Really sad, and also a testament of the fact that as much as we think we try to be indipendent, eventually once somebody starts putting enough pressure on the people around you (and you turn from "a neutral customer" to "a liability") the path to isolation is very short.
This. When the US government decides to label you “terrorist organization”, it means that you are now targeted by the most potent state actor on earth, which will go as far as blowing up weddings in your neighborhood to stop you.
So unless you're willing to become a literal terrorist organization and die with a bunch of your friends in an uphill battle (not technically unwinnable, but at least lopsided and the casualties will be tremendous), the only option is to cave.
> So unless you're willing to become a literal terrorist organization and die with a bunch of your friends in an uphill battle (not technically unwinnable, but at least lopsided and the casualties will be tremendous), the only option is to cave.
Honestly, the internet has made folks so lazy. It's very ironic that the most "revolutionary" act taken recently (January 6) was actually done by the far-right. Yeah: if you believe in something, you need to actually get out of the basement, grab a gun, and storm the Capitol. And if you take it all the way, a lot of people are going to die. That's how revolution works. Unless we're all LARPing?
But Americans/Westerners (left, right, center) are way too comfortable for a revolution, so for people that are, or have been, actual dissidents (think Arab Spring, or IRA, or ETA, or whatever), this is all just a big meme.
If everyone is so comfortable, what do we need a revolution for? Wasn't that the goal of civilization? If someone doesn't like civilization, why try to bring it down? There's plenty of places on earth you can go to live without it.
Most people are comfortable, but not everyone. At least, comfortable in the sense that they are not willing to die for their country/people at the moment, and aren't personally affected by most of the bad things their government does. In the US at least, things like high food/gas prices or unemployment/healthcare issues are just one of many other issues, and aren't causing most people so much pain that they are willing to pick up a weapon and give up their lives. Or even peacefully protest.
People that had enough money that they weren't paying attention to the price of groceries before Trump, probably still don't care all that much now. I might eat out less, but that's not worth abandoning my family or dying over to me.
The kind of problems you're describing certainly don't sound like things you should "pick up a weapon and give up your life" for, so this doesn't seem to add an argument in favour of "revolution".
Or maybe people realize that revolutions, and the civil war that almost always ensue, are a very high price to pay, for a very uncertain reward.
Talking about the Arab spring, look what it lead to:
- Egypt and Tunisia are again being lead by a dictator, it's just a younger one.
- Libya is destroyed, lacks leadership and conflict could resume any day should Haftar decide he doesn't like the result of the upcoming (but long postponed) elections.
- Syria has suffered the worst civil war of the decade and the situation is still very brittle. It looks like Jolani could bring redemption to Syria, but with the Israeli playing around with fire it could also collapse any day. And that's assuming Jolani doesn't turn into a dictator himself: we're not talking about someone with a good track record of honoring his promises (which is a good thing when the promise is made to ISIS or Al Qaeda, but still).
Jan 6, didn't work, not entirely sure why you bring this up as a blueprint for anyone. It was an actual LARP and as Bruno Macaes wrote resembled a bunch of people making it to the end of a videogame, then running around confused in costumes and going for a drink.
What did work for them was pouring money into the election system and party apparatus, media, the courts and then taking control over politics
What worked was getting people stirred up to the point that some would turn to violence. Even now a majority of their party believe they were justified.
That helped them take control of politics. And so that tactic will surely turn people to violence again. The violence itself may not be effective but the level of outrage is.
> Jan 6, didn't work, not entirely sure why you bring this up as a blueprint for anyone.
Might want to let the Democrats know that. According to them the government was >this< close to being overthrown. Which is funny, because if anyone truly believes that, we don't stand a chance against pretty much any country on earth.
Then you weren't paying attention. Watch the videos of the mob inside the building. If they hadn't been led away from the senate chambers by capitol police [1], we'd be having a very different conversation right now. Did you think the American History X extras leading the pack were just there to see the sights? Come on, man.
What conversation do you think we would be having? Would we be debating the laws that January 6 attendees are passing in the chambers? What alternate outcome do you think was likely, or even possible?
I don't know a single prominent Democrat who thought they had a chance of succeeding, just that they even tried was enough for them to be unpatriotic cultists
Ya'll don't realize what the actual plan was. It wasn't to use the mob to overthrow the government, it was to use the mob to delay the certification of the vote. Which they did, but it wasn't for long enough. They were going to overthrow the Constitution by just deciding for themselves they won despite the votes. And they're in power again, so they're very likely going to do exactly that next time.
