Alsephina

joined 1 year ago
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 76 points 4 months ago (29 children)

Inevitable for some soldiers to go against instructions. Can't imagine what it's like to hear your two children have been killed...

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 months ago

We live in a South Park world

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The LLM usage for in depth videos like JT's explains alot lol

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 months ago (4 children)

"Hides behind" you say when it is indeed a developing nation lmao

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Vocal participation in a genocidal system is endorsement of it. You can’t tell people to vote for one of the parties of Capital one year and then suddenly tell people that actually it needs to be overthrown and think that’s going to happen 5 years later.

At some point you have to commit to it being “broken” (actually working as intended of course) and organize based entirely on the fact that it is and can not be supported in any way whatsoever. We’re long past that point with the “lesser evil” party currently committing genocide.

Successful revolutions in the past have used elections primarily as a way to show the size of the movement, never by endorsing a party of Capital. Specially not one committing a genocide.

put sanctions on Israeli settlers

To pretend like it's not state-supported settler colonialism and just an individual thing, and he even walked that back lmao. You'd expect the supposed "lesser evil" candidate to do the bare minimum of stopping all relations with "israel" when it's committing a genocide in full view of the world.

freeze military aid to Israel

Biden bypasses congress to send weapons to the israel faster

(this one and a “why voting is a bad idea if you are a left wing person” video) the logic of which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you take it at face value [...] With no particular other solutions to offer

Easy to tell you didn't even watch the video lol

The answer is to organize, since you don't seem to have the patience to watch a video, seeing as how you put it through fucking chat gpt lmao. Why are you trusting shitty LLMs with political stuff?

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Can't get away from shitlibs even on Lemmy it seems lol

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Eh, that's exactly where it starts though.

Where things go after that depends on where you are, which only your local socialist orgs — and later yourself with enough experience — can figure out.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 22 points 7 months ago

"Passive ability: Permanent USB tunneling" unlocked

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 18 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Everything is politics, and should be talked about.

Also this would've been much more fitting with the Luhansk or Donetsk flags instead of the Kiev regime's, since the post-2014 coup government did commit a genocide in Eastern Ukraine.

[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 10 points 7 months ago (5 children)
[–] Alsephina@lemmy.ml 18 points 7 months ago

Good fucking video

From the comments:

So there is such a thing as Occidentalism but it's not the yin to the yang of Orientalism as some may think. Most often, it takes the form of irrational hostility towards the West. Things like rejecting well researched truths presented by Western academia solely on the basis that it's Western. I've been highly critical of this in my videos, as it obfuscates "anti-colonialism," with anti-Western bigotry in order to get away with it. Occidentalism as a stereotypical view of the West, however, doesn't really exist as a perfectly symettrical counterpart to Orientalism.

The reason why it's mostly a one way street, and non-Westerners are generally better at representing the West than the other way around is because the West is currently the hegemon of this planet, in terms of cultural soft power. Therefore everyone around the world is intimately familiar with the generalities of Western culture because everyone is exposed to it.

The average Iranian who lived in Tehran all their life can tell a British accent is distinct from Scottish, and we do associate Received Pronunciation British with "posh." They do know the organ is a church instrument. Typical Western associations are well known to the average Iranian in Tehran.

At the beginning of the video, my uncle and I mention Mozart and Ketèlbey, Western Classical composers, and the musical form of "alla turcas," and "Baroque music". That's because every musician in the world knows Western music and its genres, styles, composers, etc. But it may take you months to find a single Classical Western musician who knows the names of Sheydā, Dimitrie Cantemir, or who know what the terms "peşrev" or "kalofonía" mean, and what musical forms they refer to.

All musicians around the world can play Western music. We all do chords, harmony, play the piano and guitar; we all know and are familiar with Western music theory. Only a tiny fraction of Western musicians learn any music theory outside of their own. There's a reason why Western musicians are the only ones who call their form of ethnic music "Music Theory," whilst everywhere else, even between them, people preface their music theory with the cultural specifier like "Iranian music theory," "Japanese music theory," etc. I'm aware that this presents a rather unflattering picture of the West, but please understand that this is not a consequence of us non-Westerners being oh so wiser. Not trying to portray Westerners as inherently bad or evil. If we were the current cultural hegemons of the planet, we'd be just like that. In 500 years, if China or Brazil become the next superpower, they'll be the ones generally ignorant about other cultures whilst everyone else knows about them. Average Westerners aren't ignorant by default, they simply naturally embody the traits of a region with hegemonic global cultural influence, and we non-Westerners are simply luckier than them because unlike them, we all grow up listening to both our music, and Western music.

TLDR: everyone in the world knows that Madonna exists. Most Westerners have no idea who Fairuz or Shajarian are. That's just how it is due to the current geopolitical context. But that's just this context. In 500 years, if Central Asia becomes the next cultural hegemon, they'll be the exact same.

