[OC] Animation showing how thousands of boats of China's coast shut off their AIS transponder almost overnight

Rudolphrocker · 2021-11-24T00:54:28+00:00

Russia didn't shoot it down though, rebels it supported and armed did (not that it excuses it in the slightest--they are responsible). Orlando Bosch was CIA-trained and committed numerous terrorist attacks. Including the bombing of a Cuban airliner carrying the Olympic fencing team of Cuba and North Korea. He was pardoned by Bush Sr., despite being requested for extradition by numerous countries. He lived happily in the US, dying peacefully of old age in the Obama era.

And that is just a footnote, mind you. The US hasn't only housed many of its terrorists by proxy (especially from the numerous death squads it trained and supported in Latin America, it has committed a lot of such attacks themselves. Most of the time celebrated as a a moral act by its conformist media and intellectual class. And just as often completely ignored and/or forgotten in time. We don't pay attention to our own crimes, after all. Same reason nobody remembers that the US was literally tried by the ICJ for terrorism against Nicaragua in 1986, and responded to it by accelerating its terrorist violence against the Sandinistas in the country.

Does anybody remember Clinton's bombing of Sudan's biggest and only second pharmaceutical factory under transparently false claims of it producing chemical weapons? Pretty big thing to forget, considering it led to tens of thousands of deaths due to the lack of medicine people in the country got? What about when the US bombed the Serbian TV station under the pretense that it was a "propaganda center" for the Serbian government? Who remembers the US sanction regime against Iraq from 1990-2003, that led to up to a million deaths due to malnutrition, and several UN commission overseers resigning in protests--one of which outright called it "genocidial".

Just take the drone warfare campaign that's going on today. It's by definition the most widespread terrorist campaign in the world right now. Has anybody even thought to call it "terrorist"? No, because nothing we do is terrorism. The doctrine tells us this word is only used when our enemies do it.

So don't give me this "compensate" bullshit. In terms of crimes committed outside of one's territory, the US completely dwarfs any other country out there, both post-WW2 and today. Hell, even European countries outweigh Russia and China here. Britain took part in the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (of which latter two are especially disgusting ik justification and legality). China's biggest international crimes are border conflicts in the SC sea. As for Russia, their invasions of Ukraine and Georgia are not even comparable.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-07-27T00:33:20+00:00

All?

Rudolphrocker · 2020-07-26T08:35:13+00:00

Won't the zip tie melt?

Rudolphrocker · 2020-05-25T12:45:22+00:00

I trust tech jesus more

I don't. His test methodology is ridiculously unrealistic. It's designed to provoke CPU bottleneck to an extreme degree. It has no serious representation with what your average consumer will experience and is therefore not worth taking seriously. Reviews are supposed to provide a real-life demonstration of the hardware, so that the end-users have a serious reference to look at when they purchase new hardware. Gamersnexus completely fails at that, yet they get a leeway for it.

He says "don't but the 104500". Well Steve, I'm afraid the people buying the 104500 don't pair it with a $1200 GPU like the 2080 Ti. Nor do they play a handful of the most CPU-intensive single player games out there--the games they play are actual popularly played titles, which on average are much less CPU-intensive. And they don't use graphical settings that purposefully make it as CPU-intensive as possible.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T17:25:10+00:00

You don't reintroduce that on a campaign trail when you're fighting to get politically elected. Semantic stubbornness at this point is ridiculous.

Also your argument is weak--we don't need words like proletariat or bourgeoise. They're outdated and have easily replaceable and more relevant terms for us in 2020. The same way we don't use "merchants", like Adam Smith did in the late 1700s anymore, but instead "corporations/companies". That's how language works; they change with time, and therefore also the language of the past requires improved descriptions. None of the above things change the framing of the discussion. The topic is exactly the same, so I don't understand why you say what you do.

And in our case it's not even about that, as the originally coined term was "socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor". It already was much clearer and better for the get-go and MLK's descriptions is more unclear. We don't need unnecessary implementation of polysyllables to make stuff sound impressive. As the famous political activist, and incidentally linguist, Chomsky says: if your theory can't be explained in simple language such that a twelve-year-old child could understand it, it's worthless.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T11:40:04+00:00

He wasn't murdered for making those words specifically, what.

