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- Comment on Everything is awful because the people who went to business school figured out how to fuck us over as hard as possible. 12 hours ago:
Love you too.
- Comment on Everything is awful because the people who went to business school figured out how to fuck us over as hard as possible. 12 hours ago:
One quote vs. a bunch of hard statistics, sources available on request.
It’s not even a quote that contradicts what I said, when put in context, where it was about tax policy. Warren buffet is well aware of the gradualness of the wealth gap, and that there’s no free lunch for corporations. His whole investment philosophy is built on the latter fact.
- Comment on Everything is awful because the people who went to business school figured out how to fuck us over as hard as possible. 1 day ago:
Well, since you’re not OP.
Most stuff in the West, including businesses, is owned by kinda rich but mostly ordinary people - the 9% after the 1%. Furthermore, people have always tried to make money, and while big businesses are a lot more efficient at it today margins are much lower to compensate. There’s no self-contained club getting a free lunch here at the public’s expense, which is what OP was implying.
A few things have gotten more expensive relative to wages. Some things are actually less expensive (clothes are a minor expense post-globalisation, a basic TV costs less than a really nice meal), other things are kinda the same. The real trend has been the split between well paying jobs (like most of Lemmy has) and poorly paying jobs widening; the rest is “everything used to be better”, which people are recorded saying all the way back through Socratese.
- Comment on Everything is awful because the people who went to business school figured out how to fuck us over as hard as possible. 3 days ago:
I want to argue with this, but it wouldn’t be much of a rant community if it talked back.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 4 days ago:
No problem. The internet should be fun, not stressful.
I would still have to see any evidence that what I said (essentially that the US has been the biggest bully in the world for the last 80 years) is way off the mark.
If we’re including post-WWII decolonisation, pretty much point to any former colony - which is a rather large map area. The British or French didn’t just let them leave, but did atrocities to stop them until they couldn’t anymore. I went looking for casualty figures, but it turns out there’s not much information known. Maybe we’ll have to wait until the guilty parties are all dead.
I think you’d arrive at the same conclusion that it was a two-sided competition if you were to read up in detail on a few times and places during the Cold War, as opposed to just the US coup greatest hits. Mao did not fight alone. The thing is, it’s hard to capture that all in one number. The USSR spent maybe 20% of it’s GDP on it’s military, while being a third the economic size of the US, to give a sense of scale of the kind of resources that were piling in from the communist direction.
Over a period that long and the area of the whole world that’s about as good as I can do in a Lemmy comment.
Social media manipulation is in no way equivalent to supporting or initiating coups.
Ukraine comes to mind (did we talk about that already?), as does Georgia. It’s in no way just social media, either. In places like the Baltics there’s your classic people with suitcases full of money going around and paying for sabotage, access or votes. That’s not just hearsay - some have been caught.
In the West they’re more limited because it’s harder to get away with, so yeah, they mostly mess with social media. I’m pretty sure there was somebody that went to jail in the US during Biden’s time, though.
I’m not sure I understand your second point here,
It wasn’t a point, I just won’t/can’t argue with the basic idea that they’ve been too aggressive.
why should anyone support the US or any of its closest partners?
I mean, the most conservative stance would be just to support nobody and say every country is awful. Why isn’t that in consideration?
have not supported the US/West position in either Ukraine or Palestine.
Ukraine has lots of third world support. Palestine has some Western support; Canada just went against the US to recognise it in what is a very sensitive period in our relations.
The claims that it’s “for democracy” is very weak when there are examples in the recent past of the US either supporting or not opposing coups against democratically-elected foreign leaders. The first example that comes to mind is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring. From what I recall, there was hardly a squeak from the US when that happened, because it benefited the US.
Support for an anti-democratic coup hasn’t happened since the “stop communism” era. If you include not getting involved, neutral Switzerland is a massive bully, and I actually can show it in a Lemmy comment.
I would guess Obama was concerned and disappointed, but also wanted some kind of stability, and to not alienate someone he was going to have to deal with one way or another. Starting another ground war in the Middle East was obviously out of the question at that point - even closing Libyan airspace was very controversial.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 1 week ago:
I think the main difference between those examples and the regime changes in the past is that there’s no “accelerant”, (i.e., something like the type of involvement the US’ CIA had in those countries).
I mean, Russia’s trying to make far-right takeovers happen pretty hard.
I’m not saying that the US is secretly controlling the entire world. I’m saying the US has a knee-jerk reaction to deeply meddle in order to promote regimes that advantage them and depose regimes that disadvantage them.
The thing in question at this point, I think, is if it’s a reason why we should support anybody (or almost anybody) who opposes the US. Just saying that the US should chill wouldn’t be out there enough to argue with.
