Hard disagree.

The boomer generation’s biggest crime was being a frog in a pot that’s only just coming to boil. The leopards were still in the distance and life for the most part looked good if you lack the ability to see beneath the surface.

Most people lack this ability. They are incapable of making abstract contextual links and stumble through their lives relatively blind to how the world works. Ignorant.

For most Boomers their ignorance does not make them guilty. Just foolish and weak. Fallible. That’s not enough to lay blame at their feet.

The criminals have and only ever will be the ridiculously wealthy; who’ve orchestrated this mess for wealth, power and hubris. Who’ve stood on the backs of all workers for all written history. Who’ve caused untold suffering and death. Our ire belongs with them.

Division along any other lines only serves those wealthy bastards reaping the rewards from our division.

I have no horse in the colonial race.

But you do, your post history is entirely pro China. Each article you’ve chosen is limited in scope, looks at only small details; whereas I’m coming at this from a contextual point of view. Why are you trying to pretend you haven’t cherry picked your references to suit your political leanings? It’s baffling.

Also, Marxist-Leninist fits, thanks for your honesty. I’m with Lenin, up until he calls for a continuous revolution against all political opponents: that’s the point at which a righteous revolution turns into tyranny.

From my point of view, colonialism regardless of the flavour of it, serves only to impoverish and destroy the lives of a large number of working people. Its the opposite of what true communism should look like.

Despite this, I actually gave China a tiny bit more credit because at least they’re building infrastructure, the USA wouldn’t have done that historically. Even if that infrastructure is a debt slavery trap.

You’re welcome to think of me as loving the USA though. From where I’m sitting tonight that’s given me such a chuckle.

All your links are media arms of the Chinese government.

All of your points are quite literally Chinese governmental talking points with no nuance and no analysis from any point of view that isn’t pro-China.

And you call my post projection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Much like America’s more usual approach, it’s softer colonialism than what the Brits did.

The difference this time around though is the building of infrastructure. America didn’t do as much of that during its rise or prime. That said, it’s often just another way to get the nation indebted to China, it’s not like they’re building the projects for free and often enough the debt is more than the country in question’s economy can handle.

Colonialism is colonialism afterall.

This method is built on political manoeuvring behind the scenes through intelligence assets and corruption with infrastructural incentives masking debt slavery out in the open.

Here’s the list you asked for:

Angola, DRC, Zambia, Sudan, Mozambique, Gabon, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Pakistan Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Iraq and Iran.

“In other news, womans lips now visitor on own face.”

The only downside is living in a universe that has the Borg. They are existential terror incarnate.

That said, they seem to always get defeated one way or another. Just make sure you live in a major federation star system and you’re golden.

Yes, water is indeed wet.

You dont understand how the American two party system works. Let me explain it in simple terms.

You have one party that is corporate light; that’s the democrats. And you have another party that’s corporate get fucked in the arse; that’s the Republicans.

Both parties serve their corporate masters first and foremost before any consideration of the common man. Neither party will challenge this status quo in any meaningful way. The difference is that one is willing to be a little more giving than the other fiscally.

But the reality is that the entire political process is captured by vested financial interests that own politicians and work together so that over the long term it all gets shitter and shitter for the common people and they get richer and richer.

The only way out of this is to primary every politician in the democratic party that have any financial ties to the elites. To money.

That’s most of them.

So many generalisations and a complete lack of understanding of there being other valid ways of conducting a relationship beyond what you’ve experienced yourself or seen with your own eyes.

True love is like any other feature of a relationship, only as enduring as the health of that relationship. That takes work, communication, and many other aspects too numerous to list here. It is complex and not easy to define. But it can endure just fine.

If it makes you feel better to think that relationships based on true love don’t last, by all means continue in that fantasy. But it is a fantasy and I think it says more about your fear of what you’re missing as someone who’s likely stuck in an arranged relationship, or stuck in a culture where that is expected of you, than it does about how enduring true love can be.

Agreed. Although with the caveat that, had there been more stringent regulations surrounding misinformation and manipulation in political and media discourse for the UK, Brexit would never have been able to occur. Leave got there (and only just) through a multitude of lies and emotional manipulation.

