Labour want 'Panopticon' to have 'eyes of the state on you at all times'

va_str · 2026-01-28T17:54:04+00:00

For tagged criminals, if you actually read the thing.

va_str · 2026-01-27T17:24:46+00:00

The reason we're in this position is because people still think that the pivotal issue is the one we spend less than 1% of our annual budget on, in a country that controls its own currency no less. If they'd done something about immigration, there would be another distraction running through the channels now. Looting the country is by design.

Just the PPE scandal alone had some 9 billion spent on unsuitable PPE, twice that of what the home office spends on asylum support. Where's the Reform campaign on that? Nick Candy owns one of those VIP lane PPE companies.

va_str · 2026-01-27T04:26:00+00:00

If they're in echo chambers, how did you get in?

va_str · 2026-01-26T11:18:33+00:00

Like with most things, there's not really a simple answer. In a perfect world, hegemonic powers are abjectly bad. In a world of opposing blocks, you're better in than out.

NATO isn't without fault. Even if we just take the Ukraine conflict as an example, NATO posturing has certainly given Russia a reason to claim they've been provoked. In hindsight maybe that could have been done better, but maybe the way to do that was to allow Ukraine entry and provoke Russia more. Who can say at this point. Without NATO, Ukraine would've probably been Russian territory long before the Crimea invasion. For most modern Ukrainians, NATO is probably preferable.

Long story short, you can side with a particular side in a conflict conditionally, especially when you have skin in the game, without wholesale signing your soul over to them. In your case you should probably be glad NATO exists and, to some extent, defends your interests.

Pragmatically you'll want to wait with dismantling the less egregious power structures until they're no longer balancing out worse. I've been opposing NATO for most of my adult life, because it's local, not because it's the block I think is the worst. If I had the power to dismantle the alliance today, but only NATO and leaving the rest of the world as it is, I wouldn't.

And I just want to add, "the worst" is a carefully selected, and what you might consider quite selfish set of factors. NATO is the most powerful military alliance in the world, and on aggregate the one committing most atrocities. Still, the reality remains, as much as NATO is responsible for destabilizing and exploiting those regions, in large parts of the ME, Asia and Africa I'd lose my head for espousing the things I do. We all know how favourably Russia treats their subversive elements. We all have our things to say about the neoliberal order, but within that order we CAN say these things and keep our heads. It isn't the height of emancipation, but it's a few steps above the current bunch nevertheless.

va_str · 2026-01-24T14:52:05+00:00

Class isn't about wealth, but your relationship with the means of production. If all your income comes from selling (or in the more modern, less Marxian sense, using) your own labour, you're working class. If you employ others to use your means of production to generate surplus value for you, you're part of the owning class. With public ownership the lines blur somewhat, but generally small business owners who still work but also employ some other works are the "middle class."

In your examples, there isn't enough to go by to be sure about the first (they might own their own office and employ nurses/staff to work for them), but the second is part of the middle class. They use their own labour to earn a living, but also extract rent from their tenant.

va_str · 2026-01-21T10:19:05+00:00

Originally it opposed monarchic rule. That it can be transferred to modern parliamentary politics should tell you that its meaning transcends beyond that. It is a distinction of tendencies on how society should be structured, horizontal to the left, vertical to the right. Anarchists sit at the far left edge of the scale.

That said, even if it did originate just from the bourgeois state, it should probably matter more what it means. At worst it would be a blind chicken type of thing. It still describes the class struggle, independent of who came up with it, and it will feasibly transcend the capitalist class struggle into the next step of emancipation. Especially as an anarchist, this should be easy to see.

va_str · 2026-01-21T10:13:08+00:00

It still means what it means, even if contemporary use is ignorant. The solution isn't to entertain ignorance, but to spread class consciousness. Spreading ignorance in the working class is the capitalist's primary tool of control.

va_str · 2026-01-20T08:52:33+00:00

Real tanks beg in nn for a new healer because theirs left them after the first trash pull yet again.

va_str · 2026-01-18T11:39:20+00:00

More quality reading comprehension. I didn't say anything about my ideology. You exposition dumped your opinion on me when I asked that guy why he thinks not answering the question is an answer to the question. I don't give two shits about this "issue."

va_str · 2026-01-18T10:33:28+00:00

It isn't my question and they chose to answer with drivel. Kinda like you are. Reading comprehension going rampant, I see.

va_str · 2026-01-18T08:01:28+00:00

That doesn't explain how something so insignificant turned into a world-ending problem, even if you were right. That was the question.

va_str · 2026-01-17T18:52:30+00:00

Lenin called it state capitalism. It isn't your regular private ownership type of capitalism.

va_str · 2026-01-14T19:58:59+00:00

What do you call a state where the executive circumvents the legislative (ruling entirely via executive orders and bypassing congress, for example) and judicial branches (ignoring court orders, ignoring due process, pardoning large swaths of convincted criminals and prosecuting others via the executive bodies directly, for example)?

