« A total of 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon in less than two weeks, the country’s health minister said Saturday. » (source)

of course it’s better than France since France is still colonial imperialist power and this hellhole was once SFRY

(don’t know why i chuckled at your “of course”, i’ve only spent a few days on lemmy.world and already forgot what Lemmygrad was like, quite apart from the rest of the Internet :))

I still don’t entirely agree with the term fascism, even if i could see how the rhetoric about muslims in France is close to the rhetoric about jews in the past, e.g., they’re destroying the fabric of society by not being french enough, and are a threat solely by their identity, an annoyance to get rid of, even an attack.
But their militarism isn’t as exacerbated(, which could be explained solely by the context), the same goes for their nationalism as well(, even if they’re not internationalist, saying America first or France first, even at the expense of other countries, isn’t uncommon), and it’s always a bit worrying to hear them praise order and the restoration of authority.
They’re still in favor of bourgeois democracy though, without public plans for a stronger leadership, don’t openly support censorship, or express themselves as being a third way against liberalism.
They don’t talk about the “french race” as inherently superior to the others with a classification of the different races in a biological way, nor put forward the virile/military strength of the male in order to save the nation.
When they talk about our past you can feel that monarchism isn’t entirely dead in the heart of some of them, but damn, you can also almost even hear them talk of direct democracy sometimes(, although it may be a french exception).
But even if i personally consider the qualification fascism as an exaggeration since it can always be worse, i can see how it’s similar, it’s perhaps indeed more a question of quantity/intensity than quality/nature.
It’s just that being pro-capitalist seems enough of a slur for me 🤷, it means legalizing theft and heading back to a feodal society(, even if technological progress may change this course towards more inequalities).

some people love China and view it in positive light

Yeah, we don’t have that here, they’re a dictatorship that persecute its opposition and if it falls we’ll applaud this liberation. No need to explain to you why that’s bullshit and revolting.

extreme racism against Roma

That’s everywhere indeed, they’re seen as criminals/thieves who don’t want to work(, how could they without papers ?), people seeing their encampments sometimes think that it’s disgusting and should go away, even if they’re still allowed to stay quite a few years in the end, and it’s not to the point of Ukraine for whom i’ve seen videos of pogroms against the Romani people(, i remember a video where they were chased in the woods), this could happen if our economic situation deteriorates.
I don’t believe in national essentialism, or thinking that the poors deserve their fate(, since they supposedly have the same ‘birth privileges’/‘starting advantages’,) instead of being born at the wrong place/time and just needing help as we all do… I don’t know if you have this expression in Serbia to criticize the actions of our government “strong with the weak, and weak with the strong”. Well, everything can always be worse, at least we’ve avoided the horrors of war…

Here’s something i’ve just seen that may be indicative(, or be a wrong example i.d.k.), if you translate these comments then you’ll see that most people are supporting two protestors that will live two whole years in a jail cell for dirtying a glass protection, absolutely zero damage was caused(, i don’t know how they attained the number of 10.000£), we’re not allowed to do violent protests and that’s the most nonviolent i could think of, it even made a bit of publicity for this art piece. I can’t understand the state but even worse it’s all of these comments that i cannot understand, they’re either against ecology(, why ?), or mistakenly believed that this art piece was ruined(, i doubt it), i don’t know, that’s the “strong against the weak” part, as for the “weak against the strong” there’s private-public partnerships(, e.g., highway tolls), or the tax evasion&avoidance, etc., you’re not going to hit the hand the fed you after all 🤷
It was retweeted by someone, Guillaume Meurice, who worked in one of the last public medias that we still have for more than a decade, and was fired, unbelievably, because of a segment in which he jokingly said while laughing that « In fact, Netanyahu is like Hitler, but without a foreskin », i shit you not it’s for that sole reason officially and nothing else, i can’t understand why a lot of people agreed that he went too far and had to be fired, in my eyes i’m convinced that he was fired for being probably (one of )the last “leftist” in our medias(, clearly not a communist propagandist/theorician mind you, we don’t have that in France except on the Internet, but he’s for a more humane capitalism and criticize our excesses).

