For money. Whoever buys it has to pay you for it. Shutting down just means leaving a gaping hole in American social media that some other company will fill and you’ll be in the same position but with less money.
Yeah I agree, there really is no incentive for a for-profit company to choose shutting down over selling. Unless they never cared about profit and had ulterior motives from the very beginning.
Not really, they would still be operating the same business in every other part of the world, except for the US. So you’d then have US Tiktok competing with World Tiktok. They can’t be forced to sell the global operations due to a mandate from some American court, no matter how much they think to be the world police.
H.R.815 Sections H and I have already passed, and there is no “sales agreement” because TikTok hasn’t officially negotiated with any potential buyers. The US Government as a whole doesn’t want or need TikTok, they just don’t want China using it as a weapon.
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same?
TikTok would remain exactly the same, with the exact same algorithms, but it would then be the free speech of a US Citizen so everyone would be happy. Maybe TikTok couldn’t send the data directly to China anymore, but they could certainly sell personal data on the shadowy data markets, just like every other US owned tech company does, and if that data happens to find its way to China then 🤷 .
Shell companies hide the true owner of companies all the time. Why can’t TikTok do the same?
The problem is they targeted TikTok specifically in the law and it will be easy to circumvent. “TikTok is banned, but check out this totally new website called TokTik with the exact same content but owned by a US Citizen”.
This is why they should have created regulations that apply to all companies. Because making regulations that depend on who owns the company will only cause TikTok to change the technicality of who owns the company. They can do so through all kinds of legal tricks without ever actually giving up control.
Why don’t they just sell TikTok to a US Citizen who happens to believe TikTok should remain the same?
Who? What USA citizen is prepared to buy something for the privilege of fighting the USA government with would obviously get mad and probably block the sale if byte Dance TikTok is still involved.
I don’t really follow USA politics but didn’t this law pass by quite large margins? They could obviously ban toktik.
They can’t actually ban TikTok by name, it’s unconstitutional to make laws targeted at individuals.
The current law actually says “no company can operate in the US with over 20% owned by China, Iran, N. Korea, or Russia”, or something like that.
There’s a lot of people in the US and at least of few of them would be willing to run TikTok the same way, same algorithms, same content, and sell the users data on shadowy data markets (which China can surely get their hands on), etc. I’m repeating myself now.
Again, my point is there are a lot of people in the US and surely some of them can form a company willing to do what China wants, and isn’t that their right by our laws and morals of free speech? I know if things get heated enough laws and morals will be ignored (see Japanese internment camps).
And my even broader point is that this move against TikTok has ulterior motives. We should have created regulations that apply to all companies instead of targeting TikTok specifically. Even though we didn’t technically target TikTok specifically, we effectively did.
This is part of Section H of H.R.815 that was signed into law:
<span style="color:#323232;">(A) any of—
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(ii) TikTok;
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(B) a covered company that—
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">(4) FOREIGN ADVERSARY COUNTRY.—The term “foreign adversary country” means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code.
</span>
So, no, they don’t just get to change their name. They don’t get to change everything and still send data overseas to China. They have to cut ties with the CCP or else they cannot escape this.
For the record, they’re not currently sending data to China. Though they’d probably only have to gently twist one or two arms and need about 12 hours to do so.
The company openly stores the data in China. Ex-employee Yintao “Roger” Yu, who was head of Engineering for all of ByteDance’s US Operations in 2017-2018, claims that the CCP had full immediate access to all collected data.
I’ve also heard the data is physically stored and hosted by Oracle. So maybe China just copies it? The primary copy is in the US currently. Which doesn’t really mean much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta’s data ended up in China too. But Congress isn’t targeting them.
When Facebook was investigated following the 2016 election for selling Data that inevitably ended up in Russia, the DOJ reccomended their case to the FTC who in 2019 fined them 5 BILLION USD. This isn’t even the only time they’ve been fined or investigated, either, they’ve got ongoing lawsuits from the states and federal governments.
And now, the FTC no longer has to wait for a DOJ investigation because H.R.815 also included Section I that enshrines their ability to fine the companies who sell data to adversarial countries including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.
But sure, “tHeY’RE NoT TaRGetTiNG faCeBOoK.” I can’t tell if you’re supremely uninformed or a CCP shill, but to be very frank I don’t have patience for you in either circumstance.
You’ve made the most substantive comments in this post. Especially quoting the law and this information about Facebook.
For context, Facebook’s revenue in 2019 was 70 billions dollars. So a 5 billion dollar fine isn’t nothing. Everyone can judge these bans and fines for themselves and judge whether there’s a double standard though.
You seem upset because I said TikTok stores their data in Oracle, but that’s what they said in 2022. www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/…/index.html But, as you say, it appears in 2018 they were storing their data in China, and presumably that continued up until mid-2022.
I’m not a shill, but I am a cynic who believes the government is acting on behalf of their corporate friends (US media companies) rather than on general principles. I have no love for China. I wanted regulation that applied equally to all US companies. If you don’t want to talk to me, fine, I’ll discuss my opinion with others; even so, you’ve shared a lot of important and concrete information here, so thanks again.
