You know you are a Philistine when...

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 25, 2020 12:10 pm

CNN 'analysis'...
Instead of seeking a unifying tone, Trump has retrenched into the divisive themes he believes are the not-so-secret ingredient to his political success thus far. A successive series of advisers have encouraged a bigger approach they believe more befits an incumbent President. But Trump has resisted, unwilling or unable to move past the rhetoric he insists is a political winner.
That the current tumult over race coincides with troubling news for his reelection prospects -- including sinking poll numbers and a disappointing foray onto the campaign trail last weekend -- has only sharpened the impression of Trump reaching for racially divisive language and messages as both a political life jacket and a personal security blanket.
The examples have mounted. On Monday, a day before Trump delivered his speech in Arizona, he tweeted seemingly random videos portraying White people being assaulted by Black people, asking in one, "Where are the protesters?" Last week he posted a blatantly manipulated video of Black and White toddlers, suggesting the news media was inaccurately covering American race relations.
His attacks on his predecessor Barack Obama, which began with his promotion of the racist "birther" conspiracy 10 years ago, have continued, including his suggestion this week that Obama had committed "treason" and -- if it were 50 years ago -- some in his administration may have been executed.
In his vehement opposition to athletes kneeling during the National Anthem at professional sports games, Trump has called players "sons of bitches" and suggested they are un-American -- even as their kneeling protests seek to highlight police brutality.
Trump has openly used imagery and descriptions of police tactics that hearken to the violence during the civil rights era, including descriptions of "vicious dogs." He tweeted a phrase, "when the looting starts, shooting starts," that originated in the 1960s with a police chief in Miami accused of racism.
And while Trump has stressed the importance of preserving the nation's history and "heritage" as he takes steps to prevent the destruction of Confederate monuments and symbols, he did not acknowledge the racist violence that took place in Tulsa 99 years ago when he visited the city for a campaign rally the day after Juneteenth.
Even as institutions like NASCAR -- as rooted in White American culture as Trump is -- seek to eliminate vestiges of a racist past, the President has resisted and this week signaled he would sign an executive order to protect monuments like a statue of Andrew Jackson, a predecessor he admires and whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office.
"The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage so they can replace it with a new, oppressive regime that they alone control," Trump said in Phoenix on Tuesday. "They're tearing down statues, desecrating monuments and purging dissenters. It's not the behavior of a peaceful political movement, it's the behavior of totalitarians and tyrants and people that don't love our country -- they don't love our country."

https://us.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/ ... index.html
The clowns at CNN might get a clue if they understood that the prez is a product of, the embodiment of, capitalism. He sure as hell doesn't understand how trade and imperialism work but he is adamant when it comes to maintaining class relations. All of that 'hate' is the matrix upon which US capital was built and is maintained. If capital were human he's be the lizard in the brainstem. But they can not see or admit that, out of a job in nothing flat.
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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 30, 2020 11:31 am

You know you are a Philistine when your name is Lisa Tippet

RACIAL EQUALITY OR RACIAL EXORCISM?
Posted by MLToday | Jul 28, 2020 | Featured Stories | 0

