The "maintaining privacy" is just a bit. It's about gaining complete access to everyone's private communications for whatever rhyme or reason the ruling class wants
Bourgois economics are a smokescreen to justify the actions of the ruling class with big pseudo-scientific words. Just as kings of old used religion to justify their place at the top. Pro-homeless policies are class warfare.
Between medical bills and potentially needing a care home or home assistance later on, that amount can disappear quick. If you own your home, which many in the retiring generation still do, you also have taxes, upkeep, and maybe even the rest of a mortgage to pay off as well.
Some US based financial advisors recommend having $1.5M or more saved to retire.
Retirement is for the propertied class.
To expand on that, why are IT managers so clueless about IT?
Probably about ¥5 (less than US$1) per trip.
Real talk if that restaurant makes 1 of surplus value on that 20 burger the owner is happy. Restaurants (fast food aside) are not surplus value machines, quite the opposite.
I'd also like to know where food is still that cheap in the west.
Yes, as the Trump admin clearly proves, they follow the law to the letter.
/s
My understanding of the language of the suit is that the investors expected either a continuation of the icky business as usual or maybe a reduced profit forecast.
Gotta insure Blackrock's investment.
Reminds me a bit of the impromptu Christmas truce of the first winter of WWI.
The soldiers clambered out of their trenches, chatted, played football, and enjoyed life. The soldiers learned to see the other side as humans, just like them.
The following Christmases the soldiers were under strict orders to keep shooting on Christmas and not dare consort with the enemy.
I had a great attention span in high school. Played Minecraft for hours in class on my school issued laptop.
Those committee seats are like the papcy. You can only be even remotely considered if you've already got two feet in the grave.
Depending on where you are a light beer means different things. For example the US and Canada it means low calorie, in Germany it means low alcohol (but not alcohol free).
Session ales are also typically in the 3% range.
All very true.
IIRC yes.
Aside from the neo-Nazi anti-immigration policies, AfD is just contrarian. Whatever they perceive the mainstream party position to be, they pick the opposite and run with it.
Permanently Deleted
That's the conclusion I've come to as well. The difference between neoliberalism and fascism is the marketing and the "vibes."
I mean, just look at where the theoretical basis of both systems comes from, namely Hayek and the Austrian school.
Are they even different techniques? Maybe the primary difference is just the speed at which public property is privatized and state institutions captured by capitalists, with the destruction of labour rights proceeding in parallel.
I might argue that neoliberalism also creates out groups, such as low wage workers and the unemployed, but then again all flavours of liberalism do that.
You mean the cops founded to round up and oppress Indigenous people? The cops that now have agreements with massive corporations to ensure destructive resource extraction projects happen, no matter what the people say? Ok, I'll consider them their own type of horrendous.
The US made it illegal to cooperate with China on matters of space exploration and research years ago. China on the other hand welcomes collaboration from anyone.
Art of the deal
Permanently Deleted
The Android private DNS setting is just for a DNS-over-TLS resolver. The only thing about it that's private is your queries are encrypted en route to the server (traditonal DNS is cleartext). There's no filtering or blocking.
Some Android versions also have a hard coded DNS server set to Google, which based on my tinkering uses DNS-over-HTTPS. Not only is it annoying but I find it awfully insecure - even if you think you have stuff locked down it might just not be. I fixed that issue by blocking all DNS-over-HTTPS servers in my router, and also have all outgoing requests to port 53 redirected to my local resolvers (Pihole + Unbound).
Frankfurt, Germany — Rising sick leave rates may be bad news for German companies at a time the economy is already ailing -- but for private eye Marcus Lentz, it has been a boon for his
You will be work and you will be happy, dammit.
Blaming the recession, at least in part, on working people taking sick days is so unaware I can't even put it into words.
I don't even think such surveillance of employees by a company is legal, but no company will get punished.
Deportation after one “like”—German cabinet proposes dictatorial deportation rules
The draft law is a serious attack on the basic democratic right to freedom of expression. A single “like" under a post that contradicts German foreign policy is enough for a deportation order.
I don't even have words for this right now.
Please excuse the trot publication, I didn't feel like looking for another English article.
TikTok Psyop
TikTok is once again under public scrutiny, but a much bigger issue is being swept under the rug: that it is increasingly controlled by the US national security state.
Not sure if this one has been posted in the last few weeks, but this follows up previous MintPress reporting on the links between western TikTok and the US military-intelligence apparatus. It was probably clear to us from the beginning, but the crusade against TikTok has been an entirely cynical ploy for the empire to gain even more control over the internet.
Previous articles:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/
Approved changes to German citizenship law
Der Bundestag hat eine Änderung des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts beschlossen. Einbürgerungen sollen künftig schneller möglich sein. Was genau ist noch geplant? Die Kernpunkte der Reform im Überblick.
German politicians have been discussing making applying for citizenship easier for a couple years now. Today the Bundestag (Parliament) approved the draft legislation, with two surprising new additions.
In applying for citizenship a person will now not only have to say they agree to and respect the German constitution (standard practice for gaining citizenship anywhere), an applicant will also have to agree to a statement "on Germany's special historical responsibility for the unjust Nazi rule and its consequences, especially for the protection of Jewish life." It's reasonable enough if taken literally, but we all know what this means in practice: Zionism is the law of the land. There could be an additional statement regarding the "illegalty of wars of aggression" required as well. If a person is found to have lied during the application or even behaves against such statements in the future, their newly gained German citizenship could be revoked.
To be fair, all of this is based on p
Dell Latitude Frustration
I have been having such a difficult time getting a 2018 Dell Latitude 7930 to run any Linux distro stably. Maybe there is something obvious I am missing or maybe it really is dying hardware that's the root cause of the issue.
