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[personal profile] tcpip
Trump on womenDespite the chaos and misery of Trump's first term in office, his recent re-election bodes an extreme, tumultuous, and dangerous next four years. This is not just the case for the United States, where it will have the greatest and most immediate effect, but also with other advanced economies in Europe and Australia; the far right is already ascendent in France and Germany, and it is likely to gain power in Australia. In all these cases, the success of the far-right will come from populism aimed at disenfranchised voters with lower levels of education and wealth, the collapse of the centre-right, and an ongoing identity crisis in social democracy.

The current and future far-right demagogues that will rule the world in the foreseeable future will enact a program of punishment toward their opposition, reward their favourites (regardless of legality), engage in a culture war against minorities, and, with great awareness of their ironic punishment of their supporters, engage in a wealth transfer from the lower and middle classes to their business allies. It is more than plausible that they will, given the opportunity, transform into a militaristic socialisation of labour in the interests of national capital. That is, a war of aggression against the developing world. Understanding this trajectory suggests not only the dire need for organised and effective political strategy but also a working reconsideration of democracy to prevent another rise of reactionary extremism.

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Kakistocracy: Rule of the Worst

A characteristic of extremist States that operate with authoritarian and totalitarian agendas is the need for constant violence and chaos of varying levels. The concern that the Trump administration, having captured the institutions of governance, could transform into a fascist regime is far from hyperbole. If they do so, it will come with the spectre of war, and one which hawkish commentators have been already ear-marked 2027 for a potential conflict with the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China over Taiwan. Such a war almost certainly will not eventuate, but the possibility can be used as an excuse to crush what remains of the one body that is capable of stopping the crushing rule of the far-right: an already weakened organised labour.

Of course, the rise of this international demagoguery is a sign of the times, a combination of social media rumours that circulate without responsibility among those least able to asses their validity and a major selection of the rentier-capitalist elite who are only capable of aggrandisement at the expense of others. The control of the former over the latter is the fundamental cause of our current circumstances; developing political economies and processes that prevent such a coup from ever occurring again is a subject for further inquiry. At the moment, one is ultimately reminded that politics is primarily determined by extra-parliamentary means, with the law and institutions dragging rather than leading. Strap yourself in and show solidarity to all, for this is going to be an extremely rough next four years, the worst in living memory.
garote: (castlevania 3 sunset)
[personal profile] garote
There is a fringe movement in modern culture, born mostly of the internet, that decries the use of aesthetics of non-European cultures as "appropriation", characterizing it as a sort of theft, or even racism. The idea is that usage of these in art is a lazy way to imply that something is alien, and therefore reinforces the idea that the people who generated the original art are alien, which in turn encourages racist thought. For example, if we use a Japanese warlord's palace as an exotic locale in our adventure movie, and have our characters react to it that way, then the audience will see the people living in and around the palace as exotic as well, and mentally separate them from "normal" people, and then project that sense of abnormal onto modern Japan.

This movement has a strange hole in the center of it, revealed by asking: Why is the depiction of a Japanese warlord's palace considered a potential theft and reinforcement of racism, while an ancient French castle is not?

They are medieval France's most lasting legacy in popular culture. They've been rampant in English books, films, and now computer games, for centuries. They're a shorthand for pageantry, countryside, dangerous physical situations, and hearty food. Also of ghosts, magic, warlords, and ruin.

The medieval castle is not seen as normal. It is, without a doubt, exotic. I personally didn't set foot in an actual castle until I was 47 years old and traveled across an ocean, and even then it was just for an afternoon among a crowd of other fascinated tourists. There are no medieval castles in my home country, and there never were any. Yet I don't remember a time when I didn't know what one was, or find the idea exotic, all the way down through my childhood.

If the palace and the castle are both exotic, why the double standard?

