Comments

  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    So the freedom to vote trumps the freedom to choose? Good we've got that cleared up. We can return to a lot of your previous positions and reassess them based on this.
  • Avoiding costly personal legal issues in the West
    All morality emanates from the laws of the Almighty. In Islamic law, you never take care of a former partner. Furthermore, after the age of reason, custody of children reverts to the father of the children.Tarskian

    Historically the dumbest comment so far. Back when women were still chattel in Europe, they had family law giving rights to women to the estate. Maybe actually study this stuff instead of pretending you're a wannabe Andrew Tate.

    Edit: it's even on wiki for God's sake.

    Upon talaq, the wife is entitled to the full payment of mahr if it had not already been paid. The husband is obligated to financially support her until the end of the waiting period or the delivery of her child, if she is pregnant. In addition, she has a right to child support and any past due maintenance, which Islamic law requires to be paid regularly in the course of marriage.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    And you were claiming Biden stepped down willinglyfishfry

    Not what I said. So either you can't read or your memory is a sieve.
  • Avoiding costly personal legal issues in the West
    Laws in place to protect weaker party from stronger party. Poster believes he's stronger party and unwilling to carry responsibility for consequences of choices and then continues to blame laws, thereby demonstrating his own weakness for being unwilling to bear consequences of his choices like an actual man.

    Morally speaking, you should take care of your children and in some cases your former partner, because people tend to give up things for the other, often entire careers, to stay in lasting relationships. Maybe you should get pregnant some time, see how it agrees with you.

    @Baden correctly identified this as dumb immature shit.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I don't sympathise with any brutal regime, regardless of whatever dumb religion they believe in.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Says... A Jew whose people have their own apartheid country and still gets free bombs from its allies to commit war crimes.

    Islam is almost exclusively criticised in the West, in case you haven't been paying attention and @frank is entirely correct calling out your self serving discrimination.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I loved Michelle Obama's comment that was something like "who knows, [the Presidency] might just be one of those black jobs". :rofl:
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    And as later became clear it only describes the trajectory of Western capitalism.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Yes, that's precisely the difference between you and me, I stop reading when it contradicts evidence, you stop reading when it contradicts your dumb ideas. Spot on.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I saw they uncritically copied a meme despite overwhelming evidence everybody wanted Shokin gone irrespective of whatever Burisma investigation that may have been going on and stopped reading since it's bullshit.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190
  • Coronavirus
    A socialist world wouldn't try to weaponise viruses for profit. It wouldn't have a shortage in PPE because getting your dick up wouldn't be favoured over pandemic preparedness because the first is profitable and the other just a cost. The first policy wouldn't be to save the economy but to save people.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    The Democrats are now the party of the rich. The GOP are now the party of the working class. Exact opposite of how it used to be.fishfry

    This is also funny.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I did not engage with your arguments for the same reason I don't engage with flat earthers.fishfry

    :rofl: sure buddy. Keep telling yourself that. I suppose a high level of delusion is necessary to be a Trump supporter.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    and she's still wrong for the reasons and arguments I gave you that you never engaged. And you're doing the same spiel again, by offering someone else's opinion devoid of the context of my arguments and pretend it's some kind of rebuttal. Learn how a discussion works!
  • Climate change denial
    If we all would still be living the tribal life, we wouldn't be in overshoot. It's not too many people, it's too many people doing the wrong things. Profit over everything else because money has become the necessity to survive. Instead of actual skills that help you survive: building, fishing, farming, cooking etc., most people learn a job only existing within the system that demands money for toy to survive. So you cannot get out, unless you have a lot of money.

    In the past, there were very few lawyers and mostly concerned with arguing cases instead of writing contracts. Today consumer terms and conditions are more complex than peace treaties. Do we really need it? Probably not but it pays the bills (quite well I must add because avoiding liability fits well in profit maximisation through externalising costs).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    That's been the case for years and increasing due to the fact only extremist Jews are into the settler business. They think they have divine dispensation and think Palestinians are subhumans. IDF facilitates by making sure Palestinians cannot retaliate. Murders by Israelis of Palestinians are not investigated. It's not wild West, because then they simply had no law and order. Here they have law and order for one group of people, resulting in impunity and injustice.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    If the Palestinians organise, then they are bombed to smithereens. Palestinians in the West Bank are terrorists too. Just listen to Netanyahu "condemning" the attack:

    “Those who fight terrorism are the IDF and the security forces, and no one else,” he said, using an acronym for the Israeli military.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Most people already are in slave labour but you wouldn't know with the myopic worldview you have. The above is just dumb unsubstantiated conservative regurgitated word vomit, which you lap up daily. It's just weird.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    NS1 was in use. NS2 wasn't.