The silly thing is I had a stable install of openSUSE Tumbleweed running for a few months but because I made some poor choices on disk partition when I installed it I was eventually backed into a corner where I had to wipe the SSD and install from scratch.
I since then have tried Tumbleweed again as well as Ubuntu, Mint, and finally Manjaro to no avail. The Debian based distros completely freeze at some point, either immediately upon login and loading the desktop or when running apt update. Tumbleweed gets a kernel panic within an hour or so, even though I changed kernel options to a previous known-good config. Now after quite a frustrating time installing Manjaro it freezes within an hour as well and the diagnostic light code indicates a CPU issue.
Strangely e
I also made a website
Back in October I found a really cool book containing the speeches delivered during a Marxist theoretical conference hosted by the SED in the DDR in 1983. In the meantime I have started to transcribe some of these speeches with the intent of sharing them here and with the international community of working people. There are three speeches up at the moment and I am working on more. There are 140 in the volume so a complete digitization may take some time.
I plan to post my own thoughts on this site, as well as some more materials I have found. I may also consider cross-posts as well where appropriate.
Berlin Travel Tips
I'll be in Berlin for a couple days soon and I'd like to see some DDR stuff while I'm there.
The DDR Museum looks interesting, even if it's just to look at the visual representations of everyday life while ignoring the lib remarks on Stasi oppression and whatnot.
Also happy DDR annexation celebration day. /s
Reading recommendations (not theory)
I've been back into reading fiction over the last three years or so after a long time away. It's been really nice to slow down and read a book for entertainment rather than always going for a series or movie (when I'm not reading theory of course). For somewhat nostalgic reasons I'm missing some easy reading spy thriller type novels. There's plenty loaded with CIA/MI6 propaganda but I've had a hard time finding anything with similar pacing from outside of the imperial core. Most of the "best translated / English Chinese authors to read" lists are chock full of liberal emigrants and the like, which isn't a perspective I'm terribly interested in while reading for fun. I also enjoy sci fi, but there it seems to be a bit easier to find non western authors.
Does anyone have anything to recommend? Unfortunately it's gotta be available in English or maybe German at the moment.
New global warming study just dropped
A preprinted study by James Hansen and collaborators suggests that we've all but locked in 2°C warming by 2050. They go on to calculate a likely equilibrium warming of 10°C considering current GHG levels and known feedback loops.
I know we need to take this as yet another call to action, but at the same time I think so many of us feel absolutely paralyzed by the enormity and incomprehensibility of the situation.
Spanish Sub’s New Problem
This is a bit dated by now, but the recent post about some failed US weapons systems reminded me about this absolute doozy of a Spanish submarine.
Years ago, the S-80 submarine suffered a major engineering setback: It was overweight and at risk of not being able to resurface after submerging. In the latest hitch, first reported on Wednesday by the newspaper El País, it can’t fit into the port of Cartagena at the military base in southeastern Spain where the submarine will be stationed.
The article wraps up with a lame attempt to normalize spending billions on military equipment.
Capitalist says what
If this isn't a dire indictment of the ability of the capitalist mode of production to solve pressing problems, I don't know what is.
Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief
In his annual shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way.
“We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”
Declarations of Independence
How should new countries be handled, where the people have clearly chosen that they would like to be their own sovereign nation, with all the rights and responsibilities that comes with?
Besides the people withing the territory agreeing that they're a new sovereign country and establishing the institutions thereof, what should the global community expect?
As things stand currently, it's simply up to the imperial core countries as to whether or not a territory is recognized as a country.
US Journalist Missing
Emmy-winning producer James Gordon Meek had his home raided by the FBI. His colleagues say they haven’t seen him since.
This story is incredibly strange and unnerving. How can a relatively well known and respected journalist simply disappear for six months before other journalists finally notice and start asking questions? Meek isn't even meaningfully anti-establishment although he's pissed off the military from time to time. It looks like he's pretty tight with the military and intelligence communities. It's clear to all of us that we cannot trust bourgeois media, but this is really something else, especially with new conspiracy theories of Chinese and Russian public figures disappearing being generated seemingly on a weekly basis yet nobody publicly stated that they noticed this guy's disappearance for six months.
Workers of the World, Unite!
In memory of the destroyed project of socialism in Germany, what better way to spend October 3rd (Germany's so-called German Reunification Day) than to discuss the successes, mistakes, and lessons of the DDR.
Putting such a positive light on this topic is still beyond taboo in mainstream circles, and anti-communist mythology runs deep in Germany even today. One way we can make revolutionary inroads in any capitalist nation is to educate the working people about the successes of their socialist peers and all the tried and tested ways we can work towards making life more meaningful for all of us.
AFC
Which one of you legends is responsible for this?
Maintaining Personal Relationships with non-Communists
I really stepped in it last night. My partner is livid with me for suggesting Stalin wasn't the evil dictator he's made out to be in the west. For a German who grew up with anti-communism and went to some very liberal universities for political science it was too much. They said something to the effect of "this feels exactly like if you said, oh Hitler wasn't that bad, he was actually a good guy." We're in the midst of planning our wedding and they were suddenly at the point of doubting that they know who I am and if this is a relationship they want to maintain.
We have a hard time discussing politics as it is. We are still not so great at interpreting the nuances of way each other speaks, and our background knowledge is very different. So we have to figure out what we do from here.
I can't come at this from the direction of "trying to convert them." They already think I have gone into a conspiracy theory ridden and propaganda laden hole, and believe me, I ask myself the same thing e