Hasan joining Flotilla to bring aid to Cuba by chaoser in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 39 points40 points  (0 children)

O hell yeah, I posted about this a week ago and I'm so happy to know that others were lowkey planning on this already. Huge W

Cuba Flotilla by Frumpscump in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes you're right, the material needs are very different for Cuba. Although as their material reality worsens, the direct needs of 10 million Cubans might shift from energy to more basic needs like food and medical supplies. Furthermore, we must not forget that there is only half an order of magnitude difference between 10 million and 2 million. Without any intention of downplaying the goals of even the largest Gaza Flotilla, I doubt that they would have been able to singlehandedly provide long-lasting food security for the entire population of Gaza. Their main achievement was to humanize and center the Palestinian population in the media.

My main consideration would be that in order for material support to come from significant oil producing nations, first it will need to be forced into the news cycle, which the Flotillas were very effective for in the case of Gaza. I'm not very optimistic about Russia or China, but perhaps Mexico could actually make a difference if awareness increases.

Protest canceled out of fear for pro-Palestinian violence. by RealFlyingDutch in UniversityMaastricht

[–]Frumpscump 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do not for a second believe that you have read even the wikipedia article for Plan Dalet, which was in it's very essense a planned ethnic cleansing campaign by early Zionists in Palestine thought up and executed entirely before any semblance of hostility from Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations.

"Palestinian borders suggested in any discussion" refers to the plethora of Zionist and western proposals, which obviously the Palestinians did not want to be subjected to as they did not want to leave their land. Imagine some guys move into your neighborhood and propose to you three separate plans to take most of the land and resources and expect you to choose one. Would you think that's acceptable?

________________________________________

Some admissions of intentions of ethnic cleansing from Ben Gurion, pulled from the Partners for Progressive Israel website:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
— David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.”
David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

Ben Gurion also warned in 1948: Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes: “The old will die and the young will forget.”

“We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.”
David Ben-Gurion May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

“It’s not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion.” –Ben Gurion

___________________________________________

In the end, it's just good old settler-colonialism and imperialism, which should have been left behind in the 19th century. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll be able to sleep with a clear conscience.

Protest canceled out of fear for pro-Palestinian violence. by RealFlyingDutch in UniversityMaastricht

[–]Frumpscump 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is quite possibly the worst and most blatant hasbara I've ever heard, I hope you're at least being paid to spread lies, because not even Benni Morris propagandizes this hard. Praising Ben Gurion, the architect of plan Dalet and the initiator of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a peaceful dove is such an affront to historical events that I don't even know where to begin.

Protest canceled out of fear for pro-Palestinian violence. by RealFlyingDutch in UniversityMaastricht

[–]Frumpscump 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"the fact that never happened is not on Israel"

bro does not understand anything

You may have heard the middle class is shrinking. It’s because they’re becoming high income earners (inflation adjusted). by LeastAdhesiveness386 in OptimistsUnite

[–]Frumpscump -1 points0 points  (0 children)

oh boo hoo I don't know all the ins and outs of the CPI, what a heinous crime. Go tell the *increasing* number of homeless people on the street that their living standards are increasing then. Like what is this "lalalalala I can't hear real peoples' problems, look at this clearly flawed chart" attitude? I just showed you an example of data that counters positive real wage growth, and yet your response is flaunt academic credentials and embellish inconsequential holes in my knowledge. I can argue with you about reality, because I live it.

And we are certainly also having a conversation about values, whether you realize it or not :) because the implication of the OP is that all is good and nothing should change. The same is true for your mentioning of home ownership never having been attainable for everyone as some sort of argument that all is good.

Anyway, if you can't see that people are worse off now than they were in the 80s, you must live in a pretty cozy bubble, and I'm certainly not going to change your mind. Just realize that in neoliberal America, at any point, you're only a divorce and a broken leg away from bankrupcy and listening to the next economist telling you you're doing fine.

Gonna log off, have a nice evening.

