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Cake day: September 7th, 2024

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  • I’ve come to realize that a significant portion of people just think other people should die and that’s fair and they’re OK with being the ones to do it.

    It has always been this way. Particularly because there are people and groups who actively materially benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery and oppression of other people and groups within the social organization of our societies. The enforced poverty/slavery will never stop without sufficient and sufficiently organized, centralized, disciplined violence to overcome those who actively benefit from the enforced poverty/slavery by means of the same; and then maintaining that authority over the exploiters until their interest and strength are no more.

    It’s the same reason why there’s never been a “peaceful bloodless decolonization.” Why would the colonizer ever willingly permit that? They would be, from a standpoint of their own material interest as a societal class, complete morons to do so and make such a willing choice. Which is why (and this is historically borne out) they must be not given a choice by an organized militant anti-colonial resistance. This is also why the “authoritarianism” criticism of the doctrine and practice of revolutionary groups like Castro’s revolutionaries or Lenin’s Bolsheviks is laughable; the liberal peanut gallery can only have that criticism because they succeeded and survived to be criticized; having overcome the oppressors who, in the event of the revolutionaries’ failure (historically borne out in how every failed revolution played out including the previous ones in those countries); would show the truth of themselves as 1000x more vicious, having honed that capability for 100x longer.

    Look up any countries’ “Red Terror” in history, then look up their corresponding “White Terror.” You will see [wiki:NSFW images if you click on them]. Or read about any decolonization struggle. Like in Algeria, where every uprising that killed 10 Frenchmen resulted in a colonial reprisal with hundreds of butchered Algerians.

    We live in a material reality with material interests which are enforced by people who will use your pacifism as a means to exploit you easier, and kill you easier if you even are seen as inconvenient or ‘in the way’ of those interests, let alone if you resist and struggle against them. And that argument has been happening since Marx and Engels’ time in the framework of materialism; and was exactly the realm of rationale behind the policy of terror with the Jacobins before that in the French Revolution; from which many later revolutionaries took lessons and learned from the mistakes and refined within their contemporary material conditions and circumstances.


  • I’d rather be dead

    hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people. And to do it over your tax money? (which by the way, is a fraction that your employer steals from the value you produce for them every day)? it’s a misanthropic and myopic selfish callousness; whether or not you have struggled it is a sign of insularity to ascribe your experiences to others and how it “should be”, and to do it in such a transactional way is even more disturbing.

    I’d like to know how much you can cope with…

    unclench your jaw and breathe friend, this is unreasonable



  • You don’t seem to allow yourself to be a very deep thinker when it comes to your electoral “team.” Have you considered maybe that communists are anti-genocide and anti-fascist? Are anti-colonialism? Are anti-imperialism and anti-death-merchantry from these private arms manufacturers? All of which happens with open handshakes and benefits and with the eager help of the majority of establishment Democrats? That communists criticize the Democrats who participate in these things, for their active participation in these things?

    Unlike Liberals who can only think in abstract ideals and empty rhetoric to then be indignant and status-quo defending at being confronted with reality, or can only see things in terms of individual identity politics instead of material class relations and material historical context, Marxists have a scientific methodology for approaching politics, events, information, etc. which is rooted in class interest and material conditions. These are criticisms based on their material actions, and when a politician’s material actions are good — are against these bad things; when their actions are anti-genocide, anti-imperialism, anti-war, anti-arming extremists in proxy wars, anti-nuclear brinksmanship etc. (Almost as rare for Democrats as it is for Republicans), then those actions are said to be good, but there are held no other illusions or delusions or weird idealist or identity fixations like Liberals have — like you clearly have.

    Communists are against these bad things — are against genocide, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, war and proxy war, etc.; but and also realize that all of these things are inherently and inexorably linked to the growth of the capitalist system and the interests and needs of its ruling class for defending markets and cheap sources of labor and resources for capitalists to exploit, and control and crush competition or resistance to that expansion and theft; and that these things arise due to the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions of the capitalist system (which the bourgeois politicians depend and defend and are agents of; and whose police and army are the enforcers of) and the capitalist social relations; such as the need for constant growth to stave off crises and collapse even if all markets are saturated by capitalists; the need for profits necessarily maximized and costs necessarily forced (often through direct or indirect socio-economic systemic violence) to minimum in order that the capitalist can extract as much surplus value to make active as capital as possible in order to reproduce capital and expand their capital and markets in order to not “lose” in competition and be cannibalized by other capitalists; that this capital which is inherently concentrating in the hands of the few and the most vicious and the most cost-suppressing due to the private extraction of the surplus value provided by socialized labor and the ‘jungle-law’ of capitalist competition.

