I recently upgraded my stone axe with some flint. Those guys with bronze are doomed.

Tell me about it. When I first learned that the website developed and run by Communists had Communists on it, I couldn’t believe what was happening.

The only moral stance is to post about the US election in lemmydotEthiopia, the Australian election in lemmydotSuriname, the Bolivian election in LemmydotAlbania, and so on, but only if it’s months out of sync. Anything else is suspicious.

That fits nicely because it’s always people who have and will continue to have enough food in their belly that they can indulge in an extra meal while indulging in fantasies like ‘one more election cycle, pleeeease, I trust them to stop murdering millions of innocent people, just one more election cycle and then they’ll fix everything, pleeease’.

What’s non-wealth-based fascism?

Fr when I’m filling in my spreadsheet for the people I have to watch, it’s a lot easier if everyone goes in column A or column B.

Column A is titled ‘Radical speech but thinks that voting will change anything – no action required’.

Column B is ‘Radical shitposter – maintain eyes, no immediate action required’.

The other columns, though – damn it’s a lot of paperwork.

Column O, ‘Organising their community, feeding people, and providing healthcare’ is the worst. Luckily for me, the agency’s action means they don’t stay on the list for long so the paperwork is finite. I probably shouldn’t be saying all this as it’s top secret. But we do know what’s up in our department.

Depends if you’re hungry.

The US state department lawyers and the British House of Lords have evidence. That’s why they’re pursuing convictions of the Chinese leaders involved. No, wait— sorry, I misremembered. They both concluded there is insufficient evidence.

The reason it seems like I’m dodging the question is because if I can challenge the assumptions in the question and show that it’s a faulty question, the answer becomes irrelevant. Still, if you keep reading, you’ll see that I have provided an answer below.

As for my opinion, it’s like anyone else’s. It isn’t worth much. My statements of fact, however… in a world where people try to paint the US in a positive light, endlessly making distinctions to deny any blame to the US state for all the horror that it unleashes on the world… probably also not worth much.

I either make a logical argument that stands up to scrutiny or I don’t. If my argument stands up, it doesn’t matter whether I look like a weak idiot. If my argument fails, it doesn’t matter if I pretend control or to appear smart or to act it.

For a bourgeois state, it is ahistorical to separate the government from it’s businesses. Companies and the government go hand in hand. It was, for example, the East India Company, rather than the British ‘state’, that colonised so much of Asia.

In relation to WWII and the US-Nazi connection, Michael Parenti wrote in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism (City Lights Books, CA, 1997, p17):

Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost levelled by Allied bombing but it’s Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter. [Citing Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy (Dell, NY, 1983).]

Fn14: After the war, Herman Abs, head of the Deutsche Bank and in effect “Hitler’s paymaster,” was hailed by David Rockefeller as “the most important banker of our time.” … Rockefeller [failed to say] a word about Abs’ Nazi connections, his bank’s predatory incursions across Nazi occupied Europe, and his participation, as a board member of I.G. Farben, in the use of slave labor at Auschwitz: Robert Karl Miller, Portland Free Press, Sept/Oct 1994

All this, and we haven’t really touched on:

• the way that US state officials intervened to—
• • protect Nazi war criminals from prosecution at Nuremberg,
• • rehabilitate and promote Nazi officials to lead NATO,
• • doing the all this with Mussolini and others,
• how the US ruling class platformed Nazis in the US press and silenced critical domestic voices,
• the relationship between the US government and its ruling bourgeois, the familial relations.

The US is to be applauded for is role in defeating the Nazi war machine, including supplying the allies. The US soldiers who fought the Nazis were heroes. But it is problematic to claim the US (i.e. it’s ruling class) was on the right side of history through that period.

Likewise, in Ukraine, the US worsened the whole mess, possibly caused it all, by meddling in the region since before the 90’s. Since the recent invasion US media and spokespersons have been nonchalantly saying the US has reaped many benefits from the war with very little cost (except for Ukrainians—added in parentheses, as if the Ukrainians are of secondary concern).

I do think the invaders are bad, whichever war were talking about.

I think we agree in principle and I think I know what you mean but I must raise a challenge. There’s an example that shows an invasion is not necessarily bad, the one that you pointed out: the Allies invading Nazi Germany.

If invasion is not bad in one example situation, then logically it doesn’t hold as a blanket statement. It cannot of itself lead us to conclude that Russia is bad for invading Ukraine. To be clear, I am not saying Russia is good for invading Ukraine; I’m saying it is not self evidently bad by virtue of being the invader.

To further the clear statement, I wish Russia had not invaded. I wish the war would end today. Short of that I wish a ceasefire could be negotiated for today, so that peace and an end to the war can be negotiated for the near future.

No flippant comments about how dangerous war is for the workers who must fight in it. Only firm conviction that the only right choice is to stop the killing and maiming as soon as possible, not to send increasingly dangerous weapons with increasingly higher chances of causing collateral damage.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the US wanted the opposite at all stages and it’s representatives (officials and corporate agents) have machinated to ensure that war broke out and now that it cannot stop.

You brought up the example of the US in relation to WWII. If you make a comparison, you can’t get stroppy when people point out that it contradicts your main argument and in fact supports the argument that you’re trying to challenge.

However, for as long as you think the US is the Good Guy^TM, you’re going to struggle to find examples that support your viewpoint, so you may want to be careful with any comparison. Otherwise, you’ll start to notice a pattern of them pointing out that the US was as monstrous as always in the cited example and then you’ll say they’re doing whataboutism ad infinitum.

The yanks were funding the WWII Nazis before they ‘sent supplies to the allies’.

Yeah, we’re definitely working with different models.

I know what you’re saying. But basic hygeine, etc, work against some illnesses while other health scares require different strategies (as well as good hygeine). I think we may be talking at cross purposes, working with very different models of the world and of what’s possible.

There’s a lot of layers to this. Among them the problem that yanks and other westerners with an exceptionalist world outlook have been convinced that only the good guys win, and that to win means to be the good guy no matter how abhorrent they are. So to accept that Russia is winning or, at least, that Ukraine can’t win, means accepting that Russia is in fact the good guy. Which is clearly nonsense, but then neither you nor I are making the claim.

If we took this approach to those other germs and viruses that you mention, quality of life and life expectancy would plummet as fast as infant mortality shot up. There’s nothing special about Covid in that regard except that it needs more respect than many other issues.

Edit: I edited my comment because I was a bit rude. I apologise for that.

Yes, I wouldn’t describe my as very big but I’m not small and the number of people who look like they’re going to say something and then reconsider it when they take a second look at me… cowards. These are people used to bullying those they can bully without consequence.

Personal responsibility is the answer if the question is, ‘Would you like to contribute to millions of unnecessary deaths and further countless suffering?’ It clearly doesn’t work as a public health strategy.

I prefer to believe the planes stay in the sky because of the druid rituals on the solstices.

The number of big babies who huffed and puffed at being asked to not stand on other people’s feet. Unreal. As if keeping 6ft distance from complete strangers in the supermarket is a major request. Like, why do you need my body heat we don’t even know each other.

One day!