Well, i’ll not make my review of the whole state of France(, not sure i’d be able to anyway), but here’s some anecdotes as well, could be worse, could be better.

Thank you very much, i don’t remember having heard of an example like the steel mill factory in Silesia before, that was informative. I didn’t know about the gift of state-owned enterprises to the zaibatsus either, thanks !
I don’t think i have much to add to your comment.

I’ve quickly documented myself on the “polish economic miracle” a few years ago, but only remember that it was linked with millions of polish working in other european countries, as well as important foreign direct investments, you seem knowledgeable so perhaps could you redirect me towards some explanations for this, or take a bit of your time to explain it to me yourself ?
Also, having never heard of Poland(, or any country for that matter,) funding 100% of a company while leaving the dividends to foreign hands, i’m interesting in knowing more about that as well if you have the time and/or a link.

Wow, that was very informative on more than one level, i wrote more than a dozen comments these past day and yours is probably the best, thanks !

The situation you initially described made me think of accounts i’ve read from eastern europe, but then progressively i’ve realized that it’s probably the same in other countries with the rise of the far-right everywhere and the displacement of the Overton window. In France we’ve pretty much sold every single public company, and Serbia is incredibly much more socialists than i first thought, you almost don’t have any communists in France, our far-far-left political parties are trostkyists that are anti-Russia and probably consider China a dictatorship and our “socialist party” has been capitalist for decades, etc. Serbia in comparison doesn’t seem worse, i’ve lived all my life without knowing what socialism means, you still have remnants.
Once capitalists are in power, it’s not surprising for anti-communism to be on the rise, please don’t blame the population too much for not taking weapons, we’ll have to do counter-propaganda ideally but our funds are more meager and i could understand if it seems like a lost cause. For that matter, i don’t think that a communist revolution is likely to happen in France(, where i’m from,) either, nor in the u.s.a.
I misunderstood what you meant by “there is no saving” before, i thought that you were, e.g., french or american, and deemed these countries much worse than your own, when you’re in fact comparing it the inspiring Yugoslavia of Tito(, believe it or not, despite its closeness, most french people don’t know him and forgot about Yugoslavia, and he would obviously be classified as a dictator for not having bourgeois democracy). I didn’t realize that your criticism came from the inside, but please do not despair ! Things change, and indeed these graphs show that Serbia isn’t as anti-China as you thought(, the same goes for Hungary), it’s at least one reason to rejoice.

Ah, and pardon me, but your grandmother seems awesome(, do you have any idea what my family members believes in(, i’m honestly not complaining) ? Having a grandmother that likes Lenin&Stalin and even believes that V.Putin is a crypto-socialists seems awesome/unbelievable, congratulations, she’s even surfing the web, and she stops when he’s talking about the replacement theory ? Man, we also have whole channels and political parties that talk about this the all day, my grandmother has already integrated this as a fact many years ago and believes that immigrants are the cause of crimes, not poverty(, and is also certain that crimes are on the rise, like a lot of people, even if surveys show the contrary, we’re beyond being anti-communist by forgetting about it)).

B.t.w., are you financially independent with your own place ? If not, it’ll get better at this moment according to my experience, some people are annoying(, but, i mean, your aunt still claim to be socialist, my family members don’t even want to debate so i’m explicitly told to shut up each time(, we’ll still love each other though, just that no politics or any other debate is allowed)), but even if they’re annoying you’ll have to challenge yourself as this is the occasion to bring the best of yourself, to try small pertinent comments in a loving voice if you manage to, and take time to let them explain their worldview to you even if you already know it(, sometimes ending their sentences if it gets too long).
That’s just my personal opinion, we’re here to make this world a better place aren’t we ? Nobody’s perfect(, very clearly myself first).

I’ve got time, so we could be (learning from each other by) having a debate on religion and/or conpirationnism if you’re in a mood for that(, debating is fun and instructive ?). But i’ll totally understand if you lack the time and/or will to continue this discussion for too long.