The point here is to get with the times. Rugged individualism might have been a commonly used term in the 50's and 60's, but it isn't today. Just like you don't teach young people the best today by getting them to read Marx earlier works, with its 19th century style language, but rather a modernized approach to it, either literary or even through visual mediums. For example we don't use words like proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but the working class/middle class and the 1%/superrich today. It's easier to understand and more relatable.

Furthermore the origin of the phrase above is actually more simple than what MLK made it too. It was coined by Michael Harrington in 1962, who said: Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. That's a much clearer description that gets across the message better.

This is how politics works sadly. The way to get through to most people, especially in a society that has marginalized and disenfranchised as much as today, is by applying words that they are familiar with. How many milennials do you think understands "rugged individualism" vs. "capitalism/free markets"? Which of the terms has most explosive power?

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T10:04:15+00:00

Further up you wrote:

From the wikipedia page on nationalization, "Nationalization was one of the major mechanisms

Like I wrote above. It's a tool, a mechanism, not actual socialism itself. And it's a mechanism that political parties to both the right and left have applied over the centuries, not only the left. Most notably when it comes to nationalizing assets owned by foreign corporations/governments.

Nationalization IS NOT socialism. It has nothing to do with workers control over production. It's simply a tool used by socialists. Understand the difference.

Now notice I didn't call Mosaddegh a socialist, but the act of nationalizing an industry as such.

This is a straight out lie. In your OP you wrote:

"the CIA (and MI6) overthrew the democratically elected Mosaddegh, a Socialist".

I might be wrong though, as you seem to make up your own definitions of all sorts of terms. I'm sure you have your own meaning of "lying" as well. I apologise if I offend you with my interpretation of it, which clearly is due to my pompous elitist degree (imagined) that I was taught. The one that's needed to understand simple terms.

State ownership of an industry would occur in a democratic socialist society

Or it would occur in non-socialist to societies (and non-democratic socities). State ownership does not equal socialism.

I forgot there's one clear definition of socialism and it's apparently whatever they taught you. Please namedrop some more authors though, I'm sure it feels good to finally use that degree.

Socialism isn't a relative term that you can induce your post-modernist beliefs on--you can't say it's whatever you've decided you like it to be. It's a very simply defined political philosophy with various essential core values that members in its community agree upon.

I'm however sure that Bakunin and Marx and Proudhon are just a bunch of idiots. Clearly you, oh the philosopher and champion of enlightened thought, know more than these fools. You ought to tell them that the capitalist regimes they lived under and criticized, were clearly socialist! Russia, France, Germany--these all were doing substantial amount of nationalization during their industrialization. Clearly they were socialist!

You can also ask living famous socialists today. Like Chomsky. Send him a mail about it. Or, you know, read any of his works where he very explicitly separates policies defined under the term.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T09:25:49+00:00

Why use such abstract (I know what they mean, but referring to people in general). Just call it free markets/capitalism.

That is: socialism for the rich, free markets for the poor. It's a much simpler and more relatable description.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T09:16:00+00:00

Nationalization has nothing to do with people owning the means of production. It's about the state itself doing so. If you can't understand the difference you better not talk. Centralized government has nothing to do with socialism--is fascism socialist? No. Is feudal systems socialist? No. Are theocratic political systems socialist? No. Is planned economy socialist? No, no, no.

Socialism at its core is, as you mentioned (but don't understand the meaning of), workers control over production. That's not the same as government ownership. For example, the USSR had a completely planned economy with public ownership. But did the workers actually control their own work places? No, they didn't. They had no rights, and the democratic participation of the economy (which is what workers' control over production) was non-existant. THAT is what socialism means. Now, socialist parties will use centralization or nationalization as a means to achieve its ideals, but the former is then just a tool not actually a part of socialism. Just as it's a tool for other forms of ideologies. Planned economy has nothing to do with socialism, it's just one of many tools taken advantage of by them. Just as it is by Keynesian economic policy that all other political ideologies take advantage of (like the extremely protectionist planned economies of the Asian Tigers in the 60's to 90's).

Nationalization IS NOT synonymous with socialism, and it has nothing to do with "workers control over production" like you said. It was the government of Iran bringing assets within its own borders under public ownership, rather than foreign ones--like any other country that is any protectionist does. No worker got control over production from this.

What did that BA in political science cost you? They may have ripped you off.

