Comments
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CoronavirusYes, that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways. I just linked one of the few studies specifically dealing with masking and covid and a large n-value. I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results.
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CoronavirusI can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself!
Also on masking: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069 -
CoronavirusOr... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress?
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Ukraine CrisisA group of 6 individuals, with relevant complementary skills planning a strike like this? With things you call "not so hard" but totally not common knowledge or expertise. The balance of probability isn't a summation of the merely possible.
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Ukraine CrisisIt's reported in Germany at the same time based on German intelligence leaks. Interesting detail: Scholz once again reiterated the official investigation, performed by Denmark, Russia and Sweden, is not finished and that there are no definitive conclusions.
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Ukraine Crisis@ssu @SophistiCat We discussed a while back about who bombed Nordstream. We now have an intelligence "leak" (officially sanctioned it seems) blaming private individuals. How likely is that really? Getting explosives? Planning? Skills? And no government involved? Colour me skeptical I guess.
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Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksRegardless of what your actually mean by "woke", which is just the new "liberal" and meant as a pejorative, the idea that raising awareness of systemic racism promotes segregation is ludicrous and only promotes retaining the status quo. Women's suffrage wouldn't have come about by not talking about sexism. The idea racism will magically go away by not taking about it is nonsense. All progress in the past in this area came about by people explicating the difference in treatment. Either by taking about it (MLK or Malcolm X) or showing by doing (Rosa Parks). People whining about "you shouldn't talk about race", have done fuck all to improve the lives of oppressed people.
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Why egalitarian causes always failBut how is it going to come to pass that a society values labour more than capital? — Pantagruel
I have no clue. If I look at current politics in the Netherlands, everybody hates the established political parties. Culturally conservative parties (new right) are fragmented but very successful with continuously fomenting distrust, fear and lies and they clearly don't care about the truth. The progressive socialists take their own words too seriously and don't really know how to effectively reply. Part of that is a result of the betrayal of labour parties of labourers, who see some sort of protection with the right wing parties because everything used to be better. And we often do see relatively social programs on the new right.
I do think the language of hope is much stronger. Socialists should address the fears people have while couching it in a wider narrative of class struggle and a clear path forward to improvement. And have some stuff you simply do not make concessions. Red-lines, higher tax burden for labour, lower tax burden on capital, that sort of stuff. -
Why egalitarian causes always failYes, and without the remotest prospect of a movement for the overthrow of capitalism, I think it follows that
liberalsocial democracy must be defended, and also constantly criticized from within. — Jamal
Fixed it for you. :joke: -
Why egalitarian causes always failI think there's still a good chance we can get there peacefully as we're not denied political expression. But sure, I can see supply lines collapse, more inequality, high unemployment and consequences of global warming inciting a new wave of political violence. But it will unfortunately come from the far right first and we'll have fascism before communism.
Not reading Marx is like self-censorship. Don't read Marx because some people did evil shit in his name. That would be a good reason to not read the Bible either I guess. I read both, the Bible is also worthwhile to read even if I don't believe in God. But it does give cultural knowledge and a better understanding of moral thinking in (former) Christian societies. -
Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksWhat I try to defend is the lexicon and grammar. These "rules" are not based on oppresive behaviours. They just help us how to speak and write "correctly" in terms of serious affairs, for example when you write a book or Ph.D. — javi2541997
Definitely. I love Spanish. It's much more logical than most other languages. You don't swallow half the letters that the French do. Don't have horrible grammar like the Germans and the Greeks, or a million exemptions like the Dutch and the English. I used to be decent at Spanish (I could make myself understood and carry on a conversation in a loud bar) but not having practised it for ten years and now I can barely speak it any more.
I think feminists have been arguing for gender neutral language or inclusive language for decades already and Spanish does have a few ugly examples. Like the different meanings of secretaria and secretario and how the plural follows the male form most of the time. Their solutions were to avoid them, so "la plantilla de la empresa" instead of "los trabajadores".