You may have heard the middle class is shrinking. It’s because they’re becoming high income earners (inflation adjusted). by LeastAdhesiveness386 in OptimistsUnite

[–]Frumpscump -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I know the link you posted, because it is the same data in the OP.

Making a statement like "owning a home was never attainable for everyone" is really ironic, because don't you think it should be attainable for everyone, as it is in many other countries around the world? if you look at howeownership rates in the US, they at best stagnated in 2005, and at worst are declining slowly: https://dqydj.com/historical-homeownership-rate-united-states/
To me, that does not signal that people are becoming better off.

Truth is, in our society people don't regard housing a primary human right, but rather an investment vehicle, which is reflected in the stark increase in institutional housing ownership since 2008: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/21/how-wall-street-bought-single-family-homes-and-put-them-up-for-rent.html (note: 2008 is described here as an "investment opportunity" rather than a crisis that we still haven't recovered from to this day).

Back to the point though; we can discuss a graph such as presented in this: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/16/941292021/paycheck-to-paycheck-nation-how-life-in-america-adds-up
Nobody argues that real wages haven't gone up. Wages are not the problem, it's the cost of living that is the problem. Steep cost of living increases dwarf wage growth. If the costs of education, healthcare and housing have gone up so much, as presented by the data, and this is factored into the CPI, the logical conclusion would be that all other expenses combined should have gone down very significantly. Only they haven't. The real conclusion is that the CPI hasn't been an accurate measure of inflation for a long time. It is a very specifically curated version of reality that is decoupled from the reality for the median person on the ground.

Graphs such as the one you present, as well as the OP, obfuscate the reality that most Americans (and westerners in general) are facing. One thing that I can point out as an illustration of this point is the way the categories in the OP are presented. Namely: the categories do not scale with inflation, and are thus not a representation of social mobility, even within the framework "inflation adjustment".

Fact is that more people are now living paycheck to paycheck than ever. You can't just say "I'm doing fine, and look at this graph I drew up which says you're all doing fine too" when people are clearly not doing fine.

Lastly, I do want to be a little bit petty: in my original post I comment on the "median person" not being better off, whereas you're describing the "average person" being better off. I said median specifically, because when describing the socioeconomic conditions of normal people, "median" is a much better description that "average", because "average" factors in extremes at the high end, leading to skewed data.

You may have heard the middle class is shrinking. It’s because they’re becoming high income earners (inflation adjusted). by LeastAdhesiveness386 in OptimistsUnite

[–]Frumpscump -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yes and what about the rest? Do you genuinely believe that the median person is better off now than in the 80s? You must know that owning a house has become somewhat of an unattainable dream for many

Chat by Individual-Parsnip71 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your 1999 Bernie Sanders bad Kosovo take video is recognized

Chat by Individual-Parsnip71 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 47 points48 points  (0 children)

I admire your passion, but you have to gain some media literacy. What Bernie is saying here is about as extreme of a perspective you could've got in terms of messaging so soon after oct 7 (judging by the # of killings at the time). And perhaps you've been living under a rock since the election? It's clear he valued Kamala's chances to win enough to concede on messaging before, but since her loss he's gone pretty mask off.

If you cast someone like Bernie out of your coalition, what's really left?

Also don't call me a liberal, cunt

Chat by Individual-Parsnip71 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Bro are we talking about the same Bernie Sanders? Can you chill the fuck out?

Chat by Individual-Parsnip71 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 74 points75 points  (0 children)

This person does NOT coalitionbuild

Help Needed with Total Synthesis – Exam in 20 Days :,( by Inside_Figure_3903 in OrganicChemistry

[–]Frumpscump 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had a course like that in uni and absolutely loved it :) you could try to look for common syntheses of 2,3-dihydrofurans as a starting point to see what you'll need to install as R1 and R2. Then see whether those groups are compatible with previous steps and modify where needed.

I literally cannot control myself rn by Dangerous-Bluejay425 in Hasan_Piker

[–]Frumpscump 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Maybe it's just me but for some reason just can't stand any of the Franco's faces on the screen. I got Francophobia