#leftwingers

[thatskrakenhockeybaby]

G A M E D A Y !

Oh my god is that…is that…

It’s MCCANN IN A REGULAR JERSEY AT MORNING SKATE

[banannabethchase]

Some people have the most atrocious takes on the people in Houston in the aftermath of Beryl and they all have shit like "guardian" and "I love everyone" and "peace for all" in their bios.

It's like the Tumblr version of bigoted Karens on Instagram having bible verses in their bios.

[moody-moose-moose]

So... that is a manager.... happily saying that he likes automation since it can counter union strikes... The two takeaways. 1: People are not worried about automation used as a tool against workers. 2: Managers VERY much think of automation as a tool against workers.

[paxcybernetica]

Glushkov and His Ideas: Cybernetics of the Future by V. Pikhorovich

Introduction 

The waste inherent in capitalist production is obvious when we glance around: near-empty planes flying to keep spots on an airport schedule, planned obsolescence almost forcing us to buy a new phone every other year, and year-round fresh fruit shipped to use from all corners of the world.

As capitalist waste leads to more and more obviously ecological devastation, we communists must be louder in proclaiming that another world is possible. Opposed to the anarchy of the market is the idea of a planned economy, and more specifically a socialist one. The centennial objection to planning is that it is impossible to plan something as complex as the economy that results from millions of agents making billions of transactions. However, with computers that are becoming smarter every day and increasingly capable of solving some of the most complex problems in the world, why should economic planning be excluded from these advances? 

In jest, this is called “big computer” socialism. This line of thought is seeing a long revival through the rise of dedicated communities on the internet, who are busy envisioning a brighter future. Among these we include the Spanish-speaking Cibcom (short for Cibercomunismo) from whom we have taken the text.  “Big computer” socialism represents an optimistic way of thinking: for socialists, it is possible to organize the economy for the benefit of all, rather than just adjust the distribution of wages through a welfare state. 

The inherent assumption in “big computer” socialism is that the problems in the Soviet system of planning were not insurmountable, and other alternative planning systems, like the brief Cybersyn experiment in Chile show a way forward. Indeed, there was a glimmer of this possibility in the USSR. Faced with a stagnating economy in the 60s, it was clear to many that the Soviet planning system needed reforms. The road taken was that of the Kosygin-Lieberman 1965 reforms which introduced some market mechanisms, such as using profitability and sales as the two key indicators of enterprise success. These substituted the old Stalinist principle of “business bookkeeping”, where enterprises had to meet planners’ expectations within a system of fixed prices for inputs/outputs, causing perverse incentives such as making badly-made surpluses or increases in product weight as a net positive for the enterprise.

However, there was another option to the introduction of some market mechanisms in the economy: the road of using the available computing technology to help the planners plan and eliminate the perverse incentives. This was the main idea of Victor Glushkov, and his OGAS system. OGAS was not just “the Soviet internet” as it has sometimes been referred to; in its original form, it was supposed to be a system for radically modifying the planning systems of the economy. The original idea of OGAS was never implemented. Instead, it was downgraded and gutted to the point it became a ghost of itself, failing to provide a line of flight for the creation of a new economy. However, the principles behind it still hold, and can guide us in thinking about what shape the future can take. It is in this context that we present a short biography of Victor Gluskhov and the Soviet attempt at having a “big computer” plan its economy. 

[daisyachain]

I feel like Galactica is a better Enterprise. It’s heavily Bush/Iraq/War on Terror-influenced in a way that isn’t quite as racist but that is startlingly conservative compared to DS ‘our second lead is a terrorist freedom fighter’ 9 as its most recent sci-fi antecedent. Also ugly grey colourless design.

[asagi-asagiri]

The US military hasn't won a war since the spanish-american so what's the point of having a military that's larger than say 100,000 people and a few nukes?

[jdragsky]

"it's not my job to educate you" as a phrase that became popular among leftwingers is proof that we dont need any psyops to undermine our movement, we can do it perfectly fine by ourselves

[zvaigzdelasas]

Last Sunday’s first round produced a big victory for the party of Marine Le Pen, which - with allies - won around 33% of the vote.

A broad left-wing alliance came second, and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists third.[...]

The leftwing New Popular Front (NPF) – which comprises everyone from centre-left social democrats to far-left anti-capitalists – issued instructions to all of its third-placed candidates to step down and let a centrist reap the anti-RN vote.

The NPF is thus helping two senior pro-Macron MPs – former prime minister Elisabeth Borne and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – to win in their constituencies in Normandy and the north.

