God idk what version I’m even using. I never update programs like this unless I have to. From breaking things, to confusing my workflow and moving things around; I’ve always been more frustrated than thankful. I haven’t updated Reaper in ages too and I’m certain they’re better about keeping continuity than anyone.
Edit: lol people are mad about my own software updating habits? why and how are .worlders this way? I can’t imagine the realities they live in, and am glad so
How have I known about Varoufakis for years as a serious political economist and speaker-on-the-topic, and never heard he was a Valve employee with a catalogue of ‘gaming-economics’ blogs in the early 2010s? LMFAO what a world
That article is literally just reporting what the president did. How does that mean they’re “pro-gun control?” Do you not even read the articles and just seethe and shit yourself about what you think about the wording of headlines? You are such a raging rightist ideologue you have been blinded to all reality and don’t even understand the things that you are mad at. Is this satire? Are you a real person who engages in media and politics like this or have I been trolled?
If you’re serious, the US must have gasoline in the water or something (but ah that would be COMMUNIST to regulate that; or even report on it!)
“typical Hamas press”
CNN
deeply unserious individual
No, neolibs have figured out how to placate segments of the (ever-shrinking) petty bourgeois and defeatist windbags (like you’ve allowed yourself to become in saying these things, but can still self-criticize and grow from), who lack or otherwise benefit from not having an active dialectical consideration of the circumstances before us — in the bare-faced exposure of the sharpened contradictions between mass political movements in society; here between the reactionary bourgeois establishment and its allies, and the advancing of progressive segments and theirs; which itself in the arena of parliamentary and protest politics, and how the media reports on it, are significant representations of wider political trends.
And by not thinking before speaking, and engaging in this liberal and reactionary rhetoric you actively stand in the way of building communism and working class momentum more than Macron does, and you are perpetrating the same “keeping people unaware” that you say the media is. I don’t think you should trust what it “sounds like” to you, because I don’t think you’ve given serious thought to any of this. How does the media “keep the majority unaware” when we’re, all of us even outside of France, hearing about and talking about it?
And “Things aren’t bad enough” for what? For an immediate revolution and dragging Macron to the guillotine right here and now, like we’re remotely in a stage of things in material reality where that’s what you think “building the communist movement” is? In what way is that, to you, a reasonable framework to analyze the current material conditions and consequences for communists and how to orient within them? And how is it not just unthoughtful and inattentive idealist tripe completely disconnected from the material reality and trajectories that currently exist, and which only serves to justify sitting on your hands and telling others to sit on their hands because you’re waiting for… What, exactly? Some utopian revolutionary miracle to pop into existence on its own out of thin air and awake the placated masses (of which surely you’re not a part?)? Revolution is built; and its building takes dedicated and active long-term political engagement among the progressive elements of society with communists, even if not yet in the position to dominate its most visible “official” leadership channels, still always at the forefront of the struggle as members of the most politically advanced segment of the working class.
How do you expect to create revolutionaries before having them even come to recognize revolution as, not only an option, but a necessity; which can only be done through these kinds of lived political experiences highlighting and vindicating through agitation and propaganda the correct analyses of the communists, that bourgeois parliament will not and can not be the instrument to achieve their aims?
You’re contributing to and advocating placation. Your “it’s hopeless why bother” attitude is the “copium” (internet-poisoned term), which serves nothing but to take (and worse, try to further in others’ minds) a lazy capitulation into your own placation. Comrade it is not only wrong, but it is intolerable opportunism. It is a reactionary and defeatist attitude, and is not in any way a cogent recognition of the reality — which is that the amount of rage and disaffection over this in the masses of the working class left-wing (and even just ‘not right-wing’) populace of France, which were able to mobilize as they did to get such results to compel these self-exposing acts in the ruling class, spills visibly through even the bourgeois-media articles about it. You have to close your eyes and plug your ears to not hear mention of the anger, frustration, exasperation, and that’s just what they do mention. I guarantee they couldn’t and wouldn’t be scratching the surface of those masses that aren’t being interviewed who harbor more severe sentiments or would, with proper political education, having experienced this. Many of even the petty-bourgeois reformist leaders of these parties are calling for obstruction and protest as less motivated, more opportunist, and bourgeois-aligned representatives of their much-more pissed off bases who carry much greater potential.