    Communists have also been vehemently anti-Obama and anti-Clinton and anti-Kerry, not because they “are Democrat” but because they, as Democrats, used their mandate to for instance utterly destroy Libya — previously the richest country in Africa, instigating multiple ethnic cleansing campaigns and turning it into an open air-slave market; and trying to do the same in Syria, even allowing ISIS to take root and grow and capture cities to use as proxy warriors and turning both of these regions into an Al Qaeda and ISIS playground which was supplied by US weapons rubber-stamped by the Democrat president and most Democrats in congress.

    Communists have hated Obama and Trump both for being nearly indistinguishable in their barbarity toward immigrants, just as communists see as an enemy Biden for continuing to do the same and worse. Communists also hate Obama and Trump for their indistinguishable bipartisan also-genocidal arming and funding and participating in slowly genociding Yemenis for a decade, one hospital, wedding, and schoolbus full of children at a time.

    Communists pointed out that Obama’s cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup and his bailing out the banks was not an anomoly, not because “Democrat,” but because of the material interests that, in material reality, Obama shamelessly represented and furthered; regardless of any advertising rhetoric out of his and his supporters’ mouths – it was and is his actions that matter. Same when communists point out that Biden brought into his administration a bunch of the most bloodthirsty neo-cons he could find like Nuland and Blinken; and that he reappointed a Trump-admin judge who was Chevron lawyer who defended destroying the Amazon and poisoning Indigenous people and jailing their most prominent vocal opponent. Same when communists point out that Biden went around congress twice to ship guns and bombs to the Zionist occupation faster than even they were already bipartisanly moving toward hoping they’d would wipe Gaza’s inhabitants off the map before election time so they wouldn’t face such ongoing political consequences and the mass-defections from their party and mass protests demanding an end to this genocidal atrocity they support.

    I’ve seen many of your comments, and you’re remarkably bad-faith when it comes to politics. It often comes across as petulant. And it is very telling and indicative of where your values and interests actually lie that you spend more time and energy lashing out at those who criticize the Democrats for their participation in genocide, neo-colonialism, imperialist nuclear brinksmanship sponsored by arms-manufacturers, and far right and mass-murderous economic and immigration polices, and who advocate for starving them of the working class margins that they take for granted and rely on for a mandate; than you ever spend advocating for the sufficiently-near-unanimous-to-just-say-Democrats Democrats to stop this genocide which they could with a phone call.

    Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are anomolies, exceptions to the rule in these kinds of cases, and communists support their (and any) action against exploitation, imperialism, genocide, colonialism, war, etc. But they stand and have stood alone in a party of vampires, and for taking these stands they’ve faced endless persecution and betrayal and slander and maligning and sidelining by ‘their own’ party, including even their former allies of the “Progressives” (don’t laugh!) of “the squad.”

    When a 3rd party rises, with my and others’ support, Ilhan and Tlaib would probably abandon the Democrats like ‘rats from a sinking ship,’ along with every other progressive-minded individual communist-or-not who haven’t already (which many have over the years, me included, and will continue to). Stop lashing out at the 3rd party voters and critics who have a conscience, and a material understanding, and a memory longer than that of a goldfish; and instead force your own ‘team’ to reckon with what they are and became; or otherwise admit you’re a nationalist that likes these terrible things being this way because you benefit; or otherwise admit that the critics are right and join them.



  • anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlGetting very close to the GIMP 3.0 RC1!
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    2 months ago

    God idk what version I’m even using. I never update programs like this unless I have to. From breaking things, to confusing my workflow and moving things around; I’ve always been more frustrated than thankful. I haven’t updated Reaper in ages too and I’m certain they’re better about keeping continuity than anyone.

