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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • Some of this is good advice but I recommend evaluating every protest, having a real plan for transportation and a buddy system, and trying to be as secure as possible by default and only making exceptions when necessary.

    Most of the guide is about phones and how they can leak information. The only surefire way to prevent your phone from leaking location information to show you were at a protest is to leave it at home. That should be your default. The next option is to use a burner, but you must be very careful about when you charge your burner and turn it on, as you never want it to be on near where you live or work. Cell signals can be triangulated to a few block radius. The next option is put your phone in airplane mode and turn it off. Your phone is now an emergency device, you won’t turn it in at the protest unless a safety critical situation develops, such as being separated from your group by police or other right wing violence. Under no circumstances should you use your main phone to coordinate day-of at any event. If you are an organizer, use a burner to do this. This is also a reason to not use Signal for day-of coordination, as it will pressure you to either turn your burner on at home so that you can coordinate or associate your signal account with other devices traceable to your home or work. Walky talkies are best but Signal alternatives like davel suggested are also better.

    Also, cover your face and wear sunglasses.


  • TheOubliette@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlA two state solution
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    12 days ago

    The entirety of their logic is myopic electoralism handed down to them by the most insufferable party climbers imaginable. If you are against their neoliberal blue genocider, you must be for the other tean’s red neoliberal genocider, because all of politics must be condensed to the next / the last election day and which neoliberal horse may win it.


  • TheOubliette@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlA two state solution
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    12 days ago

    You’re talking to people that want to continue rationalizing their tacit, frequently racist support for genocide, and their easiest out has always been to say, “but Trump is worse”. They have never done the introspection required to look at their own personal role as a political being beyond what they’re told to do by the Democratic Party and their donors: slacktivist vote shaming, always presuming the high ground for themselves (even while tolerating genocide!), and doing as little as possible on the ground outside of minor exercises in false catharsis like a cop-escorted, permitted march or an ignored letter writing campaign.

    When challenged on this by people on the left that do read and do self-reflect, these are the folks that responded in bad faith, even when the context is genocide, because they have made politics into an extension of their egos rather than a project to which to subordinate yourself and devote real work to.

    Whining about .ml is their way of pretending to be vindicated every time Trump does something bad, as they cannot actually argue against what the people in .ml say, they must rely on inventions and emotional implications.

    In short, many on .ml vocally opposed supporting genociding Democrats. None that I’m aware of expected Trump to be better. At best, a roll of the dice.





  • No response!

    That’s right. You ghosted for 4 months.

    I was wrong and you were right!

    Yep.

    With Kamala gone, Gaza is saved and everything is literally the same!

    I never said either thing would happen. You’re making things up like a child and somehow think that smugness is the appropriate emotiom to accompany it.

    Kamala would have done everything Trump is doing, it’s so obvious!

    Kamala would continue the Biden administration’s genocide.

    We’re safe in the hands of trump, you saved us from Kamala! Bless you!

    I quoted this because I thought it would be a nea thing. But it’s still just delusional fabrications.

    Try to think for yourself. Just a little bit. And be honest.




  • They also list South Africa, where Westerners love to give themselves all of the credit via boycotts when in actuality fighting Apartheid used all means available and necessary, including escalating violent campaigns and associated political parties who were the main representatives at negotiations.

    Most examples of “non-violent” liberation (in some cases I should say “liberation”) are like this, it is a PR campaign putting a microscope on their preferred group or “movement” and failing to discuss the totality or criticize the incompleteness of outcomes and how this could relate to an adherence to nonviolence.

    Example: MLK was notoriously incorrect about the propaganda power of seeing participants in nonviolent direct action arrestes and hurt by cops. Most people, particularly whites, disliked King, thought he and his methods were too extreme, and opposed the movement. They won impact through organizing ground game, by turning an increasing number of people out. But their wins were incomplete and King was martyred when trying to pivot to capitalism as the main racial oppressor that would live on after the legislative concessions. The groups he was active in fell apart or became a recuperated part of the system he opposed, many of his compatriots killed or houndes into silence by the FBI and local cops, and of course, black people still face mountains of discrimination and disadvage today, particularly by the “subtle” effects of the economic system. We should potentially blame nonviolence for the collapse of the movement, as it wed itself to bourgeois electoralist concessions and primed it to accept that as sufficient rather than steeling the public for a protracted fight that would not rest until liberation, e.g. New Afrika.

    I’ll go through some other examples from this database.

