freagle

@ freagle @lemmygrad.ml

Posts

14
Comments

1172
Joined

4 yr. ago

1d ago

Trump tells Cuba to 'make a deal, before it is too late'
Jump
freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1d ago
Subscribing to the international law model is equivalent to inviting foreign capital into invest in China - it's using the opponent's energy against it.
One thing that has been true for a while now is that while the US claims to be all about international law, it violates it constantly. But the US continues to use it justify sanctions and violence and rally many countries to common cause.
If China also subscribes to International Law and behaves better than the US, why would it be any different than say Luxembourg or Zimbabwe doing the same? Because of economics. As China ascends to the dominant economic position in the globe, and as it becomes capable of protecting other nations, more and more countries will be able to use International Law against the US.

1d ago

Trump tells Cuba to 'make a deal, before it is too late'

We're hoping the US is actually a paper tiger. If the US defeats one of its strongest opponents, it's a signal that the US is much much stronger than we believed, and that has massive consequences

1d ago

Trump tells Cuba to 'make a deal, before it is too late'

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1d ago

Also currently active in Somalia, Ukraine, Lebanon (via proxy, but not only), Syria, Iran (covert) and also threatening Colombia, Canada, China, Russia.

6d ago

Is it generally understood that Mao was right in the Sino-Soviet split?

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 6d ago

And yet, very very different. Kruschev's liberalization and detante with America was an attempt to join the imperialist club and carve up the world as an ally to the US and ultimately resulted in the absolutely horrible inequality that developed in the final decades of the USSR.

Deng's liberalization and detante with America was an attempt to get the US to fund the development of Chinese productive forces. That worked. It was not an attempt to join the imperialism club, and in fact China became less chauvinistic under Deng than under Mao. That shows correctness. And the resulting economics show continuous improvement of living and working conditions for Chinese workers when, at the same age, the USSR had already started to economically collapse.

Also, the other comments claiming that the USSR might not have collapsed without the split forget that China had almost nothing to offer the USSR at the time of the split. They were not an effective producer of anything. They were deeply impoverished. They were militarily weak. The split hurt China more than it hurt the USSR because it cost China access to technology, energy, military collaboration, etc.

I think the USSR probably would have dragged China down with it as it collapsed under the programming of the counter-revolutionaries. It's not like China didn't try. They were debates and discourse to attempt to analyze and convince the Kruschevites of the incorrectness of the oath they were on. Not only was China right rhetorically, China was right materially, and history has proven this to us.

7d ago

China Urges U.S. To Stop Violating Other Countries' Sovereignty, Security: Spokesman

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 7d ago

The kids are not alright

7d ago

China Urges U.S. To Stop Violating Other Countries' Sovereignty, Security: Spokesman

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 7d ago

It's honestly so infuriating

1w ago

Invasion of Venezuela - Megathread (use for all Venezuela-related news until further notice)

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1w ago

I don't know if I would go so far as to say this is a lose-lose for the empire. Except that everything is lose-lose in a long enough time horizon.

First off, the ability to test systems and tactics against Venezuela's defenses was valuable in its own right. Made more valuable by the fact that many of those systems are from larger adversaries of the US. That provides lots of valuable intelligence.

Second, the shock and awe factor is very valuable. A public execution of Maduro is definitely in the cards and doing so would ramp up the shock and awe. It will cause lots of reactions, lots of movement. A lot of that movement will be opportunity for the US to act again. Get one more shock and awe event out of that, and it would be very valuable.

Third, it shakes the relationship tree and reveals the ride-or-die allies versus the mere sycophants. It tightens the circle, it creates bonds of allegiance, and it allows the empire to do more terrible things faster.

1w ago

Invasion of Venezuela - Megathread (use for all Venezuela-related news until further notice)

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1w ago

The moderator of a Venezuelan community on Lemmy posted the most white supremacist shit I've seen and then when called out said not to talk down to them because they're a real Venezuelan and no one else can know about the real story but people like them. Then they blocked me for being a Russian bot.

selfcrit @hexbear.net

freagle @lemmygrad.ml

1w ago

I become very insulting when arguing against imperial propaganda

1w ago

How US was able to invade Venezuela and kidnap its leader in hours?

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1w ago

Your sense of the numbers are way off. $2Bn is a small price to pay for the largest known oil reserves in the world. Very very very small price compared to what the profits will be within a year. Venezuela in 2025 was already at a million barrels per day which is at least 2 billion USD in revenue monthly.