    I call bullshit because it's too convenient to have all these details become available within 24 hours of it becoming definitive at least one Ukrainian is suspected.

    It's wait and see again.
  • Climate change denial
    Both have as their root cause profit seeking. For instance, it would be sufficient if the Netherlands would produce what we needed. Instead we produce 10x as much, which under normal circumstances would exhaust the earth (with monoculture), so we add fertiliser, which deteriorates the quality is the earth and water (you can't replicate natural efficiencies). Then we want to maximise yields, so we start killing everything that touches our food using poison, but we prefer to call them "crop protection means". Further destroying the soil and water. Marketing creates a perfect image of a tomato, zucchini and apple, so now only "perfect" looking but generally tasteless products reach our table. We mechanize as much as possible and export most of it.

    Making fertiliser = extra co2
    Poison = extra Co2
    Mechanization = extra Co2
    Export = extra Co2

    Knock on effects:
    Cleaning soil = extra Co2
    Cleaning water = extra Co2
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Conjecture a day after publication of facts? Call me sceptical but I would disregard it out of hand.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Any process that creates power vacuums are in danger of being co-opted by undemocratic forces. The other side of that coin, is it could work the other way around. Basically, communism is in a simple sense about more democracy instead of less.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    OK, it's all about you in which case I don't really care.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    The best system to avoid concentration of power is democracy. So we should abolish autocratic systems of governance in every area of human life, including the economy.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    "it's not philosophical and it's not scientific" as if the Politea was. These are nonsense complaints. The vision of Marx was about how to arrive at what he thought was a just society growing up in a time where capitalism caused a lot of problems locally. It fails as a economic theory because all economic theories fail but the crux of his work is how to ensure the benefits of economic activity doesn't concentrate in the hands of the few, who have no moral claim to it merely as provider of capital (which they often only accumulate through injustice, inheritance or dumb luck).
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    The US electorate has an attention span of about two weeks. It's too far off. Just a few weeks ago it was a shoe in for Donald Trump after he got shot, reacted iconically to it and Biden was still running.

    For now it looks good though. So then I'm wondering what will the Trump cult morph into next? Assuming Trump is done after losing this election and doesn't stick around for the next election.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    I meant civil claims. Or do you think Gasunie, Engie, BASF and E.ON wil not be concerned with losing their investments? The standard of proof is also lower so we could see judgments against, for instance, Ukraine that would not reach the level of proof required for criminal cases but will imply guilt.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    It does matter. First off, Nordstream is a company owned by five energy companies, including Gazprom (51%) but the others were European. Classifying it as Russian infrastructure is incorrect.

    Second, this will result in claims and for most people it will affect their willingness to support Ukraine. If the US was involved (and Poland) then the claims will go there and it will deteriorate trust for future operations.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Still doesn't answer which country was behind it. Makes Ukraine likely but would it do it without conferring with the US? Or is this still a non-state operation? We're not really any step closer to figuring out who's behind it, only just figured out who did it.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    @ssu@SophistiCat there's an international arrest warrant out for a Ukrainian for the Nordstream sabotage.

    Edit: correction, a European arrest warrant.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme


    Dear Citizen,

    A nervous complaint which has periodically affected me for the last ten years has prevented me from answering sooner your letter of 16 February. I regret that I am unable to give you a concise account for publication of the question which you did me the honour of raising. Some months ago, I already promised a text on the same subject to the St. Petersburg Committee. Still, I hope that a few lines will suffice to leave you in no doubt about the way in which my so-called theory has been misunderstood.

    In analysing the genesis of capitalist production, I said:

    At the heart of the capitalist system is a complete separation of ... the producer from the means of production ... the expropriation of the agricultural producer is the basis of the whole process. Only in England has it been accomplished in a radical manner. ... But all the other countries of Western Europe are following the same course. (Capital, French edition, p. 315.)

    The ‘historical inevitability’ of this course is therefore expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe. The reason for this restriction is indicated in Ch. XXXII: ‘Private property, founded upon personal labour ... is supplanted by capitalist private property, which rests on exploitation of the labour of others, on wage­labour.’ (loc. cit., p. 340).