Racial Equality or Racial Exorcism?
BY GREG GODELS
July 18, 2020

My local PBS radio station reserves an early hour on Sunday for On Being, a saccharine-sweet mixture of pop-philosophy, psychobabble, and pseudo-religiosity hosted by Krista Tippett. Tippett drips with overly earnest sincerity as she probes guests with questions posed as profound and with deep existential import. While serious thinkers occasionally rotate through her show, more than a few of her guests are con artists, conjurers, or charlatans.
Inevitably, in this time of long overdue mass resistance to racial violence, Tippett would discover and promote the “work” of Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility, a New York Times best seller and a book enjoying wide-spread influence and popularity as an anti-racist guide to book clubbers, NGOs, foundations, and corporations.
A curious feature of the On Being interview of DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem, a Minnesota-based therapist and coach and author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is the absence of any reference to the core, structural elements of US racism. There is much discussion of racially sensitive etiquette and manners, of conflicted identities, of “…interpretations, perceptions, emotions, language…”, of discomforting conversations, and of racial “repair” (“And the framework that is causing white fragility is a refusal to repair, a refusal to see or feel…”).
But there is little or no mention of the material condition of Black people, little or no mention of the substance of African American oppression, and little or no discussion of the prerequisites for achieving genuine racial equality.
DiAngelo shows no interest in exposing the material elements of the racial divide. Instead, she trades in perceptions and feelings between the races. There is, for example, no exposure of the ethnic cleansing (gentrification) that today plagues every US city and dislocates hundreds of thousands of African Americans from segregated cities to equally segregated neighborhoods in de-industrialized suburbs.
Like the indigenous American peoples, African Americans are relocated from poverty-laced, low-income, segregated “reservations” to another poverty-laced, segregated “reservation” in abandoned, formerly white enclaves. The old, former “reservations” are now available at low purchase prices and minimal property taxes to a privileged urban gentry.
Robin DiAngelo shows no interest in this development. Nor does she explore the “white privilege,” the profiteering, or the elite complicity that drives it.
Neither does DiAngelo take note of the persistent wealth and income gap between whites and Blacks in the US. Consistently, since 1968, whites accumulate on average ten times the wealth of their African American counterparts. This means, of course, that every generation of Blacks cannot give the next generation an economic head start, which serves as a multiplier of African American disadvantage. Yet this in-your-face racism apparently escapes DiAngelo.
The wealth gap condemns and forces more and more Blacks into often substandard residence in low-income areas that become literal Bantustans, results of the formal (Jim Crow) and informal apartheid policies imposed by the US ruling class since the Civil War. Like South Africa’s former apartheid regime, it is these segregated areas that are maintained decisively by the brutality of police.
These areas, euphemistically referred to by white elites as “The Black Community” instead of the old pejorative “Ghetto,” exist as food deserts, lacking the selection and quality of their white counterparts, but, often, at higher prices. Schools serving Blacks are notoriously inferior. The 1974 Milliken vs. Bradley Supreme Court decision institutionalized urban school segregation, legitimizing and encouraging white flight to the suburbs and exurbs. There is no mention of this structural racism of education, health care, human services or its effects on infant mortality, health outcomes, and life expectancy, in the On Being interview.
Nor does DiAngelo decry the criminalization and mass incarceration that has become a feature of African American oppression or any of the other features eviscerating the material quality of Black life.
Hers is the anti-racism that ignores actual racism.
Commodifying Anti-Racism
Everything can become a commodity in the capitalist mode of production. From ideas to the water that we drink, capitalism strives to incorporate them into the vast commercial marketplace. Commodification creeps into every aspect of human experience, as an answer to every whim. So it should not be surprising that even ideas like anti-racism should be appropriated, commodified, and sold in the marketplace.
In the sixties, anti-racist organizations like the Black Panther Party were laudably able to utilize the white liberal guilt of celebrities and elites to raise funds for socially useful projects like day care, breakfast programs, tutoring, etc.
But since that time, others have exploited liberal guilt and the perceived need of institutions to appear racially sensitive to establish a veritable diversity industry. Diversity training, the broad field DiAngelo’s product falls into, has a long history, but one of questionable results. While it may prove lucrative to consultants, lecturers, academics, and business types, it has done little, in fact, to desegregate institutions– corporations, foundations, NGOs, etc. In fact, some studies suggest that some institutions have become less diverse after exposure to diversity training.
DiAngelo’s fast-growing speaking and consulting business places her squarely in this tradition. It is strange– to say the least– that this enterprise has encouraged the media to place an academic white woman with no engagement with the long-standing mass anti-racist movement into the role of a leader of anti-racism.
Promoted by the national media, she is an “explainer” of racism in the same way that J.D. Vance and his book, Hillbilly Elegy, were an “explainer” of the Midwestern white working class. In both cases, someone who has “escaped,” who is enlightened, will show the way to understanding for East and West coast urban and suburban elites. Both have profitably opened a book of enlightenment for those uninitiated.
For DiAngelo, the product that she is peddling is “allyship,” a condition won through a rigorous ritual of self-examination and atonement. Supposedly, when white people pass through this ritual, they can then accompany African Americans in the anti-racist struggle
But not everyone can be your guide: “And it takes years of experience and study and struggle and mistake-making and trust-building to hold a group around race and really hold that group and push them and help them go where they need to go, in ways that are constructive. It takes a lot of experience.” Better call Robin DiAngelo.
It is profoundly revealing that DiAngelo’s anti-racism is not about Black people and their condition, but about white people and their condition, their conversations, their attitudes, their feelings, their willingness to confess: “And even the confession can be problematic. It can range from just a form of masochism to a form of, ‘Well, I feel bad enough that you can see that I’m actually good.’ And so that also becomes performative —”
DiAngelo’s anti-racism is rigidly individualistic, a kind of mentored self-help in becoming a better ally accepted by Black people– not a fighter along with Black people against the forces of oppression, not a warrior against the wealth and power of those intent upon keeping the Black working class poor and powerless. This is anti-racism without equality at its core.
In its essence, it fails because it rejects the idea of class. It fails to distinguish between the social discomforts of the upper-middle classes– both white and Black– and the plight of the African American working class.
Only a few years have passed since the Obama Presidency brought a smug assurance that we were now in a post-racial era because a Black elite had grabbed the brass ring. The smartphone camera-exposed orgy of police violence largely against poor and working class African Americans challenges that notion. But the DiAngelos and their media promoters give us new hope! We can return to post-racialism if we just get our heads straight.
Meanwhile, the edifice of racism remains intact. Black workers work for lower wages, pay more for the same services, get fewer of the available services, remain segregated, and die sooner. The developers, landlords, petty capitalists, and CEOs continue to super-exploit African American workers.
The ultimate answer to racism does not lie in exorcism, symbolic gestures, sensibilities, or feelings. If racial injustice is not merely about feelings, then certainly anti-racism is not only about attitudes, either.
The genuine anti-racist warriors — Black and white — are crafting answers that enrich and empower Black people. They are attacking the wealthy and powerful who benefit from racial oppression. They are holding the oppressive institutions, their leaders, and their beneficiaries accountable for the material consequences of racist practices. They center anti-racism around winning equality. DiAngelo’s exorcisms touch none of this.


-Greg Godels
zzsblogml@gmail.com
https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2020/07/ra ... rcism.html

Jfc I hate that show. I rise early, usually to npr propaganda which I can parse or 'classical' music which I enjoy. But everything Greg says is true, it is nauseating liberal lifestyle jive.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 07, 2020 11:10 am

Freedom Rider: Liberal Sympathy for Trump
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 07 Oct 2020

Image
Freedom Rider: Liberal Sympathy for Trump

If Ava Duvernay really believes Trump is a white supremacist, why wish him well?

“Maddow and Duvernay speak and act in defense of their class interests.”

Everyone reveals their true self in a time of turmoil. A crisis forces exposure which can no longer be kept hidden. The revelation that Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 certainly proves this point. The phony resistance immediately showed that their opposition to Trump is no indicator of solidarity with the people. Their allegiance to the ruling classes always comes out whenever it is time for people to speak forcefully.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has made a career out of pushing the sketchy Russiagate narrative but she was suddenly overcome with concern for Trump . “God bless the president and the First Lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery — and for everyone infected, everywhere. This virus is horrific and merciless — no one would wish its wrath on anyone.”

Maddow’s reaction is not surprising. She is a propagandist after all, and not the journalist she pretends to be. Her objections to Trump in no way show support for popular needs. Like the Democratic Party she represents, she may scorn Trump by ginning up the false Russiagate narrative, but she doesn’t object to Democrats approving the establishment of a Space Force or giving him military budgets larger than the amount he requests. They are of one mind in waging hybrid wars against China, Venezuela or Iran. They support sanctions that create human misery all over the world.

