General News Thread

[Mcjon01]

Still no idea why Trump decides to act this way. Maybe he is gunning for a war in which he thinks he can win and thus secure his second term? Or maybe he is betting on Iran being more bark than bite?

Like most things you can find out what trump is thinking by looking at what he accuses other people of doing

[SpoonyViking]

Wonder why your people decides to give him the power to be in charge. Is Hilary that bad?

Hilary actually won the popular vote - that is, the majority of Americans who actually voted would have preferred her in charge -, but the American electoral college can apparently override that? I'm not certain of the specifics, to be honest.

But yes, there's a sizeable portion of the American people who actually do prefer Trump exactly because he speaks to their prejudices and reaffirms their worldview.

[Reign]

I'm not certain of the specifics, to be honest.

I'm gonna be real with you, I don't think anyone is. Our election system is broken.

[Iceblade44]

It was not made for 50 states.

13 mate, just 13. The further we went out from the the larger the population gaps became

It was set up to allow all states to be equal, even when their is a wide difference of population. And that's what matters, not what the majority of people think. What the majority of states think. And that frankly does not work anymore as a system of governance

[Kamera]

It really doesn't matter who is president. All US president are bound to be psychotic war criminals in one way or another. Trump just happens to not wear a mask of harmlessness and just openly embody all the irredeemable rottenness bourgeois dictatorship is really about.

Perhaps Trump getting elected is the sign that the cancerous industrial-military-complex Empire of America is on its death rattle.

[RoydGolden]

It really doesn't matter who is president. All US president are bound to be psychotic war criminals in one way or another. Trump just happens to not wear a mask of harmlessness and just openly embody all the irredeemable rottenness bourgeois dictatorship is really about.

Perhaps Trump getting elected is the sign that the cancerous industrial-military-complex Empire of America is on its death rattle.

Right, but Trump has made things demonstrably worse in many ways, including immigration and likeliness of accidentally inviting a nuclear war (which, ironic jokes aside, I presume you agree is not something desirable). I agree that Trump's divorce from the norm is often overstated in a way that wrongly exonerates past presidents (as bad as Trump is, he hasn't started a war as large as Bush's), but this "all sides are equally bad" rhetoric is dangerous and exactly the kind of thing that lets someone like him get in power. For instance, I've read (paraphrased from memory but I'm sure I could find sources if I looked) part of the reason Hitler got elected in Germany was because left opposition parties got too fixated calling every conservative candidate a fascist, so they couldn't properly recognize and call out a real fascist when they saw him. Not saying Trump is Hitler, but you have to be careful with this sort of thinking.

[Kamera]

Right, but Trump has made things demonstrably worse in many ways, including immigration and likeliness of accidentally inviting a nuclear war (which, ironic jokes aside, I presume you agree is not something desirable).

None of this is really any different from the past administration. The bad immigration policies has already started since Obama, if anything Trump's rhetoric just make it more recognizable to the public.

I agree that Trump's divorce from the norm is often overstated in a way that wrongly exonerates past presidents (as bad as Trump is, he hasn't started a war as large as Bush's), but this "all sides are equally bad" rhetoric is dangerous and exactly the kind of thing that lets someone like him get in power.

I don't think the imperialist porky that administer the two houses would choose a candidate that's anything but another imperialist porky. For example, the Dems will never choose Sanders regardless of his popularity. It's a fact that Americans don't really have a choice but to choose between two imperialist porkies in a circus of an election.

For instance, I've read (paraphrased from memory but I'm sure I could find sources if I looked) part of the reason Hitler got elected in Germany was because left opposition parties got too fixated calling every conservative candidate a fascist, so they couldn't properly recognize and call out a real fascist when they saw him. Not saying Trump is Hitler, but you have to be careful with this sort of thinking.

lmao what

[RoydGolden]

None of this is really any different from the past administration. The bad immigration policies has already started since Obama, if anything Trump's rhetoric just make it more recognizable to the public.

Inhumane immigration policies definitely preceded Trump, but he has made them worse under pretty much any quantifiable measure. Ripping children from their families did not happen at anywhere near the same scope under Obama.

