Remember when Republicans used to yell “better dead than red!” to show their hostility to the USSR and communism?
Now too many of them are preoccupied with twerking for the authoritarian roach that emerged from the USSR’s corpse (and which still has a lot in common with it).
Also, the Republican party is now the red party, which is pretty funny.
Nothing surprising for everyone who already knew that what they disliked about the USSR wasn’t really the totalitarianism, just the lower wealth unequality.
More so that sort loved the USSR: it provided the ultimate boogyman they could use to justify just about anything.
Accuse your political foes of being commies, and “investigate” them. Advance Christian nationalism by pointing at the “godless Soviets”. Need to get your political donors want some sweet defense contracts? – well we need weapons to fight the reds.
The USSR did the same thing with the “decadent west”.
If Ukraine had accepted the deal they negotiated in spring of 2022, the war would have been over, they would have more territory than they do now, and they wouldnt have those tens of thousands of people dead. But instead they took the western money and kept fighting and are now on the verge of losing.
Ok Chamberland. You mean the ones that both sides walk away from? Ukraine has a right to all its territory. It shouldn’t have to give up any of its land to the Russian aggressor. I don’t think Ukraine is on the verge of losing.
You are talking about a different issue. I am just telling you that without the western “aid” the war would have been over and it would have been a much better outcome. But as it is, Ukraine is about to lose and you guys want to fund the war so more Ukrainians die.
No, supporting people who want to fight for their home and freedom is not a different issue. Without Western aid russia would have gone to comit more atrocities. Ukraine is not about to lose, and it’s not funding the war for Ukrainians to die, it’s for them to fight for their home from russian invaders. Something similar happened to a few annexed countries in the late 1930s…I guess we shouldn’t have supported them then either eh?
I am fine with people fighting for their homeland, but to support Ukraine in a fight they were not able to win results in dead Ukrainians. Life is not a movie, sometimes the bad guys win, and the only thing to do is to negotiate peace so more people dont die.
The average age of the Ukraine soldiers has gone from low 30s to about 43. A generation of young men have died, they are running out of soldiers, they will lose, its only a matter of time, and their power to negotiate is getting worse by the day.
Two problems with your opinion. First is that its my money and I dont want it to go to war. Second is that Ukraine fighting = drafted soldiers that dont want to fight but are forced to.
Why are you okay to have young men die because the Ukrainian oligarchs want to them to fight? They literally have had a generation of dead young men and they are about to lose.
It’s almost comical to see “leftists” scream about the lies that Trump and GOP tell - but if you suggest there was a diplomatic solution they explode immediately lol. War propaganda is working incredibly well these days and any pacifist notion is attacked as subversive and downvoted. Vast majority of millennials and gen Z are just as brainwashed and are murderous war mongers the boomers were.
PS: I’m really missing a fitting word for this. They are not fascists and nationalists or imperialists is too weak. War mongers sounds a bit lame too.
I think millenials and older know about how the left used to be the party of peace and the right was the war mongers. Now some of the rights is still warmongers but the left is just as bloodthirsty. Its like “Putin must pay!!! Send more Ukrainian young men to their death!!!”
You mean they don’t know about the left being pro peace? Or that they are overcompensating because they do know?
There is a documentary by Adam Curtis about how the rhetoric in geopolitics changed to good vs evil, not just Reagan but all the third way leftists. A very successful PR / brainwashing campaign.
But ever since Ukraine started this has massively changed on reddit which is supposedly “leftist”. Presumably the “science and technology of propaganda” is improving. If the Irak and Afghanistan happened today, there wouldn’t be any major opposition to it online. There wasn’t any in mainstream media either at the time, but back then the internet actually was less… warmongery?
I dont know if they dont know what the more traditional leftists believed in back in the 90s and earlier, or other interests have taken over their rhetoric, or if they are just using the oppressor - oppressed world view to pick Ukraine and Palestine. Do you think they got co-opted by big business interests or something else?
Yeah definitely there is PR push. All the mainstream articles are written in a way that maximizes these viewpoints. I don’t know where exactly it comes from but besides military industrial complex there is still oil and extraction of resources and general empire stuff there are a lot of business interest tied to maintaining hegemony.
For Ukraine specifically I also speculate that it’s because Ukraine is a breadbasket. With climate change, food prices are going to become unstable so having control of that region is not just good business, for the empire it’s an important strategic goal. West-Ukraine will mostly be owned by EU and US because of the incredible debt.