The whole plan after the judicial effort failed (using the courts to overturn the vote outcome) and the individual shakedowns failed (calling up governors and demanding they change the vote outcome) was to pressure senators to throw out the state certificates, kick them back to the states, and have the states decide that Trump won instead. They had a whole slate of fraudulent shadow certificates with Trump as the winner ready for Senators to certify. That 10000% would have worked because there are more red states than blue, so they would have just picked Trump over Biden.
But Pence refused to go along with the plan. So the mob was the last ditch effort to convince the senators. Its purpose was not to kill the senators but to delay the vote to give more time to affect the influence campaign. So that plan was also very very close to working because they did delay the vote. It only didn't work because Mitch McConnell refused to end the session and kept everyone around to complete the certification of the vote on January 7. But the fact that it happened on January 7 means that the plan very nearly worked.
You need to look at J6 as a buffer overflow attack. There are no instructions for what to do if the J6 vote is disrupted by a mob, the hope was that but putting the country in that illegal state would allow for arbitrary instructions to be executed.
> ~~2k~~ 250 unarmed people ~~broke into work~~ mysteriously allowed in are looking for you, while dozens of trained armed police officers surround you, it would probably be something you think about a whole lot
The one person who died violently was one of the rioters, an unarmed woman who was shot by Capitol Police. Four other rioters died of natural causes around the time of the riot.
An unarmed woman climbing through a smashed window with a capital police officer on the other side, sidearm drawn, warning her not to advance, in the middle of a crowd storming the capitol building while a gallows stood outside,
waiting for the crowd to bring out a member of congress or the Vice President.
> * U.S. representative Markwayne Mullin [currently head of DHS], a witness to Babbitt's attempted breach, said that Byrd "didn't have a choice" but to shoot, and that his action "saved people's lives".* [0]
The shooting was deemed “lawful and within department policy”.
>The shooting was deemed “lawful and within department policy”.
I do not disagree with this at all. I only mentioned her death as contrast to the usual rhetoric of how the mob at the Capitol "killed" Officer Sicknick and others (who are always mysteriously unnamed).
It's hard to reconcile a conspiracy theory that protestors were allowed to storm the Capitol with the fact that Ashli Babbitt was shot on video for refusing calls to stop breaching a barricade.
Police and security trying to manage a dynamic situation with minimum loss of life by not immediately gunning down quasi-violent crowd is a more reasonable conclusion.
Regardless, 100% of which is Trump's fault for incitement.
alright but the point still stands? people were yelling out names carrying zipties... they broke windows hit police officers and a woman was killed while crawling through a broken window?
if that happened to me at work it would be something I talked about all the time, there are a thousand ways it could have gotten even worse
Jan 6 was an attempt to convince the American public that the 2020 election was stolen, and to keep Trump in power. Today, more people believe the 2020 election was stolen than on January 7th, Trump is in power despite causing an insurrection, and all the J6 insurrectionists have been pardoned. They’re even setting up to pay them “restitution” out of your pocket.
You can be the judge as to whether it succeeded or victory was deferred, but violence definitely won in the end.
Or sue, or organize and protest, or win the next election. Not every government problem warrants revolution, and not needing to revolt is not a failing of the people.
> Americans/Westerners (left, right, center) are way too comfortable for a revolution
A better read is that the situation for most Americans and "Westerners" whatever that means, is that things are good enough that the people do not see value in revolution, or they are able to adjust the government's course enough through elections, redress, courts and other political feedback mechanisms.
They were terrorists. Every single participant in J6 was a terrorist and deserves the full fury of the United States of America to treat them as such. They were also attempting to assassinate the VP. 1500+ terrorist and failed assassination attempts.
It's a shame we went so light on them. Care bear punishment. Sweetheart deals, and then pardoned by a man that literally, factually, supports terrorism against the USA and supporting the attempted assassination of his VP.
> violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion
> especially: violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
Now, which actor in this story does this sound like? The webhoster exercising their speech rights or the apparatus bombing schools and weddings in order to get their way?
Not arguing in favor of banning A/I, but the US administration claims A/I email services were used to coordinate sabotage actions. I mean, that's as stupid as saying telephone networks or paper sheets were used to coordinate sabotage actions.
Furthermore, the noblogs.org platform (previously hosted by A/I) is used to host a lot of politically-motivated content, including news and statements by various resistance groups across the world, which of course is considered terrorist by the USA, but legally should fall under freedom of the press.
It sounds like that until you realize that the baseline behavior is for countries that are not in NATO to be subservient to NATO. So, as you can see, it is the governments and populations that are coercing and intimidating themselves and NATO is helpfully returning them to normalcy.
I am biased here, as somebody who grew up next to an American military base in Iceland and had a pro-communist upbringing and learned to hate NATO (as well as the American imperialist agenda as a whole) from an early age.
