/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

First things first, the White House just rescinded the "state sponsor of terrorism" designation for Cuba, admitting that Cuba hasn't actually sponsored any terrorism, and I didn't want to make an entire thread just for this one item.

How's that re-legitimization of private property working out for Cuba lately?

>>486890
That's great. I guess the terror-list is now a slightly less ridicules politicized contrivance.

>>486895
>How's that re-legitimization of private property working out
It's not, since the US tightened the blockade-screw.

>>486897
>It's not, since the US tightened the blockade-screw.
Why can't they trade with China?

>>486910
>Why can't they trade with China?
I'm not sure that they aren't. However Cuba is a tiny Island with a tiny economy, it's probably rarely worth it for the Chinese mega container ships to make the detour. It probably would be cheaper to send stuff from the US by Airplane.

I think Cuba is trading with Russia tho. The Russians are also rumored to have parked a attack submarine in Cuba.

Cuba joining BRICS might enable them to trade more easily, maybe that fixes administrative hurdles.

what if the fire isnt real and its just a hoax?

>>486800
Appealing for Climate change action based on Wildfires never going to work. Australia is the most climate change denying country on earth and is getting razed to the ground by wild fires are rapidly increasing frequency, once a several decade event became every decade, now its down to every 3-5 years.
Reality people still don't take it seriously because the mass of propaganda is still Climate Change denialism, and Liberals the world over, only pay lip service to Climate change while functionally engaging in denialism with shit like Greenwashing and Carbon Capture and EVs. So they lose credibility.
Average Conservative sees Wildfires and they think "They happen all the time and it was probably the fault of environmentalists stopping backburning", Average conservative doesn't question why it used to snow 3ft in their childhood, but Winter fells like a stiff Autumn now with not a hint of snow anywhere. They don't think.
There will be no climate change action at all, Trump only matters in that he's an even more active environmental vandal than most and will fuck up the last National Parks with grazing and drilling.

Normally wouldn't give a shit what Mel Gibson thinks, except I've been thinking, for the past year, that perhaps I judged him too harshly in the past and might owe him an apology.

>>486652
Even US-backed forces have to fulfill diversity quotas..

>>486659
They don't call it DEISIS for nothing.

>>486662
lol
>>486659
What does D and E stand for ?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/1/several-feared-dead-as-truck-crashes-into-new-orleans-crowd-report
Blowback coming really fast these days.

Since overthrowing the Syrian government has thrown Syria into chaos, the Syrian arsenal is now being sold off on the black market.

That means that Hezbollah is now able to buy weapons at a steep discount.

>>486775
>A lot of people seem to think that knowing how to solve advanced algebra equations without a calculator is more important than learning how to do basic home reapir.
Most of the blame for that goes towards industry that pushed for a throw-away culture. We could go back to repair culture, but you have to bully the industry to make stuff that can be fixed.

>Ive been saying that our popular culture plateaued in the mid-late 1980s.
>The technology, fashion, music, and media graphics.
Yeah that's probably caused by neoliberal economics. Everything had to go through the comercialism funnel, and new ideas rarely make it past that. Also the increasing rate of exploitation meant that people have less time and are more exhausted which isn't helping creativity.
Whether that also explaines stagnation in the "warbiz" I don't really know.

>Wrong. What is happening is the other way around.
I guess that's somewhat true, but if we invested into brain-science maybe we could figure out how to cure what ever brain-damage causes the neocons to drive towards human extinction through war. In that case scientific advances would lead to less militarism.

>>486783
>I guess that's somewhat true, but if we invested into brain-science maybe we could figure out how to cure what ever brain-damage causes the neocons to drive towards human extinction through war. In that case scientific advances would lead to less militarism

Why do people think moral compasses are neurocognitively created?
Morality isn't something that's genetic. It's a transcendent force.

But,if you want my guess, methinks some of them are influenced by demonic entities.