Well, not necessarily, it’s only suspended not canceled :)

Then please send them, i assumed that you were only talking about l.g.b.t. laws.

This graph is not related at all, it’s from 2021 and it’s global investments, look at the y axis. Poland would barely be shown there as pixel.

Did you have a look at the document ? The graph is on p.16

And in the other graphs in your link you can see that US investments in Poland were less than Belgian or Swiss or Swedish

It’s in second position though ?
(And while it’s not directly foreign investments it’s still closely linked which is why i wrote “good enough”)

I.d.k., but even if it was scrapped it’s probably counted in.

I’ve found this graph here :

I don’t know for the other years, and couldn’t easily find data to conclude, but the article writes that :

Intel, a chipmaker, picked Poland for a $4.6bn plant

That’d be 4.6bn out of the ~$7bn on the graph

I should probably stop having clashes online, but i’ve nothing else to do currently.

I’d say : isolate yourself then.
On my part, i’ll believe we need allies and not “left purity”, let’s survive first.
Also, feel free to disagree but even after ensuring the survival of the communist ideals i want a multipolar/multinodal world, i don’t want a uniform communist world-state but communists, theocrats, monarchists, real/direct democrats, “anarcho”-capitalists, and many more. I.d.c. about world domination, it’s not desirable, feel free to dislike these countries but i won’t.

Ah, i’m sorry but i can’t wrap my head around why counting(, or not,) Russia in the foreign investments number would change something about this likelihood : if it is absent then China is still enough(, and if it presents then this likelihood would increase). Sorry for my lack of comprehension and feel free not to explain yourself further on this detail if you don’t consider it important.

colour revolution based only off of this data is unlikely

While i don’t see the link with Russia(, since the p.r.c. is enough in itself), i entirely agree with this quote, it can just be considered as one of the indicators of geopolitical alignment, and i felt interesting to share this ~discovery with Lemmygrad.

no clue 🤷, perhaps a mistake ?
The article isn’t more informative about this “top three countries”(, and announces a european ban on chinese electric vehicles) : https://archive.ph/69zPS, with the usual race to the bottom :

Rich countries may offer more subsidies, but CEE countries have cheaper land and labour, looser regulations and lower taxes.

I don’t understand since i don’t see a mention of russian foreign investments in the infographic, it’s probably in the category “others” ?

(i’ve reached the limit of characters so i can’t develop in the selftext on why Russia’s invasion was more of a necessity for survival than a desire to avoid a future burden. I’ve also stopped documenting myself on this topic two years ago and it’s not always that easy to understand the russian point of view on the western part of the Internet, but if they speak of a necessity then i trust them, if Ukraine joins the n.a.t.o. then the rest of the ex-u.s.s.r. is most likely to follow, a buffer state seems like a centuries-old demand on the russian side that they don’t want to let go of, but i’ve no doubts that i’ve ignored many more arguments)

it really seems to me like there is very little reason for this feud

What’s your opinion, or that of any reader passing here, about the way to behave when you’re attacked by the west ? Our newspapers often painted Evo Morales in a negative way despite his exemplarity, sometimes even as a dictator.
Wikipedia states that « Since 1950, Bolivia has seen the most coups of any country », isn’t sacrificing Evo Morales a good thing to please the west ? Will it be enough, and will it be beneficial for Bolivia ?

With that defeatist/cautious mindset, every opposition would have fallen one after the other, only brave rebellions ended slavery, colonization, occupations, … Fighting back seems more dangerous than submitting, but perhaps that it isn’t, and the curent government isn’t really submitting but simply being less vocal, if sacrificing Evo could make them gain more years to develop, then isn’t it worth it ?

On the other side, sacrificing Stalin didn’t accomplish much in the end, because the problem was that they dared to have a different ideology, and even when the u.s.s.r. and eastern europe progressively gave up on socialism, and disappeared, it still wasn’t enough, because Russia was then criticized for supporting Yugoslavia, Lybia, Syria, etc., the endgoal for now is the stupid uniformity, until Russia, and the rest of the world, is aligned with western interests.