The other goal here is that we’ll see like a billion climate refugees in a few decades which will lead to wars. And Russia has tons of borders that could be corridors. So it’s good to destabilize and isolate Russia in advance of these climate wars so that the worst chaos isn’t happening in Europe. Similar with China. They’d want to encircle their geopolitical rivals so they don’t have that much room to maneuver.
This is all speculation and I’m really not sure if “they” think this strategically. But Nato baiting Ukraine was imho a definite trap to “force” Russia into this conflict. Fuck Stoltenberg for example. Not that I don’t blame Russia!
Interesting, I would guess that you are probably right, but I have been at an utter loss as to what happened to these people that they went from reasonable to completely unreasonable.
I dont even try to share the part where NATO/US were the main pressure at to why this war is happening, I think it would make their heads explode. I just try to point out how with the median (or maybe mean) age of the Ukrainian troops is 43, the war is going to be over soon.
@CableMonster, I’m an admin on lemmy.ml, and we’re getting complaints of you trolling this post. After dozens of comments, maybe you’ve had your say and it’s time to stop threadsitting on the conversation. I approved your account request this week, please don’t make me regret it.
I suppose you can do what you want, but I would think it would be fair to directly tell me what I did that was wrong if you expect my behavior to change.
It is not, as you said, that you’re dissenting from the standard narrative, at least not to me. It is threadsitting and making rather rude comments.
You may or may not have noticed that lemmy.world mods/admins have removed some of your comments already: lemmy.ml/u/CableMonster That is often a precursor to them banning you from the !News community or even the entire lemmy.world instance.
As an aside, most Lemmy instances consist predominantly of imperial core liberals, and lemmy.world is no exception. It’s a tough crowd over there in terms of this proxy war.
I respond flippantly in comments in response to rude comments, I am ALWAYS respectful to people that are not rude.
I dont mind taking direct action and following rules, but I need to know what is expected. What am I supposed to do about an unprovoked comment such as “Then I’d call you a complete liar with a weak grasp on reality, and a poor understanding of where and when you ought to open your ill-informed mouth, before I walked off and continued with my day, secure in the knowledge that you’re as wrong about something as it’s physically possible to be.” ? A comment that I would note is not deleted (unless I am using this site incorrectly).
Much appreciated. The mods here at !news prefer civil discourse. If we see someone not displaying civility (attacking the person, not the argument), trolling, being racist, sexist, or being a bigot, we will remove a comment.
We try not to let our views skew our moderation, and will reverse removals if we feel we or other mods were acting heavy-handed.
With that said, we appreciate admins of other members of the Lemmy federation stepping in to police users of their instance.
With that said, yes, we have received other complaints about this user, but did not find all the complaints warranted. Some were, and we handled those comments as they were brought to our attention.
We may not agree with all the comments here, but if they follow our rules, they stay.
If you haven’t, read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Just as applicable today, just the science on how to manipulate people got more advanced. Newspapers are full of bias, and it made me feel isolated until I understood the mechanisms (see propaganda model) of why this is so. But I’m at a bit of a loss too why reddit has been “taken over” this rabidly. Pacifist notions are now buried in “controversial”.
And 43, wow. I would have thought that as long as the US and Europe are pumping weapons into Ukraine the war will keep going.
Social media is even more of bias. Literally the last comment is that I need to leave this thread because “and we’re getting complaints of you trolling this post. After dozens of comments, maybe you’ve had your say and it’s time to stop threadsitting on the conversation. I approved your account request this week, please don’t make me regret it.” Literally you cant dissent from the standard narrative.
Well, one can get a bit frustrated and shitpostery among all this warmongering. It’s a kind of gaslighting. “Oh you want peace? Compromise? You fascist!” :D
Then I’d call you a complete liar with a weak grasp on reality, and a poor understanding of where and when you ought to open your ill-informed mouth, before I walked off and continued with my day, secure in the knowledge that you’re as wrong about something as it’s physically possible to be.
You must live a pathetic existence to count being called out for being an incompetent troll as a win. It took longer than usual to type this as it’s harder to type while laughing. Thanks for the hilarity imbecile!
Now it’s not funny but sadly pathetic that you crave attention so much someone just responding to your pathetic comments makes you feel like you “won”.
That tracks, as no one thinks of you at all. Sadly, your persona here will simply be staffed by fresh meat once you’re resigned to the trench on the front your drone-maimed corpse’ll plug soon enough. All in time, young comrade. Just wait and see what daddy Putin decides next for your oh-so-loyal patriotic self. 🌻🌻🌻
Its the other guys metric, I am not a troll, that is just what douches like that say so they dont have to think for themselves. Did you have anything useful to say or is your brain also turned off?