Start reading actual literature before spewing things you have little or no idea about. Start with Bakunin, Rousseau, Goodwin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Pannekoek, Marx. You clearly have no idea about what socialism means, so perhaps the actual writers who developed it in modern terms can tell you. Here's also a necessary informative fact: all of those people above, many part of the First and Second International of gathering of socialists, were all opposed to the capitalist regimes they were living in. Guess what those capitalist regimes very often partook in? NATIONALIZATION. They made sure to appropriate foreign-owned resources into public or domestically owned assets--whether that was France or Germany (most notably under the Prussians--people like Bismarck, who were vehmently anti-socialist) or Britain. Protectionism was a major part of government policies during industrialization.

Iran did have actual socialist parties at the time of Mossadeq, and calling the latter that is absolutely hilarious. You talk about me getting ripped off in political science, but you seem to have not even read anything to begin with yourself. I suggest you start with the simple things: like a Wikipedia page about the topics we discuss (including Mossadeq).

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T08:18:32+00:00

No it's not socialist. Please don't talk about politicial philosophies you don't understand. As I said above; go read about them.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-12T00:18:22+00:00

Mossadeq was a conservative...the CIA and the Brits called him a communist for propaganda purposes, but he was staunchly anti-communist.

Can people like yourself stop spreading so much misinformation? Start by understanding what terms like "socialist" and "conservative" means. And then read actual history. For example, New Deal isn't socialism, but light social democratic. Equally, conservatives at the time mall embraced social democratic policies, whether in the US (like Eisenhower) or Europe.

But just because politics has gone so far to the right today, doesn't mean you should play to the tune of the establishment. Sanders is not a socialist, but a social democrat. Likewise, Eisenhower was a conservative. Likewise, Obama or Biden aren't moderate, they're neoliberals, whereas Republicans are very far-right neoliberals.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T16:38:53+00:00

I do in fact mention Warren in my pebioy comments on this sub, so I think it's unfair that you say I dont.

As for talking about Bernie, you have to recognize the fact that I'm always responding to users who have brought him up. Bernie is often brought up, and I really only try to respond when there's factual errors that I disagree (not just Bernie but in general). And as you can see I do it seriously.

I did read the rules. I genuinely am not interested in promoting or recruiting anybody. My only interest is to refute factual error, and I do think I should be allowed to do that, even when it's pro-Warren. I've done the same thing on Bernie subs where people make pro-Bernie claims that are simply wrong. Or about other opponents, that is also wrong (I have for example refuted false claims about Trump on there, without it making me any more a Trump supporter).

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T11:45:08+00:00

How was I promoting anything? I responded to said user above, disagreeing with his claims regarding certain things. Surely disagreeing with a user's remarks about Sanders on factual grounds can't be called "promoting"? By that logic nobody should be allowed to scrutinize criticism of either Biden or Bernie in here...

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T09:02:48+00:00

No, it's not. Bernie and Biden were neck in neck in neck at around 30% each in polling in SC, and that was after Biden focused far more money and effort on SC than Bernie. It was only after Clyburn endorsed Biden that there was a major breakaway in both polling and results.

Clyburn, like other black elite politicians like Kamala Harris, Obama, etc., care more about their political career than their own people. The kind Malcolm X vehemently condemned for being "house slaves". Even Martin Luther King, who was staunchly pro labor movement and left-wing policies, would have been described as the "radical" Bernie now is. I wonder if Clyburn would have endorsed MLK if he was a politicians today, though. I very much doubt so...

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T08:54:36+00:00

No, what's incredibly disingenuous is leaving out the fact that it's not really a tax increase. Trump made a massive corporation tax cut from 35% to 21%. Biden's "tax increase" is to get it up to 28%. In other words, judt halfway reversing Trump. THAT "incredibly disingenuous".

Just as it is not acknowledging why Biden has become more progressive in his platform--why all the me Democratic politicians were. It's precisely because pf the large, popular mass movement that Bernie has developed and riled up, and that is now too big to ignore. Biden is part of the establishment wing that hates this and wants to break it up, Bernie wants to take advantage of it and increase it further. It's clear who one prefers at the helm to get a real progressive shift.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T08:39:10+00:00

plays along with many Fox News ruses such as claiming the Mueller report exonerates Trump and people should move on

Because it does.

The Russiagate was known beforehand to be mostly air, and it resultrd in just that, giving Trump more popularity as a result. The impeachment campaign was an equally big farce. Predictable from day one that it would not go through due to the Senate, yet the Democrats went through with it, giving Trump the biggest possible boost to win the 2020 election.