I’ve worked with and organized alongside US communists that became communists out of their experiences and disaffection over how the DNC and Democrat Clinton campaign undermined and slandered Bernie Sanders and his supporters in that grassroots groundswell. And Bernie and that whole experience was milquetoast and petty compared to this, and had more comprehensive targeted propaganda. And still it made many communists, some of whom have contributed more as more capable Marxists than even I had managed at the time, to elevating the consciousness of the working class and movement-building in their communities, instilling communist political understandings, analytical methodologies of theory and practice, and organizational principles in action around peoples lived material realities and experiences at the hands of the system.
People are pissed, and more than you allow yourself to recognize have, by the reality of the situation and living this political experience, come to or are primed but haven’t-yet-been politically educated to understand and advocate, some of the first and most important recognitions, conclusions, and emotions toward bourgeois politicians and their system, and of its bourgeois class character, inherent and unchangeable without smashing it and putting in its place a proletarian dictatorship to maintain power against the these-and-worse bourgeois machinations and reactions.
Just because the masses aren’t immediately fulfilling your idealist projections of what you unrealistically ‘require’ of them to “prove” to you personally that this is a progressive development for the communists (which is opportunist — rather than trying to engage actively as the most politically advanced segment of the working class to make and lead people to the proper conclusions, you are tailing behind mass movements among and as a member of the least advanced, soaking blankets to throw on the advancing segments in the most critically significant and educational moments); like they’re not immediately revolting and dragging Macron to the guillotine over this when that’s not the phase that things are in doesn’t mean that this is not a progressive development for the communists. I strongly suggest you consider all of this and correct these opportunist and defeatist attitudes, which are misaligned with reality and run counter to progress.
because nothing seems to be working.
This is an inspiring sign for communists. No reason for pessimism. A large mobilization of masses of engaged politically active workers in a state where the masses still largely believe in parliamentarism; who formed sprawling coalitions into a large left national upswelling that also made international headlines, now have themselves and onlookers been shown, better than any propaganda alone ever could, why bourgeois liberal democracy is an impediment to progress rather than a channel for it; and that the Liberals will side with the fascists to keep the left from getting an inch. This has made more communists than you probably realize. Especially if your communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this point, which probably a lot of workers didn’t even need much agitation to expect this because of the state of things and how just… unbearably awful Macron is in every way
Lloyd GeorgeMacron entered into a polemic… with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with theLabour PartyNew Popular Front (NPF)…Lloyd GeorgeMacron argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for theLabour PartyNPF whichLloyd GeorgeMacron prefers to call “Socialist” … “In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called Bolshevism,” he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on principle,Lloyd GeorgeMacron explained, because they stand in principle for private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .… Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the
Labour PartyNPF.…
At present,BritishFrench Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote forHendersonCastets and Mélenchon and againstLloyd GeorgeMacron and Le Pen they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship ofChurchillBarnier and Le Pen (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to supportHendersonCastets and the NPF in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of theHendersonsCastets will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of theHendersonsCastetses and theSnowdensMélenchons just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.
…
It is a good day friend. Communism will win, and these liberal politicians are helping it do so. Don’t let the systems and their media and propaganda make you believe otherwise in their lies. They’re trying to convince you of your own defeat because of the implications if you don’t believe you have been, and instead realize they’re selling you the rope they will be hanged with; and you push harder in smarter ways that they can’t keep up with, using connections built in these mass movements and coalitions which invariably have radical new elements that just need drawn together.