Because "appropriation" and "theft" are defined from a Euro-centric point of view. That is, if it came from Europe, it isn't stolen, but if it came from somewhere else, it can be and probably is. This obviously hinges on the identity of the artist, who is assumed to be of European descent, which is kind of a retrograde assumption in an internationally connected world: To "protect" non-European culture, do we need to ignore the existence of non-European artists operating in the English-speaking world, in order to police what can and can't be ethically used as inspiration for art? Or do we need to establish some kind of vetting system to determine if a given artist is ethnically related to their material? That's a bit suspicious.

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese filmmaker, but his work is quite popular in the United States and Europe. When he depicts a French castle on rolling green hills in the paintings around a child's nursery in Spirited Away, it's clearly intended as exotic and fanciful, and perhaps to the initial Japanese audience it is even more exotic than it is to Americans or Europeans. Is this "appropriation" because he's a Japanese artist depicting French castles in Japanese art? Well, maybe. Does the same depiction undergo a change of status, when the same film is shown in France? Does it reinforce, or rely on, the idea that Japanese people find French people exotic and weird? Because of this, is Miyazaki a progressive force, or is he trading in alienating stereotypes?

When answers are hard to find, it could be that the question itself or the assumptions beneath it don't make sense. We can't anchor art to a Euro-centric viewpoint. It doesn't make sense to take a navigational compass, stick one end at that point, and use it to draw a circle around what isn't "theft" and then condemn anyone who reaches outside the circle as a cultural appropriator, if they use myths and history and architecture from a land outside of Western Europe.

The only sane way to approach this is by looking at the intentions behind the idea, which is to avoid harm and alienation. We should look at the details of a given "appropriation" and decide whether it's a positive depiction or a negative one. Is the depiction of a medieval castle implying that the people inside, or their descendants, are bad people? If so, then there is an obvious complaint to raise against its continued use. This recasts cultural appropriation as a subset of negative depiction in general, applying a sort of "know it when you see it" yardstick. That's not very objective, but I suspect it's the best one can do.

And perhaps there are people in France who are sick of tourists wandering through looking at castles and smiling; as if that's all France has to offer, as if the France of 500 years ago is more interesting than the France of today. Or, contrariwise, maybe they enjoy the economic boost of the tourism and embrace the chance to talk about their history to an otherwise unavailable audience. I reckon it's a bit of both.

I leave you with an interesting observation to consider, while you're thinking about representation and appropriation: In 40+ years of Japanese animation, including many extremely popular internationally-recognized works, have you noticed that the more of a villain or troublemaker a character is, the more ethnically European they tend to look?

I'm neither worried or bothered by this, I just find it interesting. Perhaps Japanese society has been so oppressive that antisocial behavior is just more believable when it's coming from a character that does not look Japanese.
fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Hamas has shocked the world in early October with the mass murder of hundreds of Israelis. Despite its brutal terrorist attack, however, the radical Islamist Palestinian movement can count on influential supporters and lucrative investments in the Middle East. Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Israel, the UK, Canada and a ton of other countries.

When "Hamas" attacked Israel on October 7, even a part of Germany rejoiced. Enthusiastic Muslims distributed candy in the streets of Berlin. And in Hamburg, people rejoiced in the killing of hundreds of women, children and entire families, as could be seen from TV reports.

So it's no surprise that Hamas can still rely on donations from Muslims around the world to finance its terrorist activities, including in other Western countries: for example the largest Islamic charity in the US, the Holy Land Foundation, had been transferring millions of dollars into the Palestinian Territories from the 80s until it was banned in 2001. The money was supposedly intended to support social institutions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but it was under the control of Hamas. Because of this, money often ended up in the families of suicide bombers as a perfidious form of bereavement.

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kiaa: (Default)
[personal profile] kiaa

Having read through Liu Cixin's 2nd book from his trilogy Remembrance of Earth's Past, The Dark Forest, I've come across this take on the Fermi paradox:

Dark forest hypothesis (wiki)

The dark forest hypothesis is the idea that many alien civilizations exist throughout the universe, but are both silent and paranoid. In this framing, it is presumed that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life as an inevitable threat,[2] and thus destroy any nascent life that makes its presence known. As a result, the electromagnetic spectrum would be relatively silent, without evidence of any intelligent alien life, as in a "dark forest" filled with "armed hunter(s) stalking through the trees like a ghost".

