Traffic on the single bridge that links Russia to Moscow-annexed Crimea and serves as a key supply route for the Kremlinās forces in the war with Ukraine came to a standstill on Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing a couple and wounding their daughter.
The RBC Ukraine news agency reported that explosions were heard on the bridge, with Russian military bloggers reporting two strikes.
RBC Ukraine and another Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda said the attack was planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian navy, and involved sea drones.
Not those kinds of communists. GUE/NGL parties range in self-identification from communist to democratic socialist and are indeed quite large and established, even if they donāt have huge electoral successes in many countries. S&D is generally way more popular, socdems of various intensities. GUE/NGL is proportionally strongest in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Ireland (at least by EU election results I canāt be arsed to go through national ones). Theyāre not the kind of party who would stage a coup and then falsify elections.
The splinter groups I was talking about are the like of the German MLDP who get less than 0.1%, compared to Die Linke which isnāt unaccustomed to double-digit results. Best MLDP result ever was 0.4% in the 2006 Sachsen-Anhalt state elections. Which, of course, fits into their ideology, they believe that capitalism can only be overcome by a revolution and its vanguard. You know the type, in fact I think youāre deeply familiar with it. Occasionally they manage to get a seat on the municipal level. They donāt have a group in the European Parliament because they donāt get in.
Iām not actually referring to this bunch, although theyāre certainly one you could. I am referring mainly to national results. I think however that your measurement comes from āelection resultsā whereas this is misleading with regards to communist activities in any given country. Take france for example where you could measure the activity of communists by the results of the PCF. This however is not the sum of communist activity or strategy in the country. The vast majority of Melenchon supporters would be communists if the soft option did not exist. Most of us are revolutionaries in one breath and democratic socialists in another. It entirely depends on the circumstances. I live in Britain, I firmly believe revolution is the only path to socialism, does that mean Iām a revolutionary in the british conditions though? Fuck no it doesnāt there is no chance of a revolution right now. Thus my activity takes place through other channels and work, in the trade union movement and in electoral groups.
Germany is a huge problem right now there is a massive swing rightwards occurring. The socdem to fascist pipeline was in full swing in the recent election. Youāre correct that the left has collapsed there. I do caution against over using electoral results as a measure of communist activities though, none of us believe in electoralism as a pathway to socialism so activity in the electoral system is more about recruitment, spreading socialist education and generally used as a sort of thermometer for the trend of things.
Oh I donāt doubt it. The thing is: The ilk I was referring to donāt do democratic socialism even when living in democracies. They may not boycott elections but theyāre not really trying to win them, either, the motivation just isnāt there because they donāt believe it could achieve anything.
2/3rd of AfD voters donāt agree with the party platform. And not just in the āhavenāt read itā sense but right-out āyeah I donāt like them this is a protest vote fuck all those Wessis in Berlinā type of deal. And the east being full of open Nazis isnāt exactly new, neither is them infiltrating civil society there the trouble is, and was, since the 90s, that the GDR had no civil society to speak of because politics was something the party did. What we see right now is a combination of protest voters having tried all other parties and are now left with the AfD (and still donāt get that if they want a party that shares their ideas, they should bloody fund one) and of the far-right getting bold (which will likely mean theyāll overplay their hand), all in enabling circumstances that have been in place for at least a decade. Oh, Russian disinfo whipping the conspiracy crowd right from ācorona dictatorshipā into āclimate dictatorshipā. We didnāt have that for long thatās relatively new.
The percentage of people with a closed right-extremist world view is actually larger in the west than in the east, yet election results are the exact opposite. Open Nazism is rarer in the west because Antifa, while not necessarily larger, has a way easier time drawing upon wider civil society so the Nazis keep their head down. Thereās xenophobia and feelings of disenfranchisement in the east, the AfD plays into it, and if Wagenknecht ever gets around to actually founding her party sheāll scoop those votes straight up. āUnemployed before refugeesā and ātrans rights are human rights but fuck neopronounsā is by and large about as far as you need to go to calm those waters, a thing Die Linke never managed to do. Oh, and having selective expropriation of means of production in the programme wonāt hurt. Going all-out would not be popular but targeted initiatives, completely different matter.