“Maddow is a propagandist and not the journalist she pretends to be.”.

What does one do when the target of phony outrage gets sick? For Maddow it means asking for prayers and even comparing him to a smoker friend who develops lung cancer . We don’t criticize the smoker, we do everything to support that person, says the object of liberal adoration. Interesting that Maddow sees Trump as a friend at all. Then again, she described the late Roger Ailes as her friend and mentor. His Fox News creation is anathema to the millions of Democrats who are obsessed with her program and see her as their spokesperson. Now they ought to know she doesn’t really care that much.

Maddow was not alone. Film director Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card. But she showed her hand after the presidential debate when she condemned Trump but also managed to throw in some Obamaesque scolding of black people for good measure. “For those who hadn’t been listening for the past 4 years, Trump just told you that he ain't leaving and that he is a white supremacist. If that doesn't get every American who is not white into overdrive to toss his ass -- we may actually deserve what happens next.” It seems that in her world view, if Trump and his fascist hordes do rise up to attack black people, the victims will somehow be at fault.

“Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card.”

Even after getting push back for her first dubious statement, Duverney again tried to have it both ways as she commented upon his COVID diagnosis. “I truly hope you get well as you’re infected with a life-threatening virus and are physically ill. Also, you are a disgrace and a liar. You’ve cost hundreds of thousands their lives. And you’re a white supremacist. Get well. Sincerely. And after that, we’re going to vote you out.” If she really believes Trump is a white supremacist why wish him well? This is the same Ava Duvernay who announced that questions about Kamala Harris are off limits and are in her view an insult to our ancestors. The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians. Entertainers and other prominent people like Duvernay always try to limit the scope of black action and even of our thoughts.

Maddow, Duvernay and other well wishers have done us all a huge service. The real resistance, those who oppose neoliberalism, its racist structures, and its empire, are consistent. If they say anything about Trump and COVID they point out that he dismissed the severity of a disease that has killed 200,000 people in this country. The duopoly work together on giving meager help to millions of people suffering because of COVID’s economic impact. They lack the “socialized medicine” that Trump now enjoys. That is what needs to be said.

“The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians.”

These virtue signallers have signaled to us that they believe the little people should never complain too much. Only so much opinion is to be expressed and then we must fall into line and not disturb our rulers, even those they allegedly dislike.

Anyone unwilling to show sympathy to Trump for any reason is showing righteous indignation and is to be applauded. The well wishers are phonies, either deliberately gas lighting to protect their own interests, or their anti-Trump politics are all for show. Both statements are true for the likes of wealthy opinion makers like Maddow and Duvernay. They speak and act in defense of their class interests. The rest of us must do likewise.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... athy-trump

Cause if you wish him to suffer or even die, as so many irl liberals do, not without a lot of prompting, then you might wish the same upon his class peers.

I do. Even more so than Bad Cheeto Man, who will get his comeuppance soon, I think. But when the rest? How long, Lord....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by solidgold » Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:04 pm

blindpig wrote:
Wed Oct 07, 2020 11:10 am
Freedom Rider: Liberal Sympathy for Trump
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 07 Oct 2020

Image
Freedom Rider: Liberal Sympathy for Trump

If Ava Duvernay really believes Trump is a white supremacist, why wish him well?

“Maddow and Duvernay speak and act in defense of their class interests.”

Everyone reveals their true self in a time of turmoil. A crisis forces exposure which can no longer be kept hidden. The revelation that Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 certainly proves this point. The phony resistance immediately showed that their opposition to Trump is no indicator of solidarity with the people. Their allegiance to the ruling classes always comes out whenever it is time for people to speak forcefully.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has made a career out of pushing the sketchy Russiagate narrative but she was suddenly overcome with concern for Trump . “God bless the president and the First Lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery — and for everyone infected, everywhere. This virus is horrific and merciless — no one would wish its wrath on anyone.”

Maddow’s reaction is not surprising. She is a propagandist after all, and not the journalist she pretends to be. Her objections to Trump in no way show support for popular needs. Like the Democratic Party she represents, she may scorn Trump by ginning up the false Russiagate narrative, but she doesn’t object to Democrats approving the establishment of a Space Force or giving him military budgets larger than the amount he requests. They are of one mind in waging hybrid wars against China, Venezuela or Iran. They support sanctions that create human misery all over the world.

“Maddow is a propagandist and not the journalist she pretends to be.”.

What does one do when the target of phony outrage gets sick? For Maddow it means asking for prayers and even comparing him to a smoker friend who develops lung cancer . We don’t criticize the smoker, we do everything to support that person, says the object of liberal adoration. Interesting that Maddow sees Trump as a friend at all. Then again, she described the late Roger Ailes as her friend and mentor. His Fox News creation is anathema to the millions of Democrats who are obsessed with her program and see her as their spokesperson. Now they ought to know she doesn’t really care that much.

Maddow was not alone. Film director Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card. But she showed her hand after the presidential debate when she condemned Trump but also managed to throw in some Obamaesque scolding of black people for good measure. “For those who hadn’t been listening for the past 4 years, Trump just told you that he ain't leaving and that he is a white supremacist. If that doesn't get every American who is not white into overdrive to toss his ass -- we may actually deserve what happens next.” It seems that in her world view, if Trump and his fascist hordes do rise up to attack black people, the victims will somehow be at fault.

“Ava Duvernay also felt compelled to send Trump a rhetorical get well card.”

Even after getting push back for her first dubious statement, Duverney again tried to have it both ways as she commented upon his COVID diagnosis. “I truly hope you get well as you’re infected with a life-threatening virus and are physically ill. Also, you are a disgrace and a liar. You’ve cost hundreds of thousands their lives. And you’re a white supremacist. Get well. Sincerely. And after that, we’re going to vote you out.” If she really believes Trump is a white supremacist why wish him well? This is the same Ava Duvernay who announced that questions about Kamala Harris are off limits and are in her view an insult to our ancestors. The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians. Entertainers and other prominent people like Duvernay always try to limit the scope of black action and even of our thoughts.

