221–230 of 248 posts
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> while doing repression even more violently than chinese or russian governements Source on that?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1141568/yellow-vest-...
Where are the usual users saying "it's a private company, they can do what they want. It's not censorship."? Are those usual users we hear on this platform when companies like Facebook or Google or Reddit or etc censor people and ideas silent in this case or are they being hypocrites?
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USSR and its sphere of influence was communism in practice. You couldn't create a company, you weren't allowed to do anything for money without state permission (and mostly there was no permission). Prices and number of things produced were decided by the ruling party. It failed almost universally. China today is less "communist" economically than most of EU.
Capitalism, communism, fascism, they are all distractions from facts on the ground. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia resembled nothing so much as one another.
The story is not much different in Germany. Same fruit of a poisoned tree.
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The OG Man Bear Pig was related to Al Gore predicting Florida would sink and there would be more aggressive storms/hurricanes caused by then-global warming.
Turns out Al Gore was right!
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> Most people recognize SP as libertarian in general orientation While I believe Matt & Trey are generally libertarian-leaning I've never detected the slightest bleed-through of libertarian/neoliberal idealism in the show itself. I've not really watched the show regularly in years, maybe that's changed. I do know that they initially discussed the libertarianism at a time when it was the hip above-it-all precursor to…
You’re mistaking “both sides” with the ability and willingness to skewer anyone. Take a step back and it’s easy to see politics across the spectrum is ripe for satire.
I've never seen South Park as neutral. Its critique of American liberalism is surface level, its critique of American conservatism (whatever that means these days) was fundamental and ideological.
Moreover, I never saw the satire as much more than superficial. Which is fine, I always thought it funny but neither especially acerbic nor intellectual. I think leaning on that "neutral", above-it-all standpoint gave the show some credit that was somewhat undeserved.
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The second from the top post is about Adobe cutting services to an entire country, yet here we are, twisting our knickers over a flag emoticon.
That's the really story though - companies bending over backwards to stay in one market, while cutting off another market so easily.
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But you can watch it in German or English on their official German presence southpark.de.
Sadly, the video quality there isn't quite what I would get from pirated versions - to put it mildly. And considering that cartoon style videos don't even need much bandwidth for good quality to begin with, this seems really weird.
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China is still kinda like that. To make an internet company you need a license (not allowed without state permission) and that company is still in reality owned by the state. It may do whatever it likes to it at any moment, like insisting party members sit in the officers and control decisions ... and does. It will often also be literally owned by a state bank too. Yes, China has less economic planning than the USSR…
> But communism isn't defined by that [central planning] > Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system I really don't want to be advocate of communism, but it seems to me you're cherry-picking the defining characteristics of communism to suit you. After all: > Indeed Marx laid out almost nothing of how actual communist states were meant to operate So why demand it must be totalitarian? Also > Communi…
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...
Observe that he prescribed:
1. Abolition of private property
4. Confiscation of property of all rebels and emigrants
5. Centralisation of all credit in the hands of the state
6. Centralisation of all communication and transport in the hands of the state
9. Forced mass population transfers out of cities into the countryside
How can anyone implement such drastic policies? Marx was under no illusions about this and spelled it out quite clearly, which is why the fact he's not perceived as being as evil as Hitler is an unfortunate stain on our society:
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads ...
So he literally stated in his manifesto that creating a communist state would require despotism, or in more modern language, totalitarianism. That was just one of many calls Marx made for violent revolution rather than democratic means.
Given this starting point it's not a huge surprise the Soviets tried to implement a fully planned economy. Marx didn't specify that as an end state per se, but he specified very similar things as a means to get to communism. China still has a largely planned economy despite successfully whitewashing itself as "capitalist", hence all the stories about staggering piles of non-performing debt, zombie banks kept alive by government fiat (centralise all credit in the hands of the state), and massive overproduction of things like steel.
As for Poland in the late 80s, yes, by the end of the 20th century a lot of committed communists had realised how foolish they had been. But did they really understand the true root cause of the problems? Or did they mistakenly conclude the root cause was central planning? Sometimes when I look at the behaviour of the eastern European states I have to wonder.
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I want to love SNL but a lot of the current political skits are just cast members mimicking news events mostly verbatim while pulling funny faces. (E.g. The Kavenaugh hearings: “I like beer! I like beer!”) Or taking a serious matter and turning it into mere farce. (E.g. current impeachment matters, with Giuliani portrayed with all the wit of a Sesame Street puppet.)
The recent primary debate skit was pretty good. But... the Christmas Mueller song was particularly egregious. They were better when Obama was in office, IMO. Trump has ruined a lot of “news comedy” across the board. It’s too predictable.
Look how they portrayed Andrew Yang. An unconventional candidate with near-zero media attention consistently polling above O'Rourke, Klobushar, Castro and Booker. Yet the joke is how poorly he's doing? It's noteworthy that the audience literally didn't laugh.
Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures. China is a huge market for Paramount's films. Paramount has previously explored a 49% sale to China's Wanda Group, and they currently have extensive financial backing from the Shanghai Film Group Corp.[2] If they wanted to, it's well within the purview of the CCP to apply pressure to Paramount's ability to finance its films or distribute those fil…
Agreed. But it's reins in, not reigns in.