Direct democracy is the ideal end goal of any democratic system. But for it to work, people need to be educated, healthy, stable, and both interested and invested in the political process.

We’ve a lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Yeah my bad, my math was off and wasn’t looking at it across the multiple years. Makes sense. Cheers mate.

Never encountered fake pot until Covid.

For some reason the increase in demand meant that the streets became filled with synthetic cannabinoid sprayed weed, pesticide sprayed weed and other adulterated products.

It definitely happened before, but it happens much more frequently now than it ever had in the past.

It happens for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. Whether thats to increase the grow weigh, the intensity of the high, the ability to spray it with synthetics after washing it for the real THC or the cheapness of spraying the plants with pesticides for bugs: all of it is to make more money without caring about the consumer.

Legalise it, regulate it, health and safety it.

That slight raise is arguably relatively normal-ish variation. It probably represents the problems with capitalist lack of social care and resources to some degree. But 99.99% of people are still eating.

It’s still bad, it’s still unacceptable, it’s still ridiculous for a wealthy nation and shouldn’t happen, but it’s also not huge, it’s a tiny fraction.

To parse the math, if it keeps rising that would be concerning. But look at the scale… that “3” That the USA reaches isn’t percent. It represents circa 1 in 33,000 people which equates to about 10,000 people in the entire USA.

Whereas according to the same source, North Korea’s famine produced at least 450 sufferers every 100,000. That, represented 1 in 222 people.

Weirdly this actually doesn’t tally with a lot of other sources. So I’m left scratching my head about it somewhat. The above reference suggests only 100,000 people suffered from the famine in North Korea yet, the minimum other sources put as having died in said famine is 360,000 and the maximum of 2,000,000.

Am I missing something? This does not compute.

Edit: Ah the context I was missing was the famine occurred over multiple years. Each year was 420 per 100,000 or below out of 20 million.

Hello friend. I was also in your position not so long ago and really feel for you so much. But have hope. There is light at the end of the tunnel youre in, and you’ve taken the first and hardest step in admitting to yourself that it’s a problem. Seriously well done.

There are two things I would suggest you consider if you feel you have the energy to start to tackle this:

The first is that, I believe current methods of getting “clean” and “sober” are inconsistent in their outcomes for a reason.

Whilst total sobriety works for some people, it is my belief and experience, that going completely cold turkey and abstaining from a social and common drug like weed forever, is the hardest route forward long term. I have observed that for those that choose this path, they will always to some degree, feel the pull towards that drug regardless of the length of time they’ve abstained. It will be a constant battle for the rest of their life. To some degree this is sobriety on a knifes edge.

I saw this in the midst of my addiction and decided this wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a new relationship with my drug of choice. One where I challenged every unhealthy behaviour I’d developed with it. One where I gained control back piece by piece. One where I rewired my brain so much that I could say yes or no depending on the context and reasoning occurring inside.

And so that’s what I did. I started by weaning myself off by working out how much I smoked and choosing to weigh that amount at the start of every day. I’d then decrease this little by little every day, getting used to the feeling and effects of taking that control and running out at the end of each day. This forced my front brain to take charge amdnstart to plan where I’d have this limited amount.

Over two months I eventually whittled it down to one joint a day. It wasn’t without slip ups, but it was important that I accepted these, and instead of criticising myself, got straight back on the horse.

Once I made the jump to zero, I felt it important to give myself a length of time entirely off of it. To deal with the effects of withdrawal, such as night sweats, nightmares, vivid dreams etc.

Then once that period of time, for me six months, had elapsed, I made a list of all the unhealthy behaviours that I had built up over the years with weed. And reintroduced the weed with those in mind, challenging them each individually. This ranged from being able to say no to it when being social, to stopping at a certain point of the evening (one and done etc), to preplanning when I’d order it so that I was free and available to waste that time, so it didn’t impact my life.

For you this will be unique to your addiction.

I can now happily say I’m at a point where 80% of my addictive behaviours are dealt with. Where I am in control and weed is no longer my mistress. The balance has swung in my favour. But I still have some work to do :).