The problem is that if someone does the insult comment, they are no longer looking for a conversation or to learn they are doing an ad hominem or strawmen attack and are not worth giving a thoughtful comment. If you had a reasonable question I dont mind answering, but I dont waste my time with the douches.
But I’m not being insulting. I’m asking you to expand on why it is that you believe what you said. Literally, you offered no content. Just an opinion without explaining the information that led you to that decision.
To me it read like, “well guys, feeding homeless people actually ends up starving them.”
So, why do you believe what you believe? What led you to that belief?
I’m offering you the ability to have an honest conversation.
Unless I am on the wrong thread it started with him saying; “Then I’d call you a complete liar with a weak grasp on reality, and a poor understanding of where and when you ought to open your ill-informed mouth, before I walked off and continued with my day, secure in the knowledge that you’re as wrong about something as it’s physically possible to be.”
Why do you think responding to someone like that with an thoughtful comment would be worth my time?
What in paticular are you wanting me to tell you what I think about?
I’m not asking you to respond to anyone but me. Forget all the replies. I’m talking directly to your original comment. The one about the funding harming Ukraine.
I was just explaining why I didnt respond with anything.
The reason that Ukraine has been harmed is that in spring of 2022 russia and Ukraine had a deal in the works that would have given Ukraine more territory than it has now, and the war would have been over. But instead of taking the deal, Boris Johnson flew in and offered to support Ukraine to keep fighting. So all the funds from the west have done is extend the war so that tens of thousands of Ukrainians are dead and they are in a much worse place of negotiation.
I don’t get what’s strange about this. They didn’t like commies, Russia is no longer even calling itself socialist, so why would they still be hostile to the Russians?
For most of my lifetime, any American screeching about the President arming NATO allies in order to prevent Russian expansion into Europe would have been seen as a traitor.
Shit, mine don’t even keep up with inflation and they never have. I’m effectively being paid less and less year over year, and companies wonder why job hopping is so prevalent. It’s unreal!
The damage is unfortunately already done. The information that the cops wanted was stolen. The photos don’t matter anymore.
Unless criminal charges are brought this does not matter m unfortunately the AG is responsible for that and will not happen as they are in bed with the cops.
If only the Judge had some way of forcing the AG or some neutral or federal level Court to take this up.
I don’t know why this is still a controversial concept. Just don’t kill prisoners. Horrific crimes are not assuaged by more death. It’s never worked in history and it doesn’t work now.
It’s arguably controversial because the human brain has a cognitive bias toward vengeance. There are lot of really interesting psych studies on this topic. It feels right to take an eye for an eye, and we often try to justify that urge, even if we don’t benefit from it.
The human brain has a lot of cognitive biases that we have collectively decided to legislate against.
This is one of the easiest to move on from. It takes significantly more effort to justify and carry out judicial murder than it does to ban it.
We banned dueling to the death over honor centuries ago, and that’s a very similar cognitive bias. Arguably a lot less impactful on society at large too, since a duel requires 2 willing participants and by definition has no collateral consequences, but it was still deemed wrong ages ago. There is no clear argument killing someone for their alleged crimes.
Agreed. The problem is that voters and politician have that same damn DNA and those same biases.
We can totally use higher level reasoning to think through that old ass amygdala wiring. But doing that often takes work, or showing people that some other low level need is being threatened by giving into the feels of vengeance.
It’s pretty arbitrary, too. A guy in a town I lived in killed his wife with a knife in front of their kids, and was sentenced to 40 years. This guy helped kill someone, served 35 years, and they still want execute him on top of it.
I was assuming the article said, "the GOP is embarrassing." It's embarrassing, Republicans - seems self evident. I mean, it's not like 10 minutes when by and they didn't get anything done. Weeks, months, years have gone by with GOP demonstrating no interest in governing; of course they haven't accomplished anything.
Which is complete bullshit, they’ve wreaked havoc on civil rights and eroded the fabric of society to the point of implosion, what the fuck they talking about “we done nothing”, they did a LOT, and they should face trial and execution in the damned International Court once their fascist aspirations crumble.
As long as anti gay activists, pastors, and GOP politicians keep buying bus tickets so they have an excuse to why they were found chugging cock in the public restroom, Greyhound will stay in business.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !theonionwasright
I like how every layman said that this is what was happening but in the moment you could find half a dozen ‘economists’ on national news networks explaining it as if it was all just normal and no one was benefiting from it. Economics is a fake science, it’s not even worthy of the title social science. It’s literally just learning how to justify rich peoples actions and nothing else.
