MarxMadness [comrade/them]

This is your response when you see facts you don’t like? Here’s a 2021 article on Biden’s support for Ukraine before Russia invaded:

Zelensky observed that Biden “knows Ukraine better than the previous president” and “will really help strengthen relations, help settle the war in Donbas, and end the occupation of our territory.”

Note the acknowledgement that there was already a war on.

While Zelensky’s comments may prove overly optimistic, there is little reason to doubt that the Biden presidency will be good for Ukraine… Whether Biden, who will face many demands on his time, will choose to engage personally is a different question. He knows Ukraine, having traveled there six times when he served as vice president.

To be fair to rank-and-file Democrats, I’m sure they largely didn’t know about the Banderite problem in Ukraine, if only because they probably paid little attention to the country as a whole. But the presence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine was certainly no secret. The Biden administration definitely knew the situation.

Hard to imagine the cops arresting her at 4:30 in the morning without getting special direction to do so.

The thing that really blasts a hole in the neck of any conspiracy theory is that he was maybe a third-tier rodeo clown who had very little mainstream visibility

The white “working class” in the US have no revolutionary potential

I’ve read Settlers and don’t find it convincing. If you found it convincing, why quote someone from another imperial core proletarian movement?

Boiling it down to “Bernie killed Rosa” is not a good response to someone digging into the details of what she wrote.

And while there’s stuff worth considering here, we’re in a radically different situation than she was.

Those who can harm others to get ahead, and have that opportunity, do.

This isn’t true on an individual level, and individuals make decisions for countries. Why would it be true on a state level?

Not taking advantage of others (either other individuals or other states) isn’t even some idealistic pursuit, either. There are costs and risks to doing so, and there are benefits (e.g., peace and cooperation) to dealing with others honestly.

I wonder if they even had to purchase the film rights to those books separately, or if they came included in the deal.

When you need multiple attempts to replicate something that’s existed for decades… maybe what you’re trying to do doesn’t work!

Imagine trying to vibe design something complex.

the South China Morning Post - a propaganda outlet in China operating under the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship regime - is more critical about the Chinese bond market that Reuters

When the SCMP praises something China does, it’s evidence of censorship. When it’s critical? You guessed it, also evidence of censorship.

During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds

Vagueposting? In this economy?

They care about the economy and being racist; this is just a contradiction in their belief system.

the one where Brad Pitt speaks Jamaican patois

Don’t leave me hanging on this one!

A tweet that’s purely a take quoting a tweet that makes a “walking it back” claim without quoting a statement or anything? I’m supposed to take this at face value?

If there’s a real criticism here, let’s see what the guy actually said.