I don‘t see a difference. I was told this when I was a child, and as I’ve grown up and seen more of the world (including by immigrating to the USA) I am more convinced then ever. In my eyes, there is no meaningful difference between USA and NATO.
There clearly is. Because NATO isn’t getting involved in America’s idiotic war of aggression and Trump is very upset about this. They’ve spent years being very upset about every other NATO nation’s spending, too.
So even if you don’t believe it, the U.S. clearly cares about NATO member behaviour and therefore recognizes a distinction.
NATO Chief, Rutte: "Europe is a platform of power projection for the United States."
Of course, the local political cover story in Italy is that these bases are 'only used for logistics, never direct attacks', but that's just a cover story to deflect any retribution Italy may receive from Iran and its allies, for Italy's participation in the US' heinous acts, and to keep the internal messaging politically correct within Italys' current circus ...
This is just posturing to avoid retribution. Everyone in Europe knows that NATO bases have been used almost every day since April 2003 by the US to commit its crimes.
Lets also admit that NATO-aligned bases in Poland and Germany are also essential to the US' crimes.
See also, Camp Darby near Pisa, actively supporting NATO and U.S. European and African Command operations.
They have been involved in pretty much all previous USA "idiotic wars of aggression", so while it may become useful in the future to make a distinction, it's also fair to appreciate that this distinction doesn't make a lot sense to a whole bunch of people.
The one time NATO was called on to defend a member was the U.S. asking for help after 9/11. And nobody but the UK followed them into Iraq, shortly after the Afghanistan war began. So there’s certainly strong history of NATO not just doing whatever the U.S. is up to.
I recall this time as a very strong refusal of the above miscategorization of NATO. Bush and his cronies had a whole “you’re with us or against us” tantrum when NATO didn’t follow. I think Americans even did some proto-Trump trolling with “freedom fries” and other nonsense.
This is simply false history. Every NATO member went to Afghanistan with the USA. Even Iceland despite not having a traditional army participated in the invasion.
As for Iraq: UK, Poland, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark provided soldiers to partake in the illegal invasion. Even Iceland participated in the propaganda war by putting them self on the farcical “Coalition the willing” along plenty of other NATO countries.
It is very hard to see NATO as anything other then an extension of USA‘s imperial ambitions. It is as if in the year 1986 you would look at the Warsaw pact and claim this is a pact of independent nations and has nothing to do with the interest of the Soviet Union.
Afghanistan: Every NATO member went because of article 5. The Taliban explicitly refused to comply when requested to hand over Bin Laden. This is as clear cut casus belli as it gets. And then Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, Azerbaijan and even Mongolia participated. How are those NATO? How is Mongolia even aligned with the US or under their influence in any way?
Iraq: Japan, Australia, Nicaragua, Philippines, Ukraine, Georgia... And I'm leaving like a dozen non-NATO countries, aligned AND unaligned with the US, that took part in the invasion or post-invasion missions. I don't agree with it, and while there were numerous lies to sell the invasion, equally numerous countries were unhappy about UNSCR 1441 being treated like toilet paper by the UN itself. Moreover, actual major NATO countries like Germany or France were diametrically opposed to the invasion and told the US to take a hike.
When you hold a hammer everything looks like a nail.
You are basically saying that supporting American imperialism is not exclusive to NATO. And I don‘t dispute that.
I also think that history has been far too kind to France’s supposed opposition to the illegal invasion. France stood firmly inside a military alliance who’s members broke international law and disregarded human rights. If France and Germany were serious about their supposed opposition to that war they would have at least threatened to withdraw. But such actions were never even considered. France and Germany were perfectly happy to allow American Imperialist agenda to materialize, even though most other NATO countries took a more active role in the crimes.
> You are basically saying that supporting American imperialism is not exclusive to NATO. And I don‘t dispute that.
No, I'm saying that states are relatively free to agree or disagree with the US, at least until president 47. France faced no consequences, and countries like Nicaragua are on the opposite end of the geopolitcal spectrum with no particular interest in a war on the other side of the world.
Because whether Iraq or Afghanistan bear the historical hallmarks of imperialism is up to debate, especially with Afghanistan with clear casus belli, stated war objectives, and no intention to annex or directly control/govern the territory. The actual number of countries supporting either is a good metric on that; I think Afghanistan war had a much wider support for a reason. Putting both conflicts together is simplistic, if not disingenuous.
>France stood firmly inside a military alliance who’s members broke international law and disregarded human rights.
The USSR stood inside an economic and arguably military alliance with literal Hitler until 41. The USSR fed the Wehrmacht, fueled their tanks, and provided metals for their war machine. Mentioning this since you already mentioned you're on the left side of the spectrum. Can we call the USSR as subservient to Third Reich imperialism?