>>486784
>Why do people think moral compasses are neurocognitively created?
>Morality isn't something that's genetic. It's a transcendent force.
I'm setting the bar quite a bit lower than a "moral compass" , not trying to make your own species go extinct that's a reasonable ask.

The neocons baiting nuclear war, that's a behavior, like learning the guitar or reading a book are also behaviors. The brain causes behaviors. I have no idea what's causing neocon brains to malfunction. I'm quite puzzled why you jump to the conclusion it would be genetic, it doesn't seem very likely that evolution would select for "deliberate self-extinction genes".

Anyway i didn't intent for this to be entirely serious, i don't really expect anybody to medicate neocons away. Maybe people eventually grow tired of all the bullshit and they get thrown into a lava pit.

>But,if you want my guess, methinks some of them are influenced by demonic entities.
And the demonic entities are what ? Think tanks that come up with these schemes ?

>>486628
>All he has done is stoke among the public needless hostility against biologists.

Maybe If your folks degree aren't the most useless among the STEM fields people would be less hostile toward your people

>>486812
Curious how you came to that conclusion anon.

>>486743
The highlighted part is the bit I found more interesting.

>>486744
>Maybe we learn from this and categorize back-doors and all similar types of access-schemes as a conspiracy to engage in espionage.
This presumed that "we" are in control of US gov't policy as opposed to a cabal of power-grubbing creeps who are extra paranoid because they are actively committing atrocities which people will want revenge for.

>>486717
Israel is an american satellite, they aren't pushing shit nor are they trying to "cannibalize" the USA because the moment the USA stop existing or lose their hegemony it's the moment Israel is completely fucked as nobody wants to cover their dumb asses including most jews.

>>486761
>Israel is an american satellite, they aren't pushing shit nor are they trying to "cannibalize" the USA because the moment the USA stop existing or lose their hegemony it's the moment Israel is completely fucked as nobody wants to cover their dumb asses including most jews.
Eh, it's not like the US can take back all the money and weapons if the US collapses.

>>481541
it is happening again

GameStop trading at $71 a share. Up from $10 two weeks ago.

>>481560
What do you reckon this is ?
Speculators playing around ?

US credit card defaults at highest level since Great Recession

Credit card defaults in the US reached their highest level since the 2008 financial crash during the first nine months of 2024, according to figures compiled by BankRegData and cited in a recent Financial Times article. Credit card lenders were also forced to write off $46 billion in seriously delinquent debt balances through September 2024, up 50 percent from the same period the year before, and the highest level in 14 years.

These figures reveal widespread social distress and economic insecurity in America’s supposedly booming economy. With rising expenses and stagnant wages, tens of millions of workers and lower middle class people have been forced to rely on their credit cards to pay for food, gas, medicine, clothing and other living costs. Hit by elevated interest rates, they have not been able to make their credit card payments.

“High-income households are fine, but the bottom third of US consumers are tapped out,” said Mark Zandi, the head of Moody’s Analytics, told the Financial Times. “Their savings rate right now is zero.”

After government stimulus checks allowed borrowers to pay down their credit card debts in 2020 and 2021, credit card debt has risen by a combined $270 billion in 2022 and 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It surpassed the $1 trillion mark in mid-2023 and reached $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2024. The average American household credit card debt was $10,757 in the third quarter, according to personal finance web site Wallet Hub.

“Nearly half of Americans still have debt from the holidays from last year,” said WalletHub writer and analyst Chip Lupo, adding that a third of respondents to his organization’s survey reported they would spend less this year on holiday shopping.

Unable to pay off their balances in full, borrowers sent the credit card companies $170 billion in interest payments in 2024. As of last Friday, the average credit card interest rate was 20.35 percent, according to Bankrate.

These loan shark rates have allowed the biggest credit card lenders—Visa, Mastercard and Capital One—to reap record profits. Visa, the largest, booked $19.7 billion in 2024 profits (up 16 percent from FY 2023) and enjoyed a 55 percent profit margin (up from 52 percent in FY 2023); 2024 revenues shot up 10 percent to $35.9 billion.
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I haven't watched developments closely since the last post ITT, but apparently the local PSL is getting involved:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DDgQA6nuChS/
On Tuesday, Rockdale county commissioners’ outrageous plan to silence and prevent community members and activists from speaking on the #BioLab chemical explosion during public comment at the Board of Commissioners meeting failed.