 

Israel’s current right-wing government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood. ⠀

United States said relations between Israel and the Palestinians are far from ripe. That all but quashes the Palestinian Authority's U.N. membership hopes for now.

The U.S. is one of five permanent members who can veto any council action. Members of its U.N. delegation reiterated Monday that the Palestinian Authority needs to exert control over all of the Palestinian territories and negotiate statehood with Israel before it wins statehood.

The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Its forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas seized power in 2007, and it has no power there.

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  • Xi Jinping tells Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Beijing is prepared to step up coordination with Moscow through BRICS and the SCO

  • Lavrov hits out at the West over ‘illegal sanctions’ and ‘military and political unions’ against Russia and China ⠀

In a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China was willing to increase strategic coordination with Russia within multilateral frameworks to “promote reform” in the global system. ⠀

Some Chinese companies have already been sanctioned by the European Union for allegedly circumventing the bloc’s sanctions on Russia, prompting strong opposition from Beijing.

Calling relations with China at an “unprecedentedly high level”, Lavrov vowed to increase coordination with China within BRICS and the SCO, including to solve sanctions-related issues.

Both countries will also launch talks on Eurasian security and continue cooperation on anti-terrorism, according to Lavrov.

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The country’s trade ministry said on Tuesday that it would curb exports of 54 goods, including metals products, fuels and oils, and construction machinery, a day after Turkey’s foreign minister accused Israel of impeding attempts to airlift aid to “starving Gazans”. ⠀

Turkey exported $5.4bn of goods to Israel last year, making the Jewish state one of the country’s top-15 export destinations. Turkey was Israel’s fifth-biggest import partner, according to customs database Trade Data Monitor. ⠀

Turkey did not provide details on how it would carry out its ban, making it difficult to calculate the exact impact of the curbs. Metals and metal products were among Turkey’s biggest exports to Israel last year, accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in trade.

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Alan Estavez, US undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, will meet with officials and ASML executives in the Netherlands on Monday and raise the servicing contract matter with them, according to a Reuters report.

The report also says the Biden administration may ask ASML to stop selling equipment to a new list of Chinese chip-making factories.

Since last year Washington has been pushing the Dutch government to restrict the maintenance services that are provided by ASML to Chinese customers.

Recent public statements made by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration suggest that the Netherlands will be slow to approve Chinese maintenance requests in the future and quick to deny them, Reuters reported. ⠀

From January 1 this year, the Dutch government stopped granting licenses for the shipment to China of ASML’s most advanced DUV immersion lithography systems (NXT: 2000i, NXT:2050i and NXT:2100i and subsequent systems).

Caijing.com reported last November that there were fewer than five ASML systems in China as advanced as NXT:2000i. The report said the total number of units of the NXT:1980Di, which is not subject to the US export ban, should be below 80 in China. ⠀

The Chinese Embassy in Washington complained that the US is overstretching the concept of national security and using pretexts to coerce other countries into joining its technological blockade against China. ⠀

In a two-hour phone call on April 2, Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden that China is “not going to sit back and watch” if the US continues to suppress China’s trade and technology development and add more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists.

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The People’s Bank of China is devising a program to provide as much as 500 billion yuan (US$69 billion) to support innovation in science and technology.

It’s a “relending” scheme, meaning that the PBOC will extend credit to select institutions that lend funds to targeted sectors in need of monetary support. Having unveiled the enterprise on April 7, during US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing, the Communist Party is demonstrating why Washington’s hopes for massive reflationary stimulus seem unlikely to happen. ⠀

Some believe the PBOC must learn from Japan’s mistakes in the 1990s and print yuan aggressively to head off deflation. Others think structural reforms to fix China’s property crisis, strengthen capital markets and address record youth unemployment are far more urgent.

But President Xi Jinping’s team appears to favor a third way – hyper-targeted liquidity infusions coupled with efforts to shift growth engines towards tech-driven future industries that increase disruption and productivity – and, in this case, aimed directly where the PBOC’s liquidity might play a key role in driving China upmarket. ⠀

Yellen made a point of shouting out Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 visit to manufacturing and export powerhouse Guangzhou. It marked a key milestone in China’s progress in becoming a market economy, one that Yellen hopes the Xi era will emulate by leveling playing fields for Western companies. ⠀

She added that many corporate CEOs worry about “the impacts of China’s shift away from a market approach.” ⠀

Yet so much of Yellen’s pitch in recent days has been prodding China to shift stimulus efforts into higher gear. And there’s a lost-in-time element to Washington’s latest pleadings.

Yellen’s comments echo those Washington directed at Japan in the mid-to-late 1990s.

What Yellen is advocating is a strategy that Japan has been pursuing for 25-plus years with mediocre success. Opening the fiscal and monetary floodgates year after year surely propped up gross domestic product here and there. But without bold supply-side reforms, all Tokyo did was address the symptoms of the weak demand behind its multi-decade funk.