There's also a nice Kurzgesagt video on the subject (their vids are always awesome):
Youtube link

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asthfghl: (Слушам и не вярвам на очите си!)
[personal profile] asthfghl

After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Europe suddenly woke up to the realization that peace on the continent was far from guaranteed. With this war, Putin was hoping to sow division in the EU and NATO, but in fact his effort is achieving just the opposite.

The European Political Community (EPC), an initiative first launched by French president Macron in May this year, is meeting for the first time this week in Prague. The leaders of more than 40 countries (EU member states and those outside it such as UK, Israel, Turkey, Norway and Ukraine) are ready to start a new integration process. What's needed here, Macron argues, is "a new space for political cooperation in security, in the energy sector, in transportation, in investment, infrastructure, the free movement of people and especially our youth".

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[personal profile] tcpip
The sudden fall of Afghanistan into the hands of the Taliban may have shocked establishment experts [1], but are certainly no surprise to those expert critics who for decades have criticised the corruption, the lack of strength in civil institutions, and the disparity between what Western governments told us and what reality was like on the ground [2]. That reality is approximately 175,000 dead, mainly Afghan national military and police, Taliban and other opposition fighters, and civilians. One could add an additional 67,000 for the Pakistani side of The Durand Line [3], a British imperialist invention that divides the indigenous Pashtuns and is treated with complete contempt by those on both sides of the border; all quite a remarkable achievement by the US after spending 2.261 trillion dollars on consolidating a military presence in a country of less the 40 million. Certainly, a windfall for those capitalists who invested in the war machine; returns on the top five defense contractors from 2001 to now have a return 50% greater than the general stock market [4].

The fall of Afghanistan has occurred under Biden, as the United States had agreed under Trump to withdraw its troops whilst the Taliban agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups to operate under their areas [5]. Hand-waving their behaviour in the past, their gross violations of human rights and especially those against women, establishment experts tried to tell the world then, and continue to do so now, that the Taliban of 2020 are fundamentally different [6] from the Taliban of the 1990s. This is not entirely true; they are certainly more pragmatic in their international relations, and certainly more mercurial in public relations, but their ideology is the same, and their behaviour is the same. At the time of writing, the Taliban are going door-to-door searching for people who either worked for NATO or the Republic [7]. Whilst one would be happy to be wrong, we can certainly expect that horrific facts of the new Taliban rule will come out soon.

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mahnmut: (Ngithanda amasende amakhulu.)
[personal profile] mahnmut

This was supposed to be a "funny" piece but it's mostly become a rant. Mostly directed at a certain segment of society, calling themselves various names, from "conservative" to "truther". It was supposed to be funny, mostly due to the nature of the subject, and because of the sheer amount of stupidity that's just begging to be mocked. But no, I've no desire for LULz right now. The amount of stupidity among those people has passed the point of LULzworthiness. It's not funny. It's scary. And frightening. Much scarier than the pandemic, actually. Can't joke about this. Not now.

Illiteracy and ignorance has become trendy and dandy. Ignorant public gurus are lecturing people about stuff they know jack shit about. Illiterate "teachers" are teaching the illiterate kids of semi-literate parents.

Violence-prone folks, wannabe fascists, closet neo-Nazis, unapologetic racists are calling for riots, and they've decided they could get what they want by crying as loud as they can that they're having their freedom of speech assaulted.

Read more... )
nairiporter: (Default)
[personal profile] nairiporter
Despite all efforts on Turkey's part, many Syrians are not in a hurry to return home. The main reason is the lack of jobs and the destroyed infrastructure, the ongoing occasional skirmishes in a number of regions, the multiple reports of arrested refugees returning from Lebanon and Jordan. The two Arab countries are among the most generous hosts to those refugees, with close to 2 million each. While Jordan does provide relatively good opportunity for work, right now the situation in Lebanon is miserable.