Conversely a pro-Macron candidate has stood down in order to help radical leftwinger François Ruffin defeat the RN candidate in the northern city of Amiens.[...]

Instructions to candidates from Macron’s centrist bloc have been more ambiguous than the NPF’s.

Though Macron himself and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal have called for “no vote for the RN”, some in his camp believe its far-left component makes the NPF equally unpalatable.

Senior figures like Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and former prime minister Edouard Philippe – both originally from the centre-right – are refusing to issue instructions to vote systematically against the RN.

2 Jul 24

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

"Communist states isolated their peoples from alien influences. Walls, landmines, barbed wire, censorship and propaganda held the people of a third of the world's earth surface in quarantine from capitalism, representative democracy and civic freedom. Rulers in the USSR and the People's Republic of China initially assumed that seclusion was only temporary. They thought that the superiority of communism over capitalism would soon be evident to every well-intentioned person of sound mind and that the requirement for security precautions would disappear. There was never such an outcome." From Comrades: A World History of Communism by Robert Service

Was thinking today how Marxists and leftwingers in general still have the same massive blindspot of other religious fanatics: the complete inability to realize a very large majority of the populace they think they are speaking on behalf of and/or saving do not - and will never - actually want what they're selling.

[takashi0]

What do you think about Jenny Nicholson's video about brony fandom? I wouldn't say it's outright bad but the part about "dark side of brony fandom" that I've recently watched rubbed me the wrong way in some places, like how she said that guys were homophobic because they didn't want to be seen as gay because of watching a show about colorful ponies. One of the guys said something like "you can't catch the gay by watching the show", and she showed this bit as proof for homophobia, isn't THINKING that a show can make you gay alone is homophobic? Or how she talked about "sexualizing fictional children"? All that stuff. This part of the video I don't really like...

I'm not watching that shit for the sake of my blood pressure.

All I'm going to say is that I'd like to remind you that Bronydom was at its peak in the early new tens, right before LGBT acceptance became as Mainstream as it is now (for better *and* for worse).

So like gee I dunno maybe there's a fucking REASON so many of us were so defensive that we weren't gay or sissies for liking the show.

And that reason being that before a certain pink cunt started a harassment campaign whose aftershock still echoes today with the same Parasitic RadFem Rhetoric that's infected virtually all nerd spaces today, the big group who insisted that we were all secretly pedophiles and bad people for the horrible crime of liking a cartoon pony show were Meatheaded Frat Douches whose egos were threatened by our lack of discomfort liking a girl's cartoon.

Man I love it when Self-righteous Lefties accuse you of being a bigot over something that you yourself are victimized by, don't you? It's the best! I totally don't feel bitter by years upon years of hearing the same moralizing bullshit over from people who CLAIM to be on my side, no not at all!

I love how normalized it is for Leftwingers to look at the natural defensive response people have in the face of being bullied and declare that you're a bad person for not liking being disrespected and told that you're something you factually aren't over something so ultimately trivial! It's so wonderful how these fucking people fundamentally just do not understand how being human works and will happily side with people they claim to hate if it means they have an excuse to dunk on other people they don't like or don't bow to their whims! I love it!

I especially love how people are STILL wringing their hands over pony porn while they flick their bean to smut from every single thing else THEY enjoy and refuse to leave us the fuck alone~! And that people care more about cartoon horses who DON'T EXIST than actual people who they're harassing and doxxing and otherwise being a raging cunt to~! It's so much fun~!! Definitely doesn't make me fucking enraged at all~!!!

[pluralzalpha]

Naturally I'm thrilled to see the Tories out, and reasonably pleased to see Labour in, although I'd be much happier with an actual leftwinger running the show, and someone with, you know, principles.

But this election has really highlighted two issues:

1) We desperately need proportionate voting. Labour actually got fewer votes than in the last election, but massively gained in terms of seats. Green went from one seat to four, but proportionately would have had at least twice as many.

2) So much of the Tories' defeat is down to sheer racism. In the 2019 election, the Tories won by a landslide under Boris Johnson, a known liar and incompetent who was clearly unfit to be Prime Minister.

Now, I can't stand Rishi Sunak, but he's leagues ahead of Johnson in terms of basic ability. But even his xenophobic policies couldn't stop the huge racist contingent of lifelong voters switching to Reform, and even now even fucking Farage has a seat. People like that will never vote for a brown-skinned man when there's an establishment white man spouting the same shit.

