The YPG are the largest armed faction of the SDF, they’ve been working with the US for a while to steal Syria’s oil but this is a new level of yikes

More anarchist concentration camps.

Has the fastfetch dev ever mentioned why they use the infinity symbol? Don’t want to find out later on that it’s a dogwhistle.

The positions are elected by a vote at the supreme soviet assembly, those positions are elected by the soviets (councils) below the assembly, and those are elected by the soviets below that, and so on down to the lowest level where the local constituents vote.

In the party it’s generally considered a “duty” though, especially among those that participated in the revolution like Stalin who treated loyalty to the organisation, self-sacrifice and subordination to it as a significant and necessary part of what made the revolution succeed. Thousands of people literally sacrificing their whole lives for the goal.

As such, Stalin wouldn’t break a decision of the assembly just as he wouldn’t want anyone else to. If they said they still needed him in his post he did his duty and stayed despite not wanting to.

He largely held equal powers to everyone else on the Council of Ministers, the position of Chairman didn’t have special powers. The General Secretary role of the party was invented by Lenin with the intention of it being used to break opposition in the party (perform purges). Once Stalin had successfully performed his purges and prevented split in the country/civil-war he saw the position as having completed its purpose and wanted rid of it, he didn’t like the cult of personality around himself and wanted people to view the government in a collective capacity rather than an individual leader kind of way. That’s obviously not what ended up being the perception though. Lots of hero worship got in the way.

Voices: Correct! Vote!

Rykov: There is a proposal to vote.

Voices: Yes, yes!

Rykov: We are voting. Who is for comrade Stalin’s proposal to abolish the post of General Secretary? Who is opposed? Who abstains? Noone.

October 16, 1952 (http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/succession-to-stalin/succession-to-stalin-texts/stalin-on-enlarging-the-central-committee/):

This article was taken from the Russian newspaper Glasnost devoted to the 120th Anniversary of Stalin’s birth, was the last speech at the CC [Central Committee] CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] before Stalin died. The text was being published for the very first time in the Soviet Union…

…MOLOTOV – [Glasnost -] coming to the speaker’s tribune completely admits his mistakes before the CC, but he stated that he is and will always be a faithful disciple of Stalin.

STALIN – (interrupting Molotov) This is nonsense. I have no students at all. We are all students of the great Lenin.

[Glasnost -] Stalin suggested that they continue the agenda point by point and elect comrades into different committees of state.

With no Politburo, there is now elected a Presidium of the CC CPSU in the enlarged CC and in the Secretariat of the CC CPSU altogether 36 members.

In the new list of those elected are all members of the old Politbiuro – except that of comrade A. A. Andreev who, as everyone knows now is unfortunately completely deaf and thus can not function.

VOICE FROM THE FLOOR – We need to elect comrade Stalin as the General Secretary of the CC CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

STALIN – No! I am asking that you relieve me of the two posts!

MALENKOV – coming to the tribune: Comrades! We should all unanimously ask comrade Stalin, our leader and our teacher, to be again the General Secretary of the CC CPSU.

Same attempt (A. I. Mgeladze, Stalin. Kakim ia ego znal. Strannitsy nedavnogo poshlogo. p. 118):

At the first Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] called after the XIX Congress of the Party (I had been elected member of the CC and took part in the work of this Plenum), Stalin really did present the question of General Secretary of the CC CPSU, or of the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He referred to his age, overwork, said that other cadres had cropped up and there were people to replace him, for example, N.I. Bulganin could be appointed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but the CC members did not grant his request, all insisted that comrade Stalin remain at both positions.

His sentence isn’t wrong. Stalin did try to resign multiple times (four actually). When his fourth resignation was rejected by the party he then attempted to abolish his own position entirely.

The USSR was a dictatorship

No it wasn’t. This is propaganda. Even the CIA admits that it is propaganda in this document:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

Democracy under socialism is simply structured differently. You need to study it properly.

Several countries that you support today still use a system very much like this. Cuba and Vietnam for example. A solid video on Cuban democracy is here: https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds

All the socialist countries built on this system.

Have you actually read it yet?

I worked at the server company that previously hosted discord servers (no longer exists) and let me tell you right now that all your conversations were accessible on the server to anyone in the company and completely and totally insecure. Overall security was pretty meh and it wouldn’t be very difficult for anyone who really wanted the information to gain access to anything on your server.

It is not a valid place to store or discuss anything that requires operational security. It is also not a place where customer data should be stored or discussed, in fact you’re also probably breaking gdpr by accident if you ever do so.

Honestly a lot more deserved it over footbinding being absolutely fucking vile but then you’d be at like half the population.

I can’t conceive the land not belonging to someone, no.

This is just basically like saying “I do not know anything about history”.

The land used to be called “the commons”. It was owned by nobody. It was everyone’s land.

It was taken over by a system called Enclosure, in which the common land was stolen from the people and “Enclosed” by a small few people who took over.

I have no idea why he has such a following. Is it because he tore the whole system down? Is it because he wrote some essays? China didn’t start developing until years after Mao left office.