Maddow, Duvernay and other well wishers have done us all a huge service. The real resistance, those who oppose neoliberalism, its racist structures, and its empire, are consistent. If they say anything about Trump and COVID they point out that he dismissed the severity of a disease that has killed 200,000 people in this country. The duopoly work together on giving meager help to millions of people suffering because of COVID’s economic impact. They lack the “socialized medicine” that Trump now enjoys. That is what needs to be said.

“The black misleadership class is made up of a larger group than politicians.”

These virtue signallers have signaled to us that they believe the little people should never complain too much. Only so much opinion is to be expressed and then we must fall into line and not disturb our rulers, even those they allegedly dislike.

Anyone unwilling to show sympathy to Trump for any reason is showing righteous indignation and is to be applauded. The well wishers are phonies, either deliberately gas lighting to protect their own interests, or their anti-Trump politics are all for show. Both statements are true for the likes of wealthy opinion makers like Maddow and Duvernay. They speak and act in defense of their class interests. The rest of us must do likewise.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... athy-trump

Cause if you wish him to suffer or even die, as so many irl liberals do, not without a lot of prompting, then you might wish the same upon his class peers.

I do. Even more so than Bad Cheeto Man, who will get his comeuppance soon, I think. But when the rest? How long, Lord....
Do you remember John Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity”? Or was it Colbert, I don’t remember. Liberals love gaslighting after they throw the monkey wrench in.

“The president is starting a race war!!!!”

Three months later...

“We must keep a sense of dignity and morality. Get well soon, führer.”

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 07, 2020 10:36 pm

Do you remember John Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity”? Or was it Colbert, I don’t remember. Liberals love gaslighting after they throw the monkey wrench in.

“The president is starting a race war!!!!”

Three months later...

“We must keep a sense of dignity and morality. Get well soon, führer.”
These entertainers are not serious people. That they are looked upon as serious commentators is an example of the degenerate state of civil society during late capitalism, which offers no alternative but to be entertained.When I posted at DU it was embarrassing how they gushed over the most trivial criticism.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 29, 2020 2:04 pm

Sour grapes...
Image
Whatever Happened to Left Solidarity?

In hopes of getting rid of Trump, progressives have followed Trump to the right.

“The soft-right Democrats ignore progressive demands because they pose no threat of taking their votes elsewhere.”

In 2004, a number of prominent progressives issued statements calling on people to vote for Democrat John Kerry in the close states and the Green Party candidate in the so-called safe states where the outcome would not be close. In 2020, many of these same people have moved further to the right and call for a vote for Biden without any support for a Green vote in the so-called safe states.

In 40 states, the vote for the Green presidential ticket determines whether the Green Party retains or gains ballot line for the next election cycle. In most states, it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, or 5%. But there is no support for the Green Party this year from these progressives. What happened to left solidarity?

They have abandoned the idea that the best way for the left to fight the right is to build and fight with its own independent strength, advancing its own program under its own banner against two-capitalist-party system of corporate rule. Instead, they have responded to the rise of Trump by shifting to the right with him, telling the independent left to silence and disarm itself and back Biden, a man who would fit comfortably into the center-right parties of Europe.
Out douche bagged I'd say. The prob is, Howie, that your party does not sufficiently differentiate itself, your programs easily co-opted by the Dems because they can be without "crossing any lines". Like demanding the expropriation of the means of production that they might be oriented towards meeting human need rather than generating profit. Dems ain't gonna do that and neither will youy.

Reliance on the lesser evil has historically led to greater evils. In the classic case, instead of running their own candidate for German president on 1932, the largest party, the Social Democrats, supported the conservative Paul von Hindenberg as the lesser evil to Hitler. Von Hindenberg won and appointed Hitler to the Chancellorship. The Communists ran their own candidate in the most sectarian way imaginable, saying the Social Democrats were the “social-fascist main enemy” and “after Hitler it’s our turn.” That was a case where left solidarity against the fascist threat instead of relying on conservatives to stop the fascists. Had the socialists and communists formed a left united front, they would have easily outpolled the rightwing parties.
In typical lesser evilist fashion Howie conveniently ignores the fact that 13 years earlier the SDs were murdering every communist they could lay hands on. Petty booj hustlers may not remember but we do.
Image
The simple-minded trope that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Trump ignores the fact that a Green vote is in the Green column, not Trump’s. It is an anti-Trump vote, a stronger anti-Trump vote, and a second front against Trump that adds to the total against Trump.
"A second front", wtf? Does this guy not understand US politics? The only way there could be a 'second front' is if that Rand boy or some other chucklehead like Ross Perot tried to outflank Trump from the Right.
Richard Smith is the author of the recent book, China’s Engine of Environmental Destruction, a devastating analysis of the drivers of endless rapid growth embedded in China’s hybrid capitalist-statist economic system and in China’s police state that represses all resistance. His most recent SCNCC post, “The Chinese Communist Party Is an Environmental Catastrophe,” summarizes the book’s analysis. Agreeing with the vote-Biden-everywhere posts, he wrote, “Given our winner-take-all system, no third party has a chance in this country, so left political struggle takes place outside the parties and inside the Democratic Party for lack of any other option.” That is like saying given the Chinese one-party state, the Chinese left of environmental, labor, oppressed-nationality, and pro-democracy activists should work inside the Chinese Communist Party for lack of any other option. What happened to system change?

https://www.blackagendareport.com/whate ... solidarity
So, this guy sez he's on the 'left' unlike the other guys....As so often infantile analysis proves to be the real 'horseshoe', the Greens want regime change in China like any other bootlicker of capitalism.