In the end, following disruptions of the Board’s Chairman by PSL organizers who demanded that there will be no business as usual and that residents be allowed to speak, the commissioners were forced to hear public comments on BioLab.

These politicians who are in the pockets of corporations like BioLab are protecting the criminal executives who put profits over people’s health and lives. But working class people across are getting organized to fight back.

We are demanding that BioLab be held accountable for its crime of poisoning tens of thousands of people at a minimum. The demand is simple: SHUT DOWN BIOLAB! Join us at the next community rally this Saturday, Dec 14, 3PM in Conyers: 901 N Main St NW.

>>486323
>We are demanding that BioLab be held accountable for its crime of poisoning tens of thousands of people at a minimum.
Basic demand but correct.
>The demand is simple: SHUT DOWN BIOLAB!
IMHO this is a bad play, the better play likely is demanding that the thing be converted into a worker cooperative.

The thing likely spewed toxic shit because it was mismanaged, not because it's a fundamentally bad design on a technical level.

The capitalist who owns this likely can't pay for all the damages, so converting it into a cooperative could be part of a deal for dropping some of the damage claims. The workers do not have an incentive to mismanage the plant because they live in the area that would get contaminated, and therefor it'll run smoothly.

A Status Coup video with recent developments, clips from a hearing where East Palestine residents also spoke. Scott Smith says the results of his chemical testing showed the "highest level of dioxins that he has seen."

>>486324
IMO setting goals high is the best approach… although when you consider that "shut down BioLab" is essentially a euphemism for "revoke BioLab's business license," it sounds like a pretty modest proposal. I kind of wonder how easy it will be to even clean the plant up at this point, too, with this many instances. Working with chlorine isn't very safe in general, is it easy to clean a contaminated plant enough to maintain even a baseline level of safety after repeated fires? Idk.

>>486325
>I kind of wonder how easy it will be to even clean the plant up at this point, too, with this many instances. Working with chlorine isn't very safe in general, is it easy to clean a contaminated plant enough to maintain even a baseline level of safety after repeated fires? Idk.
If the hole thing is a write-off, why are they pushing back against political pressure ?

Not directly related, but there was another explosion at a totally different plant in Camilla, Georgia on December 27th.

An explosion at a Tyson Foods poultry plant occurred in the early hours of December 27, sending shockwaves throughout the plant and affecting workers and their families. A scene of chaos followed the explosion as workers scrambled to find safety. About 1,600 people work in the plant.

Initial investigations suggest that the blast originated in a boiler room, although the exact cause is still under investigation by local authorities and occupational safety officials.

One person was killed, a 61-year-old woman whom the Miller County coroner’s office identified as Bajarma Batozhapov. The Las Vegas woman was sleeping in a truck when the explosion occurred, having traveled to the Camilla plant in search of work. Her husband, a truck driver, was not hurt.

Several other workers sustained injuries; some were treated on-site, while others required hospitalization. The Tyson Foods plant dominates the town’s economy, which has a population of only 5,000 people.

Katoria Peterson and her grandfather, Larry Thompson, live across from the plant, told WTXL they’d never seen anything like this before.

Peterson told the station, “It was a loud boom, and then you see the flames. It was about five to ten minutes of burning. And then the ambulance and everybody left, but it burned for a few minutes.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/03/cd54-j03.html

How often does this happen without cameras?

>>486591
Probably a lot.

>>486585
death penalty

>>486585
probably more humane for the law to allow for them to kill violent prisoners then torture them like this

>>486715
>I never said their lives matter more
>You literally just keep putting words in my mouth.
my bad
in my defense, what you wrote could easily be interpreted that way.