There’s no talk of cooperation towards other different countries, it’s about selfish competition.

Yes, it’s tempting to be less vocal in your opposition, but it may also mean being less supportive of, e.g., Venezuela or Cuba, in the name of protecting your own country first.
Yes nothing will change unless we take unite together, but their/our history book is unfortunately full of martyrs that failed, should they/we avenge, e.g., Che Guevara, or learn to not make waves because they have responsabilities ?

If this willingness of appeasing the west pointless(, whether or not it’s the cause of this feud) ?
From my point of view they’ll be next once we’ve destroyed more influent differences such as islamists and the last socialists, they’re simply not powerful enough to be deemed a potential threat.
Yet on the other side it’d be foolish to haste a coup if it can be avoided, and a bit naive to simply trust that the population will lead a civil war in order to get the power back.

Most countries try to stay neutral(, some by rejecting all sides and others by supporting all sides). This world sucks, nothing new, clearly nothing normal since uniformity isn’t desirable.

I think that may be the reason : Evo Morales isn’t supported enough by the west.

I.m.h.o., since you asked, here’s an amateurish attempt :

Evo feels/was betrayed, kinda like Rafael Correa with Lenin Moreno, not much seems needed to be explained here.
I unfortunately can’t judge if he’s right to say that Bolivia would be in a better shape than nowadays under his experimented leadership, that’d require a bit of research.

I think that Luis Arce considers that Evo is too combative, and that they almost lost a lot with Jeanine Añez, there’s enough to have been scared, at least from my point of view their recovery of power seems as miraculous as the liberation of Julian Assange.
I.d.k. if he’s wrong to believe that toning down the m.a.s. rhetoric would protect their cultural revolution, honestly i don’t think so but i don’t/can’t know for certain.
He surprisingly still has the support of D.Choquehuanca whose political engagement makes no doubt in my eyes.
Luis Arce is still criticizing Israel, or supporting China, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., so apart from being clearly less vocal than Evo the results in international relations dont seem to have changed much, it’s at least not clearly a U-turn, as it was with Lenin Moreno for example.
I can’t imagine any indigenous bolivian that would prefer Añez to Arce, but like, e.g., Lula, Evo has a long history with the population, speaking of him being a living legend is probably too much to say of any living politician, but i’d support him if i was bolivian, you don’t put aside such influential people, i.m.o.
And i spoke about Arce’s “cautiousness”, but Evo wasn’t extreme since he said that he wasn’t against anyone, not the west nor the Resistance, and how much would they need to be pro-west until we(sterners) are satisfied ?
There may be some interest over being powerful, famous, rich, or whatever, as well as some partial disdain, but less cynically i believe that Luis Arce is afraid of what the west may do if Evo returns to power, that it’s not worth it.

These are all speculations, the truth is that i haven’t got a clue either. Following their twitter accounts isn’t enough to understand their justifications, i can’t remember when was the last time that Luis Arce mentioned Evo in his tweets for example(, while Evo Morales frequently attacks Luis Arce, without once getting an answer apparently).

Only 5.000 views, wtf…

“My name is Matt Nelson, and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest.
We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
We call ourselves the greatest nation in history, yet we spend more on weapons of war than we do on educating our children, helping the homeless, ensuring all Americans have equal rights, and protecting the environment combined.
We are slaves to capitalism and the military industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care.
The protest I am about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government.
I urge any of you who are of the same mind to call your senators and representatives and demand that they introduce and advance legislation to achieve these goals. If sitting lawmakers won’t, vote for those who will.
A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy.
Take the power back. Free Palestine.”