The bottom line is who possesses the means of production. If the Greens are not for the seizing of those means of production by whatever means necessary then they ain't Left. 'Green' is a niche for those claiming to love life on Earth but not serious enough to do anything effective about it. 'Anything But Communism'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 26, 2021 2:56 pm

You know you' are a Philistine when you are Owen Jones

The “humanitarian” left still ignores the lessons of Iraq, Libya and Syria to cheer on more war
Posted Jan 26, 2021 by Jonathan Cook

Originally published: Dissident Voice (January 23, 2021) |

The instinct among parts of the left to cheer lead the right’s war crimes, so long as they are dressed up as liberal “humanitarianism”, is alive and kicking, as Owen Jones reveals in a column today on the plight of the Uighurs at China’s hands.

The “humanitarian war” instinct persists even after two decades of the horror shows that followed the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and UK; the western-sponsored butchering of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi that unleashed a new regional trade in slaves and arms; and the west’s covert backing of Islamic jihadists who proceeded to tear Syria apart.

In fact, those weren’t really separate horror shows: they were instalments of one long horror show.

The vacuum left in Iraq by the west–the execution of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of his armed forces–sucked in Islamic extremists from every corner of the Middle East. The U.S. and UK occupations of Iraq served both as fuel to rationalise new, more nihilistic Islamic doctrines that culminated in the emergence of Islamic State, and as a training ground for jihadists to develop better methods of militarised resistance.

That process accelerated in post-Gaddafi Libya, where Islamic extremists were handed an even more lawless country than post-invasion Iraq in which to recruit followers and train them, and trade arms. All of that know-how and weaponry ended up flooding into Syria where the same Islamic extremists hoped to establish the seat of their new caliphate.

Many millions of Arabs across the region were either slaughtered or forced to flee their homes, becoming permanent refugees, because of the supposedly “humanitarian” impulse unleashed by George W Bush and Tony Blair.

No lesson learnt

One might imagine that by this stage liberal humanitarianism was entirely discredited, at least on the left. But you would be wrong. There are still those who have learnt no lessons at all–like the Guardian’s Owen Jones. In his column today he picks up and runs with the latest pretext for global warmongering by the right: the Uighurs, a Muslim minority that has long been oppressed by China.


After acknowledging the bad faith arguments and general unreliability of the right, Jones sallies forth to argue–as if Iraq, Libya and Syria never happened–that the left must not avoid good causes just because bad people support them. We must not, he writes:
sacrifice oppressed Muslims on the altar of geopolitics: and indeed, it is possible to walk and to chew gum; to oppose western militarism and to stand with victims of state violence. It would be perverse to cede a defence of China’s Muslims–however disingenuous–to reactionaries and warmongers.
But this is to entirely miss the point of the anti-war and anti-imperialist politics that are the bedrock of any progressive left wing movement.

Jones does at least note, even if very cursorily, the bad-faith reasoning of the right when it accuses the left of being all too ready to protest outside a U.S. or Israeli embassy but not a Chinese or Russian one:
Citizens [in the west] have at least some potential leverage over their own governments: whether it be to stop participation in foreign action, or encourage them to confront human rights abusing allies.
But he then ignores this important observation about power and responsibility and repurposes it as a stick to beat the left with:
But that doesn’t mean abandoning a commitment to defending the oppressed, whoever their oppressor might be. To speak out against Islamophobia in western societies but to remain silent about the Uighurs is to declare that the security of Muslims only matters in some countries. We need genuine universalists.
That is not only a facile argument, it’s a deeply dangerous one. There are two important additional reasons why the left needs to avoid cheerleading the right’s favoured warmongering causes, based on both its anti-imperialist and anti-war priorities.

Virtue-signalling

Jones misunderstands the goal of the left’s anti-imperialist politics. It is not, as the right so often claims, about left wing “virtue-signalling”. It is the very opposite of that. It is about carefully selecting our political priorities–priorities necessarily antithetical to the dominant narratives promoted by the west’s warmongering political and media establishments. Our primary goal is to undermine imperialist causes that have led to such great violence and suffering around the world.

Jones forgets that the purpose of the anti-war left is not to back the west’s warmongering establishment for picking a ‘humanitarian’ cause for its wars. It is to discredit the establishment, expose its warmongering and stop its wars.

The best measure–practical and ethical–for the western left to use to determine which causes to expend its limited resources and energies on are those that can help others to wake up to the continuing destructive behaviours of the west’s political establishment, even when that warmongering establishment presents itself in two guises: whether the Republicans and the Democrats in the United States, or the Conservatives and the (non-Corbyn) Labour party in the UK.

We on the left cannot influence China or Russia. But we can try to influence debates in our own societies that discredit the western elite headquartered in the U.S.–the world’s sole military superpower.

Our job is not just to weigh the scales of injustice–in any case, the thumb of the west’s power-elite is far heavier than any of its rivals. It is to highlight the bad faith nature of western foreign policy, and underscore to the wider public that the real aim of the west’s foreign policy elite is either to attack or to intimidate those who refuse to submit to its power or hand over their resources.

Do no harm

That is what modern imperialism looks like. To ignore the bad faith of a Pompeo, a Blair, an Obama, a Bush or a Trump simply because they briefly adopt a good cause for ignoble reasons is to betray anti-imperialist politics. To use a medical analogy, it is to fixate on one symptom of global injustice while refusing to diagnose the actual disease so that it can be treated.

Requiring, as Jones does, that we prioritise the Uighurs–especially when they are the momentary pet project of the west’s warmongering, anti-China right–does not advance our anti-imperialist goals, it actively harms them. Because the left offers its own credibility, its own stamp of approval, to the right’s warmongering.

When the left is weak–when, unlike the right, it has no corporate media to dominate the airwaves with its political concerns and priorities, when it has almost no politicians articulating its worldview–it cannot control how its support for humanitarian causes is presented to the general public. Instead it always finds itself coopted into the drumbeat for war.

That is a lesson Jones should have learnt personally–in fact, a lesson he promised he had learnt–after his cooption by the corporate Guardian to damage the political fortunes of Jeremy Corbyn, the only anti-war, anti-imperialist politician Britain has ever had who was in sight of power.

