psilocybin

Thanks for the source, definitely gonna read it later.

when I researched I thought a couple of things were off curious what light the article shines on that

These types of stories have been popping up around the world

Can you specify? How many cases do you know? And in which countries? Otherwise its hard to guess if the CIA can fake it. But I'd say if it is up, say to a hundred then: Yes totally something the CIA could and would do.

and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to... what... make China look bad?

To influence public opinion and manufacture consent for a wide range of political actions against the only threat to US hegemony in existence

That is not even close to the "too ridiculous for the CIA to do" scale. They once produced Bin-Laden dolls whose face would scrape off to reveal a demon. It was called operation Devils Eyes.

You have to imagine people sit there 8h a day to hatch schemes on how to best sway public opinions

Some of the assasination attempts on Castro were also quite ridiculous.

This, my friend, is the absense of neocon/neolib censorship and propaganda that you were so used to on corporate social media.

Isn't it great?

There was obviously never a communist state as you have correctly depicted communism is a goal. No argument there.

I also agree that you can make the point the USSR wasn't socialist, but that was also not what I was arguing for. (Spoiler: I describe the USSR as "state socialist")

I was arguing against calling the USSR capitalist, even state capitalist, and I stand by it.

the desire to use the words by their meaning

Capitalism is defined through private (not personal) property -- There was no private property. I think that should be enough to dismiss the notion the USSR was capitalist in amy capacity. But it also lacked competitive markets, "free" price systems and a ubiquitous profit motive, finance capital and certainly more characteristics.

Regarding the ownership of the means of production: I already agreed with you that it was not owned by the workers. However, being state owned, it was public ownership. You can say that isn't totally fair to you bc the name implies a level of participation of the people in the state which wasn't there, but their collective interests still somewhat mattered where today rules the profit motive (i.e. housing). That is not to say that planning, production and distribution did not fail the people often, they certainly did.

Since we were also talking about intent to build up a socialist system: When you look at it in the early days when it started out as a soviet republic, with worker soviets sending delegates to parent soviets cascading and culminating into the supreme soviet, the idea certainly was to create a state with (if not control then) direct expression of the workers interests. In that sense state ownership would be justified much more. This is also what has led me to call the system "state socialism".

The soviet union did definitively degrade hence I concede that it is well possible that initial intent to build socialism did not exist in late stage USSR leadership, I don't know much about that, to be honest and if that is what you experienced as a child I believe you.

But that this intent drove the initial conception should be obvious or do you think the writings of Lenin/Stalin and the internationals were all a big charade to get to power?

The degradation of the USSR, the communist party specifically, is one point why I mentioned the soviet union is an example to learn from. I believe Maoists have derived from that the principle of self-revolution within the party.

In the end to rationally learn from it is the important part, as long as we can do that it isn't important how its economic system is called or even if it was "good" or "evil" or whatever. And while I have opinions they honestly aren't always strongly held, as there is a lot to learn. Its just a mechanism of online discussions and them being overwhelmingly bad-faithed that brings that out

If you want a starting point to address your ignorance:

Juche on wikipedia

Bc I haven't heard of the cultural identity of a government

And its still not true, they have a distinct political ideology that used to be called juche, idk if they changed the name.

Also you said: "the problem with North Korea is..." not really an indicator you're talking about the government, especially given the context of a cultural identity

Okay seriously guys! Who let John Bolton join lemmy?

Also take note of the arrogance of the claim to know and declare another nations complete cultural identity.

To give them a chance I have asked them to clarify but I am pretty sure they haven't lived in the DPRK

The problem with North Korea is that its entire cultural identity is built on resisting American aggression

I am curious: Why do you feel you can confidently speak on the exact nature of another nations cultural identity? Let alone reduce it in this way?

Not sure if you understand how arrogant your statement is, but you have to realize that you have 0 idea of the cultural identity of the people in the DPRK.

Corporate news isn't interested in showing you anything but the conflict don't make the mistake of letting that shape your perception. The first step is realizing your ignorance

You joined one month ago

Yogthos' account is 4 years old.

At least this indicates that he is a human with an opinion that he stated on a highly nieche community and not a paid actor that only joins and starts to influence consensus after a community grows.

You on the other hand...

Jk, but think before you misrepresent a community and people as being shills.

For sake of completeness: account dates can be manipulated by the owner of the instance the account is registered on

[The USSR] was state capitalism economically

That statement is not valid and I can't understand where its decisiveness comes from. The enonomy was centrally planned, nobody respectable calls the USSR "state capitalist"

Russia was never even close to starting to try to attempt communism

IMO the urge to conclude this comes from having to reconcile two believes: First that "the USSR was evil" and secondly an interest in communism.

People affected can then either decide to denounce communism or reevaluate and deepen their knowledge of the USSR.

The latter option is often incomprehensible, so a third option is contrieved: decoupling one from the other.

I applaud you that you could uphold whatever positive view you hold of communism and instead settle for the last option rather than denouncing communism.

However the USSR obviously absolutely seriously tried to develop their country towards communism. A lot went wrong, mistakes were made even crimes committed.

But you also have to see the context of the times. The statehood is repealed in a revolution and you need to rebuild it. all the while a couple of the strongest nations on earth invade you and fund a civil war in your country also your people are poor. Then the behemoth war machine of the nazis invades. After you beat them, costing you 30 million people, the biggest power in history declares you their enemy.

A lot went extremely well compared to that: No society was ever development that quickly before and only China managed to pull this of as well. For a brief moment in the 60s life expectancy in the USSR was higher than in the US.

Wherever you stand: The USSR is something to learn from, successes and mistakes. Keeping them in the "evil" corner is just falling for propaganda.

militarizing space now might be about the phenomenon

Just to be clear I did NOT have a shortage of explanations for the interest to militarize space. That was already a given, much more so than any phenomena

seems that several Congress members, from both parties, are interested in unveiling where trillions of dollars went by the military

In the Oversight committee on national security? No way.

Its crazy how different interpretations can be. I was constantly roling my eyes listening to that hearing