>But killing a fucking king and killing a peasant in the midevil ages are going to have two different outcomes in society because of how society is
If we are being pedantic here there never were "Kings", there were violent thugs that terrorized societies and imposed their will on it by force. They gave them selves silly titles. Many of these were eventually sentenced to death by the people for their crimes against the people.

The sub-text i read into this that you want people to accept absurd "terror-politics" because you imagine people once accepted absurd aristocratic privileges. People didn't accept it, it wasn't "the way society was". It was never more than a violent imposition. That's one of the reasons we call it the dark age. Maybe future historians will look at our time as another mini dark age because of the violence and political repression that has been committed under the pretext of "countering terror threats" There is some irony too because when you look at what the self-declared "kings" did to accumulate power, like plundering the neighboring villages, that probably would be considered terrorism today and "killing the king" would be considered legitimate self-defense.

>You are the fucking kind of person that would literally argue in the middle of a war zone.
I admit i don't understand this expression, obviously people still argue during wars. But it's giving me an idea. Because you juxtaposed war and arguing. Putting arguing over war is basically what diplomacy is.
We could invert it thusly:
<You are the fucking kind of person that would literally conduct battle operation in the middle of a diplomacy zone.
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>>486716
>terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.
The population wasn't subjected to a climate of fear as a result of that CEO getting shot. So by that definition Luigi or whoever else killed that CEO wasn't terroristing.

>Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.
This part of the definition has a bunch of ideological loopholes.

For example by creating a dichotomy of political left/right terrorism it kinda implies an exemption for politically centrist terrorism.
It also neglects counter-revolutionary terrorism, which has been like 90% of all terrorism historically. Also transnational terrorism is omitted, for example that would be corporations that hire mercenaries to drive subsistence farmers off their land for the purpose of land grabbing.

They get credit for including the possibility that terrorism can be caused by "state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police." Most definitions you find omit that.

I have seen way worse definitions, but this one still isn't viable. You can still use this for
<it's not terrorism when we do it, it's terrorism when they do it.

>>486716
>He did exactly that to scare the bourgeoisie class.
I'm not sure i understand, terrorism is defined by bourgeois fears ? Sorry but that seems like an insane definition.

> Do you think ISIS gives a shit that anyone calls them a terrorist? They don't give a fuck. They are doing the right thing in their minds.
I don't think ISIS is a good blue-print for much of anything. 3/4 of the time they act as mercenary fighters that get funded by larger powers for proxy wars. Why on earth would you imply people should look towards isis for inspiration ?

>What is morally bank rupt is that you want to position yourself as morally superior to your college peers while not accepting the dirty undertones of real revolutionary acts.
This feels like you're trying to give marketing advice for a revolution.

I'm not sure what you are aiming for, but i do kinda want to see people trying to create a political party, that is called the "terrorism party" It would short-circuit so many propaganda smear campaigns.

>terrorism
Funny enough, Dimitri Lascaris just did a video on this. In the context of state-proscribed "terrorist" organizations now controlling Syria.

>>486720
>I'm not sure i understand, terrorism is defined by bourgeois fears ? Sorry but that seems like an insane definition.

No you retard words are defined by humans objective of your political disposition.

>I don't think ISIS is a good blue-print for much of anything. 3/4 of the time they act as mercenary fighters that get funded by larger powers for proxy wars. Why on earth would you imply people should look towards isis for inspiration ?


I don't think you have the fucking brain capacity to be having a conversation at this level, frankly and I think that you need to fuck off because holy fuck you are annoying as piss and dumb as a sack of potatoes.

>This feels like you're trying to give marketing advice for a revolution.

I'm not sure what you are aiming for, but i do kinda want to see people trying to create a political party, that is called the "terrorism party" It would short-circuit so many propaganda smear campaigns.


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>>486673
I think this was a government psyop. They just needed a good reason to go hard against the liberals

>>486675
So the man was shot multiple times and almost died out of some sneaky scheme to give himself more power?

>>486676
That wasn't my thinking when I wrote the OP but I guess it's subjective.