You’re ahead of them in this. They’ve, in a very real dialectical way, undermined liberal democracy and created more enemies to the capitalist systems and institutions than they made allies, by their own blunders in being incapable of conceding anything to intelligently reify socialists back into feckless parliamentary legitimization of bourgeois democracy, and their failures to navigate contradictions in ways that aren’t so short-sighted to look absolutely villainous to huge swathes of the population (and internationally, because this was a large enough movement to make headlines around the world; with a knock-on effect for the international proles who see parallels). Macron’s so scared of radical politics he’s making them everywhere he steps.
I’m hoping the Communists in France have been reading their Lenin. I can’t think of a better gift Macron could have given the communists. “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder
Lloyd GeorgeMacron entered into a polemic… with those Liberals who want, not a coalition with the Conservatives, but closer relations with theLabour PartyNew Popular Front (NPF)…Lloyd GeorgeMacron argued that a coalition—and a close coalition at that—between the Liberals and the Conservatives was essential, otherwise there might be a victory for theLabour PartyNPF whichLloyd GeorgeMacron prefers to call “Socialist” … “In Germany it was called socialism, and in Russia it is called Bolshevism,” he went on to say. To Liberals this is unacceptable on principle,Lloyd GeorgeMacron explained, because they stand in principle for private property. “Civilisation is in jeopardy,” the speaker declared, and consequently Liberals and Conservatives must unite. . . .… Thus the liberal bourgeoisie are abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and consider it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the
Labour PartyNPF.…
At present,BritishFrench Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I come out as a Communist and call upon them to vote forHendersonCastets and Mélenchon and againstLloyd GeorgeMacron and Le Pen they will certainly give me a hearing. And I shall be able to explain in a popular manner, not only why the Soviets are better than a parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship ofChurchillBarnier and Le Pen (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to supportHendersonCastets and the NPF in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of theHendersonsCastets will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of theHendersonsCastetses and theSnowdensMélenchons just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.
…
This has stripped more and more active and engaged and hopeful people of their illusions about bourgeois democracy than even bernie-clinton 2016 nonsense. Which even that created a lot of communists; and that was relatively milquetoast compared to this huge national mobilization and upswell and coalition movement which was big enough to make international headlines no less. If the French communists have been reading their Lenin and agitating on this stuff even before it happened (as you said, very predictable) then the communist movement has gained 10x more than any eurosocialist thinks “the left” lost.
exactly my thought
people consumed all these dystopian movies and thought “what a great rubric for society!” we’re so fucked lol. These death machines (like drones and such) are also where the most work and funding go for machine learning and AI research too. What could go wroooong
at the same time as ever more nuclear brinksmanship against Russia at the expense of who knows how many hundred thousands people on and between both ‘sides’ of the shitshow in Ukraine. THIS is the “damage control” candidate in the US?
lmfao I’m voting PSL fuck all of these people. Democrats going around congress twice to shovel as many guns and bombs as they can hoping Israel finishes off Gaza before the elections, Trump only being different in that he’s open about the same; Palestinians have said both candidates and parties are the same for them, and they’ve been the same for us.
well except all the Nazis in Germany that were brought directly back into:
but other than all of that though!
(And that’s not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the “Victims of Communism Foundation” which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet “Captive Nations Lobby” headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)
Shitty billionaire
ah but you repeat yourself
Sees the USA doing what it’s always done, which we’ve known since COINTELPRO and Snowden’s whistleblowing
“THIS IS LIKE CHINA!!!”
to this day I still occasionally mutter “it never ends, this shit…”
honorable mention to New Marijuana Study Confirms Everyone Knows You’re High And You Will Be Stoned Forever
because when this was originally uploaded on their website it would play a slightly different version every time you opened the page. So you’d laugh and show your friends, so then even if your (allegedly) stoner ass hadn’t gotten tripped out the first time, while they’re watching it and laughing you’d start sweating.
Second honorable mention to “Is The Government Spying on Schizophrenics Enough?” But I’m honestly still not sure that one’s totally okay, even if I still laugh every single time I watch it. I’m not that type of mentally ill but have had people close to me who struggle enough with it and the very nature of the disorder is such that even though I laugh I’ve always at the same time felt it treads very much on the line.
