yogthos

The reality is that this is not a problem that can be solved by individual action. The only way forward is systemic change away from the capitalist system where large industry is owned by the oligarchs. What people in the west need to do is to start organizing a movement for socialism before capitalism kills us all.

I also grew up in a communist country, and I enjoyed my life there as did vast majority people. People like you got theirs and you don't care how many people got fucked in the process, and how many people are being exploited right now to keep your comfortable life style.

A recent study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.

• https://academic.oup.com/cje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cje/beac072/7081084?guestAccessKey=01c8dd9f-af1c-48b3-b271-eb5d3a45017c&login=false

This is what people like you are cheering.

The only design flaw of the last submersible was that it couldn't fit more billionaires on it.

edit: LOL at billionaire simps downvoting

The trick is that you already have to be rich for it to be a grant, if you're poor it's just debt.

I'd argue that western media uses misleading phrasing to create a reasonable doubt, but when you look at the actual facts it's pretty clear that US is just playing games here and created a story out of whole cloth here. The fact that they can't even get their story straight is pretty damning all of itself in my opinion. US has also never actually explained what sort of intelligence such a balloon could possibly intercept that a satellite couldn't.

LMFAO these balloons and these police stations? 🤡

• https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-watched-chinese-balloon-launch-accidentally-drifted-official/story?id=97220283
• https://www.mintpressnews.com/false-witnesses-sinister-plots-exposing-cia-connection-chinese-police-station-narrative/285021/

Ah, life in the garden of free speech and democracy.

Hilarious how the same people who do hand wringing about paying to ensure that everybody has their needs met go to work and hand over most of the value they create through their labour to their employer. 🤡

I mean the purpose of a commercial platform is to create profit for the owners of the platform. I find it kind of funny that people are all outraged that these platform are pursuing their business interests. The mistake people made was to rely on these platforms to build their communities thinking that made them stakeholders.

I guess we have a different understanding of the purpose of having forums like Lemmy. If I just wanted a news feed, then I'd use RSS for that. To me the point is precisely for people to provide their own views on the topics in the submissions, and explain in their words why they thought a story was worth sharing. This is what makes it a social media site.

I also don't really see how keeping the title the same has impact on whether people choose to engage with the post. Seems to me that would be based on whether they thought the title in the submission was interesting or not.

I would phrase it as there were a handful of political topics that couldn't be discussed as freely as in the west in USSR. In many ways there was a lot more freedom of speech. Here's a great example of that from an interview with George Lucas where he explains how film makers in USSR had far more freedom than those under capitalist regimes.

I would also argue that freedom of speech is only meaningful when that speech can translate into tangible action. What the west has is the freedom to scream into the void, but as soon as there is any potential threat to the state then it's quickly dismantled. Great examples of that are the Black Panthers and MLK movement.

Finally, I think that every society has restrictions on freedom of speech, and some such restrictions are obviously desirable. I fully support restrictions on capitalist propaganda and right wing extremism.

However, my point was not to argue against freedom of speech but rather that the society should focus on ensuring that the basic needs are met and that regular people can live comfortable lives before focusing on maximizing freedom of speech. It's a question of priorities.

And given that counter revolutionary elements exist in socialist societies who try to undermine socialism and bring back capitalism, suppressing this sort of speech is justified. If you look at USSR, what ultimately facilitated a counter revolution was the liberalization under glasnost and perestroyka programs that Gorbachev introduced.

Thing is that the whole story does not stand up to scrutiny. US admitted that they tracked the balloon from the start and that it's most likely been blown off course:

U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon from its launch in China and watched as it may have been inadvertently blown into U.S. airspace, a U.S. official has confirmed to ABC News.

This latest revelation differs significantly from the previous narrative related by the White House and U.S. military officials over recent days, which has changed repeatedly since the balloon's existence became public when it was spotted over Montana on Feb. 1.

The above paragraph basically says that US officials intentionally lied from the start. All the further evidence that's come out continues to support the idea that this wasn't any sort of a spy balloon. The real story here is why does US is trying to escalate tensions with China.