    • Soviet Bloc Independence campaigns after the fall of the USSR. These were, by and large, primed by CIA-funded “civil society” organizations that congealed around liberalization (read: privatization) campaigns. Some employed violent coups to accomplish this while their states were weak due to a diminished Moscow. But in what world is the backing of the dominant superpower simply a win for non-violent action? The knife was already at their throats, they would receive the shock therapy treatment like Russia or Ukraine if they did not fall in line. Rather than an example of the power of grassroots non-violent organizing, these are examples of a great powers struggle. And once the liberal parties were in power, they enacted their privatization with brutal violence.

    • The Arab Spring. This was not non-violent and it largely failed due to disorganization and a lack of militant discipline. It was another case of cooption snd defanging by “civil society” style groups, but different ones this time. No Arab Spring uprisings led to a better country for their people, for liberation, for the demands sought. They list Mubarak and then fail to mention Morsi and Sisi or explain why they head the new government or what the military had to do with it. They just vaguely tut-tut Egyptians about not “keeping” the “freedom” they had won.

    • Latin American non-violent campaigns were essentially all crushed with violence via US-backed military coups or are otherwise misrepresented. Carlos Ibañez del Campo was removed via coordinated strikes and protests that were not non-violent. They had to fight cops. But all of this is simply called non-violence rather than organized class struggle. They list the overthrow of Pinochet without mentioning that Allende was deposed in a US-backed coups or that Chile more or less retains the Pinochet dictatorship constitution. The single man was removed from power (and allowed a comfy retirement in the US) but the system was left in place. And again, not a simply non-violent campaign and again one premised on class struggle and collective labor power.

    • They incorrectly label the GDR a dictatorship and fail to accurately describe the outcomes, which were primarily the DDR illegally annexing the country, stripping it for parts, and impoverishinh the people there. They don’t mention that East Germans preferred their own country and state nor that, with these conditions imposed and left parties bsnned, East Germany is still comparatively poor and is now far right. And, again, this was something pushed and funded by the US.

    Note that this article was written by George Lakey, the academic behind this database. As a tenured professor for decades and now emeritus, he has no excuse for these gross cases of ignorance / omissions. He is literally paid to think about such things, to spend the time to skeptically investigate and question his own biases. But of course, such people are recruited and funded and promoted precisely bevause of their bias and selective incompetence.





  • You can Gish Gallop over this comment section all you want, but you’re not worth my time.

    I am not Gish Galloping. I am engaging in good faith and am responding directly to what you’re saying with explanations and context. Do you think that’s a bad thing?

    In many of these attempts to criticize you are really just telling on yourself. You’re actually getting combative and complaining that I am taking the time to help you challenge unexamined biases (that you bring up via accusations) and provide additional relevant context. Given how many objective errors you have made in trying to justify your attacks, don’t you think a bit of humility is in order? Why launch into everything with speculative attacks?

    I’ll put it simply for you here since you’re so obtuse

    I’m not being obtuse.

    outlawing how a person expresses their sexuality, when it isnt at the cost of another persons consent, is shitty

    I don’t think we’ve had a conversation about whether that is shitty. This conversation has mostly been me replying to your false and bad faith accusations using more restraint and patience than you will likely receive any other time.

    and authoritarian.

    Again, this means nothing and you should be more skeptical towards your internalized biases.

    Have fun defending reactionary and authoritarian actions.

    I don’t believe I’ve defended anything other than myself. You should get over this habit of lying about others in support of beinh dismissive.

    Whatever it takes to defend your side, right?

    I’m not the one engaging in bad faith behavior here and you are the only one thinking in terms of sides. Again, telling on yourself.

    Please do your best to improve how you disagree with people. If you behaved like this in any decent irl left organization you would get kicked out for aggressive toxicity and dishonesty.



  • It is. You’re handwaving away criticism of laws

    How so? I don’t think having a culturally appropriate and historical understanding is hand waving. Do you?

    that are being applied improperly and unequally.

    To my knowledge I am the only person making note of Inconsistent enforcement. Rather than criticizing it to “hand wave” I introduced the topic.

    Even if this was a local failure, which it isn’t since this type of content is illegal all over China, that doesn’t excuse failure to equally enforce in this circumstance.

    National laws are often fleshed out and enforced at more local levels, leading to inconsistency. Your logic does not make sense, as a local failure in applying national law occurs regularly and tends to be the impetus for more consistent national enforcement and is related to the anti-corruption campaigns of the last decade and more. I have added this context because Western chauvinists broad brush their designated enemies from smaller or isolated incidents that are blown up into xenophobic and often racist talking points.

    Can you describe, for me, how you believe national, regional, municipal, and local governance generally operates in China?

    Plenty of comments are defending China’s actions here saying it’s necessary to fight sex work.

    Please show me these comments.

    It isn’t. It’s an authoritarian action taken to stifle sexuality and exert control.

    Is that so? Can you show me your methodology and source materials for how you have discovered these root causes?