Breaking an alliance simply because an ally does something you don't agree with, while morally commendable, it is also simplistic. France didn't pull out, like nobody pulled out when France was committing atrocities in Algeria, or when Turkey invaded Cyprus; no Warsaw Pact countries left during Hungary 56, Albania did leave because of Prague 68 but only because of it being the last straw on their already strained relations, like CSTO countries aren't pulling out because of Russian imperialism in Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova. Armenia is trying to pull out only because the CSTO wasn't there when it was needed, that is, when the treaty doesn't address its very own points.
Alliances are born out of self-interest, not out of moral purity or consistency.
> Can we call the USSR as subservient to Third Reich imperialism?
Yes we can, we should, and we do. People on the left (aside from actual Stalinist) do admit that this alliance was bad, kind of like how liberals admit how the British government was wrong to pursue the strategy of appeasement.
What makes this different though is that both Stalin and the British government (under new leadership albeit) reversed course and fought and defeated fascism. We have not seen France nor Germany do this. To the contrary.
> Alliances are born out of self-interest.
This is the world we live in, but we don‘t have to accept it, and we can and should pressure our leaders into making the moral choice. Perhaps a better world is possible, and perhaps blaming our leaders for moral failures is our way to a better world.
I think your personal beliefs fit reality if you ignore the parts of reality that strongly refute it. That kind of mentality is getting popular these days. I'll leave you to it.
Which parts of my “personal believes” are wrong? And maybe this mentality is getting more popular because it is true. People are tired of being fed propaganda for Western imperialism and capitalism more broadly.
My last attempt to convince you: Ask your self, why did Iceland not vote in favor of a ban on nuclear weapons at the UN general assembly 2016? Why has Iceland still not signed and ratified the treaty? Why has no NATO member done so? Why are Austria and Ireland one of very few European nations to do so?
Aside from France and the UK, it is hard to find an answer here which does not include American imperialist agenda.
I think it's true that NATO is for most practical purposes an instrument of the US. But it's also true that there's a distinction between NATO and the US, and some other NATO members do have influence on NATO policy - most notably Turkey, which really complicated things for the US in relation to the Syrian civil war and the Azerbaijan - Armenia conflict.
> When the US government decides to label you “terrorist organization”
We really need laws removing the power from the President to unilaterally declare organizations terrorists. At least not long term without their ability to fight the designation in court.
(Same for tariffs. There is no case where one needs emergency power to tariff or sanction anything. If you need to conduct urgent police action, court-ordered asset freezes are plenty.)
American here. This is a non-starter. Nobody does it. And war is a domain where leading on moral authority requires firepower to back it.
We don’t agree on what does and doesn’t constitute a war crime, the term seems to cover almost all war as well as actions taken by every global and regional power in almost every military action they’ve each taken.
We need reform. But pretending we can legally ban war is silly.
Nobody is asking you to legally ban war. Just start complying with your obligations under international law to prosecute your own local war criminals.
The USA is the worlds #1 funder of terrorism and its #1 fighter of illegal, criminal wars. Until the American people start demanding justice for the crimes for which their state is responsible, we are all going down the drain with the USA and its war criminals.
You can’t do this when nobody else does, and particularly not when pretty much every act of war in the world is alleged to be a war crime by activists. In practice, all war appears to be illegal under international law. That makes the law untenable, which may be part of why it’s being ignored.
> Until the American people start demanding justice for the crimes for which their state is responsible
I agree that we need a framework limiting the U.S. military under U.S. law. But someone needs to propose something realistic.
If you're going to dance around pretending to be the only world power, you have to set the example you want to see of the other 'lesser nations' which are subject to your war criminals' purposes.
>every act of war in the world is alleged to be a war crime by activists.
So what you're really saying is that warriors should always be senior to activists.
This problem runs deep.
>I agree that we need a framework limiting the U.S. military under U.S. law.
No, I'm saying that the U.S. needs to stop being a criminal nation beholden only unto itself.
We’re in a globalized world with aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. The fallacy of thinking a major economy (or significant nation) can decouple from any expansionist regime is a lesson I thought we learned from the first half of the last century.
The Russian weapons (at various points) were missing critical components, maintenance, fuel, etc.
The US weapons appear to have functioned as specified, but the commander-in-chief appears to know marginally less about the Iranian strategic situation than I personally do. And this is not a boast, I have zero military training and only follow the occasional commentator like Anders Puck Nielsen and read the odd Wikipedia page when something surprising comes up in the news or a comment, and pay enough attention to the news and comments to be capable of surprise, it's just that I asked someone around 20 years ago if the War On Terror would go to Iran given all the obvious threads leading there, and they told me it would go down basically as we saw it going down this year: very expensive, no real progress, strategic failure no matter what military victories happen.
