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davel

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davel ,
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Paywall bypass: archive.ph/AZiHf

davel ,
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https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/bacc6da7-de45-46dc-9e76-95e66faf7b97.jpeg

How should I change my polite behavior to be more accommodating?

My parents raised me to always say “yes sir” and “no ma’am”, and I automatically say it to service workers and just about anyone with whom I’m not close that I interact with. I noticed recently that I had misgendered a cashier when saying something like “no thank you, ma’am” based on their appearing AFAB, but...

davel ,
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I don’t know where you grew up, but this sounds like “southern hospitality.” I’m a gen-x New Englander, and it always creeped me out because I suspected it originated from slavery, and it seems I was right: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_hospitality

davel ,
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In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn’t a moment for politics.

Joe “nothing will fundamentally change” Biden

i-voted

davel ,
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Violence begins with cops or fascist agitators*. So far the students have had the discipline to not retaliate, which is what the violent agitators want.

*Some of those who work forces…

davel , (edited )
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Disregard what Liar in Chief Biden says? All the time. White House walks back Biden’s claim he saw children beheaded by Hamas

Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel

Washington Post Fact-Checker Gives Up on Recording Biden’s Lies

I judge him by his 50 year track record, not his words.

davel ,
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Which Russians? Ethnic groups in Russia

davel ,
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How does anyone still believe this Western propaganda despite all evidence of the last 2+ years?

davel ,
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GDP is a bullshit metric for industrial production in financialized, neoliberalized countries like the US and Europe.

Michael Hudson: Understanding America’s Post-Industrial Economy

Often the analysis we’re presented with in the media is often limited to GDP, which doesn’t really help us to understand why the US, for example, have lost its competitiveness, its industrial strength, its ability to compete, especially with the Chinese.

The idea of American economic growth from the 1990s on was, instead of producing manufactured goods, we will develop intellectual property monopolies, especially in information technology, in pharmaceuticals. And America will make its economic growth in GDP, not by making profits to employ labor to produce more and more goods and services, but to have monopoly rents for our pharmaceuticals. So we can make pills that cost 10 cents each and sell them for $500 each. We can make computer programs for automatic artificial intelligence and for computer chips and for all of the information technology we have at enormous markups. And we can live on our economic rents, live off the fat of the land, as they used to say. We don’t have to have blue-collar jobs. Everybody can work in an office and make money that way.

You have today, as the election for 2024 is being prepared, the bewilderment of the Democratic Party here. If you look at the GDP, President Biden says, you’re doing so well, look at GDP. And the vast majority of Americans, according to every poll in every part of the country says, we’re not doing well at all. We’re doing awful. And it turns out that when you look at what is the American GDP, well, almost all of it is the growth in prosperity, the growth in financial benefits for the 1%, maybe for the 10% of the population. And the 1% and the 10% has increased its wealth so much since 2008 led the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates that the 1% and the 10% gain is larger than the loss for the 90%. So all that the President Biden can say is, who are you going to believe? Are you going to look at the statistics or are you going to look at your own life and what you have to spend at the grocery store and what you have to spend on rent and housing as America turns away from a homeowner’s economy into a rental economy?

Michael Hudson: Asset-Price Inflation and Rent Seeking

The main culprit for the economy’s falling growth rate and the general middle-class economic squeeze is debt – or more specifically, the burden of having to pay it back, with penalties, fees and lower credit ratings. The mainstream press depicts the rising market price of homes as a benefit to homeowners, a capital gain as if they almost were real estate speculators or capitalists in miniature, not wage-earners running up debt. GDP statisticians include the rise in valuation of owner-occupied real estate and the rising rents it saves homeowners from having to pay as adding to GDP. But homeowners do not receive a corresponding income for living in their homes, even if rents rise in their neighborhood. And debt-financed home-price inflation has become a major factor squeezing family budgets in today’s world.