Any way, language is in flux. I think this issue about Latinx is really niche as a lot of discussion resolves around people arguing about it rarely if ever meet people in person who deal with this. I've lived in a student house with an exchange student who was clearly born female but still wanted to be referred to as "he". I just did it because it made him happy. My confusion (or anyone's aversion) really doesn't need to factor in a lot. -
Why egalitarian causes always failThose who believe, as I do and against the OP, that a classless, egalitarian society is possible, probably have to face up to this. — Jamal
Depends on what we mean with egalitarian. I think a healthy democratic society makes class largely meaningless because it won't be married to any type of (dis)privilege just being a member of a type of class. I also think that the consequences of valuing labour more instead of capital, will engender more equality as, regardless of type of job, a decent living will be made. So it will simply be more likely that I will sit next to a plumber at a Michelin-star than now. I hardly meet people of a "lower" class than I'm in, which is ridiculous when we live in the same country and have to decide on voting on things that affect all of us. -
Why egalitarian causes always failYes, and rightfully so. We just seem to have forgotten how that's sometimes a good thing. The French Revolution, kicking of the enlightenment, by and large was a good thing. If you are denied political expression then revolution is a good thing. Of course, whether that is currently denied is more difficult to argue, as spoon-fed we are with the liberal capitalist organisation of society. The reality is, however, that aside from some market structure regulations, we have no say whatsoever as to how businesses are run. Given the political clout businesses have, there's a huge antidemocratic influence on political decision making processes in every modern society to the detriment of those that are actual subject to it (whereas companies can up and leave, which they regularly threaten with).
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Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksLatino or latina is not offensive. Who said that? If I don't identify as either latino or latina and I can come up with a word that better describes me, why should you force me to use something I don't think correctly describes me? What's offensive is that people are so uptight they need to regulate how other people use words. How exactly, in real terms, are you harmed by the use of that word? Being offended isn't harm. I'm offended by a lot of bad quality movies but I don't go around demanding they aren't shot or shown.
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Why egalitarian causes always failSecond, Marx himself spoke in favour of “revolutionary terror” and of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” — Jamal
THis is out of context: the revolutionary terror was to be exercised if the political expression of labourers was surpressed. In his time only rich men had a vote and he worked, putting himself in danger. He was forced out of France because of his ideas.
And the dictatorship of the proletariat was a natural conclusion in a democratic, communal "state", whether that came about through democratic means or revolution was neither here nor there to him. In fact, he didn't want to produce "recipes for the political cookshops of the future" or something along those lines.
So yes, he said those things, and I don't even disagree. We should revolt and overthrow the corporate capitalist order that we have now and then not skip the "democratic constitution" after that. -
Why egalitarian causes always failThis is bullshit. If you are so badly educated in Marx' work that you think this has sensibly been attempted anywhere how he envisaged it then you really don't know what he wrote. On that note we can discount capitalism in its entirety as well because well... look around. The world is warming, nature is being destroyed at a record rate, over-fishing, biosphere collapse, etc. etc. Shall we now ignore what Smith wrote? Say? Mises? Only Marx is vilified because it's politically expedient. Nobody wants the common people to actually have power, to actually control the structures that affect their lives. Democracy is fine in politics but let's keep it out of economics!
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Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksSo you want to prohibit bad grammar? Shall I go through your post history and delete every post where you've made a grammar mistake? Starting with the sentence I'm replying to? It makes perfect sense to me. I'm Latinx would denote that I have a latin-american heritage and do not (want to) identify as male or female. Perfectly understandable to me and I don't even live in the States.
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Why egalitarian causes always failWhat has in history come of the attempts of doing Marxist revolution? I'm looking at history, not selected quotes from Marx. Naturally communism ought to have democracy, but the little trouble with that is that the class enemy tend to be the people you would have in any democracy. Yeah, Marx perhaps didn't intend it, but many times these revolutions come to be at ground level things like killing the rich (and vice versa, killing working class activists). — ssu
Yes, let's look at history. What did Marx do other than be a committed democrat during his lifetime? Your bias is obvious and your lack of knowledge and understanding of his work apparent. -
Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksWhy? Why on earth prohibit the use of words? Whatever happened to free speech?
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Why egalitarian causes always failAnd yet you invariably demonstrate not to have actually read him. Marx wasn't against democracy at all. In the Principles of Communism:Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
Maybe just not mention him again? Your ideological bias is already well known without needing me to point out misprepresentations. -
Dilbert sez: Stay Away from BlacksI don't even understand that poll question to begin with but it's nice to know it gave cover for a bunch of closet racists to reveal themselves. The censorship is interesting in that it's apparently ok to vote in racists and publish all their racist comments (because news) but not publish non-racist comics because we now know they're made by a racist.
And this sort of censorship probably feeds the "I'm not allowed to say what I think anymore because of evil neo-Marxists, therefore for consistency sake I'm going to prohibit critical race theory, flags and "LatinX"". -
Why egalitarian causes always failGood point. Agree. Das Kapital is after all a critique of political economy. There's plenty of social commentary throughout his analysis, beginning of course with the clear disapproval of how capitalists extract surplus value from wage laborers.
