US soldier defects to North Korea because "US is racist" - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15283112
Zero Hedge wrote:North Korea Claims US Army Soldier Defected Because US Is 'Racist'

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Nearly a full month after the bizarre defection incident involving US Army soldier Travis King, North Korea has for the first time belatedly acknowledged it has King in custody.

King, a private in the US Army, was attending a guided tour of the Joint Security Area inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Koreas, before he broke from the group and sprinted across the border. North Korea, not willing to waste a good propaganda moment, said the US soldier felt "disillusioned" with an "unequal American society."

King, while being questioned, has reportedly claimed 'racism' in the army and American society. State media KCNA said he told North Korean officials during questioning that he "harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army," per a translation.

He said he was "disillusioned at the unequal American society," and decided to seek refuge in North Korea or another country outside the reach of Washington authorities, KCNA claimed...


Of course, because the article is in Zero Hedge, the author had to explain that Travis King did bad things, like assaulting someone. We don't know the conditions surrounding the assault though. Did he hit someone who made a racist comment? Was he involved in a scuffle between racists and their victims?

Likewise, Zero Hedge is catering to its primary audience by calling the defection "bizarre" and calls its own article "a good propaganda moment."

Even as the USA collapses, its media continues to wave giant styrofoam hands, though they are starting to look a bit frayed.
#15283122
QatzelOk wrote:Of course, because the article is in Zero Hedge, the author had to explain that Travis King did bad things, like assaulting someone. We don't know the conditions surrounding the assault though. Did he hit someone who made a racist comment? Was he involved in a scuffle between racists and their victims?

Likewise, Zero Hedge is catering to its primary audience by calling the defection "bizarre" and calls its own article "a good propaganda moment."

Even as the USA collapses, its media continues to wave giant styrofoam hands, though they are starting to look a bit frayed.

#15283173
Potemkin wrote:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-E39htndsmA&pp=ygUma2VubnkgZXZlcmV0dCBicm90aGVyIGxlZSBsb3ZlIHlvdXR1YmU%3D


You can see why a wise person with some sense of ideals would want to run away from a place whose moral center (commercial capitalist Abrahamic cults) is so easy to satirize.

The center cannot holdTM if it is just a huge running gag.
#15283200
It's important to note that the North Koreans are thought of as being racist...

So much so that it is theorized that they had kidnapped Doina Bumbea to be the wife of an American defector, and when died, they assigned him a new wife who was a half-African, half-Korean woman identified only as 'Dada.'

This goes with the fact that there have been racist - this is actually a very common assertion. Check out, of course, B. R. Myers' "The Cleanest Race" for all sorts of information about this. There are other books and writers that all attest to this, and while I cannot summon up primary sources now, I do recollect that in North Korean propaganda there have been inadvertent racist portrayals of foreigners, blacks in particular. Of course, during the process they actually sympathize with blacks as being exploited, but they simultaneously portray them as a lesser order of human.

There is a lot of deep seated racism in the Korean mind when it comes to blacks and whites...

So, even in Communist regimes, a sense of identitarianism has been preserved, just as how they even have retained some rather absurd and strange myths that prop up the dynasty of the Kim's.

Here is an account I was able to come across that I am completely unsurprised by:

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial “minder” whom I’ll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world’s most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he’d heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.


He also brings up some of the Myers stuff:

Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian “military first” mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.


Slate

Honestly, not a great article. But the ideas are there.

... So my criticism of King is that he definitely did not understand North Korea.

Of course, NK is going to try to treat him well, if they do not decide to have him mysteriously un-alived with a convenient narrative if he becomes uncooperative or burdensome, but there are certain norms that they will likely not violate. I would not be surprised if Kim Jong Eun would even want to change the way that North Koreans perceive different races, but if the racist attitudes of the West have not been able to be squashed after decades of effort, it seems doubtful that the North Koreans will cleanse themselves of their own latent racism...

North Korea knows what to say and how it should portray the situation, but they have their own internal sensibilities that are going to heavily moderate this.
#15283234
Verv wrote:It's important to note that the North Koreans are thought of as being racist...

The way North Koreans are "thought of" is similar to the way Arabs were "thought of" after 911, or how Russians are "thought of" as NATO pummels Ukraine's borders with surplus weapons.

War propaganda is not the same thing as "understanding the world around us."

The ignorance that has been manufactured by the war industry has made many Westerners really numb to their own reality, and all the harm that they allow their captured states to inflict abroad.

You live abroad, don't you, Verv?
#15283274
skinster wrote:This looks like projection to me.

Travis King fled racism.


It's not just projection.

As a proud citizen of the West, there are always countries that one is supposed to hate.

And if one can't openly hate targeted nations with guns and bombs, one is supposed to label the people and leaders of these "officially hated countries" with every negative characteristic that one can think of.

It's really dumb to do this, and it has the same effect that racism does in ascribing negative atributes incorrectly on a group that is being targeted for exploitiation or genocide.