    Edit: lol people are mad about my own software updating habits? why and how are .worlders this way? I can’t imagine the realities they live in, and am glad so



  • No, I’m saying make noises in rooms where you can be heard.

    I agree. And if you seriously wish this then you will agree with us that we must all vote PSL, (or Green if you’re a liberal, and your state is strong for it) to visibly starve the democrats of the working class margins that they actually rely on (unlike the Republicans) — that they have forsaken; instead choosing to fight over the (shrinking) bourgeois and petty-bourgeois voter-base on the right with the Republicans and accepting for granted the working class margin they NEED for a mandate.

    The way to be heard by the Democrats is to starve the Democrats of the votes they rely on, and instead giving them to organizations which deserve them; while and in doing so visibly elevating and joining with the socialists and throwing our weight behind them and continuing to throw our weight behind them; so that if the Democrats ever want power again, they are FORCED to reorient; and if they don’t (and they might break in half if they tried — a good thing for democracy and workers, breaking the duopoly from the ground up in light of a rising Socialist party), the masses who never held any illusions about the Republicans in the first place will become increasingly radical; and the PSL elevated by us will be there to brief them and into the wings bring them, and the revolutionary moment comes all the sooner. And the further-elevated a real left party is, that both is elevated in elections and on-the-ground with our help organizing working people around material issues like the PSL does; the more those 35-50%, who have stopped voting entirely because of how betrayed and disaffected and abandoned they’ve been by the vampire-and-fascist show of the single-party-with-two-faces-duopoly, will be reactivated; and reactivated with purpose and direction under a banner of Socialism and Liberation. If you’re actually interested in building revolution, and/or you’re actually interested in “making noises in rooms where you can be heard” and/or you’re actually interested in taking the most intelligent decisive steps toward breaking up the dupoly and progressing the standing of the socialist movement and the working classes of the world and alleviating suffering of those under imperialism; this is not only the best option — it is the only option.

    Because right now, the democrats have ZERO reason to not totally disregard any and all of these demands or desires or criticisms (as they have been doing) because “they’ll vote for us anyway — we’re not the Republicans!” and you are standing as an active agent to defend that and further that for them so they can continue all of this with your mandate and all those you mislead. Which is exactly how and why things got to this point and the Democrat party has become so right wing. As it stands The Dems are sending PAC-lawyers to purge 3rd parties from ballots because they’re scared. And we have watched them utterly disregarding and talking down to and violently repressing large portions of their own constituency on the left making demands on them, such as to end the murderous nuclear-brinksmanship and arms-dealer and billionaire-imperialist financed proxy wars, and to STOP THIS GENOCIDE; and the same bad-faith slanders are used to malign them.

    The genocide that Biden sidestepped around congress twice to shovel guns and bombs to execute faster than even the imperialists and zionists in Congress could — who were already themselves bi-partisanly moving to do the same; meanwhile the Dems and their obedient college-liberal footsoldiers are browbeating Palestinian rights groups and leftists and people who are sick of facilitating this crap by shaming them for wanting to vote their conscience or politics, through pretending Trump is worse rather than the same, and we need to vote for Democrats “for the Palestinians” who themselves have told us that both parties are the same to them and whose biggest representative base in the US are, as per the article in the OP, TELLING US NOT TO VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATS; And how is Trump worse for Palestinians one might ask them? Only because Trump is telling the TRUTH about what he wants. He’s OPEN about it. The “harm reduction” they’re advocating — you’re advocating — is doing the same harm as, while somehow managing to be more duplicitous and dishonest about it than Donald Trump. That’s the state of things, that the “lesser evil” is lying more than Trump about Palestine.

    Biden wanted Gazans wiped off the face of the earth before the elections hit because he wanted to avoid exactly this; and now they haven’t; and to not push for there be electoral consequences is a shameless opportunist dereliction of democratic duty. It would be too a callous disregard for the suffering of those Palestinians if we allow this cynical ploy to work and let their martyrdom be in vain, that we do not allow it to help us break apart the bipartisan genocide machine step-by-step in the most effective ways we can. The Palestinians have said that there is no difference between the duopoly candidates for them, and Muslims in the US are also saying this as linked above. The Democrat wing of the ruling class NEED TO BE REMINDED of who gives them their mandate; by punishing them for actively continuing this and stating in published statements it’s going to continue and nothing policy-wise will change while at the same time lying to our faces in vague gestures during speeches about how ‘we need a ceasefire in gaza!’ when they could pick up the phone and make that happen, and don’t and we know they won’t.

