Earlier quoted context omitted.
UK has a two-tier justice system.
In fairness to UK, pretty much every place has a two tier justice system.
That absolutely puts no fairness to the UK, but puts all these other places at equal shame.
East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
51–60 of 256 posts
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
And in the US, landlords can pull credit reports from private companies, and if the private company says you missed a credit card payment a year ago they'll reject you. If the private credit score company returns a wrong score because someone else has the same name as you and they mixed up some records, well, it's a private company, you have no recourse. Since it's not the government, but a for-profit private company…
Free speech does not include slander or lies. Like when credit score company makes a mistake.
You can sue the credit bureaus for inaccurate information. I did using a contingency lawyer and it worked. Depending on your actual damages, you can win significant money. The FCRA and other laws can be very powerful.
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you using Socialism and Communism interchangeably? Communism goes further than Socialism (or Socialism doesn't go as far as Communism), Communism is more extreme, cold and hard and not at all blurry-edged, according to my understanding anyway. All instances of -isms eventually fall to the unrelenting winds of human nature. Not necessarily due to the ideals within the -ism itself.
Well, Communism was seen by countries we call "Communist" (GDR, Soviet Union, Red China in Mao era, and the like), as something potentially possible in some distant future, it was their endgame (some claim, only notionally so, with no actual plan of getting there, but it doesn't matter really). What they had in reality, they called "Socialism". Socialism is the "form of industrialised society where private ownership…
The above comment chain is what is wrong with us. We talk about labels more than we talk about issues.
Labels are a distraction. If you have a conversation about real things I find we agree nore than we disagree.
But disagreement is what is fomented by our oppressors, because it distracts us from fighting them.
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#54How does one reconcile the idea that the Stasi disappeared political opponents regularly but also engaged in weird stuff like moving people's socks around.
> The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.
I get that sometimes a "broken" opponent is more useful than a dead one as they can sabotage the whole cause, like this article implies. But if you hold as much power as they did then it seems very unlikely to me that using resources to troll someone like this provides an effort/reward ratio that would be interesting to someone with that much existing power
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#55Article mirror: https://archive.is/d1rzC Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung 2014, https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of... > Hubertus Knabe studies the Stasi — and was spied on by them. He shares stunning details from the fall of a surveillance state, and shows how easy it was for neighbor to turn on neighbor.
During COVID face masks were enough. Fine speculators earner low hundreds trading them, politicians made frauds worth millions, anyone could pick on any stranger not wearing or wearing them incorrectly, law enforcement could impose the most ridiculous fines. It's so trivial to make people yap at each other.
Not wearing one implied a lack of care for others in your society.
Wearing them imposed minimal burden, so why are you surprised when you signal that you don't care about others in your society, that they responded in kind?
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#56In the UK there is "social media intelligence", where AI systems scan the firehose of messages as they appear. [1] So people have been arrested for posting something online, even if nobody appears to have seen it, and they delete it shortly after. The policing is selective, depending on political view. For example, there were recently people with placards in London calling for the death of JK Rowling, which is de fac…
You forgot to add a source for your claim that protestors called for the death of Rowling.
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#57So much effort and resources only to produce Trabants and Wartburgs. You will know them by the cars they produce.
/me looks at most British and American cars...
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#58Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
UK has a two-tier justice system.
In fairness to UK, pretty much every place has a two tier justice system.
It didn't used to have:
The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England.
- Orwell
Re: East German Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung (2021)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
UK has a two-tier justice system.
In fairness to UK, pretty much every place has a two tier justice system.
The dose makes the poison, and the UK is getting a big dose right now that they are not used to.
Plus the normal status quo is that you have an elite you cannot offend, now there are protected classes you cannot offend.