iie

joined 4 years ago
 

The twitter thread is referenced in this excellent article by the same journalist, Alan MacLeod, which I posted here yesterday, but I think it deserves its own post.

Thread reader: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1818050593468072023.html

If you don't feel like clicking a link, here are the tweets transcribed, with some links added:

 

“I am actually kind of blown away by how advanced this system is, particularly compared to the backward nature of the U.S., so I am completely impressed,” Jodi Dean, a professor and political scientist, said.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

These are math estimates with margins, not official tallies, but the reasoning makes sense.

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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

before you praise America or Europe, remember where that wealth comes from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

Russia is communist

jesse-wtf

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the more we're defederated, the less we're able to defend ourselves when a meme like this gets blasted across the fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

spoilered to avoid spammingSome important context for why things turned so ugly after two months of peace, and why a false narrative took hold in such a coordinated way afterward, is that the CIA and its cutouts were openly present. For starters, 30 year CIA veteran James Lilley was appointed ambassador to China on April 20th, five days after the start of public gatherings in Tiananmen, which were initially to mourn the April 15 death of Hu Yaobang. Gene Sharp, who literally wrote the manual for how to start nonviolent color revolutions, flew in for 9 days and observed mysterious efforts to drive the protesters to violence — an intelligence asset only partially aware of the project he was involved in. The CIA was embedded with the protesters "for months" according to the Vancouver Sun, steering and equipping them. Voice of America was broadcasting disinformation to PLA military bases claiming some units were loyal to the protesters and were firing on other units, and claiming Deng Xiaoping was near death — literally attempting to whip up a military insurrection. This was a committed US effort to topple the Chinese government, using the momentum of the USSR dissolving and Hu Yaobang’s death.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Also Tainanmen. Athough fatal clashes did occur on Chang’An avenue and elsewhere in the city, in which hundreds of civilians and a smaller number of soldiers died, witness testimony from numerous western journalists and diplomats and student organizers themselves who were in the square all night, has indicated that no one died in Tiananmen itself. A Spanish news crew even filmed crowds of students walking out of the square at the end of the night. The Tiananmen Square Massacre is a stunning example of a “big lie repeated often enough.”

The first link is a comprehensive article. I can link more on request.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

our only defense is not getting divided, which is why this stuff scares me, seeing how easy it is.

I'm optimistic though, I think the red scare stuff is harder in real life, when people are in a real situation with other real people instead of alone at a screen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

on further thought, I'll just add that I think we're both defending ourselves and then taking each others' defenses as attacks to defend against, and it's a vicious cycle.

I still feel hurt over db0's two posts tbh. It's not even the meme, it's the witch-hunt feeling of that meme being broadcast across all of lemmy to a receptive audience we cannot talk to.

I'm sorry I stressed you out and put you on the defensive. I actually felt the same way. I don't think either of us intended it. From one communist to another, I hope there are no lasting hard feelings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

make wild accusations about people that want to disengage to bait them back in to defend themselves

ok.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

afaik hexbear unanimously hates Gonzalo, which is throwing me off trying to interpret this comment. not being snarky

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

I didn't mean to come off that aggressive. But in my own defense, you already told me, earlier in this exact comment chain, that you disagreed with the meme, so I figured it was obvious I was not accusing you of agreeing with it. That was my whole point: you shouldn't equate hexbear venom in the comments under that meme with our normal, unprovoked behavior or act like you might get the same venom for whatever innocuous shit you would say. That's still demonizing us.

I expanded both threads and ctrl-f'd your name, after you stressed the point. Everyone was civil with you. Maybe one person was a little stern. My comment with the image wasn't even there yet when you gestured vaguely at hexbear and said "Well... this kinda shit." What shit? The obvious interpretation was that you were referring to the very conspicuous hexbear dogpile against /u/db0's meme and not to some lukewarm responses you got offscreen buried in the comments.

I was drafting a conciliatory response when I saw this comment. I still apologize for how my earlier comment came off. I was not saying that meme represented your feelings. I was emphasizing that it didn't, and pointing out how inflammatory something has to be for hexbear to come down on it this hard.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago

[Picture of people being massacred in a pool of their own blood] — "modern online MLs will do this to you in the future if you believe their lies, do not trust them!"

it's all in good fun though, right tankies I would totally organize with in real life?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (23 children)

take what you give

who broadcast a meme to all of lemmy arguing that modern MLs are treacherous murderers who must be defeated in real life?

 

Link https://lemmy.ml/comment/4856749

No one rounded up and killed Tibetans as an ethnicity, or Uyghurs (even the fucking US state department concedes this), or North Koreans (unless they mean the American bombings and sanctions, but I bet $10 that's not what they mean), or ethnic groups in the Soviet Union (most historians, even those who vehemently denounce Stalin, agree the famine was not a deliberate genocide, read the preface to the Years of Hunger by Davies and Wheatcroft)

At least they oppose the genocide of Palestinians. I'll take what I can get at this point.

 

I might write a summary later

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