Prague’s Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport
And a ‘from-16-years-back’ broadside at the US approaching November:
Claudia and Karina of PSL are the only decent choice I see right now. Stein and West are also better than either duopolists policy-wise and between them I’d probably prefer Stein as she seems to have more political experience and acumen (though I’d probably like West better as a person and compatriot). But for my vote it’s PSL.
The problem I see is that not only will we never ‘get a 3rd choice’ if nobody votes for existing 3rd choices due to fear over the duopoly entrenchment, but also the duopoly has had and will continue to have zero reason to ever stop becoming more and more fascist and ignoring all of the rest of us, because they can comfortably say ‘they’re going to vote for us anyway because we’re not [other person/party]’ and wouldn’t even be wrong. Dems can just keep flying to the right while talking about how bad Republicans are and pretending Fascism is a person and can be “voted out;” rather than it being a historical trend, which both parties are converging into the apex of. A trend which arises regardless of the party in power, when the natural economic downturns and crises of capitalism produce hardship and push the ‘aspiring capitalist’ ‘small business owner’ petty bourgeois toward precarity-and-fall into the increasingly-destitute working class. So then the most reactionary portion of this traditionally upper-caste group, humiliated by the ‘indignity’ against what they are accustomed and feel they ‘deserve,’ become radicalized. They get set against internal minorities and external ‘threats’ (scapegoated to divide society into vertical segments rather than by its horizontal class relations, thus preventing working people from uniting against the common ruling class enemy) and against the communists; who during the same capitalist crises also grow their ranks among the exploited working classes in all nations and too become radicalized and fed up by the ever-worsening state of things.
It is a trend of the big capitalists actively supporting, and the capitalist politicians half-supporting-half-willingly-capitulating to, a movement of the ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaire’ upper-caste petty-bourgeois radicals seeking to violently reassert and deepen the pre-existing capitalist social relations and societal divisions, along the lines of a mythologized vision of the “proper natural order of things,” vote or no vote. The poem started “first they came for the communists…” Because the communists are the ones who, also radicalized by the worsening conditions on the other end, instead set out to OVERTHROW and abolish the existing social relations and divisions, which means the big capitalists and the upper-caste petty bourgeois forever lose out on their previous status and claim to positions of power over the masses. They’re the only meaningful opposition and alternative, hence the adage “socialism or barbarism.” And the adage “fascism is capitalism in decay.”
If we accept the Democrats’ dangerously ahistorical notion of what fascism is, and allow that to cow all of us to the left of Thatcher into voting for the Democrats without fail, where they never risk losing votes even for prosecuting the most-televised genocide in history and becoming increasingly just as fascist as Republicans over the last decades; then the Democrats objectively have no reason to try to even pretend catering to or pandering to the center-left liberals and socialists. There’s no need for a political reorientation to recapture votes that were never lost or risked being lost in the first place. This is why the duopoly serves the ruling class so well, and why it seems to emerge so regularly. But it has had ruptures and reorientations before, even in the US, due to various strata losing faith or no longer having their interests served by the parties to which they were previously constituent. The Federalist Party doesn’t exist anymore. The Whig party was formed by conservative elements that abandoned the emerging Democrat party, forming coalitions with various third parties, then itself ruptured and split. In order to stay in power, politicians were forced to reorient due to the changing material conditions and expressed interests of the voter base (which is today FAR more expansive and wielded by more actual working people [see: any] than it had been during those early reorientations).
Another historical example I found was in the British parliamentary situation around WWI when I got to chapter 9 rereading “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder by Lenin. The duopoly then was the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party with Labour being a minor but growing third party – but various material and political realities activating support for Labour led to “a number of Liberals… deserting to the Labour party like rats from a sinking ship.” And in the Liberal party’s ever-rightward slide and their ultimate allegiance being to the ruling class and their capitalist (and imperialist) system, the liberal bourgeoisie, under the leadership of Liberal politician David Lloyd George, formed a Liberal-Conservative coalition together “abandoning the historical system of “two parties” (of exploiters), which has been hallowed by centuries of experience and has been extremely advantageous to the exploiters, and [considering] it necessary for these two parties to join forces against the Labour Party.”