Syrians in Lebanon have almost no opportunity to work there legally, and 90% of them spend their time on the black market. The children of refugees cannot attend the local schools and have no health insurance. Most live in tents, since Lebanon has not allowed the creation of camps after the Turkish and Jordanian model.

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[personal profile] nairiporter
Nine years ago, as the mass protests in Syria were gradually entering the bloody stage of the civil war there, hundreds of thousands started fleeing from the violence of their own government. As new rebel groups appeared and the scope of the military operations expanded, their number more than doubled. After 2014, with the emergence of Daesh, their numbers had reached into the millions, and the actions of the jihadists only further exasperated the humanitarian catastrophe.

This brought waves of refugees upon the European borders in 2015 and 2016, and the resulting rise of right-wing reactionary factions, some of them managing to make political inroads in their countries, and even winning elections on the promise they would protect their people from "terrorists disguised as refugees". Doubtless, the Syrian civil war is the heaviest conflict of our time, and the resulting refugee and humanitarian crisis caused by all the violence and destruction are one of the most serious challenges to the international community. Although the focus somehow mostly falls on the refugees heading to Europe, the bulk of the masses fleeing from war-torn Syria actually went to neighbouring countries: Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey.

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fridi: (Default)
[personal profile] fridi
Yesterday's post on China reminded me of this new/old thing that we've been witnessing lately, the so called organized capitalism. I'd say in the long term, the world is entering such a phase that is comparable to the 30s of the last century. It's a different type of capitalism, unlike the liberal phase of capitalism.

First of all, what's liberal capitalism? Basically, it's the right of owners of capital to freely manage their enterprise. Conversely, in organized capitalism, while they're still allowed to make profit, they also have to abide by a "higher purpose" that's been imposed on them. Be it the establishment of cartels in their respective industry, or the organization of a war-time economy, or the initiation of a process of catching up with more advanced economies, or dealing with an economic crisis.

Yes, I guess we're talking about the cyclical nature of economics here. I'd argue that for the last 100 years, phases of organized capitalism and liberal capitalism have been alternating one after another. After the liberal capitalism of the 20s followed a phase of organized capitalism. After the late 70s, another phase of liberal capitalism. Generally, the phases of organized capitalism end with a protracted period of stagnation, as the relatively inefficient distribution of goods and services tends to lose its ability to meet people's needs at some point. In turn, the phases of liberal capitalism tend to end with large-scale crises so far. We're currently heading into such a period, which shows that we seem to be transitioning to another phase of organized capitalism.

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tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
Writing about the politics of public health whilst we are the midst of a major global pandemic is a peculiar combination of churlishness and critical necessity. At the time of writing, there are 425,000 confirmed cases, and 19,000 deaths, and in a few days that number will double, and then double again, and then double again. It is worth remembering that the first 100,000 diagnoses took from December to March, the second from March 5 to 17, and the third from March 18 to 21, and the fourth from March 22 to 24. It is the single greatest health risk of this century, in part due to the relatively high rate of fatalities (approximately 4.1% of diagnosed cases), and significantly due to the relative ease of transmission. Most of all, however, the greatest risk is the effects of the ease of transmission and fatality rate combined, that is, how it overwhelms our health-care systems, which are woefully unprepared for an event such as this.

But it is not as if that the knowledge was not there. There have been plenty of warning signs, such the previous outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 to mid-2003, which is related to COVID-19, to the extent that academics warned of SARS as "an agent of emerging and reemerging infection". SARS had a fatality rate of 9.6% across 17 countries, with approximately 8,000 people infected. SARS was also highly infectious (R0 value of 2-4), but was successfully contained. Then in 2009, there was the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus ("swine flu"), which had a higher infection rate than seasonal influenza, and a similar fatality rate. In comparison Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), also a coronavirus, has a high fatality rate (36%) but a low transmission rate (R0 value of 0.3 to 0.8).