Your thinking of the stock market. The basic principles of Economics are alive and well. Despite all the screwed up stuff the basics of supply and demand have held true the entire way.
find half a dozen ‘economists’ on national news networks
Oh, you mean that news that is owned by the very same oligarchs? Everyone should just collectively start ignoring national news. (Not trying to agitate you, dear potato, just…yeah, national news, their owners, and their ‘economists’ should be banned and charged with some crime for lying to the nation at every turn.)
Just like any other field of study, you can buy an expert pretty easily. It doesn’t mean Economics is fake. It Means those guys got paid to say that by someone like the US Chamber of Commerce. (Which isn’t a government agency, no matter how much they try to seem like one)
In most red states, it is literally impossible for the GOP to win a state-wide election without massive voter suppression efforts. No shocker here. Nobody hates democracy more than Republicans.
Edit: Just like Florida, Texas is easily blue if elections there were fair, and voting wasn’t intentionally made difficult for minorities and blue counties.
Texas is easily blue if elections there were fair, and voting wasn’t intentionally made difficult
There are maybe five or six House seats that could flip without some very naked voter suppression. But the state as a whole owes its allegiance to the Oil & Gas industry. And the O&G Industry (particularly in the Deep South) is wedded to the GOP.
I think the state could swing out blue from under a guy like Ted Cruz if the elections were fair. But in the end you’d still be stuck with a Bush legacy candidate or a goon working for the old money - like John Cornyn or Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Tom DeLay - on the way up. There are just way too many people who believe their entire livelihoods are stacked on the price of a barrel of crude to quit the GOP.
I think it’s because tax forms also contain information that definitely should not be available to anyone who wants it. Employer information especially - anyone trying to escape from an abuser really doesn’t want that info widely available.
I can see why people would not like it from a privacy standpoint. It would never fly in America for everyone. For government officials? I like this one.
The reason is it’s like a treasure map with multiple “x”-es for any burglar. While in the Nordics it’s not that much of a problem (though I did read once or twice stories of people who were repeatedly and uniquely targeted because they were somewhat richer than their neighbours and despite not showing off), in any country with a large, unsupported poor population and limited to none public trust…
It’s almost like places with honest and open financial records like that have policies that support less income equality and therefore less thieves exist there. What a concept.
I wouldn’t exactly say that, Nordic countries have extraordinarily high rates of theft/robbery/burglary compared to the rest of Europe despite the fact that most people report feeling more safe from said crimes. Usually rates of those kinds of crimes are mostly correlated with how “rich” a country is, for example most first-world western countries have pretty high rates of theft while the “poorer” eastern European countries have extremely low rates of theft (and certain other crimes like rape and assault) – it’s a pretty big culture shock to go to e.g. Tirana and see store owners just leaving €200 bottles of wine or jewelry or whatever on display outside the store without any containers, or women walking alone at night in secluded areas, because it’s so uncommon to get crimed that way.
I’m sure it has a lot to do with the post-communism and very high income equality in those countries, or maybe it’s because of extremely harsh punishment for said crimes under communism, but in the context of “richer” countries income equality seems not to be a big factor compared to how “privileged” or financially well-off the average person in the country is (in the context of the EU and America/Canada). But that’s just the culture you get when you center your economy around capitalism/corporatism for centuries and money is made the most important thing/the biggest measure of success.
Because you see it from your personal point of view. Seeing it from a government perspective it’s public money and should be easily identified. Also if I remember correctly, in Norway you have to identify yourself to get access to the data.
Because it could potentially subject you to a planned robbery? That’s about it, although I think it definitely depends on the place too. Norway likely doesn’t have to worry about that issue.
I just today learned that Finland does this as well. It took a while to consider, but it would help people to get paid fair wages, detect corruption, and to generally ensure people are more honest about their finances. Overall, it’s a very different approach to what it means to be in a society together.
I think this works much better in society with low inequality, or maybe for ones that got rid of most robbers, scammers, and fraudsters. But then again, maybe Finland and Norway are good in that regard and that’s great then.
This swings both ways. Public information such as voting records, for example, were used to coerce, intimidate, and physically hurt innocent people in the past. I think it takes a mature culture/society to use public information responsibly and I don’t think we are there yet.
Then again, a ton of awful stuff happens in private already, so there needs to be a balance of some kind.
I’m in favor of transparency, but this sounds like it was designed to put democrats in prison.
