CascadeOfLight

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same

For me, in that part, this line

The widespread collectivization of farming in 1930 gave women’s freedom in the rural districts its needed economic base.

was particularly notable, for so succinctly stating the materialist conception of the problem. There can be no equality without economic liberation! Under capitalism, or in this case the last remnants of feudalism, true emancipation for women is impossible because their free reproductive labor is required for the system to function - and even in a country controlled by communists, you cannot simply order that women become equal, you have to create the conditions under which that equality is not only possible but required by the intrinsic logic of the economic system.

"Pol..."

"...DIE"

That's just simply objectively not true, and US global economic sanctions have killed over 28 million people in the last fifty years alone, according to the Lancet.

Soviet people's democracy was radically democratic in a way that no bourgeoise parliamentary democracy ever has been or ever could be. A cursory understanding of the origins and history of US 'democracy' makes it clear how completely absurd the notion is. The government is a committee for managing the affairs of the rich, and it has been since the very first moment that the worthy businessmen of the colonies gathered in each others mansions to split the profits of their stolen lands and conspire on how to keep the working class under control. The people of the United States have never decided a single thing in all of history, and the people of its subjugated colonies and vassal states have never even had the luxury of participating in its sham electoral pageantry.

There has never been a more brutally authoritarian, bloodsoaked nation than the United States, and the USSR is not only not close, is not only the opposite, but its violent dismemberment and the carving up of its society and economy by the US worldwide secret police actually did kill tens of millions of people - 16.9 million excess deaths by 2019 in fact, again according to the Lancet.

Furthermore, here is a map of the 1991 referendum on whether to keep the USSR

As you can see, an overwhelming supermajority of the population were in favor of keeping the Union together. However, Boris Yeltsin's CIA-aided, illegal dissolution of the USSR was forced through with extreme violence, during which over two thousand counter-protesters were killed - including members of the state parliament, the democratically elected body that tried to stop him!

Here's the House of Soviets after Yeltsin ordered tanks to open fire on it after the parliament impeached him and tried to block his illegal dissolution of the Union.

But we were talking about Germany, so did you know? A higher proportion of judges and government ministers were ('former') members of the Nazi party in 1973, than the proportion of active Nazis in the Third Reich in 1943? Did you know the first head of NATO, Adolf Heusinger, was Hitler's Chief of Staff? Or how about that West Germany had a social club for Wehrmacht soldiers that had invaded Africa.

Here's their badge!

The Nazis didn't lose the war except where the USSR got to them, everywhere else they were seamlessly integrated back into the western financial capitalist empire from which they had spawned. Lebensraum was inspired by Manifest Destiny and paid for by British and US banks. And now, US state media gets to come along, point at the results of their brutal political intervention, of their pet reactionaries trying to erase the history of a previous brutal military intervention, and by implication blame it on the nation they destroyed.

Part of it is the effect of the extremely tight field of view when the drone moves, so that the ground appears stationary while the much closer bomb seems to make huge sideways movements even though in reality it's falling almost straight down.

Also, from the positioning of the camera relative to where the bomb falls from, I think there's probably a second 'bomb bay' camera much more closely in line with the bomb with a HUD that they're actually using to line up the shot, and the view we're seeing is purely for recording the result for these propaganda videos - I highly doubt they're just eyeballing it with this much offset from the payload. Plus several of these hit pretty close but by no means dead on, like one or two that land right next to a door or just behind the tailgate, so I believe they're all well within the bounds of possibility. Especially when they're going to pick their best hits to publish.

CNN using 'East German' in the headline as if East Germany still exists and is somehow to blame for this is incredibly cynical.

You know who wouldn't have let this happen? The German Democratic Republic. But its forcible annexation into the Nazi successor state next door, resulting in its flooding with capitalist propaganda even as the quality of life collapsed under shock doctrine, is why there is such a resurgence of far-right politics in the east. Once again, the forcible, antidemocratic destruction of communism in Europe by the US Empire reveals itself as one of the greatest disasters in history.

Well if you need an expert in anti-semitism, Germany is where you'd look

Perhaps there's something unique about being a deposed royal. Most other compradors are disposable, the only thing that matters is what they represent, e.g. Guido, Machado, Eduardo whatever his name was, for Venezuela - no one needs to remember their name past one particular pressure campaign and the corresponding news cycle, there just has to be some particular representative person on whose behalf all the military and economic terrorism can be justified. And if they stick around past their expiry date and don't take the hint like Machado, they might get brushed aside more forcefully. But unlike them, you have a unique selling point, you have a monopoly on being the 'legitimate ruler' so you can't just be thrown aside like an 'elected' leader. You're the one they have to work with, or else they throw away almost fifty years of propaganda work about how your family deserves to be in charge.

And, if you're the son of the guy who WAS the king, that probably fundamentally fucks up your identity, cause you spend your whole life imagining how it would have been to rule an entire nation without even the experience of having the power and losing it. You only have your dad's bitter recollections about what it was like, so you spend every day knowing he fumbled the bag and thinking about what could have been yours. Like those Miami gusanos who cry and fantasize about their grandparents' lost plantations in Cuba, except you were next in line to a monarchy that was 2,500 years old that ended just as you turned 18.

So it's probably a combination of hustling and grinding, a CIA/State Department paycheck, and a bone-deep personal grievance.

Just like the Dalai Lama, the East Turkestan guys and the "government" of Yemen, he has a CIA stipend that requires him to dance like a monkey for his peanuts.

US/UK: loading up Saudi planes full of bombs

Saudis: So this will help me sow the wind, right?

US/UK: Yup

Saudis: And you're gonna help me avoid reaping the whirlwind right?

US/UK:

Saudis: Right?

The description of the factory and just how many facilities, amenities and cultural activities were organized there really struck me - and in particular, how obvious such an arrangement should be. Like, of course a place of work, the place at which workers spend most of their life, the place that produces everything needed for life, should have every facility needed for life! If it's being organized by the workers who run it, that is.

It really showed, from a specific angle I hadn't conceptualized before, just how much of a tyrant's domain the capitalist workplace is, like here is this place that could be a nexus of community, but instead on top of it is squatting a dragon that demands you to leave all your problems and your humanity at the door. Housing? Your problem. Childcare? Your problem. Medicine? Your problem. Your only purpose is to enrich the owner, and maintaining your wellbeing is of absolutely no concern, beyond the wage they must grudgingly pay you. And if you're really lucky and get a job in the upper echelons of a very wealthy company, they might give you the kind of perks that, as we can see here, any socialist factory worker would demand as a matter of course. Like those Silicon Valley campus type companies, with all of their obscene wealth, manage to produce a pale shadow of the work-life integration of a factory in the USSR in the 30s.