Recognising these rather impressive precursors, certain individuals also have tried to raise concerns. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, argued in 2005 that "Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose", and in 2017 had his book, "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs" published. Virologist and flu expert Robert G. Webster warned of an upcoming 'flu pandemic, “Flu Hunter: Unlocking the secrets of a virus" late last year. The US Intelligence Team has warned about the possibility of a pandemic for years. Dr. Luciana Borio, once a member of the White House National Security Council (NSC) team responsible for pandemics, warned of pandemic threats; the team was disbanded under the Trump administration. Famously, Bill Gates argued in a TED talk in 2015, that we simply were not prepared.

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The System Kills

It is the system that is killing us. Yes, the direct cause is from a deadly infectious disease and part of that is, of course, the potential rate of transmission from a world that is a smaller place. But that could be managed with proper environmental considerations and animal welfare regulations in place. They are not in place because of the terrible levels of global inequality, the lack of social infrastructure in developing countries, and most of all because they would cost money. Our political economy is geared towards providing a race to the bottom in terms of value, and a race to the top for monopoly profits, which inevitably must be shared among fewer and fewer. Add to this either sensationalist private media which concerns itself more with shock value for sales rather than accuracy, and totalitarian media systems which have the facts at hand, but refuse to release them as to retain their social order, or engage in disruption through misinformation directed to more liberal societies. Managing the entire rotten edifice is the worst sort of political leaders whose concern for public welfare is demonstrably lacking in favour of their quest for perpetual power, manipulation of public opinion, and fulfilling their mission of their true masters. The irrational quest for the accumulation of power and wealth, at a cost of the lives of human and non-human animals, has reached the insanity that we witness today. The next pandemic, however, will be worse if these causes are not addressed; public health, media transparency, and the environment will not occur without smashing these accumulations in favour of more egalitarian power structures and a greater commonwealth. The warning has been given by this virus; and if the system does not show itself capable of reform, then revolution will be inevitable.
mahnmut: (The Swallows have won!)
[personal profile] mahnmut
Now. Where to begin. The good or the bad news?

Okay. First the good. The global War On Terror has ended with success. Mission Accomplished, folks! But this time for real! Terrorism has been defeated. There's no more terrorism. Hooray! Right?

The bad news is, there's a "but". There's always a "but" whenever there's some bombastic claim like the one I just made. Terrorism was really wiped out from the face of Earth, BUT this didn't happen thanks to the endless spec ops by the US military, Russian army, or the 24/7 efforts of the good guys from FBI, CIA, FSB, GRU, MI-6, etc. The victory wasn't achieved through multi-billion military budgets for various repressive agencies and organizations. Both the guys with earphones on their neck and those with pen in hand, or night-vision hi-tech gadgets all over, have turned out helpless against the global threat. The drone operators launching missiles from an office full of laptops have failed to do the job, too. Large-scale espionage and surveillance didn't achieve anything. They wiretapped everyone, from top politicians to mere citizens, the latter in turn footing the bill for all that - and yet it had no effect.

No. The victory was forged by the complete (theoretical) and diametrical difference between the secretive, shadowy security structures, and the bad brown guys with the turbans and big beards that they were fighting. In fact, the two were so diametrically opposite to each other that at some point they even managed to meet at the opposite side of the spectrum. I'll now tell you how that happened.