Am I glad this split the hard right vote and lost the Tories so many seats? Ish. The problem is, if we do ever get proportionate representation, and I'd be surprised if either main party ever lets it happen, the result could be much worse. Under that system, Reform would have won more seats as well.

As it happens, I voted Lib Dem. I'm in a very safe Labour constituency, so while I was originally going to vote tactically, in the end I realised it would make little difference and voted with my conscience. I also understand that a lot of people voted Labour when they really would have preferred not to because they couldn't take the risk of splitting the vote against the Tories in their area.

[kp777]

Argentina: leftists celebrate after far-right Milei fails to win election victory

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Outrage as Brazil law threatening Indigenous lands advances in congress

Critics denounced ‘lies, hatred and racism’ as legislation moves to senate after being overwhelmingly endorsed by lower house

Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Brazil have voiced horror and indignation after lawmakers approved controversial legislation which opponents fear will strike a devastating blow to Indigenous communities and isolated tribes.

Members of Brazil’s conservative-dominated lower house overwhelmingly endorsed bill number 490 on Tuesday night, by 283 votes to 155.

“You will have Indigenous blood on your hands,” the Indigenous congresswoman Célia Xakriabá told its rightwing backers as leftwingers took to the podium to protest by smothering their hands in the red dye of annatto seeds.

Critics say the legislation, which now moves to the senate, poses a series of profound threats to Indigenous communities and the environment.

Continue reading.

[warningsine]

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has named a new government led by the prime minister, Michel Barnier, marked by a shift to the right 11 weeks after an inconclusive parliamentary election.

The first major task for Barnier, appointed just more than two weeks ago, will be to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France’s financial situation, which the prime minister this week called “very serious”.

Barnier, a conservative, is best known internationally for leading the EU’s Brexit negotiations with the UK.

Most recently, he has had the difficult job of submitting a cabinet for Macron’s approval that has the best chance of surviving a no-confidence motion in parliament.

Opposition politicians from the left have already said they will challenge the cabinet, announced on Saturday evening, with a no-confidence motion.

n the July election, a leftwing bloc called the New Popular Front (NFP) won the most parliamentary seats of any political bloc, but not enough for an overall majority.

Macron argued that the left would be unable to muster enough support to form a government that would not immediately be brought down in parliament.

He turned instead to Barnier to lead a government drawing mostly on parliamentary support from Macron’s allies, as well as from the conservative republicans (LR) and the centrists groups.

Macron was counting too, on a neutral stance from the far right – but the leader of the National Rally (RN), Jordan Bardella, was quick to condemn the composition of the new government.

It marked “a return to Macronism” and so had “no future whatsoever”, he said on Saturday.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the leftwinger Jean-Luc Mélenchon called the new lineup “a government of the general election losers”.

France, he said, should “get rid” of the government “as soon as possible”.

Among the new faces in key cabinet posts are the foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, a centrist, and the conservative Bruno Retailleau at the interior ministry, whose portfolio covers immigration.

The defence minister, Sébastien Lecornu, a close Macron ally, has stayed in post.

The difficult job of submitting a budget plan to parliament next month falls to the 33-year-old Antoine Armand, the new finance minister. He has previously served as head of parliament’s economic affairs commission.

The centrist and conservative parties will depend on others, and in particular the RN, to stay in power and get bills adopted by a very fractured parliament.

“The centrist government is de facto a minority administration,” Eurointelligence analysts said in a note. Its ministers “will not only have to agree amongst each other but also will need votes from opposition parties for its bills to pass in the assembly. This means offering even more concessions and manoeuvring.”

The RN gave tacit support to Barnier’s premiership, but reserved the right to back out at any point if its concerns over immigration, security and other issues were not met.

“I’m angry to see a government that looks set to recycle all the election losers,” Mathilde Panot, who leads the hard-left LFI group of lawmakers, told TF1 television.

Even before the announcement, thousands of people with left-leaning sympathies took to the streets in Paris, the southern port city of Marseille and elsewhere on Saturday to protest.

They were objecting to a cabinet they say does not reflect the outcome of the parliamentary election.

“I am here because this outcome does not correspond to how people voted,” said Violette Bourguignon, 21, demonstrating in Paris.

“I am worried and I’m angry. What is the point of having an election at all?” she said.

Reuters contributed to this report

[kittyregime]

Crazy how there are western leftwingers who will outright reject allyship from Israelis who want to help Palestinians and establish a state but will defend Hamas to their last breath

[mieleficient]

German punks launch ‘invasion’ of holiday island favoured by elite | Germany | The Guardian

#hey ho let's go