I see. You’re right about the text of the law. Thanks for taking the time to post that.
I would say it violates the 1st Amendment then. US Citizens have a right to say what they want, which includes saying what China wants if that is what the person wants.
IG is owned by FaceBook which actually has about double the userbase of TikTok if you don’t count DouYin’s 700 Million. I kind of hope that they also fuck up and trigger Section I if not full blown Section H of the bill.
Restrictions placed on chip sales to China. Orange man allows some chips to be sold to China. China developes some tech with Orange man’s approval. The GOP blames Biden.
Because whenever you try to target class, it ends up excluding on race.
Every single time it just so happens that white applicants hoovered up all the available program benefits and NOBODY ever knows why!
Not to mention the racial wealth gap, it is impossible to achieve racial equality so long as the same amount is being given to everyone. All that’s doing is maintaining the current wealth gap, it does nothing to close the gap.
Equality will not be achieved until white people can fucking let go of the fact that black folks have to get stuff that white people will not for everyone to be on the same playing field, and that’s just economically, we’re not even talking about how “just hire the most qualified candidate!” only ever seems to be an issue when the qualified candidate is a PoC.
Every single time it just so happens that white applicants hoovered up all the available program benefits and NOBODY ever knows why!
That’s an implementation / corruption issue, then. Fix the root cause, not the symptoms.
Not to mention the racial wealth gap, it is impossible to achieve racial equality so long as the same amount is being given to everyone. All that’s doing is maintaining the current wealth gap, it does nothing to close the gap.
Assuming 90% of PoC qualify, and 30% of whites (or whatever the actual numbers are), if everybody has an equal chance at aid based on their wealth, PoC should receive the majority of aid. If that’s not happening, I refer you back to point 1.
Black people are poorer on average because of systemic racism, and they get shut out of benefits not specifically sectioned for them and them alone because of systemic racism.
Poor whites aren’t poor because of literal centuries of being treated as literal farm animals, complete with actual husbandry programs when importation became illegal.
Poor whites aren’t struggling to find affordable housing because of being specifically excluded from New Deal era housing loans.
Poor whites aren’t facing all that on top of being disproportionately likely to just randomly get murdered by the fucking cops.
Poor Whites can afford to sit the fuck down and let the black folks have what was intended for them.
Yes, so fix the racism. Get rid of the racist officials. Teaching an entire new generation that racism is acceptable if it’s against the right colour (sound familiar?) is not the way to go about eliminating racism.
Poor whites aren’t poor because…
By your logic, they obviously didn’t benefit from those policies either. Does it matter WHY they’re poor and struggling? Maybe we could just help everybody who’s deserving?
It’s impossible to judge someone’s thoughts and reasons for why they do something, but it’s easy to enforce a set of rules that makes them do something else.
Racism has had multi-generational effects. Fixing racism now doesn’t eleviate the inequality affecting people whose ancestors were enslaved, beaten, and robbed
I’m a Chinese outside China. Believe me when I say I know very well what systemic racism is. I do not however believe the best way to combat it is by encouraging more discrimination, whoever it is against.
Believe me when I say I know very well what systemic racism is.
I believe you may think you know what it is, but I don’t think you do. Systemic racism is subtle. We likely don’t even recognize a good chunk of it yet. Even if we did, a system that assumes equality of opportunity literally systemically perpetuates the effects of racism.
If a scale has $60 on one side and $100 on the other, you will literally never restore the balance by adding money equally on both sides. The best you can do is obscure the imbalance by adding so much money that the scales start to look balanced from a distance.
Now the value of the money means nothing compared to assets (property, denied to minorities historically through policies like redlining), which will hold their value through inflation. Guess who has all the assets? The side that started with $100… so even that doesn’t work.
Ultimately, there is no way to restore the balance without the $100 side’s feelings getting hurt before because they aren’t getting as much. It’s not like white folks are being told to move out of their home so a black family can move in. Speaking as a white dude, we can stand to suck it up for a bit.
Systemic racism can be subtle. The Chinese version is blatant. I’m absolutely certain that the previous poster knows quite well what blatant state supported systemic racism looks like, they grew up in such a system. I don’t know if that would help or hinder their ability to identify such structures in the subtle ways that the US does it.
I was concerned that this comment only had 5 downvotes, but then I saw you’d only posted it 12 minutes ago, so I have faith it will be bombed into oblivion as it deserves.
Targeted corrections to racism are not racism and racism is a separate problem from class. Sorry the demographic massively overrepresented in business and politics might have a few programs not available to them.
What’s ironic is these are mostly the same people jumping on Israel for committing genocide after saying ‘never again’. The lack of self awareness is stunning.
There were 5 downvotes after 12 minutes and thirty something now. That there’s a lot of other whiners upvoting doesn’t make it a less derision-worthy comment.
Liberals are not in favor of class disappearing. You’re thinking of socialists. Liberals perpetuate class divide as much as conservatives. Cons are liberals too.