When they fall behind in their payments and are subject to late fees and higher interest rates, these payments are treated as an addition to GDP (“financial services”), as if the economy is getting richer. So when the specific components of what seems to be empirical statistical evidence of affluence are analyzed, they consist not of real product and prosperity but transfer payments from the economy at large to the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector.

Payments on the economy’s rising debt should rightly be viewed as a subtrahend from national income. But the GDP accounting format treats this rising debt as a necessary cost of production. In this line of theorizing, creditors provide a productive service whose value is reflected in the rate of interest and the magnitude of fees and penalties. Ultra-low interest rates, resulting from financial lobbying pressures, have held down the cost of carrying this debt, but these low official rates mask the reality that many debtors fall behind and have to pay penalty fees and high penalty interest rates.

These payments are added to today’s GDP measure, even as they leave less family income available to be spent on products. The result is a statistical confusion concerning how much GDP growth is actual income and product growth, and how much is rent extracted from disposable personal and corporate income. That is the basic conceptual issue addressed in this paper.

The key to understanding the U.S. economy is not so much GDP as capital (asset-price) gains and the offsetting debt burden financing these gains. This financialized overhead is not real growth. It does not make the economy richer. This paper explains why, and provides a statistical format to measure the magnitude of rent extraction or the FIRE sector on the “product” side of the economy, deflating disposable personal income available to spend on goods and services, and capital gains on the “total returns” side, so as to show how most wealth is achieved not by actual production but by increasingly debt-financed asset-price inflation.

davel ,
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Confidently incorrect, the funniest kind of incorrect.

davel ,
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Good job ignoring all of the financialization and asset price inflation, which was the actual point. Keep on learning nothing.

davel ,
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And you’re still living in the neoliberal End of History, despite neoliberalism being a zombie ideology that Russia has abandonded and China skirted almost entirely.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/00faace9-2183-4ff8-978e-ab62117abfc2.jpeg You clearly have no idea what’s been going on in China.

davel ,
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Once Obama got in office, Democrat stans suddenly didn’t care about the Global War(s) on Terrorism anymore. They were silent on his star chamber as well. It was a real wake-up call for me.

davel ,
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It is not the other way around, though that is a standard antisemitic trope: that the Jews control the world.

Israel is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in West Asia. As Biden has been saying for decades, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

davel ,
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slave labor in xinjiang

Oh no the CIA-backed terrorists got job training, the horror. lemmy.ml/comment/8175413

The actual slave labor is in the United States, thanks to the 13th amendment.

davel ,
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Do we know enough about the next gen Steam Deck to be able to make assumptions about what GPU brand might be used or whether Nvidia would still be ahead of AMD in this area?

davel ,
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Never forget the Hague Invasion Act:

The Act gives the president power to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”.

davel ,
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By that logic most of the world is helping Russia fuck Ukraine, because they’re also still trading with Russia. Even the US and Europe still are, despite the sanctions they’ve imposed on themselves.

davel ,
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China files more patents than the next nine countries combined: www.wipo.int/en/ipfactsandfigures/patents

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/83ec576b-b536-40ac-b2f1-3dafd22b9894.png

China is first country to hold over 4 million domestic patents

The number of China’s domestic valid patents does not include those held in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

davel ,
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https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c1b63ebf-ce96-439d-8989-b6e53af72ce5.jpeg

davel ,
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Appropriate that you should make Orwellian allusions. That guy was a racist, antisemitic, homophobic, backstabbing snitch: Orwell’s list. Animal Farm was Cold War agitprop, which the CIA airdropped on eastern Europe and made it into an animated film that you may have seen. It funded the film adaptation of 1984 as well.

Should I join "free speech" alternatives?