Today, Japan faces by far the largest debt burden among developed nations — roughly 260% of GDP. The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, has kept interest either near zero, or below, since 1999. Six years ago, the BOJ’s balance sheet even topped the size of its US$4.7 trillion economy, a first for a Group of Seven economy. ⠀

China must avoid this formula for economic mediocrity, no matter how much flack Xi’s inner circle gets from Yellen & Co. Judging from the events of the last two months, Beijing is indeed picking up the pace in that direction.

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China has sharply ramped up its production of cheap electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries just as the Biden administration has pushed through legislation supporting many of those same industries in the United States. ⠀

Chinese automaker BYD had recently introduced an electric SUV at the "astonishingly low" price of $14,000. China's auto industry poses an "existential threat" to U.S. carmakers, the report argued. ⠀

After more than a decade of subsidizing its automakers, China has built a substantial car industry that accounts for 60% of global electric vehicle sales, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. ⠀

Yellen highlighted the Biden administration's concerns by recalling a visit a week earlier to Suniva, a solar cell manufacturer in Norcross, Georgia.

The company "was once forced to close down, like other companies across a number of industries, because it could not compete against large quantities of goods that China was exporting at artificially depressed prices," Yellen said. ⠀

China hasn't committed to any steps to address American concerns, arguing that its cheap solar panels and other green products are helping the world wage the costly battle against climate change.

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  • Taipei views conflict in Middle East as opportunity to learn from Israel’s defence strategy and foster friendly relations

  • While Beijing is still important economically, Israel is looking for partners in Asia that offer ‘less ideological criticism’, analyst says ⠀

Lee said that in the wake of the Hamas attack, Taiwan has shown it is a “reliable partner” to Israel. ⠀

Taiwan’s desire for warmer ties with Israel began long before the October 7 attack. Bilateral trade between the two has grown steadily in recent years, rising to over US$3.2 billion in 2022 from US$2.4 billion the previous year.

Taiwanese media and officials often speak with admiration for Israel’s strong military and make comparisons between Taiwan and Israel as two isolated democracies with strong tech sectors.

Taiwan has expressed more interest in “track-two” defence cooperation, referring to non-governmental or unofficial cooperation, and is interested in learning from Israel’s civil defence and reserve system.

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In a written message to Washington, Iran “warned the US not to get dragged into Netanyahu’s trap”, Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian president’s deputy chief of staff for political affairs, wrote on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US should “step aside so that you don’t get hit”.

“In response, the US asked Iran not to hit American targets,” Jamshidi said. ⠀

NBC, citing two unnamed United States officials, said US President Joe Biden’s administration is concerned any attack could be inside Israel, specifically against “military or intelligence targets, rather than civilians”.

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While the number of protesters has ebbed and flowed throughout the war, the recent Israeli military campaign on al-Shifa Hospital and the pending invasion of Rafah has brought many Jordanians back to the streets en masse.

Protesters’ demands may vary, though one Jordanian researcher monitoring the protests told Al Jazeera that there are some primary asks, including suspending normalisation with Israel, reconsidering ties with the United States, and cancelling other energy, gas, or trade deals with Israel. ⠀

So far, the protests have been overwhelmingly focused on Gaza and Palestine. Frustrations with the monarchy have not manifested calls for regime change, analysts said. But the understanding that ensured older generations of Jordanians avoided criticism of King Abdullah seems to have thawed for this new generation, the activist said. ⠀

“I would be looking for policy changes in Jordan’s stance toward the Jordanian relationship with Israel,” Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, a PhD candidate in comparative politics and political methodology at MIT with a focus on Jordan.

“And I think the Jordanian government will be looking for a concession it can give, or an attempt to renegotiate these positions to that extent that it can in order to placate protesters.”

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WASHINGTON—Explaining why the United States would not call on Israel to end its continuous airstrikes on Palestinian civilians, the White House warned Wednesday that a ceasefire in Gaza would only serve to benefit humanity. “We know there are voices across the world calling for a ceasefire, but what everyone needs to understand is that the only people who stand to gain from halting the bombing campaign are people who deeply value human life,” President Biden said in an Oval Office address, adding that if Israel was not given time to collectively punish all 2.3 million people who live in Gaza, it would be a great victory for anyone who believes civilians are entitled to basic dignity and security for themselves and their families. “We cannot allow that happen. These humanitarian concerns may be valid, but right now, a pause in hostilities would advance the interests of no one but innocent Palestinians, the many U.S. citizens living in Gaza, and the more than 200 Israelis who were violently abducted by Hamas and are currently being held in unknown locations. That’s not what America stands for.” Biden later extended the argument to explain why the United States spent billions on military aid for Israel while it spent mere millions on humanitarian aid for Gaza.

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