Secondly, I would advise you examine the reasons why you may have been attracted to weed in the first place.

The route cause of your issues will vary depending on your own individual history. But for me things like childhood trauma, ADHD and health issues formed the core parts of my need to use weed as a means to hide from the adult world.

Tackling these greatly helped alleviate the gut feeling of needing weed as a means to cope. Now it forms a part of my social life, as a means to accentuate and elevate a night, or a day at home, rather than a means to close off and hide.

I hope you find this helpful and I wish you the best of luck moving forward friend. Should you choose to go down this path, know that regardless of the slip ups, you’ve got this. As long as you can be gentle with yourself, you can always come back to it.

Peace and love :)

Yeah, let’s just ignore what’s actually good for the kids. What matters is appearing as close to our political enemies as possible.

Fucking honestly.

I dont mind the presence of these articles. I like to be in the know. I like the opportunity to engage in a constructive nuanced discussion that you can no longer find on Reddit, and can be found in abundance on Lemmy.

What effects me most is that, whether honest (human), not (bots) or covert (intelligence agencies), the defeatism, acceptance and obeyance in advance is the fundamental barrier to meaningful change. It catches, it spreads and it demoralises. It is the boot on our collective necks.

We need to be more mindful of spreading our nihilism to each other, unless we’re happy being part of the problem. More solutions, more raising each other up, less wallowing.

When pressed, he refused to declare Zionism racist in that interview. That’s quite different from saying zionism isn’t racist; he just wouldn’t say that it was. Also, he’s kind of right isn’t he? From a nuanced perspective, it’s Netanyahu and his party that have largely created the fascism at the heart of Israel, so I appreciate his point. But, I suppose theoretically, the fact he went to reflect before changing his position, could indicate a needed to gain permission from the person he is owned by before changing his stance.

This week he has said specifically, that zionism is racism under pressure from his party. I don’t see that as the act of a committed zionist, but then again is it just verbal buttering? He’s seemingly willing to go so much further than Starmer, Badenoch or Farage in his anti-Israel speech. If he was owned by Netanyahu like so many politicians are, he wouldn’t be able to say this freely surely? It also shows he’s willing to go with consensus of his party which is also a good sign.

That said I’ve been fooled before by music to my ears; so it comes down to a matter of trust doesn’t it? Do we trust him? There’s no telling before reaching power. He’s been transparent about his finances at least; and doesn’t appear to have been bought like many other politicians. But whether or not he’s a Trojan horse for the left, who has a hidden master, is impossible to see at this stage.

Here’s a paraphrased quote from Zack Polanski: “Zionism is Racism”

What are you even talking about? Israel owns all the other major parties, except the greens! That quote is 100% more than any leader of any UK party has ever said regarding Israel or Gaza.

Three very different sources on this:

• https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/polanski-indicates-support-for-greens-zionism-is-racism-motion/

• https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-green-zack-polanski-zionism-is-racism-motion/

• https://news.sky.com/story/israel-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza-but-casualties-and-destruction-are-utterly-appalling-says-uk-government-13427380

Concerning, it’s one of the few food stuffs with very high naturally occurring levels of Vitamin D. Other major sources of it are either a lot more expensive (like Tuna or Salmon - sardines being an exception but ewww) or are usually fortified and likely processed and refined.

We really need as much Vitamin D as we can get in the UK! Can’t just survive on chips, however much I wish that were the case.

It does seem to be a downward trajectory at least though. Let me cling to a little hope please :P. Perhaps the debates will swing it in Polanski’s favour; he is the only one who lays out a reasonable plan for working folks.

I hope the wider British public wakes up before the election. But, pretty much all of the mainstream media encourages their base instincts to blame immigrants at some level, rather than the wealthy. They are caught in a propaganda loop. Some of that influence is obvious (The Mail), some of it is very subtle (BBC, TheGuardian - editorship).

But I’m not overly optimistic. It took them way too long to realise the Tory leopards were eating their faces.

Americans coming over here is quite laughable. Good luck guys, you’d be better off somewhere that has a relatively young democracy and/or dictatorship in living memory (Germany and Spain look pretty good from where I’m sitting - but even Germany is a little bit O.o).