Hello! I’ve been searching for a reddit alternative, and yes, I’ve picked Lemmy and Raddle, but here’s the thing. My morbid curiosity is perked up, and a part of me wants to join the “free speech” alternatives, like Saidit, Poal, etc. What’s wrong with me that I want to join toxic places? I mean, yes I’ll find a...

davel ,
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Enlightened centrist entered the chat.

davel ,
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Paradox of tolerance

r/TalesFromYourServer: Kicking a Nazi out as soon as they walk in

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

davel ,
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You know where the exit is.

davel ,
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my-hero Thank you, Dude, very Cool.

davel , (edited )
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You seem to be echoing a large number of Russian propaganda points trying to paint Ukraine as some fascist shithole

Edit to add: Usually someone responds with, yeah well Russia has fascists, too, to which I usually respond:

There are Russian fascists. Take Navalny, for example, who the US tried to use in its regime change efforts so that it could resume its neoliberal .

davel , (edited )
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The “common good” in bourgeois democracies is the good of the capitalist class at the expense of the working class.

Wikipedia: Bourgeois revolution

Bourgeois revolution is a term used in Marxist theory to refer to a social revolution that aims to destroy a feudal system or its vestiges, establish the rule of the bourgeoisie, and create a bourgeois (capitalist) state. In colonised or subjugated countries, bourgeois revolutions often take the form of a war of national independence. The Dutch, English, American, and French revolutions are considered the archetypal bourgeois revolutions, in that they attempted to clear away the remnants of the medieval feudal system, so as to pave the way for the rise of capitalism. The term is usually used in contrast to “proletarian revolution”, and is also sometimes called a “bourgeois-democratic revolution”

BBC: [Princeton] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

I don’t mean to imply that Russia isn’t a bourgeoise democracy—it is as well, but at least it’s not under the boot of the imperial core like Ukraine is. Russia emancipated itself from the US neocolonial shock therapy plundering that began with Yeltsin and ended with Putin.

davel , (edited )
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We all understand your point of view, everyone’s a Nazi if they are against Russian/Chinese imperialism.

I don’t think that at all. Being “against” Russia or China doesn’t per-se make someone a fascist. I’m not confused about what fascism is, and I don’t use it as a floating signifier for stuff I don’t like.

But neither Russia nor China is imperialist. The imperial core is imperialist, otherwise known as the Global North.

.
Over 20 years go Russia—at the time lead by Putin—wanted to join the imperialism club, but the US rejected them: Ex-Nato head says Putin wanted to join alliance early on in his rule. Now Russia, rejected by the Global North, has no choice but to join with the Global South as allies instead. This shift in allegiances has been massively accelerated by the sanctions of this war.

Ukraine has a thriving Jewish community

So fascism means hating Jews? What about the fascists genociding Palestinians in Israel as we speak?

davel , (edited )
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Orc hordes at Hexbear, their meat waves astroturfing.

davel ,
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Six months from now you’ll be pretending you always knew Ukraine was a fascist shithole

Just as Western corporate media admitted to it up until just before 2022, as I showed elsewhere in this post.

davel ,
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Even if it was a “Nazi” state, which it patently isn’t

It is by Western corporate media’s own accounts: lemmy.ml/comment/10679555

that doesn’t for one minute excuse the Russian invasion.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say “excuse,” but I’ll further add:

davel , (edited )
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https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/26888855-135e-4627-bfc9-b6083d03f913.jpeg

lying, willfully ignorant shitlibs

Not everyone in the audience is that. I was a Burgerland lib once, too, exposed to the exact same propaganda for decades, so I know at least some can break out of it, if they’re curious & intellectually honest.

After witnessing in real time how obviously fabricated the justification for the Iraq War was, and how seemingly credulously the media propagated it, I was no longer able to ignore the cracks in the propaganda. It still took me many, many years to peel away layer after layer. It’s a process. I’m just trying to help people get there faster than I did. The dissonance between what’s happening in Gaza & the West Bank right now and Western governments’ & corporate media’s coverage of it is even harder to ignore than the Iraqi WMD lies were twenty years ago, so this is an opportune moment for others.

davel ,
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Oh well it got removed after four hours, and they caught a 30 day c/worldnews ban. Another victim of communism rip-bozo-grave

davel ,
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Lard is pig fat, which they use because it’s not kosher, despite most of their targets not being Jews. Nazism is vibes-based and seldom makes sense. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. —Voltaire

davel ,
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Yup, you totally get it. I doubt I’ll see the fruits of my labor on a pseudonymous social media platform, and I’m okay with that.

davel ,
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It’s so funny when a liberal crying about “western values” is lecturing me on what constitutes idiocy.