Here, i’m trying to add nuances to what i wrote, i guess that i don’t have time to really argue on the Internet with people who’d disagree with them, yet the desire is still very much there, i don’t like echo chambers :

We’ll regret our current republic if times go 't/r’ough, since that usually means a more authoritarian governement.
Without robot-slaves, it’d also seem unavoidable that the wealthier will desire a higher rent to sustain a way of living and live above the peasants, if they need 10 times the peasant’s salary to do so, then we’d tend towards 10% of (neo-)nobles and 90% of (neo-)peasants.
It’s true that every(?) society of large enough scale was divided between the workers, (the soldiers, the clergy, …), and the privileged class, who didn’t have to work(, except for taking care of h.is.er fortune). One could argue that nobles of the past had more responsabilities than nowadays capitalists(, as well as an even more pronounced inequality in the face of the judicial system), but it’d be more interesting to know if technology will avoid the return to the “natural” order between the laborious class and the noble/annuitant one.

There’s a future in which capitalism coud still lead to a utopia, e.g. with robot-slaves, that’d make my/our fears wrong :

Despite what i wrote in this comment, better times are ahead, in particular thanks to these “robot-slaves”, and while everyone wants more, i don’t think we’re evil to the point of refusing a mostly labor-free life to every human on earth if we have the capacity to do so.
Capitalism wouldn’t announce an horrible future if we can still eat freely, if money/‘renting your body/time’ stop being a necessity, it could lead to some socialist ideals in a utopia.
I refuse to be cynical to the point of believing that the capitalists’ greed would be more important to them than allowing technology to free wo.men from (the loss of their entire lives to )work.s they hate.

Perhaps will i be old enough to see that happening, i don’t think that we’re evil, and i dare think that nobody is, we could very well be allowed to live in a utopia, they don’t hate their population.
Hence, i don’t really care of what we’re doing in our countries, if capitalists want to stay in power and enjoy their privileges, then so be it.

The solution to our fight against other countries, to our desire of security, to the threat of cultural hegemony, would be to be united in diversity, it’s doable&desirable :

What’s annoying is refusing to allow/‘live with’ countries that want to walk a different path, we need this diversity to think ouside the box, if every creation is a little birth then every synthesis is a little death.
We have to cohabitate, and while i’d prefer to live in a communist utopia like everyone on Lemmygrad, i wouldn’t want capitalism(, royalism, etc.,) to disappear all over the world, it’s their problem, and it’s interesting to know how they’ll evolve.

The usual counter-argument is that we have to coup/“convert” other countries because it makes us more secure, i don’t think that cultural hegemony is the only way to prevent military invasions, and i’d go as far as to say that it’s also not the only way to prevent covert operations and foreign propaganda, we need to have rules against them and a way to enforce them.
Capitalists would have to be certain that their privileges wouldn’t be overthrtrown by a communist revolution for them to accept socialist countries.
Or perhaps that these “robot-slaves” will make useless this need for a superior monetary/social position, having your basic needs met should be enough for everyone, independent communities with their own rules could flourish in the “land of the free”, who knows what the future has in store.

================================

If the only reason for the moderator to have deleted my comment is that it was confusing h.im.er as said in the modlog, then i hope that these titles quickly written will have solved the problem. If that really was the only motive for deletion.

If the real problem is only that it is too confusing, if i’m to believe the moderator, then here it is with explanations :

Answer to -6-6-6- about France as a vassal of the 3rd most populated country on Earth, the u.s.a., or, in his words, « France, like the rest of Europe, grovels at the will of the American Empire and does exactly what it demands of it. » :

Oh yeah(, the last paragraphs of https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1823393948775133302 stayed on my mind, and divided we(sterners) will be more easily conquerable), 100%, you won’t find many people here to contradict you.

Answer to the rest of -6-6-6- answer about the influence of wealth in our society or, in his words, « The funny part is that in France the capitalist bourgeoise also control the government and just use different mechanisms of power to do so. » :

On medias ownership in capitalist-owned countries :

The most obvious is the control of the medias, it’d be different if every single french media was saying that Venezuela is awesome and mocking the awful capitalists for being conspiratorial about the elections of countries they dislike.
Instead, every single french media will underline that venezuelans need to be saved from a tyrant, the same goes for other countries.
That’s why american medias could easily make Bernie Sanders president if they changed their definition of “objectivity”.
That’s why most people never heard of the awesome Jill Stein or other 3rd party candidates, France is obviously no exception with little candidates hardly spoken of.

