Thanks for taking the time to read.
All good man.
I probably come off as a bit categorical, but I have my reasons for this. A lot of the foreign policy positions of western leftists make me question whether they are sincere (or even in their right minds) when it comes to social/economic issues; where I am somewhat more in alignment (w.r.t. corruption, oligarchs and the need for radicalism in resolving the aforementioned points) with them.
Cheers!
I genuinely want to believe you, but my attitude towards western leftists has radically changed after the full scale invasion. That being said I actually hold pretty strong anti-oligarch views that are not taken well by the vast majority of Americans (lived in north america for 10 years, travelled extensively). Great place, great country, lots to see, but it’s extremely corrupt and people are heavily brainwashed by oligarch word salad and overly focused on the PR component of various widgets/services/companies. But the reactions I saw (not everyone in the US, Sanders has a pretty sober take on russia) made western leftism a bridge too far for me.
I’ve discussed Varoufakis in a reply to your other post. One other example would be Corbyn and his supporters; they pretty much de facto support russian imperialist (they make vague statements that imply otherwise, but it’s a ruse). Many German leftists are also largely aligned with russian imperialist goals.
There is also the issue that I don’t just oppose the russian government. Based on my personal experiences living in russia for 10 years and seeing how my former friends reacted in 2014 (and 2008 for that matter) and a wide range of sociological research, I have come to the conclusion that:
I will end this post with quote from a Ukrainian solider who died in the summer of 2022 (it’s commonly misattributed to the former Ukrainian ambassador to Kazakhstan):
The more russians we kill today, the fewer russians will have to be killed by our children
Yeah, I might consider an alternative instance, just for the sake of the general spirit of federated service. I already have a Lemmy.world account, but I create multiple accounts depending on topics of interest (works really well with Firefox containers too).
I should have been a bit more clear when I said “Varoufakis is just the tip of the iceberg”, what I meant is that he is somewhat more empathetic than you typical western “leftist”.
That being said, if you read the details of his proposals regarding Ukraine (I will note he doesn’t speak Ukrainian, or russian, and has never lived in Ukraine, let alone Donbas), you can very quickly identify tankie-lite type gibberish.
The same article that you seem to quote also says:
And I hope that those whose politics differ from mine do the likewise: place the task of pushing Russian troops out of Ukraine above their ideological preferences (e.g. a Ukraine that is a NATO or an EU member).
Everyone in Ukraine wants to join NATO and EU. This is complete bullshit. But this is relatively modest stuff, it gets better:
This is not to suggest that the Ukrainian fighters should surrender. No, if I were them, I would keep fighting come-what-may, to the bitter end. What I am saying is something different: That a diplomatic solution needs to be found as soon as possible.
The bitter end can be avoided by providing our country with any needed western weapons (including long range cruise missile) and providing us with both the right to strike the russians (anywhere in russia) and any relevant intel info to do so. This is already happening, but it took nearly 2.5 years, with a lot of slow walking (and a lot of death and destruction due to the delay). Varoufakis cannot even comprehend the possibility that weapons and the ability to strike your enemy is important when you are being invaded.
Given that NATO will not intervene, and that sanctions take a long, long time to succeed (if at all), the only way of driving Russian troops out of the Ukraine is through a diplomatic solution.
What would an agreeable diplomatic solution entail? Three things: First, an immediate ceasefire followed by the withdrawal of Russian troops. Second, the opportunity for Putin to portray any such agreement as a form of victory – a deal that gives him something close to what he wanted. Third, it must be an agreement guaranteed jointly by Washington and Moscow, guaranteeing an independent and neutral Ukraine as part of a broader agreement that de-escalates tensions with the Baltics, Poland, around the Black Sea, across Europe.
An immediate ceasefire followed by the withdrawal of russian troops? They are just going to leave? There is no way this statement was done without malicious intent. Ukraine was neutral before 2014; guess what happened to change this?
Such an agreement would leave everyone a little dissatisfied but also grant Ukrainians the chance to re-build a free, democratic and independent Ukraine. Many issues will have to be settled but, once de-escalation begins, a healing process can commence. For example, the EU can pour investments into Ukraine, well before any move to admit it into the EU. Once Washington and Moscow jointly guarantee a de-militarized zone along the Russian-Ukrainian border, the contested Donetsk-Luhansk region could be administered along the lines of the Northern Irish Good Friday agreement in a manner that guarantees the rights of all ethnic communities under the supervision of Kiyv, Moscow and the European Union.
Once again Varoufakis demonstrates his malicious intent. Russia is not interested de-escalation and Varoufakis knows this. The Good Friday part is comical. It’s like a satirical comedy show about western “leftists” talking about Ukraine.
Now this article was written in 2022, but even in 2024, he continues to think in russo-centric terms. Here is an article from Jan 2024:
…advocated for the West to negotiate an immediate end of the Ukraine war by trading the retreat of Russian troops for a pledge to keep Ukraine out of NATO. To me, what mattered most was that the West did whatever it took to push Russia’s troops back to where they were on 22 February 2022, while enabling Ukraine to flourish within liberal democratic Western Europe.
He is still rambling on about NATO and advocating for a return to the line on Feb 22. Don’t get me wrong, I think we will be very lucky to get back to those lines by the end of the war, but it’s russo-centric, pro-imperialist worldview that makes me wonder whether everything else he says is just bullshit.
I just realized the lemmy.ml stands for Marxism-Leninism.
I recently joined Lemmy (realized that Reddit is going to turn to shit and I need alternatives) and created an account with Lemmy.ml because they had a lot of active tech communities.