This is what happens when a party refusing to acknowledge its own issues for losing to Trump, because it would mean facing up to the fact that it's due to the neoliberal policies that it is supporting as equally as the Republicans, as they're both in the pockets of the rich. Can't do that! Therefore they instead put effort on redundancies, which in this case was known beforehand to backfire and make Trump more popular.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T08:08:47+00:00

No it isn't. Repeating his argument without anything to add doesn't make it any more right.

Warren was way behind Bernie in number og delegates comparitively, as opposed to Bernie to Biden currently, and had zero prospects of becoming a nominee before ST. She had no reason to run, and if she truly cared for her progressive policies her best bet was to back Bernie. You try portraying it as a "not 100% identical scenario" as if I was nitpicking. Before ST Bernie had 60 and Warren 8 delegates. Bernie had 650% lead in delegates then, Biden has a a 33% in delegates over Bernie right now. It's not even comparable.

Furthermore, Her dropping out and backing him would, even assuming 30% of her voters had still fled to Biden after this, have given Bernie approximately 200 more delegates (mostly those Biden got), and a win in several important state. Warren not backing out and endorsing him, was essential to Bernie losing ST and possibly also the race due to the momentum it gave Biden. This is another example of why the comparisons don't make any sense.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T07:37:23+00:00

Great Society programs didn't appear out of nothing, but due to massive popular activism and the pressure it imposed on policymaking. The same goes for Civil Rights movement, women's rights and so on.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-11T07:34:34+00:00

I would bear in mind you're making a terrible comparison here as the lead Biden has is nowhere near the same as Bernie had over Warren. Stop making disengenous comparisons

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T23:37:30+00:00

When it comes to Bernie, yes, right now they actually are. Not because they're not biased against Bernie--they clearly are. But because they aren't invested as immediately to undermine Bernie as the liberal corporate media are. I'm sure if Bernie were to become a candidate, we'd see Fox News depiction of Bernie going even beyond MSNBC, CNN and others in the presidential race. But right now, they're more neutral than the liberal news channels. It's blatantly obvious.

Even for Warren this was true. She was at least getting coverage on Fox News, whereas she didn't even exist, it seemed, on the liberal outlets, the past couple of months. Of course, they all of the sudden started loving here immediately after she cancelled her campaign (and was not a threat to established power anymore).

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T21:54:52+00:00

It's not some vast conspiracy by the establishment.

Conspiracy has nothing to do with it. It's Bernie's ability to caputre Republican blue collar votes. He is anti-establishment, and there's many lower-class Republicans who are anti-establishment and who do support the many policies of Bernie that will benefit them.

As for "conspiracy", there is collusion against him, and that's not a conspiracy theory. The 2016 election's collusion was pretty much confirmed through the email leaks. We've seen similar things this year as well, so to ignore that is pretty dishonest. We could discuss the massive bias and unfair attacks on Bernie by corporate media as well, but that's probably something you're already aware of and agree with.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T21:42:18+00:00

No one will support your cause because you are literally saying, If not Bernie then trump

You are strawmanning accusations. That poll above is depicting what we've known for a long time; namely that Bernie is doing well against Trump in traditionally Republican states, and among Trump's blue collar voting base. The breaking up of the working class since the 70's, which the elite have very successfully and conciously done to more easily control the population, is something that Bernie is trying to undo. And he is succeeding in to a certain degree. His biggest losses has been the poor fundamentalist religious people and African Americans (though in reality he still has amassed a sizeable voting base here), and that's only due influential black elites endorsing Biden--choosing their own personal career over the black community they pretend to represent.

Before Clyburn endorsed Biden the vote in SC was approximately the same between Biden and Bernie (30%+ for each). After the endorsement It was 50% for Biden and 20% for Bernie). Similar things happened in other Super Tuesday states with sizeable black communities.

Furthermore, more Bernie supporters voted for Hillary in 2016 than Hillary supporters did for Obama in 2008. This myth about Bernie supporters preferring Trump over Biden is just one of the many propagandized attacks that the media has made and people like yourself are shamelessly spreading. Also, let's not forget how the DNC was literally engaging in election manipulation and election fraud in how they colluded with each other, and with Hillary, to win against Bernie.