    This exact delusion that you hold regarding the duopoly-of-exploiters (many of whom donate to the Democrats and then vote republican, and win either way) is exactly how the Democrats have flown rightward for decades, because “they’ll vote for us anyway.” Without any actual reason to fear being starved of their working class margin, they can continue to have outright anti-human policies and become more and more indistinguishable from the Republicans, and where they are still vaguely distinguishable constantly capitulate in the name of “reaching across the aisle” to the Republicans anyway, furthering all of the same policies.

    They can continue to be no different than the Republicans on increasing the funding and expanding the planet-destroying global-militarism. No different on financing, growing, and supporting the fascistic and bipartisanly-militarized police state. No different on increasing the funding and power of surveillance, intelligence, and gestapo agencies in the US and using them to COINTELPRO anyone who challenges them; including Black radicals who’ve been in the struggle for decades with more bad faith slanders, and the old “outside agitators” schtick and dogwhistle (just like Walz used when sending in an army to repress an uprising in Minneapolis) while pretending to be a friend to any minority. No different on the global racketeering of neo-colonialism and using asset theft and sanctions as a genocidal weapon to mass-murder children.

    They can keep doing this because they have no reason to stop, they get in power anyway because of this mindset they’ve conditioned in you. They can work to continue to outflank the Republicans on the right on immigration like they’ve been doing, continuing the rightward-slide legacy of Obama the “Deporter-in-Chief” and his border cages and draconian policies —where Biden not only didn’t close the concentration camps he said he was going to, but actually deregulated them and opened them up for (and advertised for) private subcontracting of the border concentration camps for profit. Which is somehow worse than Trump was. And he even did things like an executive order to totally shut down the border, a far right action that was blocked by the courts when Trump tried the same thing.




  • PSL. Even Greens would be better than either party if you’re a liberal. But you would apparently rather ignore these “political groups worth backing” that both the left and large big-tent Muslim groups have been advocating, to plug your ears and make petty insults (“dungeon dweebs?” the hell are you talking about?) and make smarmy word-salad with a weird side of half-defending of the US subsidizing petty-bourgeois living conditions with violent imperial and neo-colonial exploitation, served on a plate of blatantly lying about the “far left,” which are in reality the only ones who do understand and constantly talk about the evils and contradictions of empire and its absolute need to be dismantled, somehow “not understanding” one of the things they talk about and analyze more than anything and more than anyone; probably including you.

    Which, also, go to any lumpenized ghetto or homeless tent city encampments in the US and tell me it’s not “third-world country” for huge portions of the population. You imprison more than anyone ever has in history and still can’t cover up this ever-expanding underbelly caused by both parties. How much of the “Real America” have you spent time in? Everything you said is petty-bourgeois distraction and railroading conversation into a jam-up of complacency and status quo-reinforcing. Vote for the PSL, join them or another socialist organization to help, and stop with this bad-faith talk; or otherwise admit to being a nationalist and that you like things this way because you are one of the shrinking portions that still benefit from it — but don’t pretend to be on the side of progress while standing in the way and throwing shit at those advocating and pushing to make the world a better place.



  • That article is literally just reporting what the president did. How does that mean they’re “pro-gun control?” Do you not even read the articles and just seethe and shit yourself about what you think about the wording of headlines? You are such a raging rightist ideologue you have been blinded to all reality and don’t even understand the things that you are mad at. Is this satire? Are you a real person who engages in media and politics like this or have I been trolled?

    If you’re serious, the US must have gasoline in the water or something (but ah that would be COMMUNIST to regulate that; or even report on it!)