Read more... )
asthfghl: (Слушам и не вярвам на очите си!)
[personal profile] asthfghl

Greetings, ma'fellow navel-gazing procrastinators! I'm sure most of you (the US part anyway) are watching, fixated, with unbliking eyes the ongoing circus of the US Democratic primaries, but may I distract you for a while with something more remote and abstract? Yep. I'm talking about Erap. That country (heh?) where you dream of going to spend a one-week vacation, eat some pizza, visit a museum or two, and go back home bragging how much more cultured and sophisticated you now are. ;-)

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of the accelerated divergence of the European West from the European East, including on the most important political issues of the day. The convergence between the two halves was among the main goals of the post-communist era, the emerging democracies of the former socialist bloc almost unanimously embracing it. The first years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall were packed with effort for that kind of social, political and economic transformation. The expansion of the European economy to the East, and the gradual expansion of the EU, NATO and European liberal-democratic culture as a whole in an eastward direction, were not just a series of symbolic gestures, but actually very real steps in the same direction.

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airiefairie: (Default)
[personal profile] airiefairie
The "fake news" term was widely introduced into the public discourse a couple of years ago, after the 2016 US election more precisely, when Democrats and Republicans were accusing each other in spreading falsehoods in the media to hurt their opponents.

Thousands of cases of manipulating the public opinion for political purposes around the social media have been reported since then. We all know the case with Cambridge Analytica, a company that obtained the personal data of millions of Facebook users, which it used to influence the voters before the election. A few weeks after this scandal broke out, Malaysia adopted a law that criminalised the spreading of fake news (up to 6 years in prison).

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asthfghl: (You may kiss me now!)
[personal profile] asthfghl
Greetings, comrades folks! The other day marked 3 decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. As for yesterday, no doubt November 10 is a very symbolic day for my society. On this very day, exactly 30 years ago, democracy "exploded" here in Bulgaria. Well, maybe not exactly. But it felt like that at the time, at least for a while. One thing is for sure, though. Things haven't been the same ever since. Even if only prompted by events abroad, we did do our best attempt to erase and forget the past, sometimes with more success, sometimes with less. But the idea was there. However, one'd think that some things can't go away just like that. You'd think it would take several generations for a society to completely shake off the legacy of the past, especially if that system had been ingrained into people's brains for decades, ultimately distorting the very culture of said society, and the mentality of its people. No, good things don't just happen overnight.

Really, we've gone through all sorts of hardships for the last three decades, all sorts of transformations, and we've experienced what it's like to learn the lessons of history within a very compressed period, and catch up with what the rest have achieved in many decades, but learn it all the hard way. We saw the ugly face of "wild capitalism", while we were kicking out the memory of communism. We saw the Al Capone era being played out right in front of our eyes. We saw what hyper-inflation means, what queueing for bread with food coupons means, what "baseball-bat business" is, what Thug-o-Baroque architecture, lifestyle and mentality looks like - we've seen it all. But, at the end of the day it was all worth it. Hell, it really was!

And probably all that remains now to remind us of that "Time Long, Long Ago", is the various memorabilia remaining from the commie times, which are gathering more dust as the time passes, only to fuel the feeling of nostalgia among the fading older generations. And of course the awesome anecdotes from the time of the "Sotz" (as we used to call socialism), which were being whispered with half a mouth; the sharply humorous and penetrating caricatures of the Sotz leaders that were being spread around like apocrypha; and the stinging lyrics of Vysotsky, the genius "Bard of Freedom".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkojGf_u2uI
You know the drill. In order to proceed reading, first you'll have to play that song in the background. ;-)

Ah, memories..... )
asthfghl: (You may kiss me now!)
[personal profile] asthfghl
"After the Chernobyl series, the world ought to not be the same any more", a local columnist wrote here after the finale of the HBO mini-series ended. And it made me thinking. This is scary. You know what's scary? The fact that no, the world WILL remain the same. Things will keep being done the same old way over and over again. Because people don't change.

Or maybe they do, and I'm just being too nihilistic here (must be a byproduct of aging).

