MrMakabar @ MrMakabar @slrpnk.net

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16

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225

Joined

2 yr. ago

You are not going to easily convert a hardcore Republican, but a lot of undecided voters do not follow politics closely. Having the Republican describing himself as a Nazi is about as clear as it can get, which will convice a lot of them to vote blue. It is also a good way of bringing people who would vote Democrat to actually vote.

States like Louisiana or Mississippi have huge black minorities. If those voters turn up to actually vote in a non racist candidate the Republicans could loose.

Moving away from Office and Windows and so forth is a nightmare for any larger company. If you use specialized software, it might very well only run on Windows or only have an integration into Office. Even if you could, you then have to retrain staff to use Libre Office, Linux and other alternatives. You also will have problems converting, changing servers and so forth.

So companies just do not switch. That is how Microsoft makes money. They really do not care that much about private users. That is only usefull so people can use their products.

China has been waiving no intrest loans, which can not be repaid. Debt restructuring inckuding forgiving loans is part of a debt trap too.

Beijing, which has come under criticism for its lending practices to poorer nations, accounts for almost 40% of the bilateral and private-creditor debt that the world’s poorest countries need to service this year, according to the World Bank. It has helped forge recent debt-relief agreements, participating in the Group of 20 suspension of repayments during the pandemic.

(From the Bloomberg article) The amount is certainly right and already working with the Western lenders as well.

The AlJazeera opinion piece you linked shows pretty well, what it means. After all the IMF adjustment programs were how the West was able to exploit the South. China is starting to take part in that exact process.

Obviously those are just loans. Do you seriously believe they sign documents named "debt traps"?

https://nation.africa/oped/opinion/Kenya-must-avoid-China-debt-trap-or-fall-into-Sri-Lanka-pit/440808-4551200-kv7y59/index.html

https://www.news24.com/fin24/Economy/South-Africa/da-demands-details-of-r370bn-chinese-loan-warns-of-debt-trap-20180916

For example, but that took me a minute to find. Just asking for proof does not work, when the other site is unable to argue its case beyond "I looked into it". Not even an unsourced explanation of how Cowbee came to the cconclusion. Only that it is supposed to be "obvious".

I doubt I get a reply from Cowbee due to that.

So you consider North Korea or Eritrea to be better then the US? Seriously?

Can you proof China is not debt traping poor countries?

It is very easy to call the US the worst country, when you ignore the bad other countries commit.

China is currently debt trapping most of Africa. They pretty much appointed the current dictator of Zimbawe for example.

The way I look at good and bad is on a scale. Whenever a country makes the life for the average human better in terms of material well being, but also political freedom, that is a good thing. Whenever they make those things worse then it is bad.

A huge reason the US is the country doing so many bad things, is that nearly nobody else can. Any large scale war between two countries in recent times had the US being the agressor or the US intervening massivly. Iraq was done after invading Kuwait and Russia despute having nukes and a resilient economy is not liking it either.

So we have to look at what countries choose to do with the power they have and the US is not the worst in that metric.

Looking at the countries currently trying to replace the US none of them are better. Russia an Iran are pretty obvious. China is already working hard on enslaving the poorest countries in the world. For most of the rest the US Empire falling apart, just means local dictators continue their rule.

Add to that the violence of the conflicts and I gurantee you very few will celebrate that collapse.

Empires breaking up tends to be extremely violent. Just look at what happened during the collapse of the European empires.

Also what replaces them is not necessarily better. Not all evil comes from the US. Other countries are perfectly able of horrible stuff as well.

There are big money donors, which are not billionaires. The most common one are unions.

This is what I am talking about, especially the second half of the article:

https://jacobin.com/2016/08/ernst-thalmann-east-germany-stalin-nazis

The SPD initially prefered to work with further left forces. They worked together on the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils however the SPD wanted a parliamentary democracy and the USPD wanted a council republic, so when they realized the most of the councils were not in fact communist and actually supported the SPD, that caused uprisings against the interim SPD lead government, which the USPD left. The USPD was also unwilling to work with the SPD in the national assembly, which was the parliament they set up and they were sitting in. Intresstingly the Weimar constituion has a few points which could have been easily turned to accomadate workers councils. Hence the more centrist forces worked with them and the consitution was born.

I really think the word you’re looking for here is “liberal”

No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.

You’re making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists,

I am looking at what we might want to learn from what happened back for the US election and other struggles against the far right. So pointing out that this was an option is imho extremely important. Obviously they did not do it, but that does not mean it is impossible to do it at least partly today, with different left wing groups considering different centrist groups not radical enough.

Hitler and Thälmann lost to the center right Hindenburg who was backed by the social democrats. Hindenburg was already president since 1925, so he was seen as no direct threat to democracy. Then Germany had parliamentary elections in July 1932. Those had a Nazi + Communist majority, so they repeated the election in November as they did not have a majority to form a government as both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy. That however although slightly better did not solve that problem. So Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.

So if the Communists and social democrats would have worked together and elected a left president. That might have been somebody from the social democrats or indeed Thälmann, then a minority centrist or left wing or a majority centrist and communist government would have been possible. The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces. The Nazis actually did exactly that, which they were able to use to gain total power.

Point should be obvious.

Not at all. The judges appointed by the opposition party, protect the laws made by the opposition party, when they were in government. This way the government can not just ignore those laws. So most countries have very long term limits for judges to deal with that. Hence a single government can not just stack the courts. Term limits are used, so no single government just happens to be able to appoint a lot more judges then usual. However even with the term limit being death, a court like the US supreme court has judges appointed by five different presidents for example.

In the 2020 election Trump had 52.06% and Biden 46.48% in Texas. Obviously a lead for the Republicans, but it is moving getting closer and into swing state territory. This is with nobody spending a lot on Texas right now.

That was going back much further. The Communists had tried to overthrow the Weimar Republic in the Hamburg Uprising a decade earlier. So the social democrats, who were a key supporter and really the creators of the Republic, saw them as an enemy. Thälmann was especially outspoken against the social democrats. Hence they saw supporting Thälmann as supporting an enemy of the Weimar Republic.

However Jill Stein and co policies are mostly about as radical as the German social democrats back then. All of it could be done by reforming the US political system. At least near term.Also the German communists were much better organized then the US left. They were sitting in most parliaments of German states and cities. The US Green Party has no officeholders on a federal or even state level right now. Of the 8 state level officeholders they did have only 3 have run on a Green Party ticket, the rest was elected Democrat and switched to the Greens. That has to be changed first, before running for president. Seriously if you can not take state seats, then you can not win the presidency.

Exactly you can use the railing to hang on the outside. Greater speed and much more fun.

Just as a bit of context:

• Willy Wimmer is a German former Bundestag member, who is massivly into conspiracy theories and at this point far right
• Michael Flynn was one of the contacts between Trump and the Russian government. He plead guilty to that
• Cyril Svoboda was one of the guys who gave Voices of Europe an interview in which he supported Russias position on Ukraine. Voices of Europes interviews were paid and used as a way to finance the far right in Europe using Russian money. It is currently under EU sanctions. His former party has distanced themself from him, due to his ties to Russia.
• Emir Kusturica is a Serbia film director, who makes propaganda films and has far right pro Russian positions. His wife is well his wife.

The rest are obviously all Russian politcal figures and well Jill Stein. The photo was also taken at a Russia Today celebration. Just saying.

No

Because in Europe you are pretty much always on or near somebodies property.