As someone who has been accused of being a tankie, I view RT and Chinese state media as roughly equal in level of bias and reliability to western corporate and state media.

All media tends to be more or less factual, the main difference is in what facts are reported and how the facts are talked about.

You can consume media from all of the available sources as long as you recognize what the biases are and why some sources are better for some topics and worse for others.

For the vast majority of people, it was a large improvement, yes.

As a good first step, the means of production must be controlled by the people, not by individuals, so that the fruits of our labor benefit everyone. As a second step, those of us aware of the problem must band together to create a strong vanguard (if you will) that can defend the people from infiltration while we all figure out how to make a non-hierarchical system.

There, we’ve just come up with Marxism-Leninism.

Outside of the primitive communism of our hunter/gatherer days we’ve never had a society that is free from a ruling class that sows discord and division to protect themselves. I wouldn’t be so sure that tribalism is innately human and not something that we have been conditioned to by millennia of rule by psychopaths.

It’s amazing that a company that literally named itself after a cursed tool used by the epitome of evil is not viewed with more suspicion. People should be protesting outside of Palantir HQ every day.

Those are the worldwide numbers for starvation and preventable disease, roughly.

They’re talking about the US I think.

Right, and my point is that it’s not surprising that you don’t see that evidence (assuming you live in the US or elsewhere in the imperial core), given the effects that class dynamics have on social behavior. By its very nature capitalism alienates people and turns them into individualist consumers. If you travel to more communally-minded places, it’s clear that human nature is very much place- and context- dependent.

Because countries didn’t exist when humanity’s mode of production was primitive communism, and then since the agricultural revolution the means of production has always been held by individuals, which necessarily creates at least two classes, those who have, and those who have not.

There have been a few attempts by the people to seize the means of production, but they have always existed within the context of a global class system that prevents any attempt at a truly classless society. (IE, a strong centralized state is necessary to survive reactionary attempts to take back control, but a strong state creates a class system of those who have control vs those who don’t.)

Most Marxists actually acknowledge that after a socialist revolution you will still have class contradictions that society will have to work through, like the potential abuses a strong state can inflict. We generally agree though, that the key first step to creating a classless society is getting the means of production out of the hands of private individuals.

Maybe. We’ve also never had a classless country, so we don’t know for certain how very large groups of humans interact when we are free from the exploitation, division, and oppression that is inherent to class structures.

Every year capitalists kill 10 million people by withholding food, medicine, and clean water. All because it isn’t profitable to them personally.

It turns out capitalism actively disincentives cooperation. Cooperation is how humanity became the dominant life form. We’re fucking great at it when we don’t have a bunch of leeches siphoning off our surplus value and using that wealth to turn us against each other.

9/11 also marks the end of western hegemony as the West destabilized the world and ruined its reputation as a force for good in its pursuit for revenge, leading to the rise of BRICS and other anti-imperial coalitions.

9/11 also coincides with peak imperialism, the final stage of capitalism, which marks the point when increasing exploitation abroad has diminishing returns so capitalists must begin devouring the imperial core, leading to stagflation, enshittification, rent-seeking, and other parasitic activities. This in turn leads to an economically struggling population of former petit-bourgeois, which is a class condition that is especially susceptible to reactionary propaganda, leading to the rise of fascism.

Historians will almost certainly mark 9/11 as the beginning of the end of the American Empire.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats also voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin.

Palestine Action’s biggest crime is that they were effective. Their actions forced the closure of two Israeli weapons factories and forced Barclay’s Bank to divest from the manufacturer (Elbit Systems). Direct action (sabotaging the means of production that support the genocide) fucking works.

Capitalism is the disease. Socialism is the cure.

I’m so tired of living under capitalism. Can you all please get some fucking class consciousness so we can get out of this hellscape?

You don’t get to claim some moral high ground if you insult someone and they respond in kind. It’s not some kind of ad hominem logical fallacy, it’s just two people spitting at each other.

You’re saying I’m “extracting a narrative” and “filled with conjecture” and yet you haven’t even responded to the additional source I brought in that pointed out valid concerns with Newsom’s approach to homelessness and the lack of resources as reported by homeless service professionals. The point isn’t just to vilify him, the point is to hold him accountable for real policy failures and not let him get away with anti-homeless campaigns that do nothing to solve the actual problem.

I’ve brought evidence that supports my claims, and all you’ve done is attack me and call me disgusting. Truly, every accusation is a confession.

The point of these protests is networking. They’re not supposed to solve the problem, they’re supposed to connect you with like-minded people so you can organize actually meaningful actions like sabotage a la Palestine Action.

Resistance is hard work, you don’t get to just show up and light some shit on fire and expect the fascists to go home.

It’s better than nothing, though. Which is what it would be if our elder activists left it up to the young generations.

I get it, my partner and I are consistently the only ones under 60 at our local protests. I have been feeling profoundly disappointed by my fellow millenials. Can’t talk shit about the boomers though, at least they are actually out there doing something instead of doom posting.