1w ago

At least 7 explosions and low-flying aircraft are heard in Venezuela's Caracas

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1w ago

That could be the point. If things get ugly on the ground in Venezuela it just gives the US further context for escalation after escalation

1w ago

At least 7 explosions and low-flying aircraft are heard in Venezuela's Caracas

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 1w ago

I absolutely wouldn't put it past this administration to Livestream a public hanging

2w ago

Exclusive: CIA carried out drone strike on port facility on Venezuelan coast | CNN Politics

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 2w ago

Hold on to your butss

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

freagle @lemmygrad.ml

2w ago

it occurs that me that with these revelations about Trump, he might not be the worst president we've had....

2w ago

Ideas cannot be "stolen".

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 2w ago

Oh yeah, I know, and it's sort of ridiculous. I was just saying your idea about the utility of trademark as a way of keeping people informed about what they were buying is really about preventing fraudulent representations of a product.

2w ago

Ideas cannot be "stolen".

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 2w ago

Trademark infringement in it's reduced form is just fraud protection

2w ago

Why, exactly, are the Western bourgeoisie so evil and fucked up?

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 2w ago

The Western bourgeoisie are the inheritors of the unchecked great resentments, fears, and traumas of all of humanity. Patriarchy. Ownership. Paranoia. Empire. War. The West has developed these in an essentially unbroken process from the cradle of humanity. It is the pinnacle of our collective trauma as a species. Every other society that also had some or all of these was forced to confront their own inner demons when they met the Westerners. It is only th West who has not yet met the West.

3w ago

a little question about ai slop and the impact it may or may NOT have on future generations.

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 3w ago

Of course! We all should! Until we die. We should never stop learning and there is never an end to the things we can learn. Study more theory, but also study more history, and study literary critique and the history of literary critique, and study philosophical theory and history, and study political theory and history, and study economics and the history of economics as a field of study.

Study forever. Your positions will constantly be updating. Eventually you will have a bunch of good evidence for positions that you can rely on and build from, while always recognizing that new evidence could undermine those positions and you should be open to that.

Stop trying to establish what you support and what you oppose and start trying to identify what you are ignorant of and how you can fix that.

3w ago

a little question about ai slop and the impact it may or may NOT have on future generations.

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 3w ago

I don't think that question has much meaning without context. There's no such thing as a hard line ML. Ask specific questions and you'll get specific answers.

Of course one can be an ML while opposing anything. But you have to oppose it as a process, not as an emotion. What do you specifically oppose? Why do you oppose it? What do you think gave rise to the phenomena to which you are referring? Where is your evidence for your claims? What would make you change your mind? Etc.

There are very few things that MLs just oppose because that's "the line". Marx, for all the complexity in his analysis, gives us a very simple framework:

Human life requires human society
Human society must remain for human life to remain
Human society can be organized in such a way that it will end
Human society can be organized in such a way that it will continue
Determining how to continue human society is a process of theoretical analysis and empirical experimentation

Our job is to assert that we value human life, that we support it. Everything else comes from that. We do not need to support Stalin to be MLs, nor oppose him to be MLs. To be MLs we must engage in the analytical and empirical process of discovering how history has preceded us, how that has produced the present moment, and what we are to do now in our present context to bring about a future state that results in the continuation of human society and avoidance of the foreseeable collapses of that society.

3w ago

a little question about ai slop and the impact it may or may NOT have on future generations.

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 3w ago

You literally opened the thread with a hypothesis about fascism. How am I the one to blame here? You can't be serious.
That's correct, the US has been spying on its citizens for a long time, just like the fascists did. That would be evidence that the US might be fascist, despite the fact that they don't punish everyone who speaks out against them, and the reality is that the fascists also did not punish everyone who spoke out against them. This particular line of reasoning was raised when you said that I was in America posting online in critique of my government as potentially evidence for how the US is not yet fascist, but as I said, fascists didn't punish everyone who critiqued them either but what they did do was spy in everyone so they could figure out who they wanted to punish, which the US is definitely doing

3w ago

a little question about ai slop and the impact it may or may NOT have on future generations.

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 3w ago

Because you told me what you emotionally support. What you support is irrelevant to an analysis of whether the US is fascist.
And there you go supporting things. I am happy for you. But it adds nothing to our mutual understanding
Poverty alleviation would be a great thing, yes, but it would not make it less fascist if it maintained racial hierarchy, the Indian reservation system, and did not engage in reparations of the harm that the European colonial movement visited upon the continent and its peoples

3w ago

a little question about ai slop and the impact it may or may NOT have on future generations.

Jump

freagle @lemmygrad.ml 3w ago

I said that. I live in the US. I am a settler colonist. What of it?

Yes. Lots of German fascists were allowed to express themselves. You may not realize this but the stories that every single critic was murdered are actually just stories and not true.

What was true was that the government spied on everyone they could. Guess that the US has been doing? Spying on every single digital communication for the last 25 years.