I don't think the imperialist porky that administer the two houses would choose a candidate that's anything but another imperialist porky. For example, the Dems will never choose Sanders regardless of his popularity. It's a fact that Americans don't really have a choice but to choose between two imperialist porkies in a circus of an election.

I don't see how you can say this so confidently. Most of the people saying Sanders can never win are the same centrist liberal elites who said Trump could obviously never win. The establishment wins by curtailing people's imagination that anything genuinely different from the status quo is possible; you're just playing into their hands here.

lmao what

Tell you what, I'll get back to you if I can find a source on that. As is, feel free to disregard it.

[Kamera]

Inhumane immigration policies definitely preceded Trump, but he has made them worse under pretty much any quantifiable measure. Ripping children from their families did not happen at anywhere near the same scope under Obama.

I'm sure it happened just the same, just not reported and decried as much as now.

I don't see how you can say this so confidently. Most of the people saying Sanders can never win are the same centrist liberal elites who said Trump could obviously never win. The establishment wins by curtailing people's imagination that anything genuinely different from the status quo is possible; you're just playing into their hands here.

Let's just say that real change can never be achieved through American electoral bourgeois "democracy". It's easier to imagine the end of the world through nuclear war than to imagine an end of the corrupt American "democracy".

Tell you what, I'll get back to you if I can find a source on that. As is, feel free to disregard it.

I know what you're referring to (the whole "social-fascist" vs "red-fascist" shit-flinging between German Social Democrats and Stalinist Communist Party). It's just that it's irrelevant in this context.

[TomPen94]

It was not made for 50 states.

13 mate, just 13. The further we went out from the the larger the population gaps became

It was set up to allow all states to be equal, even when their is a wide difference of population. And that's what matters, not what the majority of people think. What the majority of states think. And that frankly does not work anymore as a system of governance

That is incorrect.
The Electoral College doesn't give all states equal votes. They are roughly given out in proportion to the state's population. However since there's a minimum of 3 votes per state, the smaller states actually get more voting power.

The main issue with the Electoral College doesn't lie in the state division it has (though that is an issue). It's that most states give ALL of their votes to the candidate that won within their borders, even if that candidate only won with 51% of the vote that state.

Theoretically you could become US president with as little as 22% of the popular vote due to this.

There's also the fact that people don't even actually vote for president, the actual members of the Electoral College do, and most of them are not required to vote for the candidate their state chose.

The Electiral College was designed on purpose to go against the will of the population if the actual Electors believe people were dumb.

Still, whining about it now isn't gonna change anything. Trump won because a significant portion, even if not the majority, of the US population is just dumb.
They let him become the sole republican candidate by simply calling names to the other republican candidates. Then his opposition does him a solid and elects Hilary over Bernie.

Btw, I doubt the democrats will get back on the President chair this year given that they seem to care about more if their candidate has a vagina than the policies they actually have in mind.


I must say I did not see this coming. I thought Trump would be mostly harmless, even though he is a massive dickhead. I thought no one would actually let him get this far.

Hopefully WW3 wasn't triggered, but I'd be lying if I said the perceived parallel between this situation and the killing of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 doesn't leave me worried.

[RoydGolden]

I'm sure it happened just the same, just not reported and decried as much as now.

Kind of hard to verify that assertion. It's like how some conservatives talk about "unreported crime". It may be increasing, or not, but it's hard to say how you'd know when it's by definition not reported. And even analysts of the immigration issue who very much aren't fans of Obama et al tend to agree that Trump is worsening things, if only because he doesn't even care about being seen as blatantly cruel.

In any case, here's a brief and non-inclusive list (from a social leftist magazine) of some of the terrible things that have been going on recently in Trump's immigration policy. Most of these things were not policy in Obama's administration or practiced to anywhere near the same extent. Now if you want to say that equally bad things had been going on undocumented under Obama it's hard to rebut that assertion, but I could just as well say claim that Trump is doing even worse things that still aren't being reported, so he'd come out worse anyways. Two can play that game.