> US weapons are near useless due to prolonged institutional corruption, just like Russian ones
At invading or achieving any geopolitical objective, yes (though I wouldn’t compare the American military-industrial base to Russia’s). At causing at least as much chaos as sanctions, no.
> you are now targeted by the most potent state actor on earth
Well, it is a mafia. See the international court investigating war crimes is
also targeted by the orange clown-brigade mafia.
> the only option is to cave
Objectively speaking you are correct, but I don't think this has to be the
case. For instance, why is that orange mafia so powerful? That is the thing
that has to be fixed on every level, not just by taking back what their
billionaires stole from us.
> which will go as far as blowing up weddings in your neighborhood to stop you.
And in case the wedding reference wasn't explicit enough, this isn't just Trump, it was also Obama.
It pains me to summon the specter of "both sides" because the Republicans are so much worse. But the majority of national level Democrats aren't inherently good. They are just less bad (and on some issues they can be close to equally as bad).
I don't have a scientific study at hand, but historically many revolutionaries and resistance fighters were family men and women with children who precisely cared for their children's future.
Could someone point me to some background on this whole incident or write a quick one? I don't know who they are or what's going on but it seems important.
The US Republican party has been inventing an increasingly elaborate alternate reality fiction in order to convince their voters to keep voting for policy positions that obviously work against those voters' own interests. One component of this alternate reality is a fictional terrorist organization called "antifa." They claim that anyone who does not align with their policies is a member of this organization. This allows them to use the anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11 and similar incidents against their political opponents. The US government claims someone who used the A/I service was a member of this fictional organization, and used those anti-terrorism laws to declare that A/I is supporting terrorism and so threatened sanctions against the banks A/I was using. No access to banking means A/I is shutting down.
... But also, there's no organization called antifa, and no antifa members. It's an accusation levied against people the right wing wants to call terrorists.
> But also, there's no organization called antifa, and no antifa members
Left wing extremist groups absolutely exist. The fact that they don't go around wearing matching uniforms with the letters ANTIFA on them doesn't change that.
Your demand for an exact membership list is simply not how extremist organizations work. Terroristic groups have always been fairly amorphous.
Are you going around planning terrorist attacks, vigilante violence, sabotaging critical infrastructure in groups or consistently materially supporting those who do? If so then yes.
If you aren't doing anything even close to this then no you wouldn't be.
You're missing the distinction between individual action (however abhorrent) and an actual terrorist organization. Organizations fund, cultivate, and organize attacks, as opposed to lone wolf terrorists, and therefore are much greater threats.
Timothy Mcveigh (and Terry Nichols) weren't members of a terrorist organization, but they were terrorists. Meanwhile, the ku klux klan has actual initiations, membership, and organizational structure. As do Isis and al qaida.
Yes you are you left out the rest of the sentence:
> … and an actual terrorist organization.
A group is not “an actual terrorist organization”. You’re trying to say all groups committing a crime against the government are actual terrorists organizations, and they all belong to the same organization, Antifa. That’s not the case. If that’s the case then MAGA is also a terrorist organization — at least they have a clear leader.
> You’re trying to say all groups committing a crime against the government are actual terrorists organizations
No, I only said that the ones that are committing terrorist attacks, or similarly serious vigilante violence or sabotaging critical infrastructure in groups are.
Mere "crimes" aren't the same as targeting a powerplant for example.
They said Good and Pretti were domestic terrorists, they were summarily executed, so not really the line you think you're drawing. NSPM-7 makes "politically motivated trespass and civil disobedience" a terrorist act. So it's not like all you have to do to avoid being labelled a terrorist is to just not blow up a power plant. Helping someone ICE knocked down during a protest is enough.
> so not really the line you think you're drawing.
It actually is a pretty good line. I am sure there are some edge cases, but the vast majority of designated terrorist organizations did more than enough to deserve being put on that list.
Yes, I am sure there is "Insert random one off exceptions here" or grey areas, but they would almost certainly win their court cases through the legal system, most of the time the world is pretty good at figuring out who the terrorists are.
Additionally, no, neither Good and Pretti were ever charged with terrorism. You can have your opinions on unfortunate incidents of use of force or officer training failures or about any overly zealous bad apples in our law enforcement personel, but when it comes to official designations the law is actually pretty reasonable here.
Like the anarchist groups that dress in all black and attack people/infra/stores in the middle of the night during riot?
Its hard to say, because political violence is a spectrum and the border is very blurry between being an organized violent rioter and someone engaging in terroristic activities. Both are bad in their own way.
But fundamentally there doesn't seem to be a huge categorical/technical difference between violent rioting and "terroristic" activism other than that terroristic attacks are simply the more serious/worse version of political violence.