Anti-imperialist politics is not about good intentions; it’s about beneficial outcomes. To employ another medical analogy, our credo must to be to do no harm–or, if that is not possible, at least to minimise harm.

The ‘defence’ industry

Which is why the flaw in Jones’ argument runs deeper still.

The anti-war left is not just against acts of wars, though of course it is against those too. It is against the global war economy: the weapons manufacturers that fund our politicians; the arms trade lobbies that now sit in our governments; our leaders, of the right and so-called left, who divide the world into a Manichean struggle between the good guys and bad guys to justify their warmongering and weapons purchases; the arms traders that profit from human violence and suffering; the stock-piling of nuclear weapons that threaten our future as a species.


The anti-war left is against the globe’s dominant, western war economy, one that deceives us into believing it is really a “defence industry”. That “defence industry” needs villains, like China and Russia, that it must extravagantly arm itself against. And that means fixating on the crimes of China and Russia, while largely ignoring our own crimes, so that those “defence industries” can prosper.

Yes, Russia and China have armies too. But no one in the west can credibly believe Moscow or Beijing are going to disarm when the far superior military might of the west–of NATO–flexes its muscles daily in their faces, when it surrounds them with military bases that encroach ever nearer their territory, when it points its missiles menacingly in their direction.


Rhetoric of war

Jones and George Monbiot, the other token leftist at the Guardian with no understanding of how global politics works, can always be relied on to cheerlead the western establishment’s humanitarian claims–and demand that we do too. That is also doubtless the reason they are allowed their solitary slots in the liberal corporate media.

When called out, the pair argue that, even though they loudly trumpet their detestation of Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad, that does not implicate them in the wars that are subsequently waged against Iraq or Syria.

This is obviously infantile logic, which assumes that the left can echo the rhetoric of the west’s warmongering power-elite without taking any responsibility for the wars that result from that warmongering.

But Jones’ logic is even more grossly flawed than that. It pretends that the left can echo the rhetoric of the warmongers and not take responsibility for the war industries that constantly thrive and expand, whether or not actual wars are being waged at any one time.

The western foreign policy elite is concerned about the Uighurs not because it wishes to save them from Chinese persecution or even because it necessarily intends to use them as a pretext to attack China. Rather, its professed concerns serve to underpin claims that are essential to the success of its war industries: that the west is the global good guy; that China is a potential nemesis, the Joker to our Batman; and that the west therefore needs an even bigger arsenal, paid by us as taxpayers, to protect itself.

The Uighurs’ cause is being instrumentalised by the west’s foreign policy establishment to further enhance its power and make the world even less safe for us all, the Uighurs included. Whatever Jones claims, there should be no obligation on the left to give succour to the west’s war industries.

Vilifying “official enemies” while safely ensconced inside the “defence” umbrella of the global superpower and hegemony is a crime against peace, against justice, against survival. Jones is free to flaunt his humanitarian credentials, but so are we to reject political demands dictated to us by the west’s war machine.

The anti-war left has its own struggles, its own priorities. It does not need to be gaslit by Mike Pompeo or Tony Blair–or, for that matter, by Owen Jones.

https://mronline.org/2021/01/26/the-hum ... -more-war/
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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:35 pm

Alfred Nobel, oh yeah.

THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR PUS
Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein

18 Feb 2021 , 10:04 am .

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Alfred Nobel was far from thinking - when he instituted the prize that bears his name - that it would derive in an affront to humanity from the moment he began to deliver himself with political and ideological criteria and as an instrument of exaltation of capitalist values ​​and practices .

Nobel established the awards in five areas: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. The latter with the aim of recognizing the "person who has worked more or better in favor of fraternity among nations, the abolition or reduction of raised armies and the celebration and promotion of peace agreements ." By decision of Nobel who invented dynamite, unknown reasons subject to speculation led him to statute that the peace prize was awarded by a Norwegian committee appointed by the parliament of that country, unlike the others that are awarded by Sweden.

It is possible that Nobel thought that Sweden and Norway, countries that were united while he lived, would be the correct guarantors in the application of the wishes stated in his will. However, it is paradoxical and hypocritical that this country, at the same time that it awards Nobel Peace Prizes and claims to be the headquarters and promoter of dialogues and negotiations in favor of it, has been a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1949. (NATO). Even, at this moment, its general secretary is Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian politician. The Atlanticist vocation of this country is expressed in its membership in NATO and its absence from the European Union.

On another level, it is very difficult to suppose that a parliament with an overwhelmingly conservative and retarding majority could appoint a fair and impartial Nobel commission. A political and ideological criterion has clearly prevailed in deciding the award, especially in the most recent years.

Thus, of the 128 people and institutions that have received it, 41, 32% are American, British or French, and 47, 36.7% are European, if you add to the 20 Americans (including four presidents, one Vice President, in addition to Henry Kissinger who did not stand out precisely for his love of peace), three Israelis, two Canadians and a Japanese who have received it, gather 57% of the winners.

Nobody can believe that in 120 years, Europe, where the two wildest world wars in the history of mankind were unleashed, as well as the club of warmongering countries and violators of human rights, are the ones that have made the most efforts for peace. It is true that the award is given to personalities and not to countries, but it is very particular that the two Chinese (one of them the Dalai Lama who appears as a Tibetan, a country that does not exist) and the only Soviet who received it have been dissidents. contrary to the political systems of their countries.

It is fair to recognize that respectable personalities and organizations such as the International Red Cross, Jean Henry Dunant its creator, Martin Luther King Jr., Le Duc Tho (who honorably rejected it while the American napalm was still falling on Vietnam), our Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchú and Alfonso García Robles, Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, José Ramos Horta, among other winners of the award, are deserving of any recognition that is made to the struggle of the peoples for their freedom.

Can anyone believe that in 120 years only six Latin Americans have received such an award? And that among those half a dozen are the former president of Costa Rica Óscar Arias, from whom the United States "bought" it to hide it from the Contadora Group, the true manager of peace in Central America in the 1980s, and Juan Manuel Santos, notorious promoter of paramilitary groups and human rights violations.