It’s not controversial, but it is ignorant of the underlying issues. Yes, poverty is a class issue; but it’s also a race issue. It’s a lot easier for a white person to change their class than it is for a black person (or any person of color). Give a white person a million dollars and they are accepted almost everywhere. Give a black person a million dollars and they are still denied access to opportunities.
If you give two race car drivers the same car and training, but one of them has friends/family who are a fully professional crew to do their pit stops and the other doesn’t have any friends who know about cars and has to change their own tires and fill their gas tank, then guess who is going to win that race. If you give those same two drivers the same professional pit crew but one has a shitty car, then guess who is going to win. The problem is unequal starting points requiring unequal assistance to ensure equal ending points. Giving everyone equal access to equipment/training doesn’t give equal endpoints if the starting point is different.
Go ahead and breakdown black/white ancestry for me, judge for us who belongs to what race, because America truly is a melting pot, kind of a mess.
Fuck me, I dated a Jamaican woman that had pale(ish) skin and hazel eyes, but seriously tight curls. Black or no? My wife is 50/50 Japanese/Pilipino. Which is she?
I get systemic racism and privilege. As a middle-aged white guy, I’m stunned at the privilege, even vs. being a poor young white guy watching blacks get fucked over. Man do I have stories.
But granting government privilege by race sounds kinda messy, given my post, doesn’t it?
My point is, we’re so genetically mixed, it’s getting harder by the day to point to a person and say, “Black!”, or anything else. Jo Koy has some hilarious standup about Philippinos being the Mexicans of Asia. If you dropped me in a room with my wife’s friends, and put in ear plugs, I couldn’t tell!
Anyway, I’m white as fuck, and it’s obvious. Maybe I should shut up.
Well if you want an answer, go tell a racist you have a black great grandparent. They subscribe to the one drop theory. But it’s also not just about current stuff. It’s about the generational trauma too. Just because someone was born lighter than their parents does not erase the difficulty inherent in anything involving their parents. Getting into school, camps, sports, banking, networking, etc.
Why? Are you denying then bank loans in 2024? Did you redline them in 1965? Pass criminal sentencing laws meant to destroy their community in 1992? Are you not even looking at job applications with names like Matt and Adam?
I don’t know dude. But these problems certainly aren’t solved by forcing organizations which exist to benefit minorities into wasting their resources on the majority of people who do not suffer racial discrimination. Obviously.
Why are you trying to distract from the very racist decision by this judge to waste the resources of an anti racist organization?
If you want to quibble whether certain minorities ought to be included, but aren’t, fine. But that has nothing to do with this court’s decision, and nobody is going to be helped by it except for racist, conservative whites playing the victim.
And your comment right here is exactly why this extra help is needed. You have a clear lack of understanding of how the real world works. Ask a person of color how they are treated when they go shopping. Black people in a clothing store will get followed around by workers and even other customers who think they might be stealing. Imagine how it feels to be treated like a criminal everywhere you go, even if you have the money to be shopping there. They have the money, they can afford it, but they still are treated like they shouldn’t be there. Hell, my buddy growing up worked at a clothing store and got free clothes to wear during work, and he was still followed around by customers thinking he was stealing. I can tell you that I’ve never been treated like I shouldn’t be in a store even when I clearly couldn’t afford to shop there. That’s not a class thing, that’s a race thing.
Just last year in Los Angeles, not exactly a white-only city, a black person had the cops called on them for trying to deposit a large check at their own bank. The black person was a movie director or something and had a ton of money, including in their account at that bank; but the teller and manager assumed they were a criminal and doing something illegal and called the cops on them.
So tell me again how black people aren’t denied access even when they have a ton of money.
You also either didn’t read my post or didn’t understand what I was saying. I said they are denied access, and you replied they are going to be more valuable to society. I never questioned their value, just what access they are given by society. Access is one of the most important things in life, even more so than money in my mind. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Value is a whole different thing. Slave-owners value their slaves, but they don’t treat them like friends.
Texas already offers help for small business regardless of minority status:
The Governor’s Office of Small Business Assistance and the Business Permit Office assist small and medium Texas businesses through advocacy, entrepreneurial support, education and technical assistance. The team serves as a focal point in the state for start-ups and small businesses of all sizes in urban, suburban and rural communities. The offices offer a variety of services, including assistance with permitting, licensing and regulatory compliance, small business resource referrals and informational small business webinars and events.
If a society is to properly serve the needs of all it’s members then it must recognise that those needs differ, sometimes due to historical and ongoing abuse of certain groups. A one size fits all approach to social services is not going to work. Targeted help is needed and when racism is a factor then that help will naturally reflect the problem.
It wax Russia that tried to negotiate a treaty with the US. And the US said ‘fuck you, ask Ukraine, not us’. Its Russia treating Ukraine like a puppet state, not the US.