Tankies are a no-go for me as I am Ukrainian. Even mainstream leftists, who generally have good ideas, like Yanis Varoufakis, turn into complete degenerates when it comes to NATO or Russian imperialism. And Varoufakis is just the tip of the iceberg.
Seems like I will need to create a new Lemmy.world account for technology communities.
Oh wow, I did not read the source Reuters article and yeah it’s a Chinese project.
This is the kind of stuff that should make Americans evaluate whether their orthodox and somewhat parochial approach to “free speech” (the polemical definition as opposed to the broad concept) needs updating to reflect modern realities.
Even before AI and digitization, there were many examples of how an American interpretation of free speech was clearly lacking, but this AI spam and strategic methods used by russia/China are going to make these deficiencies a much more pressing matter.
I think there are time when it is more relevant, e.g. initial change from a feudal/agrarian model to industrialization. By all accounts this was perhaps the biggest, most impactful change in human history.
One could argue that we are now witnessing a similar transition with respect to the information age.
At any rate, this was a somewhat glib statement on my part. :)
This is a bit of cliche, but still relevant to our current times:
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
Antonio Gramsci (Italian Marxist philospher from the turn of the century)
$700 dollars worth half decent?
Yeah, it did look like everything happens server-side. Still seems like a borderline scam.
CPU: Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon (Snapdragon 720G to be exact, they don’t list it on their page though) Memory: 4GB RAM Storage: 32GB eMMC
They have a bunch of other HW too (LTE modem, camera, voice etc.), but this does look like one of those “legal” silicon valley type scams.
Their subscription service costs $24 a month? This is madness.
I am guessing this because the processing is done in the cloud? But then why the $700 price for the “AI Pin” device; what exactly does it do justify a $700 cost if processing is done in the cloud?
Google had a privacy chief?
What exactly was he doing? Jacking off Pichai?
Not happening at least for another 2 years.
With smartphones being “good enough” (even in the mid-range), they really need AI-focused marketing to try and push upgrades. Same with PCs and laptops.
What do you mean by multi-tab browsing.
I’ve used Firefox on Android tablets and while it does have a “phone app” UX to it, it works fine; specifically tabbed browsing is not an issue.
Guess, I will need to stop using Chrome unless I have no other option (I mostly use Firefox, but I occasionally use Chrome).
I hope you’re right. :)
With respect to the US regulatory/judicial actions, I find it difficult to believe that they will be sufficient to nudge the criminals towards genuine self-reflection and a desire to change their behaviour. Similarly, other criminals are likely see enforcement action as more of a “risk to be managed” as opposed to a strong incentive to re-evaluate their approach to criminal schemes.
This is of course not a US only problem, albeit there are countries were consumer rights and business criminality is less socially acceptable.
I didn’t interpret their argument as stating “the agency is wrong”. More like “we weren’t told this was wrong, we were one of the caught … so this claim should be dismissed.”
I would even go as far as saying that this is a sign of disrespect towards judicial processes.
This is a start, but the fact that they come up with this:
Executives had urged the court to dismiss the FTC’s claims against them. They argued that the FTC “singled them out ‘for an ‘unprecedented sanction’” when the agency had “only recently started prosecuting companies for using ‘dark patterns’” under Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) and the FTC Act. They claimed that the FTC never alerted them to any wrongdoing before filing the lawsuit, so how could they have known they were violating the law?
Suggests that they are not being serious.
And I doubt the fine will be sufficient for them to re-evaluate their attitudes. What we need is full asset seizure (every last cent, home, car, everything) and to send them to do a decade as junior support personnel at a late stage Alzheimer’s care facility (my dad had Alzheimer, so I am not being callous for the sake of it).
They can also do 20 years in prison with no parole if they are too good for community service.
Until there are proper incentives for executives (e.g. full asset seizure and mandatory multi-year community service in roles such as junior janitor, junior hospice care specialist, live-in support for late stage alzheimer’s patients) that require them to take ownership and responsibility for their actions (or lack of thereof), this will continue.
Just look at the 2017 Equifax breach in the US:
Wikipedia background:
An Equifax internal audit in 2015 showed that there was a large backlog of vulnerabilities to patch, that Equifax wasn’t following its own timescales on patching them, that IT staff did not have a comprehensive asset inventory, that Equifax didn’t consider how critical an IT asset was when prioritising patches, and that the patching process worked on an ‘Honour system’. The report set out actions to improve the process, but the time of the breach, two years later, many of them had not been completed.
Equifax press release states that CIO and CSO can now enjoy retirement:
As part of the company’s ongoing review of the cybersecurity incident announced September 7, 2017, Equifax Inc. (NYSE: EFX) today made personnel changes and released additional information regarding its preliminary findings about the incident.
The company announced that the Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer are retiring.
Richard Smith, the CEO under whose watch this happened, got to retire at the ripe old age of 57 and got a nice bonus of $90 M
Richard Smith, 57, is the third Equifax executive to retire under pressure following the company’s massive data breach revealed earlier this month, putting the personal information of as many as 143 million people at risk.
But the CEO is still set to collect about $72 million this year alone (including nine months’ worth of his $1,450,000 salary), plus another $17.9 million over the next few years. That’s when the rest of Smith’s stock compensation hits a few important milestones or “vests,” allowing Smith to essentially put it in his bank account. Altogether, it adds up to a total potential paycheck of more than $90.1 million, according to Fortune’s calculations based on Equifax securities filings.
I will add that (most?) MLs don’t openly claim support for the russians, but their positions and rhetoric is almost always pro-russian imperialism.
The “nato provoked Russia” argument is for idiots who don’t know russians, don’t anything about russian history and culture and who have never lived.