I donāt think it matters if 2 thirds of them donāt support the whole platform. What matters is simply that they supported them. It doesnāt matter that people here in Britain donāt support the whole platform of the tories, they still supported them on Brexit, enabling them to go ahead with the entire rest of their platform.
Iām not that familiar with Wagenknecht, is she what happens when the strasserite types of morons understand that nazis are bad but couldnāt explain to you why?
A good thing. Neopronouns are fine and good. People donāt understand them but thatās ok, eventually they will, assuming the right donāt manage to kill everyone first.
This was the landlords expropriation shit right? Did it ever actually get implemented or did it get snatched out from under the people through other means? I am betting on the latter.
Strasserite fuck no, sheās a card-carrying communist, always has been, joined Die Linke when it was still the SED. Masters inā¦ philosophy, I guess, on Marxā interpretation of Hegel. PhD in macroeconomics. If the GDR hadnāt fallen sheād probably sit in the central committee. Ceased to do Stalin apologia in the 90s, still does Russia apologia and has rather unhelpful Ukraine takes (āletās just all stop shootingā, āceasefire nowā). Against a vaccine mandate but that only ever has been debated about in the abstract, anyway, definitely not a denier. Where she really breaks with the rest of Die Linke is the stuff I alluded to (with a bit of populist spin as sheād then also be bound to do it in her new party): The main beef she has with her party is over, as she puts it, Die Linke forgetting to advocate for the broad masses and instead fixating on (however justified) minority issues. See that as you will itās certainly the exact perception people in the east have of the party.
Iām drawing the line at having a neutral pronoun anyone can use. I donāt mind one bit if some enthusiasts want to go all-out and have as many pronouns in a group as there are people but donāt expect me to keep track of all that I can barely remember names (faces and characters and histories, no issue, but names just donāt stick). Itās bad enough that Indo-European languages have gender-afflicted noun classes itās a better idea to just get rid of them (or at least class distinctions between different groups of people1) than to explode the number of classes.
Or, to put it with Zizek: Why LGBTQ+ canāt we just all be +.
Oh no it went through. Berlinās government is currently dragging its feet (CDU/SPD, both opposed the referendum) but they have to implement it.
1 Pun not intended but Iāll take it
This is the kind of stuff Iām alluding to. Maybe not strasserite, maybe nazbol-ey. Either way itās not communist. Thereās a significant segment of communists who have fallen rightwards through anti-idpol bollocks failing to understanding marxist intersectionality. Theyāve mistakenly decided it all needs to be rejected for popular support rather than re-educating the population into recognising the intersectionality is a requirement for the broader masses to succeed, we simply donāt have the numbers otherwise in the new cosmopolitan societies that were constructed after nation-states ended and got built into the multicultural multi-racial cosmopolitan societies they are today.
I donāt think anyone wants you to keep tracks, just to acknowledge and respect it. Itās not really something that lgbt people came up with either, it has existed prior to the modern day and Iām willing to bet thereās at least one isolated group out there somewhere using some unusual shit. At the end of the day itās just a way to describe their gender when āmanā or āwomanā doesnāt work for them. Itās pretty harmless and seems to particularly resonate with people that arenāt neurotypical so ehhhhhh itās fine. Power to them really. Iām glad theyāre happy. I donāt have neopronouns but it doesnāt affect me so you know.
I couldnāt care less what this socdem lib thinks. He was losing my attention with his rape obsession for years but he completely lost my attention when he started writing for the cia outlets like Radio Free. Heās not getting away with ignorance he knows whatās up.
When? Is there a timeline? If theyāre dragging their feet theyāre just looking for the circumstances necessary to drop it. When I saw this happen my immediate thought was ātheyāll never ever implement thatā. If they ever do I will be incredibly surprised.
ā¦what? Intersectionality is like a late 80s concept.
How do you re-educate when the masses think youāre not interested in their success? How do you get people interested in other peopleās issues if they think youāre shafting them?
Thereās been a massive erosion of the social systems over here roughly starting in 2000 with Schrƶder, New Labour type of stuff, right after Kohl pushed through his neolib privatisation agenda, victims of which were among other things the complete industry of the GDR ā factories were sold for pennies to western competition who then shut stuff down. Itās a double whammy.