In the USA 35-50% of eligible people don’t even vote. If that isn’t proof of complete loss of faith in the duopoly, as well as prime fertile ground for activating disenfranchised people through doing the work ourselves to uplift real working class parties like the PSL into the national consciousness, who concretely advocate for empowering the least empowered, I don’t know what is. This is how you force a political reorientation in the electoral system from the bottom up and lay bare the duopoly’s true interests; and more importantly, from there continue movement-building among masses of now-politcally-engaged working people organizing for real work to improve our lot; like forming worker and tenants unions, pushing to end the forever wars, to nationalize the more-vacant-houses-than-homeless that exist while people freeze on the streets, and in general confront the impediments to changing society and the world for the better, things which BOTH duopoly parties stand in the way of. Worse, even — both duopoly parties are active agents in all of its worsening for the benefit and profit of the big capitalist donors they work for.
Even the relatively small movements of “Undecided electors” and Michigan Arab voters demanding better of Democrats, as well as the Democrats’ dark-money Super PACs sending teams of high-paid lawyers to purge small 3rd parties from the ballot (“Democratic Party” my ass lol, I’d write in 3rd party out of spite at that point) shows that withholding votes or voting elsewhere is an impactful course of action. They are scared of exactly this, that being “better than the other guy” is not good enough. Why not show them they are right to be scared? It’s not like under Biden and his cop VP who’s now running for President things stopped spiraling into fascist hell domestically and abroad. Cop City is happening under democrat president and local governance, where they are tearing up Atlanta’s only nature grounds to build a fascist police academy (on the plot of an old slave prison) to crush worker protests. The cops murdered a protestor and initiated the largest RICO case ever (originally created to fight organized crime), against these protestors to punish all of them together and even people who were organizing bail funds.
To say nothing of women’s right to choose, book burnings, anti-LGBTQ acts all still happening under democrats. Abortion rights and LGBTQ civil protections could have been passed and codified when Obama’s Democrat regime had both houses of Congress. Biden could’ve been forcefully pressuring the expansion of the court (after Obama gave away a seat in capitulation no less) but instead cowers from “politicizing the court” as if that ship isn’t sailed and past the horizon. They don’t do this stuff, because they don’t actually care about any of us. They care about appealing to their donors, monopolizing our votes, and selling us shit. Abortion rights being under threat is actually great for them, because they can drum up fear and anger about the Republicans. LGBTQ people’s rights being attacked is great for them, because they can weep crocodile tears and shake their fists about how evil Republicans are and “if only we get voted in this time we’ll solve it!!!” while doing little to nothing to fight it but occasional unenforceable half measures and symbolic gestures of “support”. This is all happening and increasing anyway, because fascism isn’t a person, or even a party. It’s a trend which grows out of capitalist crisis as a class movement. And Democrats and Republicans are both among and represent the same class which supports fascism, historically and now. And they’re doing everything they can to demonstrate that fact to all of us.
To my mind our votes are supposed to be earned, not taken for granted, and unless we put them toward who actually earns them through deed and not just two-faced empty word, and withhold them from those who don’t, none of the ruling class has to even pretend to remember or care about that fact.
Hot take here, but I’m pretty sure women who are being oppressed and having their social rights restricted by the Taliban are still able to enjoy more rights than women who have been blown up and murdered by anglo bombs.
Also, this is in Yemen, wtf you on about the Taliban for? You lost get over it smh. Do you not have enough genocides to support or something?
Cases in point:
There’s a long and ongoing history of this; for the US, UK, and Israel.
And just for fun, and just in case
here’s [PROOF from their own source’s “apology” lol]