EX: Once it gets to the point of targeting actual critical infrastructure, we can call that terrorism, and just getting into a fist fight at a roudy protests wouldn't be (even though both are technically political violence).
That being said, serious riots can cause a lot of damage and even kill people, but the blame is more collectively spread out towards a large group of people, as opposed to a few small groups causing the large amount of damage.
I don't go around dressed in black with anarchist symbols and wearing a mask, attacking people or destroying stores at riots in the middle of the night, no.
I generally stay away from that type of stuff and instead support non-violent, political change that happens within the system and I think those destructive groups are engaging in ineffective and bad tactics.
That's not true. Black Panther was a group. CNT was a group. Even on the other side of the spectrum, KKK and Boogaloo Boys are groups. They all have a name, membership, and identification.
There's no "antifa" organization because antifascism is a concept with different branches of thoughts and practices. Calling antifa an organization is akin to calling "science" an organization. Sure a dictator can arrest millions of people of the "science" terror organization and jail them for their dangerous subversion, but that doesn't make the "science" organization any more real.
> If so, why carry those flags and bandanas on their faces?
The flag just symbols that this person is against Nazis. Nothing more, nothing less.
It can be held by anyone. Here in Germany, we have (amongst others, just a list of what I have seen) religious Christians (often of Lutheran Protestantism), Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, other denominations of Communists, Anarchists, Greens, Social Democrats, Antiimperialists, Zionists and sometimes even the occasional Conservatives showing up under the Antifa banner.
People sharing similar values does not make them an organization. “Why do they wear masks?” because they don’t want nazis to interfere with their jobs, friends and families? You’re asking questions there are very obvious answers to. Seems like a disingenuous comment or you’re unable to do the most basic research
> Why do so called anti fascists act fascistically
Because anyone call themselves anti-fascist, doesn't make them so. While most people who are, well, not fascists probably don't wear or care about the label. You basically confirmed the point of the comment you replied to.
> I’m sure there are supremacists “organizations” that are also hard to pin down.
You mean the ones that aren't organizations? Let's say all the people who are racist in the world, are they an organization? Even all the people who really hate the same "race", if that's all they do, does that make them an org? Is everyone making inane arguments be part of a global group of people working in concert trying to diminish the cognitive capacity and level of discourse in society?
Lots of maga are idealists (even if their ideas are not based in the real world), a number of them are LARPers and a small number are hard core intent on eliminating “the enemy”. To think that no maga member is violent and entertains violent options, is denying reality. Also it’s disingenuous to think they are all out of their minds looking to overthrow the government. Many just have ideals that don’t align with the mainstream.
Its not controversial to say that right wing extremists exist, some of which even commit violence, so your analogy isn't the brilliant whataboutism gotcha that you intended it to be.
So yes, just like some very far right people exist, that can justifiably be called terrorists, so to do some very far left individuals.
No, its not random people on twitter. If you read the statements that were put it, it involved actual terroristic actions of a variety of groups to sabotage critical infrastructure.
Yeah so I said this: "it involved actual terroristic actions of a variety of groups to sabotage critical infrastructure."
I would say that people who are sabotaging powerplants count as being called far left terrorists. And that is both dangerous and bad. It is not just a random person making tweets. Instead its people sabotaging powerplants.
It is silly to dismiss that all as just being on twitter. When power plants are sabotaged that can kill people.
>voting for policy positions that obviously work against those voters' own interests
Delusions of grandeur / superiority complex much? Have you considered a posibility, that these voters just dont agree with your idea of what their best interests are?
>fictional terrorist organization called "antifa."
An organization so fictional, that just a few months back multiple members were convicted in a terrorist attack
“Organization” is a stretch. Criminals? Sure. Violent thugs? Maybe.
The “terrorist” word, however, has been stretched and distorted for political ends. It seems like any crime motivated by political or religious ideology is now “terrorism”, and thus subject to much harsher punishment than those same crimes would normally receive.
By this definition, the Jan 6 rioters were terrorists - yet they received pardons.
The UK's position on Palestine Action is the poster child for this. Completely harmless old people holding placards have been prosecuted under terrorism legislation passed after 9/11. "Terrorist" has become a label applied to anyone opposing any government policy.
We need to roll back all those counter-terrorist laws in every Anglosphere country.
If people could imagine it being used against them, maybe they might understand. Like labeling the Republican party a terrorist organization because they sponsored Jan 6 insurrectionists.
> Antifa defenders just hide behind the fact that the movement is decentralized and leaderless by design
Calling a movement an organization is a fiction, unless you live in an alternate reality. Should i consider you part of an organization because you tweeted a certain hashtag once? Are you the member of a band because you whistled a song on the subway? Are you in the military because you watched a Rambo movie when you were a teen?