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/hbo-chernobyl.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1

Yes, this is about the Chernobyl series )
dancesofthelight: A fractal curling and uncurling in a loop (Otherwordly things)
[personal profile] dancesofthelight
One of the more amusing aspects of the craze built around that HBO adaptation of the A Song of Ice and Fire series is the view that Daenerys Targaryen, the heir of the family that conquered a continent with trained Kaiju that are essentially l living, breathing nuclear weapons ala Godzilla and Rodan having an ugly redheaded lovechild left to a Catholic priest, was ever heroic.

https://truthout.org/articles/daenerys-targaryen-was-never-a-liberator/

cut for length and number of links )

If the real life dead massacred by living and dead empires are not worthy of true concern, or even the hollow gesture of an official apology, why should fictional dead be any different? Why the feigned shock that a tyrant who conquers areas and leaves them worse after the fact does not change her stripes in a new territory that is still more crucial to empire dreams? Real empires have done this worldwide, their victims sufficient to raise blood to drown the oceans. And it is no different to make heroes of Leopold III, Hernan Cortez, or Paul Bremer than it is to do so for a fictional dynasty of imperialists. As in fiction, so in reality. What people make of stories is the mirror of truth and seldom in a way intended or desire, perhaps, in either case.
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
What is the optimal size of government? This is an issue which has interested political scientists, economists, psychologists, anthropologists and more for many years. For some anarchists the ideal size of government is zero; in contrast, the totalitarian perspective argues for a society where the State controls all [1]. It is argued that anarchists sometimes err in a conflation between government and the state [2]. A contemporary quirk is that most contemporary "anarcho-socialist" perspectives argue for the abolition of the state yet for democratic governance of social property, in contrast to the "anarcho-capitalist" perspective, which argues for the abolition of democratic governance of social property in favour of numerous private states.

Starting from an examination of the need for governments of different scope, the following looks at some of the major theories concerning the optimal size of different types of governance, heavily informed from public economic theory. In doing so, it is hoped to overcome some of the shortcomings of theories of this sort, but also to provide some steps towards resolving what are often well-meaning, but extremely flawed, perspectives in political theory and voluntary association.

Read more... )

Cross-posted at the usual suspects.
abomvubuso: (Groovy Kol)
[personal profile] abomvubuso
There was a time when the US used to send its top diplomats to do tours around Central and East Europe almost every month. Once Poland, Hungary and the rest of those post-Soviet-bloc countries joined NATO and the EU, the US kind of adopted a "mission accomplished" approach, and turned its focus to Asia.

Now through Mike Pompeo's tour in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, the US is giving signs of a return to the region. The official intention is to fill the vacuum that remained after America's withdrawal and allowed Russia and China to step in. Pompeo's main messages were about the dangers of Russian gas and Chinese technology, especially in countries with questionable reputation, corruption-wise (seen as a vessel for creeping Russian and Chinese influence), and the long-term repercussions of the erosion of the rule of law. The US diplomatic surge on EU's eastern flank comes at a time when the US and EU are closer than ever to an agreement for new sanctions against Russia because of that incident with the detained Ukrainian ships in the Sea of Azov.

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asthfghl: (Слушам и не вярвам на очите си!)
[personal profile] asthfghl
Turkish president Recep Erdogan received his New Year's present from US president Trump a bit early last month, when the latter announced the US withdrawal from Syria. This basically gave Erdogan a blank check to spread his control over Syrian territories east of the Euphrates.

The information first leaked on some US media citing White House sources, and then it was officially confirmed by Trump himself in his fave way, a boast on Twitter:

"We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency."

A bit later, he also released a video where he was praising the "historic victories" over ISIS, achieved by the "great young people" who were about to return home. This was followed by a series of re-tweets of Trump praise that he had heard on Fox News. Then his speaker Sarah Sanders didn't help make things any clearer, as she claimed the US had defeated the "territorial Caliphate", and was entering the "second stage of the campaign", while the victories against ISIS in Syria were "not a signal for disbanding the global coalition and ending its campaign".

WH sources have told Reuters that the evacuation of the US Department of State staff from East Syria had already begun, and the military withdrawal would take 60-100 days. Others have alleged this could happen even faster. Officially, the US military presence in Syria numbers about 2000, but recent WaPo reveals show that it could actually be double that.

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