On preventing citizens to present themselves in an election in capitalist-owned countries :

A less obvious one is that in France we don’t even need to explicitly ban political opponents(, awful when it happens in Venezuela, but not in Ecuador or many other countries, they almost succeeded with D.Trump, and apparently succeeded with R.Kennedy), we only have to require candidates to have hundreds of signatures/endorsements from mayors.
Hence, only a handful of candidates manage to get these endorsements, and not only did this number of required signatures went up, but it’s not anonymous anymore(, with the possibility of repercussions).
As expected, while anti-Europe or anti-imperialist candidates could have gotten enough signatures in the past(, strangely), they don’t anymore(, and even if they did the medias wouldn’t talk about such a little candidate, frankly never heard of by people i’ve spoken to).
Even very large political parties only get their signatures in the last weeks, weird.
My candidate would have been Clara Egger on this list of the citizens who tried to have these signatures, but i’ve never heard of most of them.

On election fraud in capitalist-owned countries :

And that’s not even considering that they may be cheating, which wouldn’t surprise me honestly.

Other influences of capitalists :

Obviously it doesn’t stop there : you need money in politics, and the thieves/capitalists sponsors don’t want ‘to give back’/taxes. Medias aren’t enough for our oligarchs, they also want control over the education, survey institutes, think tanks, as well as helping our capitalist-owned state in meddling in foreign countries, which is the real crime here i.m.o. : destroy your country if you want, but leave others alone.

Conclusion about elections :

People aren’t stupid, on the contrary, but they don’t have the time to document themselves, they don’t know that we’re being manipulated.

Out-of-topic : On Israel and the medias :

I do have to acknowledge that i expected more support for Israel, but the latter only said that it wants to take revenge for the (very partial )revenge taken by palestinians on Oct.7th. Israel tried to argue that it was more than revenge(, and we did pretend that the hostages weren’t released because of “Hamas”, and not because Israel refused to agree with a permanent ceasefire in exchange), but the argument of protection wasn’t bought by our medias, and since we agreed on our previous western wars that revenge was enough of a motive, Israel thought that it didn’t need to do more. Still, i expected more support for Israel, not sure if/‘how much’ it helped in restraining israelis.

Out-of-topic : On the medias and the islamists fighters/separatists/heroes/terrorists/rebels/martyrs/humans/murderers/victims/…{choose your denomination} in western Africa :

A good example of propaganda is that islamists in the Alliance of Sahel States are now progressively painted as the good guys since they’re fighting Russia(, even if i don’t expect us to go very far in that direction, we didn’t talk a lot about them in the past and will continue to do so, but the shift of narrative is very obvious, they’re promoted from terrorists to rebels now). Unbelievable i know since we fought them until very recently, and at least as late as president Hollande, but it’s similar to what we did with Bin-Laden in Afghanistan against the soviets after all(, or in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Xinjiang, …, whatever serves our temporary interest).

To be fair, a reminder that censorship/bias/manipulation isn’t only anti-communist, but on both sides of the Overton window(, which doesn’t have only two directions b.t.w.) :

And the propaganda isn’t only anti-communist, but anti-fascist as well(, the far-right doesn’t identify itself with fascism though). Of course, you’re not going to like this obvious statement, and rightly state that at least far-right movements are supported by some billionaires, it’s just that the censorship&manipulation is directed towards both sides of the Overton window.

A reminder that more direct state censorship is also practiced in western countries :

Then there’s also direct state censorship, with so many examples(, “disinformation”, anti-“terrorism apologia”, “foreign actors”, even Rumble has been banned), but oligarch manipulations is probably more influent, not as if it was a competition.
Sure, things could be worse, especially since we still have the Internet(, for now ?), but keeping power isn’t that hard to do, even if the global distrust towards (legacy/mainstream )medias is a growing thorn is the side.