So stop it.
#15283394
Unthinking Majority wrote:I will bad that African-Americans have to deal with the racists in the US. However, if this soldier thinks North Korea will be much better he's going to get a rude awakening:

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


From the wiki article you cited as proof:

Korean ethnic nationalism, or Korean racial nationalism,[2] is a racist, chauvinist and ethnosupremacist political ideology and a form of ethnic and racial identity that is widely prevalent by the Korean people in Korea, particularly in South Korea.


South Korea is the side we support in our war against half of humanity, isn't it?
#15283444
This U.S. soldier wouldn't have been the first western defector. Numerous persons have decided to cross over to the Communist side, for various reasons , some cases perhaps more validly understandable than others. Take for example that of Dean Reed , or these U.S. armed forces personnel who defected to either East Germany or North Korea. This one guy's sons still reside in North Korea , and apparently are loyally serving the Juche regime there.
#15283456
QatzelOk wrote:The way North Koreans are "thought of" is similar to the way Arabs were "thought of" after 911, or how Russians are "thought of" as NATO pummels Ukraine's borders with surplus weapons.

War propaganda is not the same thing as "understanding the world around us."

The ignorance that has been manufactured by the war industry has made many Westerners really numb to their own reality, and all the harm that they allow their captured states to inflict abroad.

You live abroad, don't you, Verv?


I agree fully that North Koreans are portrayed as completely bizarre caricatures of themselves.

I actually live in Korea - have done so for nearly twenty years.

Just a few months back, I went into a cafe during their off-hours and there was a group of women in their forties who asked me where I was from... I revealed I was from the US and we began chatting for some time about America until I finally asked them where they were from, and each & every one of them was a North Korean, and all of them had grown up in North Korea.

It was completely undetectable that they weren't regular South Koreans, and the only significant difference I could say about these North Koreans was that they were... More extroverted & better conversationalists than the average person. Absolutely pleasant and straightforward.

We actually talked about the total fertility rate of South Korea collapsing and they stated that they couldn't believe it. It's incomprehensible - the economy is good, but nobody wants to have a family, while in North Korea everyone grows up wanting to get married and have kids, to spend time with their families, etc. It's a real sickness...

North Korea, of course, has many problems, and there are some sick elements of their society that go back to their government's totalitarianism... But the North Korean people are wonderful, and I am actually confident that their country will become better.

I also think that the reason for their extreme totalitarianism is the personal excesses of the Kim dynasty, and I believe that the Cold War politics enabled such grotesque totalitarianism. Kim Jong Eun has the power to make these things better by easing in reforms, and it is conceivable that sooner than later North Korea could be like China: a very pleasant place to vacation full of wonderful locals to hang out with.

... and one of the barriers to us getting there is unhelpful rhetoric.

Pres. Kim Daejung's "Sunshine Policy" of the 1990s was the right attitude.
#15283457
skinster wrote:This looks like projection to me.

Travis King fled racism.


I actually just think of racism as just an outgrowth of in-group/out-group attitudes and sometimes just bad analysis...

Much of Asia does not have any kind of programming on these things - it is changing rapidly, but for people who are our peers and older, they did not grow up with any formal education on race...

Last week, my wife and I took our daughter to a Kid's Cafe we often go to, run by a Russian-Korean woman and her family. We live in a very multicultural part of the country, but she stated that sometimes a beautiful little black girl comes to play but "other kids are scared of her because Koreans are still not highly educated."

... and yeah, that's about right.

This does not really happen because of bad education or information people are given but some natural fear of outsiders, IMO, and I think this is even why whites sometimes find themselves in an easier position than other groups: we are immediately perceived as people from very highly developed societies who can be useful for alliance building and insights...

But when you perceive others as being from a lower rung, they seem useless and dangerous, or a forbidden fruit.

Such types of racism can persist for blacks in Algeria.

I asked a Gujarati woman once if her kid (my kid's playmate) could marry a non-Hindu, and she said "Yes, of course," but eventually clarified she wouldn't want her kid to marry anyone from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or Nepal...

I asked her why Sri Lanka or Nepal, and she frankly stated that they are underdeveloped societies. This can be viewed as racist, or not, but I view it as a component of racism, to say the least: people always want their kids to marry up, never down. If a group of people are perceived as backwards and undeveloped, marrying them is wrong, regardless of skin color...

Which is why the portrayal of non-white societies as always lacking and hopelessly mysterious in their foreignness is a sort of racism. The average Arab kid follows sports, likes video games and cell phone games, watches regular kids shows, has regular values... But every time he is shown on TV, he is running around in a caftan with a white skullcap on, barefoot, sweet but uncouth... He is a spectacle for everyone, and a reminder that these people are not developed...

Which reinforces ideas of people not wanting to marry or meet people from these groups, you could say.

I do not even think these portrayals and barriers created by consumer entertainment are out of malice... It's just a side effect of what we get from the storylines people pay to see.
#15283488


Verv wrote:It was completely undetectable that they weren't regular South Koreans, and the only significant difference I could say about these North Koreans was that they were... More extroverted & better conversationalists than the average person. Absolutely pleasant and straightforward.


Why did you think they'd be any different? They were one country before the U.S. divided them and some Koreans believe that will be true again as soon as the U.S. ends its occupation of the South and leaves.