  • You know, the guy who wants Israel to kill people faster:

    Biden sidestepped around congress twice to shovel guns and bombs to them faster than even the bloodthirsty Zionists in Congress could — who were already themselves bipartisanly moving to do the same. He 100% wanted Gazans wiped off the face of the earth before the elections hit. The only difference between them here is that Trump is being honest (dig that, your “lesser evil” is somehow being more duplicitous and dishonest than Donald Trump). You fixate on rhetoric and ignore tangible actions. Palestinians have said that both parties are the same for them. We can see it in policy. They’re the same for us in most cases, only difference being Trump doesn’t rely on working class margins to be given a mandate like the Democrats do.

    Detain them in concentration camps:

    So does Biden… In fact, so did Obama. In fact Obama was known amongst immigrant rights groups as the “Deporter-in-Chief” because of how draconian he was in both detainment and deportation policy. And Biden not only didn’t shut down the concentration camps, but deregulated them and allowed for and advertised with state money the private subcontracting of these concentration camps for private profit. Which is somehow worse than Trump was.

    I wouldn’t use this talking point because this whole presidency and openly now in-campaign has seen Dems try actively to outflank the Republicans on the right of immigration. He issued an executive order to fully close the border, a thing that was egregious enough that the courts blocked it for Trump. But now that it’s Biden it’s okay by you? Where do your political standards lie? Unless you’re just ill-informed, it feels like you’re just concern-trolling. And like the refugees to Europe, they’re fleeing from the bipartisan destruction, terror, debt-crises, and chaos caused by US empire.

    Who wants to revoke the citizenship from Americans:

    That’s something he tried in 2018, and while bad, is not ‘unilaterally revoking citizenship of Americans’ like your non-description insinuates, but was the DHS forwarding more denaturalization cases than used to be to the DoJ, where the actual process takes place, as ICE intended to review a lot more cases. These institutions are bipartisanly this way, and we’re seeing how Biden is increasing this regardless. Besides, the scale of this 2018 thing was very small compared to things right now that you’re distracting from; like the current genocide, homicidal and violent and for-profit border policies stricter than even Trump, homicidal nuclear brinksmanship and proxy wars by the democrats which are much more impactful and serious. And besides, Obama also drone striked US citizens. And more US citizens are in bi-partisan-supported prison than any citizenry in any country in history, imprisoned with a profit incentive, where they are in cases legally (read the 13th amendment) worked as slaves in the mass-incarceration prison-industrial complex, whose architect and primary instigator was none other than Joe Biden and the Democrat Clinton administration of which this campaign, now replacement-headed by Top Cop Kamala Handcuffs is a continuing rightward legacy of.

    Biden also, incidentally, helped create and push the Patriot act and has never stopped expanding funding and power to the DHS, ICE, NSA, CIA, FBI, Pentagon, etc. Kamala has no intention either, as Black organizers have been raided and burned out by the FBI on false ‘espionage act’ charges under Democrat governance. As anti-genocide protestors for Palestine are being violently repressed and arrested en masse and demonized or infantilized by Kamala, Dems and republicans, and corporate media. As poor people are being brutalized and arrested over $1.75 public transit costs in Democrat New York after the deployment of hundreds of cops to sit and watch turnstyles. As domestic workers are increasingly broken and lumpenized under the guns of of the ever-expanding fascistic police state set up and supported bipartisanly by the institutions and increasingly militarized under both parties. I mean Walz sent an army into Minneapolis to crush uprisings and to protect (mostly white-owned) property and institutions after the police murder of George Floyd, with the old “outside agitators” shtick.

    And do the same thing to Mexico that Israel does to Lebanon:

    This is incoherent; an empty comparison with surface level understanding (at most) about these nations and their situations. It’s also empty pandering by Trump and the most unhinged handful of Republicans who ride this kind of rhetoric (MTG, Graham, etc.). Trump’s not going to start a war with Mexico, and neither will the military establishment. Just like noone’s going to nuke Iran because the southern-belle-Holden-Bloodfeast that is Lindsay Graham slams his fist and hollers about it to rile up his base, This is a silly thing to get your underwear in knots over, especially when there’s real things you’re avoiding instead.

    As far as actions: we’re closer to WW3 than ever, with Biden’s nuclear brinksmanship fueled by arms-dealers; we’re witnessing the most televized genocide in history, a continuation of bipartisan genocidal foreign policy

    Biden in his first months of office to keep the region in chaos and suffering after everything they’ve done to keep it so for decades, straight up stole half of Afghanistan’s assets and crushed them with sanctions knowingly killing untellable tens of thousands of Afghan children and counting.