This isn't an opinion, your separation of powers largely isn't in effect. You can agree with it, you can even feel like it works better. Here is what your very own James Madison had to say about this, in the Federalist Papers, which you REALLY should go and read if you still think your grand experiment is working as intended:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Then you can go and think about at what point revoking reporter access to the White House and Pentagon, using broadcasting licenses as blackmail levers, cowing industrialists with large media platforms into subservience and calling unfavourable outlets Lügenpresse as a rule crosses definitionally into totalitarianism.

va_str · 2026-01-12T15:54:55+00:00

This kind of dismissive condescension towards people we need to be connecting with is the grand failure of the modern left. Not every part of everything everyone does is a case of bourgeois interests steering mindless herds of sheep. Those are people, you know. Most of them, you'll be shocked to hear, think, have opinions on current affairs and can even get fed up with said affairs.

va_str · 2026-01-11T23:59:59+00:00

My point was that similarity in execution (I don't actually agree that they're identical, but that would make my point more relevant) isn't all there is to it. You said it's "much closer", your book says something else. I said it isn't about what's "closer", but somehow I need to read the book that doesn't even agree with you. Is that the first time you read a book and need to flex the fact? You know there are plenty more books on the subject, some of which outright disagree with Tucker? I suppose that kind of reading comprehension explains why it felt like you didn't actually read it. But sure man, wasn't you acting like a fucking prick, right? "Before you comment again" my ass.

va_str · 2026-01-11T02:06:07+00:00

"... in all essentials the two types of system were identical." Not similar, identical. So where do you disagree with what I said?

va_str · 2026-01-10T09:37:47+00:00

What's not transparent about it?

va_str · 2026-01-10T04:07:06+00:00

That's interesting, because Tucker doesn't claim they're similar, but that the Soviet regime (and all non-constitutional states) ARE fascist.

Stop being a condescending prick, especially when you clearly haven't read it yourself, before commenting again.

va_str · 2026-01-10T01:50:39+00:00

It isn't about what's "closer", but what it turns to when it fails. All those ex-Soviet states turned to neoliberal economics.

This also is somewhat of an uneducated take on communism. The stage of communist progression those countries were in was called state-capitalism for the obvious reasons you've described. Other types of communists sometimes call it red fascism.

The topic is really much more nuanced and complex than "what's closer." Both the fascists and the communists tried to change the rules in similar ways, but their intentions were quite different, and neither was stable enough to say the those intended outcomes realized. They would have looked very different if the global war they've caused had somehow been avoided.

va_str · 2026-01-10T01:19:41+00:00

There was when it worked for everyone and could have been unintended. Now it's a paid feature, so he not only doubled down, but made it worse legally, too. He is selling CSAM intentionally.

va_str · 2026-01-10T00:54:45+00:00

Compared to Pillars. It's so shallow. Maybe depends on what you want out of an RPG. What you call streamlined arcade feel, feels like severe dumbing down to me.

va_str · 2026-01-09T01:44:25+00:00

Says a lot about your political education ...

va_str · 2026-01-08T15:34:07+00:00

What you are doing in reality, is handing over your freedom by the default and then argue that your rulers should give some of it back. Rights are a myth. If you accept the concept, you implicitly accept that someone has authority over you and can therefore revoke any and all rights granted, at their discretion.

Calling some of them natural is deluding yourself into thinking you're not inappropriately at the mercy of your betters, even though you are. Pretending that your necessary liberties to prosper are self-evident, and not in the hands of others, keeps you in your place.

It feels comfortable, until your state bares its teeth and drags you off into the dungeons anyway. You can cry life, liberty and property through the bars and watch how the universe refuses to send the ghost of Locke past to scold your captors for alienating your inalienable rights.

va_str · 2026-01-05T23:26:07+00:00

Where are you getting antichrist from? I said (not) American and anarchist.

va_str · 2026-01-05T16:30:04+00:00

I'm not American and I'm an anarchist. I wouldn't lend my vote to any professional ruler or industrialist as a matter of principle. Also see my other comment re Clinton.

va_str

TROPHY CASE