Let's just say that real change can never be achieved through American electoral bourgeois "democracy". It's easier to imagine the end of the world through nuclear war than to imagine an end of the corrupt American "democracy"

Again, a very confident assertion presented with nebulous evidence to support it. What's your definition of "real change" and what would it take for you to say it's been achieved? Was women getting the right to vote "real change"? What about ending segregation* or legalizing homosexuality? Obviously these things aren't smashing the system in one go, but they still matter.

If you define "real change" as a violent revolution then obviously it isn't compatible with liberal democracy, but if you define it as concrete improvements that benefit the lives of millions of people then it very much is possible. And those small improvements can eventually add up to big revolutionary change. If you asked people many decades ago, even some of the most liberal and progressive people for their time, whether gays would ever have the same right to marry as straights, or black people would be considered equal to white ones, they'd have outright laughed in your face. Yet those things did happen, despite the people calling them impossible. So I wouldn't be so cynical as to say it's impossible to achieve meaningful change, even in a corrupt system. No reason socialism can't be next.

*I know that many parts of America still have de-facto segregation through class differences, but it's still a far cry from when blacks and whites literally couldn't drink at the same fountain together. Which is my point.

I know what you're referring to (the whole "social-fascist" vs "red-fascist" shit-flinging between German Social Democrats and Stalinist Communist Party). It's just that it's irrelevant in this context.

My point was that saying things like "every candidate is equally bad" is dangerous in the case that one comes along who really is uniquely bad and by then you no longer have the language to call them out. Mind explaining why you don't think that applies here?

[Kamera]

Kind of hard to verify that assertion. It's like how some conservatives talk about "unreported crime". It may be increasing, or not, but it's hard to say how you'd know when it's by definition not reported. And even analysts of the immigration issue who very much aren't fans of Obama et al tend to agree that Trump is worsening things, if only because he doesn't even care about being seen as blatantly cruel.

In any case, here's a brief and non-inclusive list (from a social leftist magazine) of some of the terrible things that have been going on recently in Trump's immigration policy. Most of these things were not policy in Obama's administration or practiced to anywhere near the same extent. Now if you want to say that equally bad things had been going on undocumented under Obama it's hard to rebut that assertion, but I could just as well say claim that Trump is doing even worse things that still aren't being reported, so he'd come out worse anyways. Two can play that game.

I don't care which war criminal punch the immigration policy bag harder, that's not my problem, the promblem is that the system which allows this kind of enforcement exists and is allowed to exist. It really is don't matter who is president; it is rigtly in the president's interest to work in favor of the bourgeois ruling class to extract more profits for the country by turning the immigrants into zero cost laborers.

Again, a very confident assertion presented with nebulous evidence to support it. What's your definition of "real change" and what would it take for you to say it's been achieved? Was women getting the right to vote "real change"? What about ending segregation* or legalizing homosexuality? Obviously these things aren't smashing the system in one go, but they still matter.

If you define "real change" as a violent revolution then obviously it isn't compatible with liberal democracy, but if you define it as concrete improvements that benefit the lives of millions of people then it very much is possible. And those small improvements can eventually add up to big revolutionary change. If you asked people many decades ago, even some of the most liberal and progressive people for their time, whether gays would ever have the same right to marry as straights, or black people would be considered equal to white ones, they'd have outright laughed in your face. Yet those things did happen, despite the people calling them impossible. So I wouldn't be so cynical as to say it's impossible to achieve meaningful change, even in a corrupt system. No reason socialism can't be next.

*I know that many parts of America still have de-facto segregation through class differences, but it's still a far cry from when blacks and whites literally couldn't drink at the same fountain together. Which is my point.

You cannot reform socialism into existence lol

As explained here

As Marxists, we support any and all reforms that improve the lives of the workers and poor, even within the limits of capitalism. But there is a difference between fighting for concrete reforms that raise class consciousness, confidence, and unity, and believing that capitalism can be “reformed” out of existence. We do not content ourselves with a “kinder, gentler” form of wage slavery. A system that cannot productively make use of the diverse talents of every individual for the greater good, and which condemns millions to “enforced idleness” has no right to rule over the majority.

