KiaKaha

joined 4 years ago
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (4 children)

V for Vendetta.

A government uses a false flag pandemic to consolidate power through provision of a vaccine. A single person in a Guy Fawkes mask wins the populace over with atrociously verbose wordplay and domestic terrorism. He also wins the girl over to his ideology by kidnapping and torturing her.

It’s less lib and more outright reactionary, but whatever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

If there’s zero attempt at accountability, then yes.

There was more navel-gazey introspection over how they were suckered into covering Trump in 2015 than over how they ‘accidentally’ enabled a full on war.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

I’m digging the encryption clues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

For my mental health, I’m assuming it’s a bit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

Parenti has a short primer.

Maidan put pro-west, anti-Russian fash sympathisers in charge. The population of Crimea, being ethnically and historically Russian, said ‘fuck this’ and left, then joined Russia.

There was various degrees of US support to Maidan and Russian support to Crimean independence.

Geopolitically, the annexation of Crimea was a response to the west’s pulling of Ukraine into its orbit. The Russian preference would have been to keep a Ukrainian govt sympathetic to Russia. But when that proved impossible, taking only the pro-Russian portion of Ukraine was the next best choice.

My understanding is that, historically, Crimea was Russian, and was transferred to Ukraine as a gift during the USSR era.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

You could go for a memorable quote.

I’m always fond of Allende’s last words:

They have strength and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 years ago (2 children)

What’s a boy moder

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

Fingers crossed he backs PSL.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 years ago (1 children)

Sad horse show is way better than sad grandpa show and both are reflections of the social malaise we’ve fallen into

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

You’ve quoted the right leaning party members at a conference during the height of privatisation. Ofc there’s gonna be some dumb shit said.

If you’re assessing China, you need to look at its direction presently, under Xi Jingping, not it’s direction thirteen years ago under Hu Jintao, especially given that the Shanghai Clique of Jiang Zemin only started to lose power in 2006-2007.

Instead, let’s look at some of what Xi says.

Here’s a document distributed to all high level cadre outlining ideological trends to be wary of.

Neoliberalism advocates unrestrained economic liberalization, complete privatization, and total marketization and it opposes any kind of interference or regulation by the state. Western countries, led by the United States, carry out their Neoliberal agendas under the guise of “globalization,” visiting catastrophic consequences upon Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe, and have also dragged themselves into the international financial crisis from they have yet to recover.

This is mainly expressed in the following ways:

[Neoliberalism’s advocates] actively promote the “market omnipotence theory.” They claim our country’s macroeconomic control is strangling the market’s efficiency and vitality and they oppose public ownership, arguing that China’s state-owned enterprises are “national monopolies,” inefficient, and disruptive of the market economy, and should undergo “comprehensive privatization.” These arguments aim to change our country’s basic economic infrastructure and weaken the government’s control of the national economy.

Not to mention this hilarious headline: China’s Latest Crackdown Target Is Liberal Economists.

Alright, so there’s at least some ideological pushback. But what about reality? After all, didn’t they privatise a bunch of stuff like those economists wanted?

Well, the holding entity for state owned entities is the largest economic entity in the world at approximately 7.6 trillion USD, so whatever they’ve privatised, there’s clearly a hell of a lot they haven’t.

But what about the general trend? And what good are those entities if they’re just running according to market principles?

Well, let’s just check the news:

An agency led by President Xi Jinping to advance institutional changes in China has approved a new plan to make state-owned enterprises “stronger, better and bigger”. Monday’s decision by the Central Commission for Comprehensive Reforms to “optimise and restructure the state economy layout” – a euphemism that generally points to government-led mergers and the consolidation of various state-owned companies, with ornamental participation by private investors – came after Beijing found its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to be more reliable in answering the government’s calls during the coronavirus.

China’s “adjustment” of its state sector is aimed at “serving national strategic goals and adapting to high-quality growth”, and state firms will dominate areas of “strategic security, industrial leadership … and public services”, according to an official statement released through the Xinhua news agency.

So what we see is that SOEs were better able to respond in a pandemic situation, where market allocation just wasn’t going to cut it, and use value needed to be pushed to the fore.

No one’s denying there are capitalists in China, or that they haven’t been allowed to flourish. What’s important is that they remain under the control of the Party, and that the Party retains its control over police, military, and the commanding heights of the economy. It says a lot that even at the height of their power, the capitalists had to couch their arguments for privatisation in Marxist terms.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (2 children)

Leftists don’t have opinions on fucking kids challenge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago (1 children)

There are a lot of expansions there for HOI4. Do you need them all? Can it be pirated, or are there regular updates?

 
 
 

Posting this here to watch later

 

I’ve seen a fair few threads asking about the New Zealand Labour Party and it’s leader Jacinda Ardern, given its historic win last night. Here’s a brief explainer for why she isn’t the second coming of Lenin (or even Michael Joseph Savage).

Ardern is our equivalent of Obama, or Biden, or Buttigieg. She’s very good at saying nothing and sounding meaningful about it. She talks about compassion and will even say that capitalism has failed, but when push comes to shove she walks the same neoliberal path that the Labour Party started down in 1984.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. She worked as a senior policy advisor under war criminal Tony Blair after the Iraq war. Ardern is our version of Justin Trudeau. Foreigners swoon over her, but she’s a neoliberal through and through.

