JohnBrownsBussy2 [she/her, they/them]

Looking at this International Crisis Group’s list of donors:

BP

Chevron

ENI

Open Society Foundation

Rockerfeller Brothers Trust

As well as various Western European & gulf state governments, billionaires and billionaire-founded NGOs. Of course they’re coping: their backers were hoping to get a piece of PDVSA.

It’s buried in the article, but yep it’s a Boeing.

Obviously, these attacks are bad, but the impressive resistance by the Jenin fighters (as well as the reconciliation between Saudi and Iran, and Israel’s domestic turmoil) do give me some hope for a renewal of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

I don’t really care about the honor of Rian Johnson, but I don’t think your points are correct.

why are there suddenly cloaking devices in star wars

Cloaking devices were introduced in Episode I

why don’t the imperials hyperjump in front of the fleeing rebels?

The tracking device makes hyperspace jumping a game of hopscotch. There’s not really a point.

why can several characters leave a chase in progress visit some planet and come back to the chase still in progress?

Yeah, this one is kinda dumb, but it’d be possible for a small ship to escape unnoticed and get out of range in order to jump to lightspeed.

the holdo maneuver breaks several in-universe rules about how hyperdrive works.

Those rules are established in the books/supplemental materials, which aren’t canon to the film series. The film-makers have no obligation to respect them. Episode 7 also breaks/rewrites the hyperspace rules.

Luke’s character “development” happening entirely off-screen (and throwing out better character development from decades of books) makes the flashback scene completely unbelievable.

None of the books are canon. It makes sense that people change over long time skips, and they did outline the rationale for his mindset changes in the flashback.

It’s also fitting the vanguard of America’s descent into fascism will one of the earlier places (in the US) to be rendered uninhabitable by the climate change.

Fascism is a death cult.

I don’t understand the logic here. When the putsch occured and then ignomously fizzled out, I saw Putin as weak for letting Pringles walk out with a (relative) slap on the wrist. Taking Prigo out of the picture was overdue. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened by an semi-autonomous mercenary army, so removing its leadership and breaking it up is just a rational course of action that probably should have been done sooner from that POV

That’s a bit more dramatic than polonium. He was going to get got sooner or later after his tantrum/half-baked putsch.

I think Nigeria could still invade (and drag ECOWAS with it), but hopefully that helps take the wind out of its sails.

Glad to see that your instance filter is working. Everyone should be free to curate the content they see.

For the benefit of others, checking your comment history, it is hilarious to me that you’ve never posted in your home instance even once and have the audacity to call us brigadiers.

We all live together in the posters’ gulag in Yakutsk where we are forced to post incessantly for the glory of the post-Soviet motherland.

We we see a bad post we all gather around the collective 2004 Gateway laptop and laugh at it.

You see, brigading is when content that I am interested in is algorithmically prioritized in my feed and I interact with it. The more algorithmically prioritized the content is, the more it’s an inorganic brigade.

To be technical, did the US actually fund the Taliban when it got started? The Pakistani intelligence service did, and the Taliban were only able to take power because of the US-backed Mujahideen alliance rapidly descended into civil war when the Soviets pulled out and the Afghan government fell, but idk.

???

I’m obviously biased as an accursed tankie myself, but looking at this thread:

• 1.) The article wasn’t even posted by a hexbear user.
• 2.) The level of discourse seems to be pretty level between hexbear natives and other users.
• 3.) The failure of the US to fight illicit opium production in Afghanistan, despite it being a public aim of the US and its allied government in Afghanistan, is well documented. Just doing a quick look, here’s a New York post article (I know, I know, but it’s well sourced, and certainly not leftist): Why the only winner of America’s war in Afghanistan is opium . It cites the Afghanistan papers and a variety of US and Afghan officials, and illustrates a timeline on how every program implemented by the US to combat opium production only intensified cultivation. The success of the Taliban government in cracking down on it despite far more limited resources suggests either gross incompetence or malice on the part of the US government.

EDIT: I will also point out that the harshest criticism of the US here is from a user from your own instance. That wouldn’t even be allowed on hexbear, so glass houses.

Seems like a bit of a stretch if you’re having trouble developing a normal hypersonic missle. Presumably, you’d need to make something faster and more agile.

What’s your point, that Soros is a hypocrite? That was always obvious. Is he more of a zionist than the average American lib though?

I disagree with your definition of authoritarianism. 50.5% of a population voting to elect a representative or enact a referendum versus the 49.5% is authoritarianism. The same if the margin is 67-33, or 80-22 or 99.9 to 0.1. In any case, the minority is imposed upon by the majority. The individual is imposed upon by the collective, or even merely another individual.

Like Engels said, the revolution is certainly an authoritarian endeavor. The original expropriation was authoritarian, and the counter-expropriation would be a counter-posing authoritarianism. How can you take something from someone without imposition? If asking nicely worked, then we wouldn’t be posting here.

The opposite of authoritarianism isn’t democracy, but pure volunteerism. That would be nice.

No, annexation is illegal under the UN charter, of which Russia is a signatory, and wars of aggression are criminal in and of themselves. I’ll condemn the illegal annexations performed by Israel and other states, and Russia’s annexations fall under the same boat.

To be even more clear, I do think that Russia would have won fair referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk and certainly Crimea. I doubt that would have been the case for the other two oblasts. Still, all of those annexations were illegal. Just because the neo-cons have flouted the UN charter in favor of the ad hoc “rules-based order” doesn’t mean others should.

The annexations in Ukraine are illegal, but Russia annexing 5 oblasts and Ukraine being locked into a status as a neutral buffer state is not exactly a Hitlerian take-over of Europe.

The kind Vladimir Ilyich would have killed everyone here.

A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.

Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.

We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.