Ye that’s unfortunate. I’m not sure why praise any army in this conflict when CIA is involved in like all of them. They’d naturally back the most right-wing forces, trying to portray as any superior to another or worse is an exercise in futility. Also it obscures how inhumane Capitalism is.

I’m guessing there must have been a heavy propaganda campaign against particular forces, at the time, unfortunately and then the book has counter-propaganda, which is like really not a good idea to immortalize in a book especially, you can end up defending some real terrible shit. The worst part is we have such ontological evils around the world this should cause me outrage to hear about a human safari, but it’s happening so often and it’s happening right now in Somalia, pretty much most PMCs can set you up for it if you’re wealthy it’s disgusting. Capitalism is so disgusting I just don’t have words for it.

Btw thank you for the explanation! I appreciate the effort.

That is quite unfortunate to hear. Could I ask for a detailed critique on the whitewashing done in the book?

I think most of us here are interested in the truth and don’t view Parenti as a demigod, rather a flawed human being just like all of us and I think he would love to be corrected on any mistakes that are present in his works.

I’m so grateful for his insight and wonderful pieces of literature has has produced on such somber topics like Yugoslavia. A book I had recently picked up.

As I understand he was not feeling well for quite some time and he’s more than earned his rest.

Yeah I suppose that’s the crux of communism, it’s a David vs Goliath scenario and even though a better version of USSR seems like an impossibility to me, that’s probably where we’ll end up and I’m sure it won’t be called that and I probably won’t get to see it, the more the bourgeoise class weaken the more room I have to breathe.

There’s just this voice inside me telling me we’ll suffer the same fate as the Spartacus league and that’s the decent outcome, which just honestly really sucks even if it’s inevitable and nothing can be done. Damn nato and everything they stand for.

I’m sure there’s truths to that, but I’d just like to say that it was not a shithole for everyone, it was a shithole for the working peasants, the fascists quite liked the arrangement they had going.

In fact they’re quite happy to turn my birthplace into overexploited shithole again. The only reason we haven’t collapsed yet is because Brussels sometimes subsidizes and how are we supposed to become independent now?

I am wondering how much of this drive for Nationalism is the tendency of history to over-correct itself, like how is it even going to work? We all agree to just stay within our own borders and I’m supposed to believe that my neighboring capitalist nations will just watch a socialist revolution going on and be like: “Heh I won’t send in some death squads to help squash that.”

But I’m ngl I don’t see a way out of this. I think someone bigger is eventually just going to shallow us. I have been trying to find a more appealing proposal for the locals, but everything is either a horror show, slow death or idealistic dreams.

You got to keep in mind who is saying what and why. I betcha majority of people who you see posting online don’t even question things, they just agree with the narrative and parrot the news.

They wouldn’t mind if my country was turned into the likes of El Salvador. They just won’t say it out loud. As long as they aren’t personally effected by the developments they feel fine.

Now I will also say that there are people who care and have been lied to, but we aren’t reaching them. I think we’re spending too much time trying to argue with wolfs in sheep’s clothing and not enough effort is being done to reach those who will listen.

At least the user tried, but failed

Evil is Evil, but it can’t exist in a vacuum, that’s the problem.

The way I look at it, Evil is the act which denies others of their freedoms. Good is when you free people from their chains. But you can commit evil to chain someone and liberate the other and then feel good about it.

Instead of correcting evil by doing good, now you have evil reinforcing evil and masking as good. This is how a self-reinforcing loop is created.

Our societies depend on others remaining chained. We have our freedoms, because others do not. If the others were to be liberated, we would lose the freedom we currently experience.

We don’t want to do that. We say: “Nonononono… just hold on a minute, we just need to build more technology, okay things are bad for some, but hold on with enough advancement everyone can be saved, hold on if you just redistribute what we’ve got then, then… who would know how to continue? The people? They don’t know how to work these machines!! Listen if you take away this stuff you’ll plunge humanity into darkness and regress!!! I know it’s built on slave labor, but listen to me I can free everyone from slavery, if you just give me some time and have patience, soon I will liberate everyone. Okay I know life sucks for you, but hold on, gosh darn it why do you people keep interfering with progress!!! If it wasn’t for your constant interference, if you JUST PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN and, excuse me for yelling, anyways, if you just. put. down. your. head. and did what I told you, if you and your people just did that we’d be on colonizing Mars already! Can’t you see how much burden is on my shoulders when I just want everyone to be free? :(”

I don’t think the backlash is coming from the features. It’s coming from the fact that we’re constantly being prompted to please try the “AI” features. Companies installing “AI <something>” on your devices without you asking. Re-installing them when you try to delete them. They don’t even tell show you why it’s better they just slap “AI” on it.

Anything that this tech does and is actually good, speaks for itself, so it just goes unnoticed. People end up associating it with the worst and now Firefox is also saying: Hey we have “AI” too. Of course people are gonna be mad, especially when they are already fed up with being prompted to try it constantly.

The enemy is cunning, stay on-guard. Like, коварный(коварен) basically means someone who hides their nefarious intent behind a disguise of being well meaning.

It’s based on a 1945 poster credited to two artitsts: Victor Semenovich Ivanov and Olga Konstantinovna Burova

AI is a tool made for accumulation of capital, it’s like a factory. It’s not a sentient being.