The US has demonstrably engaged in more covert and overt regime change operations and high-pressure tactics around the world than the entire rest of the world combined, since the end of World War II.
Hmm. That would include the end of the actual colonial era. There was a lot of what you could describe as “high-pressure tactics” used by Europe against the various independence movements.
If you restrict it to regime change only, it’s possible, since it’s mainly the US-led West and the Soviets playing. I honestly not sure if there’s non-aligned examples of supporting a foreign coup/revolution.
but I think claiming that US foreign policy isn’t a deliberately self-serving enterprise is pretty far out there and would need to some major evidence to the contrary, like perhaps demonstrating what was the actual noble purpose of all the regime change operations of the past.
If you do believe that’s the case, why should the US be involved in the domestic affairs of other countries?
During the Cold War the reason given was usually “to stop communism”, since then it’s more like “for democracy” or “to stop atrocities”.
That may or may not be drinking the kool-aid. If you are yourself a non-communist democracy, those can overlap with national interest, which is definitely a slippery slope. That’s not the same as it being purely propaganda, though (which looking back through the thread is where this tangent started).
- Comment on We're back 2 weeks ago:
Stuff on the alt. Normal rural Canada stuff IRL, which is pretty boring.
- Comment on We're back 2 weeks ago:
I’m on futurology.today, pretty sure it was just next on the lowest blocked/blocked by list.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 2 weeks ago:
K.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 2 weeks ago:
Here’s me getting instabanned for saying billionaires aren’t very communist, to someone confused as to why OP would say they are.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 2 weeks ago:
So much for calm, polite discussion.
I know what you’re thinking, that’s just tone policing, but it was in OP and is the whole reason I bothered with this thread. Usually Hexbear and friends are against actual conversation as a concept.
Use whatever tone you want, I may just decide not to talk to you, since digital turd flinging is a waste of my time.
You asked if there was anything you said that I disputed. Now you’re complaining that I “ignored” some of your points. Why? That just means that I didn’t see anything to dispute. Usually, I don’t take issue with people, you know, not disagreeing with me.
Ah, so you agree. See, only mentioning what you disagree with was unclear. Maybe you’re afraid to say it explicitly, because you’ll get banned, because “NK is great” is the actual party line.
One of my earliest childhood memories is dressing up as the “great hero” Robert E. Lee to give a presentation on the Civil War, or as we called it, “The War Between the States,” or, if we were feeling cheeky, “The War of Northern Aggression.”
So, that’s racist - and exactly what I was guessing you meant - but it doesn’t say anything about the quality of what you learned about math and reading. I think it’s out of touch that you’d compare a racist school in America to conditions in the third world. Where I have family.
And that’s not even touching on the implication that everyone in DPRK must be some illiterate backwards savage.
Oh no, the elites go to the best schools.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 2 weeks ago:
My sense of the Cold War examples is that they happened in places that were on a kind of knife’s edge already. Like Chile - there was an existing underfunded, previously influential and endogamous military that didn’t need to much encouragement to take down Allende, electoral mandate be damned. They managed to gain influence across a lot of Latin America at the time, but there’s no comparable place now. In modern places like with unstable governments, the US has been losing ground this decade, as opposed to running the show.
If the US was secretly replacing otherwise-stable governments all over the world, it would take vast numbers of people all over and be much too hard to perfectly to cover up. France’s program in north Africa ended up an open secret, for example. You don’t need it to explain anything either; so, it’s not supported by Occam’s razor. And obviously, how could I falsify that idea? This is when it starts feeling like arguing against a conspiracy theory. Every thing you can say against it gets twisted into evidence for a successful coverup.
There’s been open interventions like Iraq and Libya, and legitimate controversy about them, but neither of those guys were remotely elected (which is what I was asking about). Intervening in the sense of throwing their weight around in lesser ways definitely happens, both in secret and in open, but China is also notorious for it, and has even taken a couple swings at Canada deep in the US sphere.
But the fact remains that the foreign policy of the US has remained fairly stable across multiple administrations from both parties, which essentially amounts to saying “promoting freedom and democracy” but in actuality promoting expanding military power around the world and expanding economic power as a result of that military presence at just about any cost.
My point there was just that a lot of the decision makers believe they’re doing something noble (and the rest just want to get re-elected). At least in my country, which is culturally very close to the US, foreign policy isn’t a deliberately self-serving enterprise. (Although the fascist/“far-right populist” movement obviously goes in exactly that direction, and claims it’s a virtue)
I don’t agree at all that it’s always BS.