In this scenario, by assuring the coup plotters that the U.S. will keep funding the war as long as they keep fighting it, as opposed to cutting bait with the coup as an excuse. The coup plotters would then accuse the deposed government of treasonously planning a surrender (a mischaracterization, but that’s par for the course) and portray themselves as acting in the national interest. They then keep the status quo of the war, with just a change in management. This would all fit neatly with the anti-Russia/pro-U.S. propaganda Ukraine has been subjected to. Any Russian objection would be written off as lies.
If Russia tried to support a coup government, that government would be branded as treasonous even if they sought to act in the best interest of the Ukrainian people. The U.S. would immediately seek to discredit and destabilize the coup government, and a lot of Ukrainians would listen as they’re fighting a war with Russia.
Zelensky just removed Zaluzhny from heading the military because Zaluzhny was getting too popular and becoming a political threat. Important to point out that Zelensky has called off the elections that should be happening right now and that there’s growing dissent for his administration due to how poorly the war is going. Also worth pointing out that Zaluzhny has ties to the far right militias of the Ukrainian armed forces and flaunted this fact when Zelensky first tried to have him removed. It would be very easy for NATO to back Zaluzhny and his right wing thugs (the same ones that took part in the maidan coup) against Zelensky if Zelensky breaks with the West’s wishes. US intelligence agencies are very good at pulling at threads of existing dissent to create chaos and oust difficult political leaders
This entire response here was ostensibly in respect to Ukraine.
From the article, which you clearly didn’t read:
A U.S. official, speaking in Washington on condition of anonymity, said that the U.S. has not engaged in any back channel discussions with Russia and that Washington had been consistent in not going behind the back of Ukraine.
Nobody expects that they actually will do so willingly. Just that Russia should because, y'know, starting wars to annex territory is not something most people like. That's why Ukraine should be armed until it can make Russia leave.
That said, Russia would absolutely benefit from a negotiated settlement right now. This war is taking a lot of Russian lives and resources, so if it can persuade either Ukraine to agree to enough concessions or Ukraine's backers to stop backing it, Russia could benefit enormously. Even if Russia actually manages to completely overrun Ukraine in the future, actually having to fight to the end will be an extremely costly ordeal.
This take is both idealistic and ignorant of the situation on the ground.
It’s clear to anyone paying attention that Ukraine has lost any shot they had at driving Russia out in 2023, assuming they even had any shot at it in the first place. As shown by the evolution of the front line in 2023, Russia is now deeply entrenched in it’s current position and Ukraine, even back when Western military support was at it’s maximum, is unable to make them move from them in any significant way. Meanwhile Russia has had the time to adapt to western sanctions and the economy not only stabilized but is even growing quite a lot, especially the arms industry.
You need to come to terms with the fact that Ukraine won’t be getting back the occupied territory. With Russia now largely outproducing the west on military equipment and the west having pretty much depleted their stockpile, Ukraine, who is largely dependent to western military aid as their own military industrial base is far from solid, will unravel sooner rather than later. The ONLY thing sending them weapons is doing right now is prolonging the war and getting more Ukrainian killed for literally nothing.
Getting more thousands of Ukrainian killed because of the delusion that they can somehow still drive Russia out at this point is not worth whatever territory they want to get back.
Continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to them won’t do any good to the Ukrainian peoples, and you aren’t the saviour of Ukraine you think you are by cheering for this.
What would do good for the Ukrainian people is suing for peace and starting to rebuild whatever territory they have left.
I don't want to make Ukrainians do anything. If they choose to keep fighting, they should be enabled to do so. If they choose to make peace, great, but they should be armed sufficiently that they can actually negotiate instead of just capitulate. Either way they need to be armed, because if they don't have the capacity to make the status quo costly then they have no leverage. There is no negotiation if we neuter Ukraine beforehand, there are only Russian demands.
Also, most of the aid is not weapons. A lot of it is, but more of it is housing Ukrainian refugees and funding the Ukrainian govenment to keep the basics of civil services going.
How may of them chose to fight in the first place, aside from the neo-Nazi ones? Many of them were conscripted and forced to fight.
How many of the women & children & old men want the fighting to continue? The Ukrainian government is a shit government; how committed even are they to its survival? This is a post-US coup government that has banned opposition parties and is auctioning the country off to foreign capitalists. All of the aid they’re getting is lend-lease, which they will be repaying for generations. This is going to be full-on neoliberal shock therapy.
To what extent does the Ukrainian government have a choice in whether to continue fighting, when the US clearly has a lot of say in the matter despite its claims to the contrary?
1: Enough that there aren't mass desertions at the front lines.
2a: Continuing to fight typically has 2:1 support in what polling I have seen. My country's governnment is absolute dogshit, but if Russia invaded my country you're damn fucking right I'd want to fight them about it even with our shit government.
2b: Your article assumes a US coup, it does not show that there was a US coup. It is not weird that the American embassy wanted to negotiate with potential new leaders, doing so does not mean they masterminded a coup, and Zelenskyy was never even mentioned in the Nuland-Pyatt call. There have been two elections since then. It is also not difficult to believe that the protests against Yanukovych were legitimate considering his massive unilateral lurch in policy just beforehand.