    You see this most often in fascist governments when setting up dictatorships.

    Oh? Most often? So then you have done a fair comparison across different political tendencies, cultures, histories, and governments and can show me some statistics?

    And before I get dumb comment, China isn’t fascist. But they are authoritarian in several of their tendencies.

    You rely heavily on that ambiguous and selectively applied term. Why not be more direct and descriptive?

    I couldn’t

    K.

    Does this mean you are uninterested in good faith dialogue?

    It’s dictating human nature and what is allowed based on governmental morals.

    That is a lot to unpack. The concept of human nature is itself poisoned by reactionary ideas, it is used to actually reinforc a desired status quo by claiming it to be an immutable ot otherwise “natural” way of things rather than something that is mutable and socially constructex. For example, European Christian concepts of original sin have been used to rationalize a misanthropic view of people as inherently bad and in need of subservience to the ruling powers of different eras.

    I have yet to see appeals to human nature used in a way that was not reactionary, but maybe you are thinking of something that is not. Can you state this more concretely?

    Re: government morals, all state policies and enforcement is political and social, and has some kind of a moral component. So this would not distinguish this from any other state policy. Are all state policies authoritarian? If so, do you describe all of them as such, consistently? Or do you think you may be inclined to use the term for certain countries more than others, as is more common?

    You say this is in reaction to the sexual and war crimes that have occurred in China. While that may be the root of the law, that does not make it just in this application of the law.

    I did not present it as a sufficient justification for any particular thing. I added it as context for understanding a culture and history that most people here will be unfamiliar with and onto which they are eager to project their biases. You are assigning conclusions and motivations that aren’t there and are being uncharitable.

    Consenting adults in the privacy of their own home writing/collecting their own written material are not engaging in or even condoning such tragedies.

    Yes everyone knows this and nothing I’ve said contradicts it.

    To harken back to such tragedies when talking about something unrelated is yet another excuse to give cover to authoritarian actions.

    You think that the historical and cultural origins of the law are irrelevant to its existence and application? What?

    It feels like you are just cobbling together negative sentiments to throw at the wall, facts be damned.

    If we were talking about pictured/video pornography or prostitution that would be one thing. But this is written erotica. There is no physical person being engaged with. This is at best reactionary and at worst authoritarian.

    Is it reactionary, a holdover from a progressive law that doesn’t always map neatly onto modern times (this law is actually about distribution, not “writing in their own homes”), a regional variation? Is it a composition of the three in different ways? Is there more to it? How do you distinguish the law from enforcement? How much do you know about these specific cases?

    Also reactionary actions can still be authoritarian. Was the term “purely authoritarian” hyperbole? Yes. Are you being a complete pedant in pointing this out? Also yes.

    I still cannot tell you what I think you mean by the term “authoritarian”. In my experience it is a term used selectively, like calling designated enemy states “regimes” and designated good or neutral states “governments”, and it means little aside from trying to communicate a negative connotation despite presenting itself as political theory. Its modern usage can be traced back to imperialist cold war PR campaigns to try and flatten the difference between Nazis and the communists that defeated them.

    It is important to be humble and self-critical about one’s own unexamined biases.

    By using “inconsistent enforcement” as an excuse to ignore criticism.

    I didn’t do that. Please do your best to not invent things about me to get mad about.

    There is no justification for these arrests, and yet excuses are being made for what occurred.

    I haven’t seen the latter once. And I cannot address the first without knowing more about the situation.

    On top of all of that: inconsistent enforcement is a tell tale sign of authoritarianism as the law is used as an excuse to arrest whoever offends.

    Arresting whoever offends would be a consistent application of the law. And again I cannot imagine what you mean by “telltale sign of authoritarianism”. What are your examples? Have you done a fair comparison? What do non-authoritarian law enforcements look like?

    Even though said laws aren’t applied uniformly. Thus manufacturing pretty much any consent needed for an arrest.

    This does not make sense. Regional variation is not the same as selective application at the point of declaring warrants, which is the kind of inconsistency you are describing as bad.

    Also, manufacturing consent is a term about how capitalist media creates its narratives through the amplification of thise biased towards ruling class interests, even if they themselves do not think of themselves as corrupt or as political operatives.

    You can claim things like western chauvnism and orientalism, but those words have actual meaning that you debase when you throw it out at any criticism of China

    I don’t do that. You are, again, making things up about me. Please do your best to talk to me, the human on another screen, and not the person in your head that you are angry at.

    The people I am replying to in this thread are often guilty of sweeping generalizations and sinophobic remarks.

    This arrest was, once again, reactionary at best and downright authoritarian at worst.

    Okay, so what about the rest of my comment that you didn’t reply to?