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Aung San Suu Kyi, Abiy Ahmed Ali, Juan Manuel Santos, Barack Obama, Teodoro Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were some of the war presidents who won the Nobel Prize (Photo: File)

The award was presented in 1991 to the Burmese (now Myanmar) Aung San Suu Kyi, who in 2015 claimed that "throughout the world, commercial interests are above human rights." In the same way, the huge Nobel Prize winner has become an accomplice in the genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, whom it hates from the majority fundamentalist Buddhism in Myanmar. The Rohingya are not even recognized as an ethnic group in their country so they do not have citizenship, that is, it is as if they did not exist, which is accepted by the new Nobel Prize winner.

Similarly, in 2019 the award was given to Abiy Ahmed Ali, Prime Minister of Ethiopia who the following year, in just two days, caused the death of 600 citizens in the repression of the separatist province of Tigray, also causing the flight of 50 thousand refugees to neighboring Sudan. But that is only the most scandalous, also in other towns of Tigray like Humera, Dansha and the capital, Mekele, other massacres were carried out. To avoid knowledge of this humanitarian disaster, the Nobel Prize closed the region to the press and international organizations.

The case of Juan Manuel Santos is difficult to comment on. In the first place, one wonders why it was given only to him. Peace negotiations are never one-sided events. So the Norwegian commission handed it over to Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973; to Sadat and Begin in 1978; Mandela and de Klerk in 1993; to Arafat, Rabin and Peres in 1994. Why then was it not handed over to the FARC and / or its boss who were the government's counterpart in the negotiations? Didn't he make the same effort to end the conflict?

This case is another in which the United States buys the prizes from its subjects as payment for services rendered. Santos ordered with Uribe to violate the sovereignty of Ecuador to carry out an armed incursion into foreign territory; He was the genius of the "false positives" policy, a covert way of murdering thousands of innocent young people outside the conflict in order to show unsuccessful combat successes; He is also the confessed murderer of Commander Alfonso Cano, captured alive and murdered under his orders, a fact for which he permanently boasts. All of these appear to be valid requirements for the award.

A special case is that of Barack Obama, recipient of the award in 2009 when he had only been president for 11 months and who was awarded for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and collaboration among peoples." Nobody knows what Obama did in 11 months to deserve this "recognition." What is known is that after the end of his term, seven years later he became the first US president to complete two full terms of his mandate with troops from his country in active combat.

Obama launched the third war in Iraq against the Islamic State to end up associating with it and Israel in the effort to overthrow the Syrian government, continued in Afghanistan, and increased the "surgical" operations to assassinate terrorists that, as they were not so "surgical", caused hundreds of deaths among the civilian population. He also ordered the bombing of Libya and entered Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. In our region, he signed the decree that declared - without evidence - that Venezuela was an "unusual and extraordinary" threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, a stupidity that does not withstand the slightest serious and responsible analysis.

In this context, the facts could lead us to affirm that Aung San Suu Kyi, Abiy Ahmed Ali, Juan Manuel Santos and Barack Obama, like their predecessors Teodoro Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, received the Pus Nobel Prize with joy and acceptance.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/el-pre ... -de-la-pus

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And not just Alfie but the committees, parliaments, the whole damn shebang.
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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 10, 2021 2:02 pm

(You know you are a Philistine if you ask this question...)

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What’s Their Endgame?
March 9, 2021
By Steve Lalla for Orinoco Tribune – Mar 6, 2021

Invariably, in a conversation about environmental destruction, war in the Middle East, or the pandemic, someone eventually asks the question: “Yes, but what’s their endgame?”

Behind this question is the assumption that an elite cabal of capitalist overseers controls everything and foresees the outcome of all their decisions—that they possess an unassailable plan that can never be defeated. Behind this question also lurks capitalist realism, characterized by Zizek and Jameson as the mental state in which “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.”

“We find ourselves at the notorious ‘end of history’ trumpeted by Francis Fukuyama after the fall of the Berlin Wall,” wrote Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? “Fukuyama’s thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious.”

This mindset is so common that many of us don’t think twice before asking “What’s their endgame?” We believe that in posing the question we’re making a meta-critique of capitalism. The mere formulation of the question supposes that there’s such a thing as organization—a system—a concept that in itself is truly revolutionary for many of us, who don’t even realize that we live within a system, and that alternatives are possible.

The question “What’s their endgame?” is often posed in the context of the pandemic. In this case, the assumption behind the question is that capitalism, if it wanted to, could have reacted better to the pandemic, and could have saved more lives. Therefore, the pseudo-intellect wonders, was there perhaps not a master plan behind letting hundreds of thousands die? Perhaps the US colluded with the leaders of Brazil, Britain, China, Cuba, and the United Nations, and they all agreed on a plan to usher in a police state? The theory falls apart when we accept that various communities had divergent responses to COVID-19. It’s more likely that the agenda behind allowing mass death was the same that capitalists always have: to make as much money as possible with little thought for the consequences.

On the topic of environmental destruction, we aver that billionaires are building spaceships to colonize Mars; that they’ve already planned for the destruction of planet earth and its ecosystems. Whether it’s the singularity, or life on Mars as imagined in books and film, we’ve internalized the idea that the contamination of earth and humanity’s exile into space—or at least an elite fraction of humanity—is actually an ingenious plan devised by the super-intelligent billionaires, not the inevitable result of an economic system that ignores the most basic principles of nature in order to line the pockets of the oligarchy.

Global war? We’re supposed to believe that the imperialist wars in Syria, Afghanistan, or Yemen, are going exactly as planned; that the US withdrew from Iraq in 2011 strategically—the US actually won the war. We’ve internalized the fallacy that Vietnam’s Resistance War Against America went according to US plans; that powers beyond our control act unilaterally on our beings, that we’re not actors in history.