2c: Absolutely shocking to suspend pro-Russia parties while literally being invaded by Russia. It should be noted that the incumbent party has a majority either way and suspending parties did not grant them any power they didn't already have. Further, the parties suspended represent a minority of the opposition.
2d: Sorry to tell you this but fighting a war is actually quite expensive. Is this approach the best one? I have no idea. It hardly seems relevant to what your second point started as. If you'd rather Ukraine didn't do this, it's going to need alternative financing, which means more support from its backers, not less.
2e: I do think that it should just be gifted, and some of it is. If your preference is that they get nothing at all then Ukraine could equally just refuse the lend-lease. Again, the better solution here is more support, not less.
2f: You know Ukraine was a capitalist country before this war started, right? But once again, if you don't want this to happen, Ukraine needs more unconditional support, not less.
3: How much say do you think the US has? This article is literally about Russia trying to get the US to decide on Ukraine's behalf and the US saying "that's not our choice". What is the US going to do if Ukraine decides to stop fighting? Stop supplying arms that the Ukrainians don't need anyway if they're at peace? The thing that I assume you want the US to do anyway, given the comment you're responding to?
A pretty fair point but I still think you are neglecting a few things.
Firstly, while according to this study by the Kiev international institute of sociology most Ukrainians do still support the war it also indicate that the portion that peace at the cost of losing territory is definitely growing since the start of 2023, if I were to try giving admittedly loose and uncertain bound based on those numbers and assuming the rate of change don’t shrink, I would expect this portion to reach 50% of the population 2 months from now at the soonest, 11 months from now at the latest.
An other related thing to consider is how accurately is the state of the war depicted in Ukrainian media? A state at war that don’t plan to surrender has incentives to make their war effort as good as possible and the enemy’s war effort as bad as possible and Ukraine is obviously no exception.
Depending on how distorted the narrative about the war is, these figures could be drastically different from what they would be if the Ukrainian public got a more neutral account of the war.
So do the Ukrainian want to continue fighting? For now yes, but I don’t believe it will last.
Your leverage point is moot in my opinion.
As I said, it is a fact that Russia is winning the war and that Ukraine has decisively failed to push them back before the Russian entrenchment in their position and the dwindling military supply to Ukraine made doing so impossible going forward.
I’m not saying that Russia could just roll over to Kiev any day if they wanted, that would obviously be absurd, but the military situation in Ukraine, the state of western weapon manufacturing compared to Russia’s and the sheer difference in manpower reserve and moral make it such that even if the west threw every last weapon in their stockpile at Ukraine, it would not change significantly what a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev could look like. I repeat therefor once again that the ONLY thing continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons is increasing the death toll on both side and prolonging the was for nothing, it’s literally not doing anything more, let alone helping Ukraine in any tangible way.
You are right, though, that most of the aid to Ukraine is humanitarian and not military, and those absolutely should continue, but that’s one reason more to not prolong the war uselessly, the end of the war would make helping the Ukrainian people way easier and would allow Ukraine to start rebuilding.
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine's ability to fight, how does it prolong the war? In your assessment, Ukraine would be forced to make peace at the same point either way. Could you expand on that?
If arming Ukraine does not substantially impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, how does it prolong the war?
This is not exactly what I said. I didn’t say that it didn’t impact Ukraine’s ability to fight, I said it doesn’t change the outcome of the war.
Of course, arming Ukraine adds difficulty for Russia, but it only at most delay Russia getting what they want since because of the way the war is going and the west’s inability to outproduce Russia, Russia has time on their side. Russia can largely afford to just wait until western weapon supply to Ukraine can’t keep up with theirs anymore, which is exactly what they have been doing since their retreat from the siege of Kiev in 2022, that’s why the front line has barely moved since then, Russia know they are in a position where time will do most of the work for them.
I'm not sure this holds. To me that very delay is the valuable point of negotiation I'm talking about; this war is also costly in lives and materiel for Russia. Being able to eventually outlast Ukraine on that front doesn't negate that. But I think that's getting towards too subjective a point for us to find common ground on.
I'm sure it is, but Zelenskyy is an adult and capable of making his own decisions either way and I don't see what leverage the US could possibly have to force him to keep fighting. What are they going to do if he makes peace, stop giving Ukraine weapons for the war they aren't fighting any more? Even if the US deposed him, Zelenskyy has said openly that he doesn't want to run the country after the war. Can't say I blame him, I'd want a holiday too.
Regardless, none of this changes the fact that if you had read more than the headline, you wouldn't have said "per the article", would you?
Literally the same thought terminating logic fucking flatearthers use.
“I have literally have no counter argument so instead considering what you said I will gaslight myself and others into thinking I don’t have to by declaring out loud, without any evidence, that you are paid by NASA/Russia and imply that therefore everything you say can be dismissed without paying any mind because it is ontologically dishonest.”
Welcome to lemm.ml, #BlueAnon conspiracy theorist.
Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media FraudThe Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork
all religions are cancer. ALL. period. I can criticise any fanatic of any religion the same way I criticise the fanatics of the religion I grew up and was brainwashed to follow. I was able to leave. For some people it may be more difficult because of the situation in their country. However, the people who migrate in mostly atheistic west countries, they continue being fanatics by choice.
yes, you’re very correct on that. I failed to write it in a way that gives space for exclusions. I wanted to write something like “from the people who migrate in mostly atheistic (or at least less religious) countries, when they continue being fanatics in their religion, then this decision is by choice”. Because they are now in a place that if they want to get rid of that culture, it is easier to do it.
Sure, there are people who migrate because they want to leave from the oppression they experience in their home countries and they decide to follow a completely different lifestyle but these are not the majority. But they surely exist.
Well, as you’ve likely noticed, capitalism only works a theoretical construct. It makes the assumption of an ‘ideal’ market, which very much violates the laws of physics. As a result, no country actually employs unregulated capitalism.
i don’t think it works even in a theoretical context. like you said, it requires assumptions that violate the laws of physics. i don’t think that’s a great starting place for any political/economic system.
Well, I did write construct, not context. So, yeah, I do mean that you need to make up a fundamentally different reality (where everything happens in a singularity) for it to then potentially work as the theories say.
And while we can have arguments on whether those theories with fundamentally wrong axioms can still be mapped to reality, monopolization is a very obvious example where it falls apart and we do need regulation from the outside.
oh i misread that the first time. yeah i completely agree. i was even thinking of saying the thing about monopolies in my comment, i think it’s a pretty good example of how things start to fall apart.
making up fundamentally different realities does sound like fun though, just not for the purposes of trying to justify capitalism.
This is not supposed to happen in a market economy, as you have in developed countries. Many people define “capitalism” as being, more or less, that system.
A narrower definition of “capitalism” is private control of the means of production. In that sense, “capitalism” is at odds with a market economy, which is one reason why that private control is limited in many ways in developed countries.
That’s literally the argument Amazon is making. They have said the Nessie tool is just for market analysis and doesn’t do 90% of what it’s are accused of doing 🙄
Just as a little reality check for all Hamas “fans” (Hamas not Palestine!!) out here which are actually comparing them to Israel or openly defending them. The Hamas is founded on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which are a fairytale full of antisemitism and proven, false statements about Jews and how they are responsible for every bad thing that happens during the centuries and their diabolical plot for world domination (of course one of the favorite lecture of the Nazis)
Those idiots are really believing this fairytale and they use it to justify the murder of innocent people and Jews in general. So the next time you step in in defense of the Hamas or when you compare them to Israel, keep in mind that they are doing this because they believe in some antisemitic fairytale written by a crazy Russian back in the old days…they are basically Scientology only more degenerated and more violent.
Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who interpret it as referring to racist hatred directed at all “Semitic people” (i.e., those who speak Semitic languages, such as Arabs, Assyrians, and Arameans). This usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus (lit. ‘antisemitism’) was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a “scientific-sounding term” for Judenhass (lit. ‘Jew-hatred’), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone.
It really always amazes me how people like you are able top post really dumb shit like this while we are living in the age of technology where it is so easy to do a fact check in seconds from various trustful sources…I really can’t explain it, it’s either ignorance or you are doing it on purpose…
Nope, the etymology of “anti-Semitism” originates with one man named willhelm who used it specifically as a racial term though yes clearly a veiled commentary on Judaism. It didn’t however change the meaning of the word as used by its Creator.
Google it’s etymology and get back to me about how “people like me” are.
Can you please just fuck off and leave me alone with your antisemitic bullshit and false statements? Nevermind there is a blocking function for people like you…
Anti judaic is what it would be, I’m not however bigoted in that manner. I hate both of these fucks and religion in general for excusing such behavior.
But no screech about how objective fact isn’t so because your fee fees got hurt by things I never said.
And the swastika was originally a religious symbol in Eurasia.
While true, it is a pointless fact that contributes nothing to the discussion as they are commonly used in a different way and understood by everybody. This is nothing more than derailing a discussion.
You should also be asking the question–are Lemmy developers anti-semtic?
This whole situation has seriously caused me to reconsider a great many things about Lemmy. I can’t support lemmy, at all, if they are pro-murdering terrorist (Hamas, ISIS, et al). The lemmy.ml instance (run by the developers) has serious foundational issues and to me, I am wondering who it is that is writing this software, and who is paying them.
From what I saw, there was one developer spouting some abhorant things, talking about how all Israeli citizens were targets at this point. I haven’t seen anything else about other developers sharing these views though so I’m considering it an isolated nutter until we see more
Lemmy.ml is run by the developers on lemmy, and if you look at the modlog, it looks like the lemmy developers deleted comments then banned a shit ton of people who were not virulently anti-Israel. It is pretty shocking to me, as the anti-Israel stuff remained. Who are the developers, and who is paying them?
There’s probably a great deal of involvement from bad actors who want to farm and exploit big data where they couldn’t before. I wouldn’t blame you, lemmy should be branched, but isn’t that what kbin.social is?
