davel

Holy fuck you don’t even know what a nation is lmfao

I do, actually, but since you were the one talking about nations’ flags, I assumed that you didn’t know the difference between a nation and a state. Israeli Zionists clearly do know the difference, and they want an ethnically-cleaned, “Greater Israel” nation-state. Because they’re settler-colonialists; they’re fascists.

Allies even stuck to day bombing to limit collateral damage.

No, they did it in order to hit their targets, which were often cities. The US also dropped two atomic bombs on city centers with no warning at all.

Isreal bombs a population center: bad. Iran bombs an Isreal population center: good.

Obviously neither one is “good.” You’re putting words in my mouth.

Here’s a fun fact, most Israelis—bourgeois and proletariat—approve of what the state of Israel is doing in Gaza.

These are fascists. If there’s anything to be learned from WWII, it’s that no one is more antifascist than communists.

If your empathy for the people crushed under the rubble of an apartment complex depends on the flag out front then just admit you’re a frothing nationalist and stop pretending.

Palestinians don’t have a nation. They’ve been under occupation by European settler-colonists for about 80 years.

Palestinians have the right under UN law to struggle against their occupiers by any means necessary, including armed struggle, while the State of Israel, as an occupier, has no right to “self defense.”

As for Iran, it is an anti-imperialist state retaliating against an unprovoked attack by an imperialist state, which it has the right to do by UN law. Marxist-Leninists give Iran our critical support[^1] in the struggle against imperialist states, not to mention the struggle against genocide.

[^1]: Critical support is supporting something while also being critical of its flaws.

Are you serious right now? Communism isn’t based on solidarity with settler-colonists who are genociding the people they locked into the Gaza prison-ghetto for a generation, for the crime of being indigenous. October 7th was a prison break, a Warsaw ghetto uprising.

I highly doubt anything will ever bring it peace

The death of the imperialist Great and Little Satans would go a long way toward bringing peace.

Previously. Previously. Previously.

What about those comments? The Palestinian genocide has been bipartisan, aided and abetted by both Biden and Trump. And on the campaign trail, Harris created no daylight between herself and Biden on the issue.

I don’t know how you’ve been on Lemmy for two years and are hearing this for the first time. Previously:

Liberalism has a definition, which Marxists (and still many liberal Europeans) have never forgotten, though thanks to red scare purges and two cold wars, others have. Now, in Orwellian fashion, “liberalism” and “socialism” are floating signifiers, so we have liberals like Sanders calling themselves socialists, despite never calling for abolishing private ownership of the means of production.

Wikipedia: socialism: Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

Wikipedia: liberalism: Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law.

“Private property,” a.k.a. “the means of production.”

What people in the US usually call “conservative” and what they call “liberal” are both liberal. Fascists in the Republican party aside, both it and the Democratic party are liberal parties. And liberalism and fascism have more in common than most people realize.

Oh good, it will be in the public domain.

OpenAI, which is also fighting a string of copyright lawsuits, donated $50 million this year to a group of research institutions including Oxford University’s 400-year-old Bodleian Library, which is digitizing rare texts and using AI to help transcribe them.

When the company first reached out to the Boston Public Library, one of the biggest in the U.S., the library made clear that any information it digitized would be for everyone, said Jessica Chapel, its chief of digital and online services.

“OpenAI had this interest in massive amounts of training data. We have an interest in massive amounts of digital objects. So this is kind of just a case that things are aligning,” Chapel said.

Consent manufacturing is long-established fact, not magic spooky conspiracies. It’s taught at universities worldwide.

Michael Parenti, 1996, Dirty Truths: Reflections on Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life and Class Power

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.

Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.

At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

it’s not like Iran isn’t known for authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

Iran certainly has its problems, but they don’t hold a candle to Israel’s (or the US’s) human rights abuses.

Meanwhile Iran has as much right to develop nukes as any country: precisely zero.

Okay? Iran isn’t even developing any, while Israel has had hundreds for decades, which they developed in secret as a rogue state.

Paywall bypass: https://archive.today/3TO24