The first example I was thinking of there is Venezuela. Conditions in the nation are really bad, there’s been mass migration out of it, and it’s not hard to find a Venezuelan that hates Maduro and friends. He can say it’s the CIA planting people, but even if you agree that none of the situation is actually his fault, it’s not the CIA - people do blame the current government. Same story during the Arab Spring. Really, dictators will usually say an enemy manufactured any civil unrest, and the US is the obvious choice for some of them. Others blame local rivals, and historically Jews were popular.
Also, Maduro is still in charge of Venezuela, which goes back to the knife’s edge thing. The US appears to be gearing up for an open armed invasion to dislodge him, because just the considerable public support for the opposition and whatever clandestine programs weren’t enough.
A 2021 review of the existing literature found that foreign interventions since World War II tend overwhelmingly to fail to achieve their purported objectives.[100]
Interesting, I might have to read that. In my head the banana republic coups worked like half the time, but maybe that’s just because nobody talks about the failed ones.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 2 weeks ago:
No.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
plus Western corporations with large presences around the world, still extracting wealth to this day.
Not as much as you’d think, honestly. For things like resources, there are corrupt deals that get funneled through places like Saychelles, but if you actually look at the savings that come out of it it’s like pennies on the Western end. Uh, [here’s one of the reports I think I read]. They’re really screwing the global poor for nothing. Meanwhile, the low-end manufacturing jobs are popular because they tend to pay better than anything else available, and are arguably lighter work than going out in the fields; nobody’s really losing there.
Western wealth comes from other Western wealth, for the most part. Solid institutions, high education rates and lots of capital, which allows all kinds of complicated industries to exist. That got started on colonialism and slavery, but it doesn’t need it to exist now.
The West cares about human rights and democracy mostly for propaganda
I’m also involved in politics. There’s legit ideology there, just like there was legit ideology in the Soviet Union.
Although the far right is a different beast, obviously. These days the US is a lot like a second China, from a Canadian perspective.
The West has overthrown democratically-elected governments and installed human-rights violating dictators plenty of times, up until recently
What are you thinking of there? I can’t really come up with anything past the 80’s. Some leaders will blame the West for their own domestic protesters, but it’s always BS. If the US couldn’t find one guy for that long they certainly can’t whip up an entire nation.
To the rest, I’ll say we both know the earlier history, and I’d probably agree the West needs taking down a peg circa 1920. The Cold War is a bit murkier, because the USSR liked a good puppet or intervention as well.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
Oh, I’ve traveled plenty and lived in more than one country. You seriously believe that there are more Westerners building wells and handing out vaccines around the world than there are trying to control other countries militarily and economically in order to extract as much wealth from them as they can? If you do believe that, I’m not sure that we will get anywhere with our discussion.
More in terms of what? TBF I’m from a relief work background, but it seems to me most Western institution don’t care enough to send people at all.
Also, the US has been involved in overthrowing dozens and dozens of governments around the world since World War II, many of them democratically elected.
That includes the period where black people literally couldn’t vote. Don’t you think the West has changed?
To pick an example on this side of the Cold War, obviously the US and a few select friends fucked up Iraq for no reason, but then again lots of people fucked up each other within the non-Western world. Russia is doing a whole lot of that right now.
The West at least cares about human rights and democracy in the abstract. And, at this moment in history, anyone else that does is probably friendly with the West. Isn’t that worth something, if our actions are, at worst, just as bad?
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
I explained elsewhere here. We’ll keep it in one place.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
If you have the chance, travel. You’ll notice a distinct lack of Westerners standing around and cracking the whip. If anything, they’re building wells and handing out vaccines.
It’s arguably the strongest faction, although China’s also up there. But, there’s still plenty of sovereignty to go around.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
No sources, because it’s a quick reply made up of what a lawyer would call “common knowledge”.
Hey, me too!
You write well for someone with minimal education. Now who’s lying?
Interesting! You’re “certain,” are you? Where does that “certainty” come from, exactly? Evidence? Or does it just “feel true” to you, based on vibes? Does it just have that certain quality of “truthiness,” to it? Does “feeling a different vibe than you” make someone a “conspiracy theorist?”
Gonna gloss over the things verifiably in the picture, as opposed to just obvious?
This is why I’m rationing my time.
Any country that’s cut off from global trade is pretty much condemned to poverty.
Why? I don’t think that’s universally true. Nor do I think it wasn’t self-inflicted here - anything to keep the peasants from rising up.
Do they? Do you have a source?
Here you go. I’d go with HuffPost, but there’s a paywall.
Here’s a picture of him with the source, who definitely wouldn’t take my call:
There’s enough elite defectors to paint a pretty good picture as well. It’s less a normal dictatorship, and more a resource colony for people who spend a lot of time in China or on private islands, at this point.