Yogthos is not defending Western/liberal values, he is pointing out the hypocrisy of liberalism.

Liberation of Ukrainian people must culminate in the destruction of the Ukrainian state, be it western- or Russian-backed, as is the case for all other peoples and states.

Yes.

On the other hand, destruction of only Ukraine serves only their imperialist oppressor - Russia.

Russia is not predominantly an imperialist state at the moment, though it is a capitalist state which should ultimately be destroyed. And being a capitalist state, in time it may well develop into a full-throated imperialist state. To elaborate I’ll copypasta myself:

Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?

In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

davel ,
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oic tanks! en.wikipedia.org/…/Comparison_of_Islamic_and_Jewi…

davel , (edited )
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Oh I see, this conversation would just be a repeat of eight months ago, where no successful communist states have ever existed, the USSR was an ethnic cleanser, and Russia today is a fascist state. You also seemed to downplay Ukraine’s Nazi problem.

You were right on at least one account, though: Haz, Maupin, and Hinkle are patsocs and/or nazbol pieces of shit. But I don’t know why you thought anyone on Lemmy/Lemmygrad/Hexbear would give them the time of day. Where did you get that idea?

As for Ukraine’s Nazi problem:

davel ,
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No one here seems interested in our opinion, and no one’s going to click on more replies in a three day old post, so bugs-no

davel ,
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When your purges actually violate literally every Marxist principle and sabotage the revolution, isn’t it kind of fair to accuse Bolsheviks, or at least the leadership, of being fake communists? Stalin was a counterrevolutionary, die mad about it, we’re Menshevik posting in this removed.

Has this gentleman ever seen a revolution? 😂

davel ,
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OPPOSE BOOK WORSHIP

Whatever is written in a book is right — such is still the mentality of culturally backward Chinese peasants. Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements. It is quite wrong to take a formalistic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing and examining them in the light of actual conditions simply because they come from a higher organ. It is the mischief done by this formalism which explains why the line and tactics of the Party do not take deeper root among the masses. To carry out a directive of a higher organ blindly, and seemingly without any disagreement, is not really to carry it out but is the most artful way of opposing or sabotaging it.

The method of studying the social sciences exclusively from the book is likewise extremely dangerous and may even lead one onto the road of counter-revolution. Clear proof of this is provided by the fact that whole batches of Chinese Communists who confined themselves to books in their study of the social sciences have turned into counter-revolutionaries. When we say Marxism is correct, it is certainly not because Marx was a “prophet” but because his theory has been proved correct in our practice and in our struggle. We need Marxism in our struggle. In our acceptance of his theory no such formalisation of mystical notion as that of “prophecy” ever enters our minds. Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well. Of course we should study Marxist books, but this study must be integrated with our country’s actual conditions. We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.

How can we overcome book worship? The only way is to investigate the actual situation.

davel ,
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The less communist theory a lib has read the more of an expert they are. Every fucking time.

davel ,
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https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a8f299e2-2640-4e72-ba5b-e6f676599434.jpeg

Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

It won’t do!

It won’t do!

You must investigate!

You must not talk nonsense!

davel ,
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The Western concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.

Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited

U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.

davel ,
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I think the original point was that “the United States of Israel” can be—and often is—a (((globalist))) antisemitic trope. I think it’s very important not to ever give the impression that the influence is unidirectional, or even that it’s primarily Israel influence over the United States, because it absolutely is not. Israel is the US’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East, and “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.”

davel , (edited )
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Zuberi is like a box of chocolates. You might get based takes on imperialism, you might get harassed, you might get crypto shilling.

davel ,
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Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the TikTok community?

davel ,
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A very belated gold-communist

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