For a group who's so bloody-minded about "words have meanings" about certain things, this whole "movement and affiliation and organization are all obviously exactly the same thing" claim is blatantly ridiculous.
When Republicans in the US communicate and sometimes coordinate with totalitarian international leaders, does it mean we get to label the whole thing as a single "international totalitarian organization"?
> Have you considered a posibility, that these voters just dont agree with your idea of what their best interests are?
I mean, there's not really room for debate on it. Voting to take your money away from you and give it to people who already have more money than they could spend in a lifetime is obviously against your interests. But that's what Republican policy does. That's why they have to make increasingly outlandish fictions and fund whole media empires to sell those fictions: to convince people to keep voting against themselves. Between either a billionaire, or the guy down the street making burritos for $8 an hour, it's obvious which one took all of your money. It's the guy with the money. The increasingly elaborate alternate reality exists to hide this from their voters, so they can keep raiding us.
You're just not confronting reality, man. The President of the United States personally called for Gavin Newsom to be arrested in June 2025. In September of that year, in response to Newsom's post calling Gestapo chief Stephen Miller a fascist, Miller went on TV to complain that nobody is allowed to call him a fascist and Newsom was encouraging violence by doing so.
that's what a call a straw-man. NSPM-7 exists and is providing funding and direction for LEOs to target ideologically leftist organizations as tame as BLM or 50501 [0]
this, in combination with the rise of Flock, Clearview, Axon, and other mass-surveillance programs is leading us down an incredibly dark and Orwellian state - something that feels almost ludicrous given how anti-Big-Brother your average person is
They say "every accusation is a confession" yet I'm still continually surprised by accusations that I never thought would turn out to be confessions, turning out to be confessions. Like the Chinese surveillance state.
It seems to be a type of psychological projection - someone harbors an ideal like a surveillance state and assumes everyone else is harboring the same ideal so they accuse them.
I hope the Uyghur genocide accusation doesn't turn out to be a confession.
it's been around for quite a lot longer than that. 1984 was written in 1949 and wasn't strictly inspired by only fascist regimes - there were and still are a lot of similarities (eg ethnosupremaccy, nativism, etc) that have deep roots elsewhere
>With the end of World War II, Project SHAMROCK was established in 1945. The organization was created to accumulate telegraphic data entering and exiting from the United States.[4][22] Major communication companies such as Western Union, RCA Global and ITT World Communications actively aided the project, allowing American intelligence officials to gain access to international message traffic.[23] Under the project, and many subsequent programs, no precedent had been established for judicial authorization, and no warrants were issued for surveillance activities. The project was terminated in 1975.[4]
I was responding to the comment that said "Everyone who disagrees with the GOP is labeled antifa" with two of the many prominent Democrat politicians who haven't been. Should I have listed 50 of them or 100?
"After 2005 we have been constantly pestered by prosecutors and security forces (and even by the Vatican! [4]) asking us to hand over users’ data and identities and we are proud to say we were always able to answer: we are sorry, but we do not have them."
This is tech guys supporting with infra real freedom of speech! even more important nowadays!
jumping to the violent antifa narrative means ignoring a lot of important things.
The US government is labeling anyone who says they're "anti fascist" as terrorists, and shut down a major Italian private email provider using that rationale.
“Autistici/Inventati (A/I) is an Italian hacktivist group that provides Internet communication services for left-wing activists. It was founded in 2001 by members of the anti-globalisation movement…”
I read it as a very long path, but they've finally got to the end. They say this project is 25 years old and carried by the same people. Now they're tired. They've done enough. Someone else has to carry the torch. That's how I read it
And yes, they could relocate to TOR, I2P, use P2P websites, torrents, and only accept cryptos for donations. But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.
>But eventually you'll need to put down a credit card on file to buy a domain, and that domain needs to be owned by somebody.
You don't need to pay to host onion websites (.onion domains are free and have no central registry). Though that of course really limits the possible outreach, because most people are not used to browsing onionsites.
Njalla is not ICANN accredited, so they cannot register domains. They buy them and then lease them out to you.
The issue is, now they are the legal owners and liable for the content of the website, and they also support PayPal, which will absolutely drop them the moment they get sanctioned.
It depends on the tweet. I can browse many profiles of public figures just fine and open their tweets, but tweets from random people (especially if they include media) will bounce me back with a login wall. Remotely NSFW stuff is instant block.
A year ago or so, the ThinkPhone 23 (Snapdragon 8, 2023, a weird "flagship") was available for 229€ new on various retail stores. The phone also supports Mobian/PostmarketOS and the bootloader is unlockable with no adverse effects.