It only applies to city officials, not county or state, (more likely to be democrats) and has stiff penalties for any errors discovered during an audit.
this again is why I will pipe in I like biden. So many things have come out of the agencies of this administration. He can't make congress function but he can sure as heck streamline stuff at the executive level.
“So, when my daughters were young, all three of them, I would take them with me to school,” she said. “One of them would answer the phone, the other one would help me deliver textbooks, and the other one would help me do something else. So, they grew up there. … They’re just fantastic.”
Is this kinda… weird? I remember liking to help my dad out once in a while with simple tasks since I had to stay with him at work, but I don’t know how I’d feel about doing it every day.
I don’t know if I would say “weird”. I think it is unusual. Shouldn’t they have been going to class? Why was the principal in charge of delivering textbooks? How often do textbooks need to be delivered anyway?
Should shed some light on the subject. Particularly:
Garza comes from a Brownsville education legacy. Her mother, Rachel Medina Ayala, was one of Brownsville Independent School District’s first female superintendents. Garza’s two sisters are also principals in the district.
So, in answer to your question:
What kind of incompetent principal reacts to trouble making elementary schoolers by calling the cops on them?
Other parents have also complained to the outlet about the principal. One mother said that, after a meeting with Garza about her 5-year-old in which her own mom questioned the school's special education plan for the boy, Garza called Child Protective Services on her.
The foundation is its own 501c non profit, they donate to it, put their money into the trust fund.
The trust fund then turns and invests all that cash thst they donated and make bank while paying back “costs” for whatever. The only tax that gets paid is personal income taxes on the salaries paid out.
Which are much reduced because the fund also pays for things like hotels and rentals and travel
What the foundation then gives out, they were going to give out anyhow so as to whitewash their reputation and make themselves feel good
It’s exactly how it works. You calculate what your tax bill will be, and instead of paying it in taxes where the government decides what to do with the money (in theory democratically, in practice it’s different obviously, see point #6), it goes into a charity in your name.
Then you use this charity for multiple things:
Free PR, as you don’t need to use your own money, you use the money that otherwise went to taxes. The headline is X donates $N billion to charity, you look so giving, even though it’s money you wouldn’t have been able to keep any other way.
Your foundation donates to prestigious academic institutions. That’s something that you can parlay into a board seat or at least influence. Now you can decide what this institution will do. In Bill Gates’ case, he used his influence to make sure the Oxford vaccine wasn’t open sourced, but instead licensed. This delayed the response in the developing world by a year or so, and made sure that the pharmaceutical industry made even more money than they even made otherwise. Oh, and Bill Gates privately (on the non-charity side), owns a bunch of pharma stock.
speaking of academic institutions: you buy a fancy building for their economics department. Suddenly the whole field of economics is basically limited to professors teaching trickle down economics. Marx’ analysis of economics is considered fringe, and MMT as well.
your foundation throws parties fundraisers where you get to hang out with important people. Catering, venue, entertainment, etc is paid for by your charity. The people donating to your charity are using their own charities to do so, it’s just one big circlejerk with free money that would’ve gone to taxes instead.
your foundation can donate to politicians or political organisations that will advocate for things you want. The things you want are deregulation, less taxes, etc. This in turn benefits you personally again on the non-charity side.
So these foundations are free to invest 95% of the money into whatever they want and only 5% into charity. And this data is partially open, they invest into oil, pharma, finance etc.
What is not open but very likely happening, is private talks behind the scenes about what these 95% should be invested in based on personal motivations/goals of these billionaires, i.e. just doing with their money what they want anyway, just in a tax-free way.
The only thing I “extrapolated” is to assume that the 95% of money that they are actually free to invest wherever is essentially being decided by their whims. Sure, this might not be completely true, but let’s say you assume that “extrapolation”/assumption is not the case.
As I said, the 5% charity requirement, 95% whatever is definitely true, that’s why I even provided the IRS links, i.e. the actual tax institution governing these foundations. You can also see all the worst companies you can think of are being invested in, this is open data. There are also so many “very likely conflict of interest donations” it’s hard to not “assume the worst” - like for example Gates donating large sums to the private school their children attend, investing in big pharma that are directly responsible for the huge price of vaccinations his foundation tries to make available…
These (and you can find more if you search) are not speculations/“extrapolation”, these are things that provably happen. Of course it’s possible to construct “good” reasons on why these “coincidences”(or whatever) keep happening, but the huge volume of these things where you have to try to come up with “good explanations” is just unreasonably high.
Ne he’s not. He uses his foundation to avoid taxes and even gets praised for it. This video provides a pretty good explanation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH4uh8cHuto
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