Also, does Kim Jung Un look malnourished? The malnutrition being another thing you just ignored.
This is a big part of why Vietnam introduced reforms that would make it more amenable to the West, and likewise with China. But of course, you hate them too, despite taking a different direction and being more successful, don’t you?
Hate’s a strong word. China’s a nationalist autocratic bully, but the US is going in that direction too now, and most historical nations that can be, are. Even the genocide is hardly unique.
They’re higher on the shitlist than Iceland, though.
[Rant about the US]
Cool. North Korea still sucks.
I think that’s enough for today.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
That’s a long way of agreeing they are the good guys, with room for exceptions whenever it gets too hard to defend.
How do you feel about the fact non-Westerners hate each other at least as much as they hate the West? Your community is full of Westerners, because those of us who actually have family outside know better then to make it more than just another faction.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
Not stereotypes and myths that you’ve seen passed around in your in-group that have nothing to do with me.
This is from observing entire instances. Maybe you’re lost, that’s fair.
Soo, last I checked (pre-Gaza), North Korea had the highest rates of malnutrition in the world, and most of their population received an education mainly about loving the regime. Their elections are not secret ballot at all, are just approve or disapprove, and I’m certain using the dissent box has implications. They’re vastly poorer than their southern neighbors despite being indistinguishable at the time of the Korean War. Meanwhile, their leadership lives in luxury. I see no redeeming qualities there, and it would have been better if they’d lost and just gritted their teeth through the junta years. Oh yeah, and they regularly threaten to burn down cities elsewhere with everyone inside if.
Anything wrong there?
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
But Deng is a cool anti-imperialist - to the point where saying billionaires aren’t very communist gets you instabanned. And also somehow Modi, despite the fact the two were recently sending people to bash each other with sticks over territory.
I remember back in the day there was dispute over if Assad is cool, if Assad or the actually-socialist Kurds were cooler, and if Daesh is cool too. Interesting to hear Hexbear has a carveout for Russia. .ml, at least definitely posts TASS all the time.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
If we had a real discussion, it would go like me sending evidence NK isn’t a great place, and you telling me the CIA planted it all. Or at least, that’s how it usually goes. Either I actually am in the most boring spy novel ever, or that’s conspiracy talk.
Do you want to talk about North Korea on the condition you can’t just say things are definitely fabricated without evidence? I don’t have a huge trove of stuff ready, but it won’t be hard to find, because there’s a lot of defectors and a lot of imagery.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
And see, that’s the real point of the community. You can be one of the very few Ascended Ones that knows the real truth they don’t want you to know.
I suspect OP won’t last long, because they seem to actually care.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
Everyone who’s not in the club reading is going “yeah, of course”. You can deny it if you like, not OP.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together. We believe that’s crazy, and any open-minded read of real history and news will illustrate that.
It’s less crazy than flat earth, but mostly because physics is less fuzzy and easier to pin down. In both case the point seems to be to go against the consensus, not find the truth.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 3 weeks ago:
As far as I can tell bad-faith means exactly nothing at this point, despite being used both in the anti-cm0whatever rant and here.
- Comment on I am fucking tired of this shitty behavior. 3 weeks ago:
Oh. Well if so, that’s true. Although if you’re not going by whole blocks the effect is limited, and can be solved by any kind of appeal process. I’m guessing most unfair bans are intentional.
- Comment on I am fucking tired of this shitty behavior. 3 weeks ago:
What’s the point? OP mentioned that there’s still ways around an IP ban in theory. They’re still widely used to great effect in practice.
- Comment on I am fucking tired of this shitty behavior. 4 weeks ago:
Most trolls don’t even know what those are, though. In my experience, making an account somewhere else is more effort than 99.9% put in already.
- Comment on The MP944 was the ‘real’ world’s first microprocessor, but it was top secret for nearly 30 years — F-14 Tomcat's chip lived in the shadow of the Intel 4004, but was eight times faster 4 weeks ago:
Even with the advanced flight characteristics of a modern fighter, I’d guess they don’t really need the power modern chips are capable of offering.
I mean, it’s not just fly-by-wire. If they do any signal processing in CPU or GPU they’d need power - and I’m sure they do for the higher level processing, since they’re always updating things like target identification and electronic countermeasures to keep pace.
The F-35, for example, also famously has all kinds of automatic combat information and networked communications management, and includes a display that allows pilots to virtually see through the floor. It adds up to 4 million lines of code or so. (All proprietary and controlled by America, which has made Canada’s acquisition deal a political hot potato post-Trump)