Out of nowhere, it received (along with other older phones) updates up to Android 16.
I wouldn't be surprised if the "sudden" update was just a side effect of Motorola preparing for Graphene to be released on these older phones.
I have a 'long life' Android device (Zebra EM45) that has only recently gotten its Android 15 updates; its committed through Android 16 so I assume it's also waiting on Qualcomm to get its act together and in gear for whatever final patches are required for the QCS5430. IIRC, QCOMM is promising "10 years" on the CPU.
Also note: LCSC sells PY32 Arm Cortex-M0 (PY32C642-C) for half the price (0.06$) of the cheapest CH32 [CH32V005D6U6] (0.11$). Given it has half the RAM, but price matching yields a better chip for less or the same money.
STMicroelectronics also launched the STM32C0 series that is still quite cheap @ ~0.35$/piece.
However, the prices on aliexpress all mishmash so giving a correct quote is impossible as the same chip is sold at wildly different prices by different sellers.
This is a bad analogy by somebody who never played the game. Guitar hero is not harder or easier than guitar, it's just different.
I don't know how to play guitar, yet I can play guitar hero. My friend who plays guitar cannot play guitar hero. I'm not interested in playing guitar and I don't find GH to be a "shortcut" to learn it. In fact, I play the piano and I'm okay like that.
Guitar Hero is a "rhythm game", perhaps calling it a "guitar simulator" is a bit incorrect. A rhythm game is one where you, for example, push buttons in tune with a song, exactly what Guitar hero is.
So you are good at different things. Maybe not at a real guitar but perhaps at reaction times.
I say this as someone who had one of those plug-in guitars but never knew how to use it, hah.
The absurdity is that back in gen-7 we had everything figured out: PS3 used the (free) servers only for matchmaking and all online games were hosted on the consoles themselves. The matchmaking servers are still up and working, and everybody plays with better latency thanks to the prominence of fast fiber.
No internet? Games work offline and support LAN if you have a switch and a couple of consoles.
In 2026 I can still insert any used disc I bought in my ps3 and it will generate a (offline) client-side license for me and let me play and update the game with the disk inside just as a "proof" of still owning it.
If I'm online I'll get patches, else I'll just get served the version on the disc.
(Btw, ps3 also has a print spooler and can natively rip CDs and serve them while acting as a NAS. Or, you can stream games to your psp with remote play. It was truly a "let's cram everything we can inside" era and more like a proper pc with a mediacenter interface)
> PS3 used the (free) servers only for matchmaking and all online games were hosted on the consoles themselves. The matchmaking servers are still up and working
That's not true. Naughty dog shutdown online servers for their ps3 games in 2019:
Seems like ps3 was kind of the sweet spot in terms of decent graphical capability, being allowed to actually own your games, patching, and online capabilities. Given the backlash we’re seeing towards the console giants and their desires to kill off physical media, I wonder if a console with the features mentioned above could be released today with any chance of being competitive? Does anybody know of any projects like that?
I wanted to play an old call of duty game to reminisce about my childhood. I tried Modern Warfare II and Black Ops, but it’s impossible. You get into a game fine, but every single game is just full of cheaters - not just cheaters with fairly benign (yet unfair) things like wall hacks, cheaters that literally change the physics of the server for all users in a completely unworkable way.
I’m not sure whether this is because of the PS3 client-hosted server model, or just poor coding from COD.
Either way, I gave up eventually. It was a brief passing thought one evening; I’m sure if I really wanted to I could figure out a way to play properly. But you can’t just put the disc in and play online, at least in my experience.
The Call of Duty series is one of the worst offenders, effectively every game outside of the last 2 years has so many bad CVEs' and remote code exploits that even opening them on your PC is unsafe. Playing the official matchmaking on even something as recent as Black Ops 3 will have your computer compromised in minutes.
Yet they are still on the store front, they never go on sale. Black Ops 2 has been out for well over a decade and still wants full price for it on Steam & its unsafe.
Playing Call of Duty games on PC is probably the most unsafe thing you can do with your computer, outside of downloading malware itself.
Valve should delist these games from the store if they are effectively unplayable. They should ban Activision from selling new games on the store if they cannot make older titles even remotely safe. It's pure neglect, most of this stuff is fixed by the community with a few lines of code.
> all online games were hosted on the consoles themselves.
FWIW this had its own share of problems, most common being host migration (when the host leaves) and less often, although a bigger problem, is your IP address being given to all players and malicious actors DDOSing the host to make a match unplayable.
I remember PS3 Call of Duty online play being very unreliable compared to Xbox Live. It didn't use relay servers, so the host needed port-forwarding or upnp, which is a dubious situation to be in.
The Italian police wiretapped them for one year without them knowing.
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