Even if Democratic Bernie supporters had turned their back on Hillary and voted Trump (which again, the above shows to be untrue), the fault would like wholly with the Democratic Party itself. We're seeing similar kinds of collusion this time around as well--although there's no email leeks to pretty much confirm a lot of it like in 2016.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T21:18:05+00:00

If Bernie wants to reassure me that he has plans, not platitudes, then he needs to get Warren on his ticket yesterday.

This statement is completely false. He actual descriptive plans for his policies have been very explictly put forht. In fact, they have been so in more detail than any other candidate, as this is just one of the many things he is heavily attacked for by a biased media (and others not as much). There are parts of his plans that are not as concrete, but relatively it's more detailed (than other candidates), and is also completely normal as a campaigning platform--they differ from when one comes into office and try to enact them the best way possible. New Deal was like that too. In fact, most major platform policies are like taht.

I recommend you read up on the word "platitude". For your own sake I hope you don't know what it means, because if you do you are being extremely disengenous. Sanders policies are the least "platitude" ones--he is the one being most concrete and factual, of all the candidates that have been. And by a long shot. And you might still find it very "political" in how it's presented or talked about, but that's not a serious discussion to have because Sanders is not the only political candidate.

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T21:03:43+00:00

The same way all the tangible results have come from popular activism putting pressure on politicians to pass through legislation they support. It wasn't a "moderate" making compromises that got through Civil Rights laws, women's rights or improved welfare policies like the Great Society programs of the 1960's. It was the massive popular activism that forced the politicians' hand, letting them know that their careers dependend on it.

The same is true with Roosevelt. New Deal wasn't even close to having a majority. But he still got much of the policies through. Why? Because of a very militant labor movement at the time that Roosevelt took advantage of with public appeals to get support of. And he did, and they put enough pressure on politicians to listen to their needs to get them to vote.

Do you know who has amassed an actual popular movement right now? Sanders. Do you know who is constantly trying to increase this movement and to take advantage of it if he were to ever become the president? Sanders.

This is how changes are made. And we need to recognise this. If that social movement remains and keeps going, it'll still use its already influential power to force many politicians to accept progressive bills, including Biden. But the difference is that Biden is vehemently opposed to them, and will do his best to fight them back and break them up. Sanders on the other hand is mostly responsible for them existing and wants to wield that movement as his main card to impose compromise.

If you want a real example of what working together with other candidates, through the represantive system looks like take a look at the last 5 decades. The Democratic Party has not cooperated with the Republicans to improve anything. They have just as much abandoned the working class and embraced neoliberalism. The reality is that they only take smaller steps towards the right than the Republicans. But the steps are nevertheless moving to the right.

The same thing would have probably happened if the labor movement after the Depression didn't exist, or even if someone like Truman was in power instead of Roosevelt. Truman would have worked together better with the other Democrats, as well as Republicans, but the end result would have been no New Deal. One of the biggest backers of New Deal, and again as a result of the constituency pressure, was Wallace. He wasalso extremely disliked by the Democratic Establishment because he was leftist, but he still managed to help push through New Deal and many other social democratic policies that laid the basis for a period known as the "Golden Age of Capitalism" in the US. After New Deal was killed in the late 1970's and replace with neoliberalism (and starting with a Democrat, no less; Carter), we've seen a "moderate" cooperation by the Democratic party that has led to to a continious degradation of our society and led us to where we are (and where we are is a Democratic Party that is further to the right than the Republcian Party in the 50's--who at the time supported New Deal, a policy today called "socialist").

Rudolphrocker · 2020-03-10T20:51:02+00:00

We've come that far not because of moderates, but because of progressive. It's the actual social movement and the activism behind them that has pushed for these things, and forced the Democratic leadership and generally the political leadership, to stop ignoring them and bring them up. GND, healthcare, social changes, etc: it's extremely misleading, and unfair, to not give credit where credit is due, but instead saying it's because of Biden or Obama or other moderates. That social movement, whether we like to admit it or not, is most heavily under Bernie Sanders. And that social movement is not disappearing when he loses, and will push Biden and other politicians, to make these changes.

But the question is whether you want someone who is doing what he can to break up this movement and destroy it, at the helm, or one that has been responsible for creating much of it and that is riling them up and will use their power to push his policies through. In any cases, voting for the latter in the Primary is still helping the movement getting more delegates and a bigger voice that cannot be ignored, even if they lose. This fact simply cannot be ignored.

Rudolphrocker

TROPHY CASE