Whereas back in the GDR you were not able to open your mouth without the Stasi taking notes and not able to run your mouth without the Stasi picking you off the street, if you didnāt you were guaranteed to be able to get a job, fund a family, have some vacations etc. economically the situation wasnāt great but you didnāt need to worry about falling through any cracks (as long as you kept your mouth shut). The GDR had no Lumpenproletariat. Itās the exact opposite right now. And people in the east are, rightly, blaming politicians for it. And now Die Linke appears to them to worry more about neopronouns than being demsocs or even socdems.
Sure you can do both, caring about one doesnāt really affect caring about the other ā but you also have to avoid the above perception. Most of all, if you make progress in one area but not the other you might have to tone down those successes lest the perception be that you only fight for one.
As to the numbers game: For a majority youāll need the masses. No two ways about it. A minority politics focus might win you activists, but not elections.
Not the schizo spectrum thatās for sure, trust me, Iād know. Autism spectrum, sure, when it comes to subjectivity theyāre hyper-normies. Now I donāt mind yāall having prescriptive identities but you donāt have to be muppets about it.
I meanā¦ you donāt have to to consider the point? Ok, hereās what Rosa Luxemburg said: Why LGBTQ+, why not just +?
Dragging their feet among other things included āwe need studies, we need a framework law first, and we have to make sure that itās even compatible with Berlinās constitutionā (the Berlin constitution, unlike the federal one, wasnāt explicitly written to be compatible with state capitalism, but in any case the federal one takes precedence), so they tasked an expert commission with figuring all that out. Said commission just recently reached its final verdict: No framework law needed, yep of course itās constitutional, itās probably even going to be cheap.
The government is constitutionally required to implement it, the referendum was legally binding. The rest is a matter of rule of law. If they refuseā¦ well courts can hold them in contempt but thatās not going to do much. But it would cost them the next elections, or probably rather cause early elections because the SPD wouldnāt want to dig their heels in over this one. Or there can be another referendum, this time of the āthis exact law shall now be in forceā kind, not the āthe senate shall legislate on this matterā one.
A third wave concept yes. The only issue with the liberal conception of it is that it does not include class as one of its methods of analysis. The intersection between a black trans woman creates different conditions to that of a white trans woman, but without class it creates an incomplete analysis. Class explains the difference in experience that creates for example the right wing trans bourgeoisie, who ultimately are insulated from the conditions that a poor working class trans person experiences and thus they politically lean towards protecting their class status even if it means supporting people who are hurting trans people. Marxist intersectionality simply adds in class to complete the picture and analyse groups correctly.
Itās a balancing act. Protecting the marginalised while also connecting the dots between class issues and their issues. The issue is that people go too far one way or the other, the groups that want to never defend the marginalised groups for fear of the outcome simply become reactionaries themselves. Although a controversial figure Stalinās quote on antisemitism leading the working class into the jungle is just as relevant to all the various minority groups today.
Because itās not about him. Itās about the LGBTQ+ people. This attitude reeks of the same āwhy canāt you just like be a little less this and a little more thatā, which is something the various phobes and bigots (whether they realise it or not) have consistently levelled at lgbt people over the decades. They decide what they are, and how they like to present their community and identity. Zizek doing this shit just demonstrates he fundamentally doesnāt give a fuck about us, and that he would only like to make these groups politically more convenient for himself. On top of that there is the other issue, that lgbt people have for decades now had to exist in a āfuck you, we exist in public and thatās your problem not oursā attitude to public life and existence, attempts to make them adjust how they exist in public life are always going to be viewed as attacks when that is the cultural background of the community defending itself and its right to exist. Thatās what āprideā is, a big fuck you we exist weāre proud of that and visible. Having people come in from outside and try to tell them to do it differently isā¦ Not good. Itās out of touch. It shows heās never really engaged properly in order to understand this group, how it got to where it is, why it defends itself so aggressively, etc etc.
I think theyāll take the election hit over implementing it. But weāll see.