My reading of course speaks to my own bias, where I find the economic interpretation and analysis interesting and the politics inconsistent (there's a reason volume 2 and 3 weren't published by Marx himself). -
Why egalitarian causes always failThe problem is that what's solid is his economic work. The rest is all over the place. He describes revolution as a historic necessity and the way to the one worker party. At other times just the logical consequence of democratic outcomes. Whatever politics people consider Marxism to be, it says more about them than Marx himself.
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Why egalitarian causes always failMarxism isn't a political theory but an economic one. Maybe read him some time.
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US Election 2024 (All general discussion)I think you're too sane to accurately predict what stupidity voters are capable of.
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Joe Biden (+General Biden/Harris Administration)There was a reddit that claimed the photo was already in use around the pizzagate story.
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Ukraine CrisisHe predicts 2 unexploded bombs. Presumably that's easy to check? So we should know one way or the other if the Germans are in control of the investigation, which I think they're not. It's Denmark and Sweden right? The Germans are politically independent enough not to be influenced by the USA.
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Ukraine Crisis@SophistiCat @ssu Almost complete silence on Hersh' article in Europe by the way. Nothing in the main newspapers. You'd think the Graun would jump at the opportunity.
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Ukraine CrisisI agree, and I never said otherwise. There are arguments in favor of the Russia-did-it theory (e.g. this), and I could buy some of them, but not with real money. — SophistiCat
Oh good, didn't mean to suggest you did. Interesting article. With regard to his Nord Stream speculation, I think the first is bullshit. If things normalise, the West isn't weaned of Russian gas: it will buy whatever is cheapest and if that's Russian gas, we will buy Russian gas.
The second point, though, is indeed a good argument to suspect the Russians.
Personally, I don't think the Russians are sophisticated enough to not have any evidence pointing their way after 3 months of research. -
CoronavirusI haven't followed it but I vaguely remember they thought people would get a false sense of security wearing masks and increase risky behaviour?
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Ukraine Crisis@SophistiCat @ssu https://www.welt.de/regionales/mecklenburg-vorpommern/article243596071/Frank-Keine-Belege-fuer-russische-Sabotage-an-Pipelines.html
Peter Frank is one of German's highest ranking prosecutors. And he's no friend of Russia as he's also the guy that communicated they found 100s of pieces of evidence of war crimes by Russia in Ukraine and called for their prosecution.
Of course, no evidence yet doesn't mean there isn't any but I think, once again, we really don't know who's done it and we need to wait it out. I do think the hypothesis the US did it needs to be considered and investigated. If they didn't do it and give full cooperation then disculpatory evidence should be relatively easy to find.
Another theory, but one further down the likelihood road, is that it was corporate sabotage. Certainly players that could pay for it but who would they hire? -
Ukraine CrisisThis means that the United States will remain the primary supplier of LNG to Europe for at least 2023. This will likely generate even greater revenue for U.S exporters after a record 2022, which totaled $35 billion through September, compared to $8.3 billion over the same period in 2021, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows. — Reuters
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Ukraine CrisisI don't see why anyone in his place would take such a huge risk for a minor (proportionally) financial gain. — SophistiCat
Minor? Weaning Europe of Russian gas in favour of North American gas is not minor in my book. It's tens of billions of dollars in value per year. -
Ukraine CrisisYes, this MH17 twist is interesting. We had an extensive report in November 2015 published that was performed by the Dutch government (Raad van Onderzoek). Putin wasn't mentioned. We convicted in absentia three Russians. Putin wasn't mentioned in court either. Now a little over 7 years later he's considered guilty of it because he likely decided to provide the separatists with air support. While this is most likely true, that doesn't result in him ordering shooting down a civilian plane. We hebde to wait for this new report but in the face of it, it looks politically convenient and tenuous at best.
The conclusion of the original report was that all parties involved underestimated the danger of flying over the region, which was regularly barred for commercial flights due to military action by the Ukrainian air force against the separatists. -
Ukraine CrisisWell, I have no opinion on whether it's true or not but seems grounds for investigation by Germany and other EU members. With "allies" like that, we don't need enemies, so it's essential to either rule it out or to confirm it. I'm afraid though that even confirmation won't lead to a reevaluation of our intelligence and military relationship with the US.
Benkei
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