    You fixate on rhetoric and ignore action, and by appeasement you serve to legitimize the “two party” charade for all the billionaire imperialist exploiters, racketeers, murderers, and liars who both parties are funded by, speak for, and work for.

    V. I. LeninPolitical Parties in Russia

    To see what is what in the fight between the parties, one must not take words at their face value but must study the actual history of the parties, must study not so much what they say about themselves as their deeds, the way in which they go about solving various political problems, and their behaviour in matters affecting the vital interests of the various classes of society—landlords, capitalists, peasants, workers, etc.

    The greater the degree of political liberty in a country and the more stable and democratic its representative institutions, the easier it is for the mass of the people to find its bearings in the fight between the parties and to learn politics, i.e., to expose the deception and find out the truth.



  • that is not what “disenfranchised” means at all. These people are business owners with large portfolios?? They are objectively some of the most enfranchised people in the country. They’re literally sitting on their thumbs in their bathtubs of money deciding which genocidaire would be better for their wallets? How is this a disenfranchised population? This is objectively the opposite. Fuck them.

    Anyone catering to these very enfranchised sociopaths for votes, rather than to (and while actively repressing and brow-beating) those who are demanding an end to the bipartisan US-financed and US-armed genocide in Palestine, and rather than to the huge portion of actual left-wing voters and poor working class voters who are moving to 3rd parties or among the 35-50% who have stopped voting because of how actually disenfranchised and abandoned by this imperialist-corporate-conglomerate pretending to be two different parties they are — anyone catering to the former group instead of the latter two groups is my enemy




  • because their interests don’t allow it. Their donors and the people they work for, recruit from, and get hired by after leaving office, are all the billionaire imperialists that benefit from exactly what the democrats are doing and have been. It’s in the base structure of the democrat party. A lot of times these capitalists donate to the democrats, then vote republican. Both parties work for the same class of capitalist imperialists in whose interest they are so entrenched, they literally can’t do anything else but fly to the right and become more and more indistinguishable from each other as they both compete for who can be better at committing genocide and who can be more fascist on immigration and the border concentration camps and also militarily and operationally abroad

    The only way to break the duopoly is to throw weight behind a 3rd party (the further left the better, PSL or greens if you’re a liberal or your state is strong for it and you like that idea), which would starve the democrats of the margin they need to ever get power, and force a reorientation where the ruling class would have to float a reformist “labor” party to keep people from further radicalizing and flooding to the socialists away from the open-fanged republicans, who would remain as the only real political force when the mouth-closed-smiling but just-as-fanged democrats, entrenched in their position, can no longer cruise-control on “not being the republicans.” Which they already are in most ways, and in the ways they wear a mask of not being they’re totally feckless and actively capitulate in order to drum up more fear about the republicans to scare people into voting for them without doing anything to earn those votes (Obama had both houses of congress. He could have codified abortion rights and LGBTQ civil rights protections into law then and there. He didn’t. He also gave away a supreme court seat. And Biden has not only not forcefully pushed to expand and pack the courts, but has actively denounced the idea as “politicizing the courts” as if that ship isn’t already past the horizon. And has done fuck-all to stop the book-burnings, anti-LGBTQ laws, criminalizations of abortion, etc that are currently happening under a democrat president. They don’t care about any of us and never will, and it will continue to get worse under the duopoly).

    The ruling class floating this “labor” party would itself cause the democrat party to split in half, with half hedging their bets and pouring into the ‘labor’ party and the farthest-right establishment remnants stopping pretending they’re anything else and joining the republicans. Which would then “democrat-ize” the “labor” party and alienate their left wing who were trying to escape those same people and interests into joining with the socialists. This is why I say throw weight behind a socialist 3rd party. Because then you actually have a growing counterweight pushing forward against this rupturing contradiction and highlighting how badly these people play politics, as the establishment and their bourgeois politicians are scrambling in retreat to reorient and reconstitute politically, having obviously grown so entrenched and corrupt and complacent they’ve forgotten how to play politics.