Do not, my friends, become addicted to bad news. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
It’s another symptom of alienation. People try to reclaim agency by acting out against what seems to fall out of control of industry and media. America is an urban, developed society so things like raw milk and meat only diets seem both authentic and transgressive. There is a certain level of glamour to these things because they are out of sight for most almost all their life, even if they buy their raw milk in a carton and their meat prepackaged in a grocery store.
It’s impressive what the collective human effort can accomplish when enough people put their minds and will to it.
I have stopped eating basically anything packaged, cutting few things out first and over time practically all of it. It wasn’t an especially conscious effort even, I feel like I might have fallen out of test groups because I don’t even particularly enjoy those foods now even as massive sweet tooth. Maybe it was because I became more aware of the contents and ingredients of food and stopped making the associations I once made.
There is something very telling about Germany which patronizingly preaches about Western values and peace to Palestinians which get displaced and bombed regularly immediately have large portion of their country turn fascist as soon as there is smallest amount of societal disruption and violence, backing the party that supports the political ideology that caused said violence no less.
It also makes me respect those who suffer from some of the worst of humanity in cruelty and violence still embrace kindness and compassion first.
Compromising on legitimate issues to get a crumb of concession on other issues will only lead to sacrificing all your principles to meet fascism in the middle. Problem with leftist in Europe isn’t that they don’t compromise enough, problem is that they appear as single-minded by compromising too much and letting their detractors engage them on issues like Antisemitism and Trans rights. Meanwhile you can have literal Nazis in European right and its overseas supporters like court eunuch Elon cast a wide net and compromise on nothing manage to keep pushing the boundaries of acceptable and moderate fascism.
They keep inventing new types of guys all the time. My condolences to any who suffered and continue to suffer because people keep letting empty ideology poison their thoughts until they become unhinged like this.
First rule of Victoria 3 and really any Paradox game is that there are tons of data and a lot of things happening which can be overwhelming but learning the game is just filtering out what matters from a bunch of things that don’t matter. More you play the more you can realize what matters so it’s easier to find out what doesn’t, that’s all. Can’t really learn it without first playing it badly.
The point is women’s proletarianization and emancipation didn’t happen to increase profits of the capitalist class and it certainly wasn’t granted to increase profits by paying them less in factories or wherever else. It happened because of changes in material condition due to industrialization and pressure from women to have equal part in their proletarianization. Wartime conditions made that more easily possible because interests of society, state and also preservation of capitalist order triumphed short term profit motives and found social support due to reality on the ground and “home front” but that’s exactly why it didn’t happen to increase profits.
It is true that capitalists conceded this to prevent revolution and indeed didn’t even fully concede it since a large part of unpaid labor was and still is rested on women, such as housework and child rearing or has its costs burdened by public while its profits are taken by state such as food aid, maternity aid, child benefits and other forms of welfare. However these are not because capitalists included women in labor pool to increase their profits but to cut costs of women in labor pool. Khamenei is promoting a common and false idea that women in workplace reduced the wages in general and was a ploy by the capitalists or something similar. It wasn’t and it wasn’t a minimalist change either.
As for profit interest, it is always short term. That’s also why destroying the planet might not seem realistic but it is ultimately what is happening. In case of women, industrialization and disenfranchisement of women destroyed women’s livelihoods and created conditions that allowed complete entrapment of women in households where before they were participants in if not equal. It would both figuratively and literally destroy women but that was ultimately not acceptable to society or women. That’s not because of any clemency or trick by the capitalists, the trick is making people believe women are allowed to work because capitalists made it possible.
Khamenei is wrong on both accounts, the proletarianization of women didn’t happen on account of capitalist class for profit motive but due to state-level national interest that overrode profit driven structural changes that were happening within Western economies. Now of course capitalist class not only can and often did mobilize state for profit motive but rather outright prefers to utilize state for its interest but wartime conditions that threatens survival of capital class created a different equation in which self-preservation was enough of a pressure.
One cannot accept the suggestion that women only acquired rights on clemency of capitalists to benefit of capitalists. Because not only is it false and gives into the exact sort of tautology that Khamenei spouts here that appears correct but also lets all sorts of reactionaries make false arguments about role of women (and minors, minorities and all types of exploited groups). All sorts of worker liberation is against capitalist self-interest and are only conceded with enough pressure in which the other outcome is worse for their class interest.
Women’s liberation follows capitalism destroying the livelihood of women by uneven proletarianization that subjugated women to exploited labor for benefit of capital class, in which if profit interest was followed they would rather women be extinct which is obviously against the interest of women in question and functioning society in general as profit interest usually is. Women managed to acquire enough of a leverage to change this state of affairs due to pressure of wartime conditions that made women even more essential and made profit interest a temporarily secondary concern.
Not only is this blatant opportunism by Khamenei to excuse the rampant sexism that Iranian government embodies and seems to use both as a distraction from internal political failures and international pressure but it is also categorically wrong because women’s labor was not in effect something that capitalists entrepreneurs desired collectively to establish. Capitalist class benefits from unpaid labor in general because it reduces the monetization of economy outside of capitalist control which at all levels of chain of production reduces the value of labor. In effect, women entering work force increased labor costs because previously free labor started requiring expense from the pocket of labor which is factored into wage demands. This is something that capitalist class still tries to make into a public expense by socializing its costs to public programs, such as food aid, maternity benefits and other needs that companies still inadequately compensate their employees otherwise.
I don’t know what to think if even leftist news would rather believe in something so far-fetched as dirty bombs not to mention the lib or trumpist mass panic about alien or Iranian invasion instead of the banal reality that USA is a full on surveillance state. I guess it’s a bit too boring and we require more excitement now in the ever-escalating stakes environment.
Wasn’t it basically confirmed back years ago when BLM protests were happening that three-lettered agencies were filming it all with drones?
I saw this in the news today and first comment I have seen was about gender of the shooter. All political discourse is now downstream from social media sheikhs whose every thought is obsessively occupied by trans people.
It’s impressive how much French are able to get away with in terms of chauvinism, jingoism, imperialism and neo-colonialism not to mention implicit or explicit racism. They managed to craft, I believe by design, an image that appeals across a broad political spectrum by sustaining the view that France is a prestigious and romantic country that ironically is amplified and projected even further by Anglosphere and has purchase even in many leftist circles who idealize France and French.