So I went back because I was curious. Again it is a fucking wild ride, I suggest yall search it out. I’m not gonna post it because I don’t wanna bring any unnecessary bandwagoning. But I searched for anti-semitism real quick and found this:
It proves absolutely nothing but it would be pretty weird to see the devs of lemmy cite anti-semitism as a reason Orwell was bad if they were also anti-semitic.
Bro stop crying. The devs don’t profit from this like a private company would. Don’t use their instance, spin up your own, the project is open source and bigger than them. Your political grandstanding means nothing.
Although good news, maybe do something about the fact that every minute 13 million dollar in subsidies is going to fossil fuels… In 2022 the total was 7 trillion, dwarfing the 1 trillion for renewables (globally)
Would fossil fuels even be profitable anymore if the subsidies were removed, or is the recent history of fossil fuels just a tale in wealth extraction and collusion by a dead industry?
They absolutely would be profitable, it’s just that those costs would then be passed on to the consumer. People would see energy costs skyrocket to make up the difference.
The oil companies still have a product most of the world needs and people will (and have) killed to get it. We’d rebel against a government they tried
In order to get passed oil we need to move to alternatives like EVs.
KYIV, Aug 11 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy broadened his battle against graft on Friday, firing all the heads of Ukraine’s regional army recruitment centres as the war with Russia enters a critical stage.
Zelenskiy said a state investigation into centres across Ukraine had exposed abuses by officials ranging from illegal enrichment to transporting draft-eligible men across the border despite a wartime ban on them leaving the country.
Ukraine has made cracking down on graft a priority as it fends off Russia’s full-scale invasion and seeks membership of the European Union and has fired or prosecuted a string of high-ranking officials implicated in sleaze.
Zelenskiy said that any sacked army recruitment officers who are not being investigated should head to the front to fight for Ukraine “if they want to keep their epaulettes and prove their dignity”.
Videos purporting to depict army recruiters aggressively pursuing or becoming violent with would-be draftees have gone viral on social media in the country, which has been under martial law since the invasion.
Zelenskiy said top general Valery Zaluzhny would be responsible for implementing Friday’s decision and that new candidates for the posts would first be vetted by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU.
“This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” he said, adding that those fired would be replaced by recent veterans and soldiers wounded at the front.
They’re not trying to sell a bright future like military recruiters in the US. People are forced to do their military service by law and the recruiters are responsible to match the drafted people with the role that fits best.
I beg to differ. The applicants talking to recent vets or wounded soldiers know that these people could be their future. It is important to know all the possible outcomes, including possible PSTD, death, or dismemberment. Having recruiters that are too disconnected from the human war cost is a disservice, in my opinion.
I think I missed my point in there. They would be more effective when those new soldiers are on the frontline fighting, instead of selling a false image of how easy joining would be. That false sell would result in wasted resources training soldiers that wouldn’t be as effective. Sometimes it’s better to have less people in your unit, when the extra bodies (that were lied to) would cause more wasted time and energy. Time and energy that should be focused on war.
They’re obviously not fascist, and you’d know that if you were being honest about it and bothered educating yourself both on what fascism is, and on the realities of the PRC.
Also, it’s not “state capitalism”. They do use a market economy in addition to a planned economy, as part of the overall socialist economic system. It’s not a binary either-or; using a market economy doesn’t mean it’s capitalism, and planned economy (intervention) doesn’t mean it’s socialism. They’re structural terms, and relate to purpose: capitalism’s purpose is to maximally extract profit and concentrate wealth; socialism’s purpose is to better the lives (materially and culturally) of its people. China, as a socialist system, takes advantage of the benefits that a market economy can offer (efficiency, competition, resource allocation, demand and pricing signals) but doesn’t use it to extract and concentrate wealth: instead, it uses the net benefits of the market economy to benefit the people. Similarly, a purely planned economy can be very stable and fair but is prone to stagnation and slow progress. By using both systems simultaneously, taking the relative advantages of each, China is able to benefit from efficiency and stability. There’s also no pure free market economy: every capitalist economy has degrees of government intervention (another name for planned economy), especially in times of crises.
Tell me this, does this supposed “socialist system” have workers owning the means of production? How are factory conditions again? Hell you can’t even particularly call them a social democracy, they don’t have complete universal healthcare like Europe yet, and they have less than half the paid leave! Socialist system with billionaires, LMFAO (I don’t care if the rules are stricter and they’re held more accountable, the fact they exist in the first place is pure capitalism).
And I’m calling them fascist because of how they treat political dissidents and minorities.
In contrast to many others coming over from my instance, I’d say the outright “support” of the PRC is not really my thing, to say the least. My comrades won’t admit this directly, but a lot of that energy is indeed contrarian-posting for funsies, although several are genuine.
That said, it is incredibly important to carefully analyze the country as a socialist, because for a minute there they were successful in overthrowing capitalism (kinda what we all want)!
Many good and bad things have happened since then under the leadership of the Communist Party. We should carefully analyze these decisions, particularly after analyzing the historical context in which they occurred. We also need to critically evaluate our sources of information, since I hope that we can acknowledge that Western powers have a vested interest in seeing the continuation of the capitalist system. If most of your sources are in English, they will generally be heavily slanted against the anti-capitalist movements.