Here’s an article from our local left media outlet mocking this perception foreigners have of her.

International readers who are vaguely interested in New Zealand’s politics probably don’t actually care all that much that most of what was announced yesterday was heavily contested from many different and diverse perspectives. Going by much of that overseas coverage, it appears that what they’re really interested in reading about is an avatar for a better world, one that they wish they lived in. New Zealand, the country so fantastical that some people don’t even believe it really exists, is a beautiful dream for many people in countries like the USA and Britain that are governed by grotesque oafs.

While Labour has done alright in terms of handling the attack on the mosque in Christchurch, we can’t ignore the county’s racist refugee policy that would make Donald Trump and Australia blush.

Let’s get into the weeds. Prior to COVID, Labour’s budgets were perfunctory and third-way budget, not ‘transformational’ like they try to paint it.

Here’s what NZ socialist Morgan Godfrey has to say about the budget:

Labour's current conservatism reaches its peak in the unintentionally funny Budget Responsibility Rules (BRRs). Under the BRRs the government commits to paying down debt and keeping core Crown spending within certain limits. The Oxford English Dictionary will probably define “neoliberalism” as “the Budget Responsibility Rules” in its next edition. What’s striking, though, is not even English made a commitment like the BRRs, probably recognising they risked constraining any reformist agenda in a hypothetical fifth term. Remind me, who's on the left again?

Ardern’s Labour Government refused to deliver a capital gains tax in the midst of a housing crisis, after setting up a tax working group to recommend that very tax. Furthermore, she can’t even blame it on coalition partners, as she went on to rule out a capital gains tax in her political lifetime. So her recent outright victory in the 2020 election will do nothing for even marginally leftwards movement here, since the restrictions are self imposed.

Look to the attitudes of the unions that survived the 1984 Labour Government. On the eve of the recent budget delivery, all primary and secondary school teachers walked off the job in a mega strike.

This is a government that’s tied its own hands and refused to take on debt to rebuild infrastructure despite credit agencies saying it could comfortably borrow much more. Post COVID, the Government continues to underspend, especially on climate change compared to its peers.

Despite unemployment only looking to return to current levels by 2025, Labour has ignored the recommendations of the welfare working group they themselves commissioned, to immediately and significantly increase the amount paid to beneficiaries. In contrast, the Australian Liberals, their right wing party, doubled welfare payment amounts due to COVID.

The cherry on top is that our welfare agency regularly trawls through beneficiaries’ private text messages for nudes to make sure they aren’t fucking anyone. How’s that for compassion?

While Ardern is more than happy to front up to the cameras when facing crises from external sources, like pandemics, volcanoes, and terrorism, she’s notorious for hiding away when it’s the government’s actions that caused the crises.

Take for example land theft of the native Māori peoples. Faced with a land occupation, she staunchly refused to visit, despite multiple invitations.

Or when the state got filmed trying to take a newborn Māori baby from its mother in the birthing ward, leading outcry, Ardern, along with the Minister for Children, refused to watch the video, or read the resulting report of mothers’ experiences at the hands of the state.

This all leads to the left asking, if she’s going to govern like National, what’s even the point of Jacinda Ardern and the NZ Labour Party?

 

In 100 years (lol) people will say Trump was ‘a product of his times’.

 

So you know the Great Filter, right?

It’s what happens when you look up at the stars and ask “Where the fuck is everyone”.

There are so many planets out there, yet it’s radio silent. The intelligent life to planet ratio is really, bad. So far we’re the only ones.

You gotta ask, why?

Enter, the Great Filter. Something, at some point in the pipeline, prevents planets from developing and maintaining intelligent life capable of electromagnetic communication.

We don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a quirk of chemistry that makes the chance of multicellular life forming ridiculously low. Maybe it’s a quirk of biology that makes sapience incredibly rare. Maybe it’s a hyper intelligent space worm that eats any civilisation that makes too much noise. Maybe it’s runaway climate change.

The thing is, we really don’t want to be on the wrong side of that filter, because that suggests that an imminent demise is in our civilisation’s future. And with every discovery of non-intelligent life on other planets, it becomes increasingly likely that we’re on the wrong side of that filter.

Enter, the recent discovery of life on Venus. It means that we’re much more likely to be on the wrong side.

But, watching that debate tonight, I began to feel a sense of relief. At least if we’re on the wrong side of the filter, it’s not as though we’re wasting a once-in-a-galaxy chance. We’re just yet another civilisation that failed to get past that filter. I can live with being unexceptionally mediocre.

 
 

I would put this in !Juche, but since we don’t have that, here will have to do.

 

I get that the mod team doesn’t want to be seen as ‘censoring’ or shutting down discussion, especially without elections or a community mandate, but this approach isn’t panning out, and it’s getting frustrating as hell for the userbase.

We’d even be better off having a front page full of China struggle sessions than this garbage.

They’ve tried reaching a consensus with the wreckers, but it’s not happening.

Let’s get that community mandate, and move on.

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