the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
citing unnamed sources in the Israeli military.
without citing any evidence to support the claim by the Israeli military source
I'm not sure I'd trust israeli sources, specially when it's coming directly from its military. Could very well be war propaganda and an excuse to invade Lebanon, since that's what they've been trying to do for the past few months.
Why won't anyone think of the poor billionaires 😢
Just read it man...
Read it in multiple few minutes long sessions across a day or two if it's too long. Shouldn't take more than an hour in total.
I need to get around to actually finishing that someday...
Liberal "democracy" moment
So like the dems, they're supposed to be marginally less fascist than the opposition
They've been since 1948
Calls snap elections right after the far right wins big in eu elections
That's the only reason they did that lmao. They were hoping the far-right would win, and ignored the results because they didn't.
Haha yeah, I'll stop there.
Your comment on that thread stated "Just tax the rich while maintaining a democracy," which is describing a social "democracy".
And this
What I called Democracy in the afforementioned thread was a hypothetical Democracy which redistrubes wealth and holds all people accountable as equals. An institution where people vote on policy and/or leaders to create a society thar benefits as many people as possible: the definition of the word.
is idealism. Under a system where everyone's held equally accountable and benefits as many people as possible (aka communism), there wouldn't be any leaders in the first place. And you will never get a redistribution of wealth under a liberal "democracy"; only through revolution. This one will stay hypothetical.
What you're calling "social democracy" is a capitalist dictatorship with minor concessions to the working class. Countries that live off of imperialism of "former" colonies just like liberal "democracies" / capitalist dictatorships like France (which always inevitably slide towards fascism like we're seeing right now) but give some of the loot to the working class.
The ruling capitalist class of these countries had to give these concessions because of their proximity to the USSR and threat of a working class revolution. It's a way of cementing capitalist rule similar to fascism. And now that the threat is gone, these concessions are gradually being undone.
I'm surprised /u/ansaas actually touched on that to the extent she did. I was under the impression that was a socdem community. Guess I misjudged them.
Her comment itself is a good answer if you're willing to read, even if I don't agree on some of her points.
Autocracy?! That’s not what that word means. Tsarism was autocracy, Chiang Kai-shek was basically an autocrat.
What you are talking about is a revisionist degenerated workers state (or bourgeois state of a new type in the case of contemporary China) in which the bureaucracy grew too strong to a quasi caste-like status above the rest of the population. There were attempts to correct this in both the USSR (workers/left/united opposition) and in the PRC (Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution) but both were crushed
So it’s definitely smth we should learn from, to not repeat those mistakes. But that does not mean turning to the snake oil that is social democracy/democratic socialism which believe that somehow we can magically convince the ruling classes of systemic change and that they will give up power voluntarily. (And even if you manage somehow to wrestle significant concessions, they will either be rolled back after 30yrs or you’ll get the bullet in a fascist coup)
EDIT: Even under bureaucratic state socialism, there still was collective rule. Yes cults of personality were established around key figures (e.g. Stalin and Mao) but you can look up CIA documents where they dismiss that Stalin had abolished collective leadership (though ofc he still was the figurehead of the bureaucracy and the dominant force). Mao had an even stronger cult of personality, but a far “weaker” position than Stalin and the leadership was far more collective (just an fyi: this is why Mao called for a cultural revolution, which was a grassroots movement btw. The capitalist roaders (party bureaucrats who wanted to get back to capitalism but keep their privileged party posts) where gaining more and more power and he was not in a dictatorial position to stop them at will. So he had to organize a mass students and youth movement. Ofc there were excesses and errors there as well)
And despite the corrupt character AES brought forth massive progress in all fields of society. Free education up to university for everyone who didn’t slack at school. Millions of emancipated people learned to read for the first time ever. Massive scientific progress. Access to culture for millions. Making things like theatre, operas, ballet, cinema and chess accessible (and affordable !) for the masses. Making sure everyone had a place to work, sleep, smth to eat and clean water. Giving women the right to work, vote, choose whom or even if to marry, to go through life unveiled and just generally choose their own lives.(but this is one of the errors again. Patriarchal social structures were still kept and social conservatism took hold, which is why women rarely if ever had the rly high positions and were barred from the military f.e.) Making sure every child had a place at a crib or kindergarten. Making good quality healthcare accessible to all free of charge. Including vaccinating even the furthest regions, that had never even seen a doctor before.
This might not seem all that impressive to the priviliged liberal, but you have to look at the state the regions where in before: semi-feudalism at best (and/or bombed into the 3rd world after WW2)
Ofc there were excesses and mistakes, as already stated. But that does not negate their achievements.
TL;DR: dismissing state socialism as “something that didn’t work for the people” is disingenuous and disregards the fact that it did work and that, despite its flaws, it worked for hundreds of millions of people. We should not demonize previous socialist experiments, neither should we glorify them, but constructively learn from their mistakes when striving for a class-, state-, and moneyless society (aka communism, which is materially possible in todays world and not an idealist utopia, but a historic necessity if humanity is to progress as a species and not devolve into barbarism/fascism)
good short clips of Parenti talking if anyone’s interested (he put it rly well imo)
Third time's the charm?