I think that your way of calling the country “fascist” exposes that your analysis is incomplete. The Chinese government is, in fact, flawed, but why? Fascism means something very specific, and the flaws in the PRC are not the same as what you see in 1930s Italy and Germany. The historical contexts, and economic structures under which they operate are very different.
You’ve got nothing here dude, take the L. You’re clearly ignorant of what AES actually looks like historically, how it’s formed, how it responds to pressures and challenges. You’re just going by this vague, largely aesthetic conception of what socialism looks like, that you probably got from some youtuber that call themself a libertarian socialist or some other such incoherent shit, and you’re castigating a real socialist governmemt attempting to reckon with the real world because they haven’t waved a magic wand and enacted your asinine Disneyland version of socialism.
The CCP absolutely has the power to redistribute wealth from billionaires… except the CCP is full of rich oligarchs themselves that are only occasionally purged, so that’s not gonna happen.
And I’m calling them fascist because of how they treat political dissidents and minorities.
“In my true socialist state, Qigong cults can operate with impunity as they scam people and push racist cosmological myths”
And for the second part you’re just drinking neoliberal koolaid published by the people who are the most prolific killers of racial others in human history.
You ever notice how America seems unable to meaningfully damage China’s economy?
This is because China’s economy is integral to everyone else’s. You can’t really hurt China without hurting yourself. Their annual trade volume is in the trillions of dollars.
China paid a price for this leverage. The price was allowing capitalists to operate within China. That is how you do business with the rest of the capitalist world.
Surely I would not endorse Catholicism. Because in Abrahamic religions it does not matter how they sugarcoat it, you are kinda being a ‘slave’ (with no better word to describe it) to your deity.
Maybe we should let them bugger out to the Mars. They can try their ancapistan "utopia" there, we'd be rid of the bastards. Win-win. Just put some railguns in orbit, in case their plans won't work out and they make their way back to Mother Gaia 🙃
Even at +4c there will still be plenty of “nice” places for billionaires to fuck off to and build a nice little rich people commune. Hell, a +6c world is still the garden of eden in comparison to Mars.
Yes there’s a lot of interest in Mars right now, but it’s really is just mega rich nerds. Hell, if I was mega rich, I’d make an aerospace company too, space is cool.
The rich peppers are buying up land and building compounds in climate safe havens, like New Zealand.
Humans on Mars seems to be a pure fantasy fueld by old SF. Technically it seems to be easier (and more viable) to build floating cities on Venus than for humans to live (on the surface of) Mars
Musk said something about how terraforming Mars to be habitable shouldn’t be difficult, and I was thinking “well then getting CO2 from 400+ ppm to 300 ppm should be a cake walk for you! Why haven’t you done that yet!”
I believe, and I’d have to go find the quote, but he meant/said simple. Simple =/= easy, just that there are a few things you can do that have a huge impact. Like you could bombard the polar caps and release a shit ton of Co2 and water which would thicken the atmosphere, trap some heat, and start a rain cycle. That’s conceptually simple but practically hard. To keep on with Musk, he’s also been quoted multiple times saying that living on Mars is gonna suck for a long long time.
I guess in the same way climate change is conceptually simple but practically hard. Cutting out 90% of Co2 emissions pulling existing Co2 out is simple, most of the tech is already developed, it just would cost hugely insane amounts of money to do it quickly. We have direct air capture, we could build dedicated nuclear power air capture plants above existing limestone/granite deposits and pump them full. It just would cost $$$$/kg.
Self-preserver capitalists are more along the hoarding supplies and creating fortified bases variety. Even Steve Huffman got his laser eye surgery for prepper reasons, according to him. No idea how much that was just a cover story for the pure vanity.
But the amount of preppers in the tech world are increasing, and they're not looking at ways of keeping anyone else safe but themselves and their families.
They would rather live underground in a bunker in luxury, then share just a litte percentage of their wealth that would benefit more people than themselves.
Most of them aren't billionaires though. They just own a little land and can afford to build on it, which is high-salary rich but nothing like billionaire rich. They might have a couple of years of comparative comfort at best. The billionaires are on a different level of entirely.
Unless lasik has significantly changed, last I looked it lasts ~10 years and you can only do it twice, so it doesn’t really make sense to do it from prepper reasons unless you think collapse is within 6 months. Otherwise, get the timing wrong and you could need another round of lasik just after the beginning of the appocolypes or worse you could need a new round but have already done two right before everything collapses.
Unless lasik has significantly changed, last I looked it lasts ~10 years and you can only do it twice
Iirc how long it lasts depends on the person. And most people take two at most as its usually good after the second correction, for those who actually need the second (not all people need it)
Record number of people are leaving because things are so bad!!!
Wait, record number of people are arriving because things are worse elsewhere making net migration in positive? Let’s downplay that because predictions show that MIGHT slow down and it hurts our story about how bad things are.
reuters.com
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