I’m reminded of a comment someone posted on my Facebook wall this week: “if one wishes an answer, there is none, to war and chaos. When it all spills over it becomes a world war, and history repeats itself, over and over.” There are elements of truth to these ideas, which is why they’re so appealing.

“This malaise, the feeling that there is nothing new, is itself nothing new of course,” wrote Fisher.

History repeats itself: an appealing idea
Perhaps the root of this idea is the oft-repeated saying that “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It turns out that this is really an altered version, or a misquote, of the original written by Spanish philosopher Jorge Santayana in 1905: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

From this deeply ingrained idea we extrapolate the notion that history repeats itself—but that’s not at all what Santayana meant. Neither of these maxims is meant to teach us that history repeats itself. Santayana’s statement warns us that if we don’t learn from history, we won’t be involved in the making of the future. While there are certainly cyclical elements in both nature and human history, to believe that either nature or history truly repeats itself is simply to bow out of the game—to quit before we’ve even played. A similar logic is at play when we ask “What’s their endgame?”

The reasonable alternative is to recognize that reality is always changing, and will continue to change; to recognize that humans play an active role in creating the future. Our realities are not determined by forces entirely outside of our control. This recognition gives us both strength and optimism.

“For revolutionary hope to come into being, we need to discard determinism,” writes Yanis Iqbal. “Instead of dialectically locating an individual in the interconnected economic, political and cultural systems, institutions and structures, determinism considers him/her to be unilaterally influenced by it. A determinist conception is based on the dichotomous division of existence into an ‘external world’ and ‘human consciousness.’ In this conception, the external world and consciousness are two different components of human existence.”

In truth, humans are not separate from the world around us. It’s self-evident that we’re part of it. We require air, water, and sustenance to live and to think. Conversely, we alter and metabolize the world around us by our existence. The oligarchy and the elite, while they may live in ivory towers, are subject to the same forces of nature as we are, with the same powers and limits of agency. They may have various plans, and diverse strategies, but none of this ensured that their plans worked perfectly in the past, nor will in the future.

Despite its popularity in academia—particularly in philosophy, cultural studies and postmodernism—it’s easy to demonstrate that capitalist realism is incorrect. One only has to imagine other mental states or cultural tropes such as apartheid realism, feudalist realism, or hunter-gatherer realism.

Understanding and analyzing the plans of our opponents or enemies is important. The assumption that we are powerless before them is fallacious and futile.

Often, what lies beneath the question “What’s their endgame?” is conspiracy theory. Yes, many elements of conspiracy theory are certainly true and yes, groupings of like-minded people marshal increased power to guide events. However, blind adherence to conspiracy theory ignores the self-evidence of the greatest conspiracy of all: that we, as humans, all conspire together to create the future.

https://orinocotribune.com/whats-their-endgame/

Bolding added. Good despite the Zizek reference, which was 'broken clock', even a dipshit gets lucky.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: You know you are a Philistine when...

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:58 am

Girl Ilona Mask spoke for communism without collective farms
06/06/2021
The ostentatious "leftism" of the Western establishment

Singer Grimes , the common-law wife of the famous entrepreneur Elon Musk , recorded a video for TikTok with proposals to the communists. She stated that “artificial intelligence is the fastest way to communism,” and described how AI can help root out corruption and automate agriculture. Grimes ended with the thought that "collective farms are not cool at all . " Musk's reaction is not reported ... We figure out what the billionaire's girlfriend said, and most importantly - why.

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Elon Musk and singer Grimes

The singer's video appeared online on June 3. The network already has a translation into Russian . Outlining her "proposals for the communists," Grimes said:

“We can get into a situation where no one has to work, everyone is provided with a stable basic income. Artificial intelligence can automate the entire agricultural sector, eradicate systemic corruption, thereby bringing us as close as possible to true equality. AI will give what everyone likes about communism, but without collective farms. Because, to be honest, collective farms are not cool at all. "

It remains to be seen what the girl did not like about the collective farms. Be that as it may, the video caused a flurry of comments from supporters and detractors of the singer. She was even dubbed "Caviar Socialist" - a contemptuous nickname for the elite of bourgeois society, who bask in luxury while at the same time portraying ostentatious concern for social problems. The same nickname was once awarded , for example, to the notorious former director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn .

Some commentators point out that Grimes' statement is consistent with the so-called "accelerationism" - one of the political currents within the Western left discourse. Supporters of this trend, which issued the "Manifesto for Accelerationist Policy" in 2013 , advocate the all-round acceleration of technological development under capitalism, hoping that this will also accelerate the collapse of capitalism. While wittily noticing some of the current trends, the "accelerationists" at the same time remain captive to the petty-bourgeois illusions characteristic of the Western left. In some cases, when they succeed in overcoming these illusions, the "accelerationists" come to the same conclusions that were long ago drawn by the communists.

Technical progress
Artificial intelligence, like universal robotization and other modern technological advances, will not lead to general prosperity. Even Karl Marx , analyzing large-scale machine production, emphasized that a machine should free a person, but under capitalism it only enslaves him. A century and a half after his words, science still belongs to capital and serves its interests, so automation and neural networks are being introduced, first of all, to strengthen control over society and reduce costs, which leads to an increase in poverty and unemployment.

Claims, if not of sympathy for socialism, then at least of the fatal problems of capitalism, seem to have become a trend among the American and European establishment. For example, Ray Dalio , billionaire president and CIO of Bridgewater Associates, said that "the world has gone crazy" and the capitalist system is "broken . " Mark Benioff , billionaire co-director of SalesForce, admits that capitalism has personally benefited him, but at the same time has led to "appalling inequality . " He dreams of some kind of "new capitalism"in which the super-rich will be taxed heavily. It is difficult to say to what extent such statements are sincere, but the most perspicacious capitalists, in any case, see that something has gone wrong and puzzle over the salvation of the system.

Or, more precisely, over the extension of the life of capitalism, since it is impossible to resolve the contradictions that have accumulated in it.

https://www.rotfront.su/devushka-ilona- ... a-za-komm/

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Gotta love the headline.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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