    In the Western case, then, one form of private property is transformed into another form of private property. In the case of the Russian peasants, however, their communal property would have to be transformed into private property.

    The analysis in Capital therefore provides no reasons either for or against the vitality of the Russian commune. But the special study I have made of it, including a search for original source­ material, has convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. But in order that it might function as such, the harmful influences assailing it on all sides must first be eliminated, and it must then be assured the normal conditions for spontaneous development.

    I have the honour, dear Citizen, to remain
    Yours sincerely,
    Karl Marx
    — Marx 1881

    In other words, there are more roads that will lead to "communism", in this case the Mir as the fulcrum for social regeneration.

    EDIT: Capital was very eurocentric, the 20 years after its publication, Marx studied a lot of anthropology and ecology, which resulted in him abandoning a strict productivist belief.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    We see in societies that don't have a rich history of welfare a relatively sharp decline of the middle class. The UK sees a cost of living crisis. The US has had a shrinking middle-class for over 50 years now. And most EU countries have shrinking middle-classes as well, following years of neoliberal policies. So, to be expected. Obviously, redistributive policies and progressive taxation can manage some of these consequences but they didn't exist during Marx' time, which is why he campaigned for it to address some of the inequality. We fairly had such a tax system in the Netherlands but now too (after about 20 years of neoliberal policies) we see various financial crises besetting the middle class, like the inability to purchase a home.

    EDIT: and there's also something to be said for relative poverty, where growth in GDP ends up mostly in the pocket of a limited few. An effect that has severely increased in the past decades as well.

    Western "material progress" has largely been run on the exploitation of people in the perifery and exploitation of nature (also locally but more so in the perifery).
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    Which Marx relinquished in any case in his later life so this misses the point.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    I think it is clear his main criticism of capitalism was in fact wrong. He predicted that capitalism would lead to an increase in poverty. In his time it is quite easy to see why he would think this, but he was simply proven wrong by history on this main point.I like sushi

    It aged very well actually. You should read up on his ideas on technological and geographical displacement (to the perifere) as well as displacement in time. Profit seeking runs on externalising costs. The burdens on the perifery and future generations are huge and even in contemporary western society most people are significantly in debt for the majority of their lives.
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    [Marx's] studies of prehistoric and ancient society led him to the conclusion that the patriarchal family should be seen not as the original basic unit of society but as a form of social organization more recent than was generally believed. It was an organization “too weak to face alone the hardships of life” (472). It was much more plausible to assume the existence of a form like that of the American native peoples, the sindiasmic family, which practised a “communism in living” (Marx 1972, 115).Musto
  • Myth-Busting Marx - Fromm on Marx and Critique of the Gotha Programme
    This could also be of interest: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/ethnographical-notebooks/

    A summary: https://marcellomusto.org/marxs-ethnological-notebooks/

    He also, apparently, did a lot of ecological research in the period between the publication of the first volume of Capital and his death. But I don't believe those notes have been (widely) published yet as I can't find them.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    To add:

    Netanyahu is attempting to position Israel as the vanguard of Western civilization in the fight against "barbarism," with the implicit message that only his vision, driven by an unwavering military stance, can protect our Western way of life. He invokes religious texts and historical analogies, but does so in a way that polarizes and excludes any compromise. This rhetoric increasingly distances Israel from the ideals of justice, freedom, and human rights—the pillars of civilised democracies.

    By demonizing Palestinians and glorifying military aggression as the only effective response to threats, Netanyahu reduces the complex geopolitical reality to a black-and-white struggle between good and evil. This dangerous simplification not only fosters a cycle of violence but also undermines the ability of the international community to pursue peaceful solutions. What we are witnessing is a dangerous shift toward a worldview in which power and military force are the only legitimate means of ensuring security, regardless of the human cost.

    This is a direct threat to the values we should cherish: the protection of human rights, respect for and adherence to international law, and the commitment to diplomacy over violence. We must ask ourselves whether we want to continue supporting this course. Israel has the right to security, but that right should not become an excuse for unchecked power politics and the denial of the fundamental rights of others and the denial of their security. It is time for a reassessment, in the interest of both Israel and the global community. Defending our way of life cannot involve endorsing a racist ideology that stands in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of justice and humanity.

    A country that deliberately bombs hospitals, schools, refugee camps, universities, museums, churches, mosques, and entire residential neighborhoods rejects the foundations of a civilised way of life. The West's continued support not only undermine the principles of justice and humanity but pose a direct threat to everything we stand for as a civilised society.