The average lifespan in China was 33 when Mao launched the revolution. It rose DURING the revolution, during civil war conditions simulteously alongside a literal fascist exterminationist invasion by the Japanese. The life expectancy during this period rose despite war because the communists were improving the conditions of the people immediately.

The life expectancy upon Mao’s death was 64. It rose further after his death.

Life expectancy does not rise when people’s lives are getting worse. He certainly made some mistakes, but you are making an utterly fatal mistake here by looking at “x number of people died” in isolation instead of looking at it in comparison to what existed before.

And if none of that is enough for you I leave you with this:

It has been estimated that, by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Han Chinese women.

The ending of footbinding alone justifies Mao as a positive thing all by itself. Without ever having to discuss literally anything else. It was a horrific practice. There’s plenty more to use as justification, but footbinding by itself is singlehandedly enough to justify it all.

acting in a way that directly leads to people being hurt, maimed and / or traumatized

If that’s your benchmark then 90% of people should be considered criminal.

Out of interest do you support Israel and/or the continuation of the war in Ukraine or do you support ceasefires?

Yeah you get what I mean about her being THE child killer here lol.

Even the average person would’ve fucking killed her given the chance. This is Breivik. He’s a monster and someone absolutely would try and have him given the chance.

Being a child killer among other people that have committed murders but still have some principles is usually not good. Not to mention being like THE child killer in Norway not just any child killer.

I’m British, THE child killer here would’ve been Myra Hindley, would I have killed her in prison? Yes. Yes I would. I’m pretty sure there’s some fairly rough guys in there that would not take kindly to a person that slaughtered 69 kids one by one by one at a fucking summer camp.

So many good future socialists died that day. I completely guarantee someone kills the fucker if he is mixed in with everyone.

Not really sure why you think Norwegians are ontologically predisposed to not want to kill child mass murderers tbh.

I was ruder than I should’ve been, I thought you were the other person who has irritated me a bit.

I guarantee you without change far reaching enough to societally gain a new understanding of public space and roads

This is the weird fantasy part I was referring to. It’s like, just nonsense. It comes off like an american attitude being ported to the UK with absolutely no adaptation whatsoever to British conditions. Our conditions are nothing like america. Getting rid of cameras and getting traffic calming measures installed instead is not particularly difficult, it’s about the same. This idea of complete and widespread reinterpretation of public space? It doesn’t make sense here.

The particular road from the OP is a main road through rural space between major locations. By American standards it would be considered idyllic.

Parts of the road already have traffic calming measures.

This is very easily expanded upon with the addition of chicanes, which are in wide use (hundreds of thousands) across the country.

#

There’s no “reimagining” needed here. People don’t need to develop a new consciousness of public space. We do not live in a country that is utterly obsessed with cars like america. And we aren’t opposed to limiting them. There are zero political barriers to this, the only barrier is the profit/revenue barrier of the traffic camera obsessed crowd. I must stress, I am not just cherrypicking out rare projects that look good. This shit is bog standard, everywhere in the country already. In every town, in every village, in every city. Outisde every school. In every residential area. All over the country.

It is categorically not the same environment here and we do not share the same political barriers or problems.

Meanwhile, in the real world we must be concerned with actually viable change.

when the last speed cam is dismantled you’ll find all the roads still suck ass and will not be redesigned

This is just factually not true, evidenced by the abundance of traffic calming measures that exists, and those that have replaced cameras.

You are inventing a fantasy reality to suit an anti car obsession. One I share, car reduction is good. However you’re being a tit now.

you have not listened to a word i’ve said lmao

Ay that’s a surprise at least.

You’re not being realistic though. Will continue congratulating the gang for cutting these down, fairly sure some of the ycl lads have done a few, dunno about these specific ones though.

You physically can’t speed with traffic calming, they will just crash and fuck up their vehicles.

This conversation is silly. Right from the start if you were committed to this fuck the poor nonsense you should have just been honest and admitted it so neither of our times would have been wasted on this ridiculous farce.

Not really that surprised, typical liberal bullshit. Gonna vote Starmer too yeah?

Ok so what do you expect to happen when you rock up to the council and say “Hi, I want to replace this speed camera making tens of thousands in profit per year with this other solution that makes no money at all” ?

Please tell me what you think the pathway to the alternative better solution is.

My point here is that for every one it fucks over, it helps other people not being fucked over, because it does do something against speeding. My line of reasoning for speed cams is not that it fucks people over, it’s that it helps people. You wanna focus on the first part, I’m trying to get you to see the issue is more complex than that, at least if you include people outside of cars in your consideration.

Well my line of reasoning is that there is an alternative that fucks no poor people over, and that taking action to achieve that end us a good thing. A negative in the short term leads to a longterm positive.

Also I see no other method of doing this. If you go to the council and say “I want to replace this highly profitable traffic camera making hundreds of thousands per year with a traffic island that will make no money at all” the decision that any team will make internally is obvious. That issue inevitably leads to destruction of these cameras as the only method of causing the alternative to occur.