We should also understand that those social welfare programs that do exist are by-products of revolutionary struggle and are maintained solely to prevent the threat of revolution. Our historic aim is not to win a few more crumbs for the destitute, but to ensure that everyone on the planet has food, clothing, shelter, education, and long, productive, healthy lives.


To be sure, reformism is a natural first stage of political awakening. The idea that we should try to tone down this or that “excess” of capitalism seems the only “pragmatic” thing to do. But there is a difference between the reformism of the average person, who can’t yet conceive of any system that goes beyond what they have experienced so far in their lives, and that of committed reformists who consciously reject the need for revolution, or at best, postpone it to the indefinite future. Having no confidence in themselves or the working class, they eviscerate Lenin of his revolutionary essence and embrace the ideas of the German Social-Democrat Karl Kautsky. Ultimately, as with all utopian socialists and reformists, their aim is to “pressure” the capitalists and their politicians to “do the right thing.”


However, history provides ample evidence that this is a dead end. As Leon Trotsky succinctly put it, “No amount of ‘pressure’ can make the bourgeoisie stop being the bourgeoisie: it must be overthrown.” Nevermind that in the midst of an organic crisis of capitalism, there is no material basis for reforms, only counterreforms.

TLDR; The bourgeoisie will never concede their power. They will never stop being bourgeoisie. The bourgeois controlled sate will do anything in its power to undermine any attempt to "reform socialism into existence".


The arguments among the German leftists before Hitler came into power is literally this; this ends up with the Social Democrats insisting on reform. Fascism is the reaction this kind of policy.

My point was that saying things like "every candidate is equally bad" is dangerous in the case that one comes along who really is uniquely bad and by then you no longer have the language to call them out. Mind explaining why you don't think that applies here?

I'm not saying that lol. Bernie and (arguably) Yang are the only good candidates, but as explained in the post above you, American "democracy" is rigged as hell that it's literally impossible to even get them past the primaries.

[Dullahan]

meanwhile, in australia

[Kamera]

mmmhhh, smoked koala

- - - Updated - - -

'Entire Species Are Being Wiped Out': Ecologists Say Half a Billion Animals May Have Been Killed by Australia Wildfires

This is fine

[Kamera]

funny thing about wildlife extinction is that younger people can't perceive how much wildlife there used to be

https://wildthingsinitiative.com/our...ture-is-wrong/

[rxrx]

Australia's fire seems to be getting worse.

[asterism42]

They've gotten to the point where they're producing their own weather

[RoydGolden]

I don't care which war criminal punch the immigration policy bag harder, that's not my problem, the promblem is that the system which allows this kind of enforcement exists and is allowed to exist. It really is don't matter who is president; it is rigtly in the president's interest to work in favor of the bourgeois ruling class to extract more profits for the country by turning the immigrants into zero cost laborers.

You should care though. "Which war criminal punches the immigration policy bag harder" can make a difference of millions of people being raped, tortured and killed. Of course it's atrocious that things like this can happen at all but when people's lives are on the line you have to choose the lesser of two evils, even while working to overthrow the system later on. Otherwise you're literally saying people's lives aren't as important as your desire for ideological purity.

You cannot reform socialism into existence lol

As explained here



TLDR; The bourgeoisie will never concede their power. They will never stop being bourgeoisie. The bourgeois controlled sate will do anything in its power to undermine any attempt to "reform socialism into existence".

This is getting into a much more complicated issue than I'm in the mood to debate. I will say you're probably right from a Marxist respective (at least you know far more about that subject than I do), but there's many serious socialists who are not Marxists and vehemently disagree with that approach to enacting change.

[massive_jojo_reference]

According to the Defcon Warnind System's semi-official site, the iran situation has only a very small chance of sparking a major conflict and that the chance might increase following future developments
https://defconwarningsystem.com/2020...update-1-3-20/
This is reinforced by the fact that the defcon level is holding at 5.

[Twelveseal]

So the AFP and a few other news sites are reporting that pro-Iran groups have fired mortars at the US Embassy's Green Zone and targeted the Balad air base with missiles. I can't seem to find a link that doesn't get butchered by the Lair, though.