What happens after that? Who has the teeth to force its implementation? Anyone at all? Or can the courts do nothing more than āwe find you in contemptā ? What actual repercussions does that have other than electoral? The bougies can play the electoral game and come out on top forever if there is no real way to force any of these parties into implementing it when they donāt want to do it. They could fuck around for years, and then throw it out in some crisis saying āitās no longer viable because [excuse here]ā. āItās been too longā, āwe have war now the conditions are differentā, āthereās a famine from climate change occurring nowā, āwe have a water crisisā, āthe war with chinaā. I can think of so many things that are just around the corner that could be used as excuses. As long as the āāpunishmentāā is only in the ballot box they could feasibly fuck around forever, if no alternative mechanisms of forcing it through exist.
See the issue is you all look like humans to me. You can slice humanity up in any number of ways and can say āfuck you we existā for a gazillion of characteristics or combinations thereof, one is ultimately as meaningless as the other. Individual people having identities, sure, thatās perfectly warranted theyāre autonomous agents with their own properties but group identities? All youāre doing there is prescribing behaviours to each other, denying both individualism and universalism.
Now you might not perceive it like that because all your perception is soaked to one half in āIt is me who is perceiving thisā, i.e. the presence of a subject, and that subject gets all warm and fuzzy if thereās others sharing a sufficiently close subjectivity giving you reason to immediately and unthinkingly compromise your own individuality but objectively, yep, prescribing behaviours to each other is what youāre doing. It just so happens that you like it that way.
(It then shouldnāt come as a surprise that thereās no such thing as a schizophrenia-spectrum idpol movement. Itād be like cats trying to herd cats. We rather prefer to confuse the fuck out of each other when we meet by chance)
Also, not everyone wants to be visible, which is why Iām e.g. critical of establishing a cultural norm of having people state their pronouns when giving talks and whatnot. You have fluid people that are then forced to lock themselves into an identity which might change from making their slides to giving their talk to mingling after, you have people whoād rather be publicly closeted about being trans and force them to choose between outing themselves and publicly lying about themselves.
The whole thing would be easier if language wouldnāt force us to choose a gender. Thereās plenty of language in which thatās worse than in English, e.g. in Russian you canāt talk about yourself in the past without choosing between male and female, but thereās also plenty of language (but AFAIK not a single Indo-European one) in which itās possible to talk for ages about someone without once implying their gender, and thatās the natural, idiomatic way to do things. As such: Why not get rid of he and she, everyoneās a they? (which is what I actually meant the āeveryoneās a +ā thing is merely structurally similar, but ultimately a different topic).
As to visibility: Thatās what the marches are for. What matters there is that a kid from a small village, completely alone in being member of a sexual minority and thus having issues finding connection and advise, can see that theyāre not alone. It allows both the kid and the rest of the village to say āyep that kid might be a rare breed, but nonetheless itās nothing out of the ordinaryā.
If the government ignores courts then weāre in a full-on constitutional crisis. Which wouldnāt be unprecedented, mind you. Technically, then, Article 20 (4) applies:
and thatās what the RAF argued, and also what the Last Generation tends to argue, having an even stronger case than the RAF: In particular, thereās already federal court judgements declaring that the government is ignoring its own climate laws, laws parliament was required to pass on order of the constitutional court. But using that as defence in criminal court has never, ever, worked. 20 years after, though, when perceptions have shifted it gives you the right to say ātold you soā so thereās that and it might very well play into parole hearings.
The courts, even if they de jure have the power (e.g. judgements of the constitutional court are immediately applicable law) tend to shy away from using it when theyāre of the opinion that parliament is the one who should do it ā thatās a general thing, not specific to this situation. They issue āthis half-sentence of the law shall not be applied until parliament comes up with a sane version of the lawā type of orders. But thatās because theyāre balancing their own powers, cognisant that they while judging in the name of the people, theyāre, well, unelected technocrats. But then the Berlin expropriation thing isnāt an ordinary situation, the whole thing does already have democratic justification because it was a referendum, courts wouldnāt be interfering in the process of formation of the political will of the people in this instance: They donāt have to defer to parliament to not hurt democracy. As such it would kinda be a first but constitutional courts might just enact a full-on law directly and I have little doubt that the administration would apply it.
I mean itās not that Mao wasnāt ultimately right about politics and cannons, however, not even the FDP would start a civil war over a couple of apartments.