We actually talked about the total fertility rate of South Korea collapsing and they stated that they couldn't believe it. It's incomprehensible - the economy is good, but nobody wants to have a family,


What do you think is the cause of South Korea having the lowest birth rates in the world?

while in North Korea everyone grows up wanting to get married and have kids, to spend time with their families, etc. It's a real sickness...


How is that a sickness?

In the DPRK, people who want big families are encouraged by the party and get support for doing so.


North Korea, of course, has many problems, and there are some sick elements of their society that go back to their government's totalitarianism...


The problems that I can think of stem from the blockade the U.S. has imposed on them for refusing to lay under its military boot.

But it doesn't have a racism problem, in fact, the DPRK has called out U.S. racism and has defended states under racist attack e.g. are strong supporters of Palestinian liberation and have denounced the apartheid colony as a "imperialist satellite", which I can't help but agree with, since it's true.

I also think that the reason for their extreme totalitarianism is the personal excesses of the Kim dynasty, and I believe that the Cold War politics enabled such grotesque totalitarianism. Kim Jong Eun has the power to make these things better by easing in reforms, and it is conceivable that sooner than later North Korea could be like China: a very pleasant place to vacation full of wonderful locals to hang out with.


The first part doesn't seem like thinking based on anything real, but what do you want the DPRK to reform?

The DPRK already accepts visitors. Obviously it's cautious on who enters considering the parents-generation genocide that occurred against the state when a fifth of the population was killed, but people can visit. I'm hoping to visit next year.

Verv wrote:Last week, my wife and I took our daughter to a Kid's Cafe we often go to, run by a Russian-Korean woman and her family. We live in a very multicultural part of the country, but she stated that sometimes a beautiful little black girl comes to play but "other kids are scared of her because Koreans are still not highly educated."

... and yeah, that's about right.


I think you meant to say "South Koreans"

This does not really happen because of bad education or information people are given but some natural fear of outsiders, IMO,


Racism is learned behaviour.
#15283558
skinster wrote:https://twitter.com/AetiusRF/status/1691792617653080089?s=20


Rando account on Twitter tells us that DPRK is not racist - guy even seems sarcastic in Tweet..? lol.

Versus...

Academics, accounts of blacks in North Korea.

Why did you think they'd be any different? They were one country before the U.S. divided them and some Koreans believe that will be true again as soon as the U.S. ends its occupation of the South and leaves.


That is absolutely not the case - the South Koreans probably can repel any invasion, and definitely have zero interest reuniting under the Kim dynasty, while the Kim dynasty has zero interest in reuniting in a democratic manner.

But let's hope that KJE can grow as a person.

What do you think is the cause of South Korea having the lowest birth rates in the world?


Hyperconsumerism and atomization brought on by highly developed, economy driven, super-materialist capitalist culture.

And part of the issue is probably feminism - not in the sense that women should not be regarded as equals, but in the sense that women are viewed as a repressed class that requires validation through labor force performance to be humanized.

The real answer to previous issues of discrimination is, of course, equality in education and social standing, and validation through familial and social relationships...

How is that a sickness?

In the DPRK, people who want big families are encouraged by the party and get support for doing so.




You misread me.

I am saying that the South Koreans are sick in terms of this.

The problems that I can think of stem from the blockade the U.S. has imposed on them for refusing to lay under its military boot.


I do support easing that blockade and normalizing relationships as fast as possible.

But it doesn't have a racism problem, in fact, the DPRK has called out U.S. racism and has defended states under racist attack e.g. are strong supporters of Palestinian liberation and have denounced the apartheid colony as a "imperialist satellite", which I can't help but agree with, since it's true.


And that's great.

Most sane countries support Palestine, though, and this cannot be a remark about what the lived experience of non-Koreans in NK is like, which is particularly racist towards non-whites and opposes miscegenation (see my first post).

The first part doesn't seem like thinking based on anything real, but what do you want the DPRK to reform?


More individual liberty and a freer economy.

The DPRK already accepts visitors. Obviously it's cautious on who enters considering the parents-generation genocide that occurred against the state when a fifth of the population was killed, but people can visit. I'm hoping to visit next year.


I do not really have any remarks about their tourism policies.



I think you meant to say "South Koreans"



Racism is learned behaviour.


No, in-group/out-group dynamics is a natural expression.

This does not have to be racial, but it can be racial, and the delineations that racialize it are not learned, but naturally occurring. That is to say, without any indoctrination, in a state of nature, racism will exist sometimes as an extension of normal tribalism...

I feel like the onus would actually be on you to prove some radical theories about the formation of racism.
#15283580
skinster wrote:Racism is learned behaviour.


Racism is one of the fundamental types of stupidity and ignorance.

And I'm sorry, but there will always be stupid and ignorant people. Thats just a fact of life.

So we cant get rid of racism for the very same reasons that we cant get rid of, say, murder.

All you can do is create a human society where there is little reason for racism or murder. But you can never get completely rid of it.
#15283608
Verv wrote:Rando account on Twitter tells us that DPRK is not racist - guy even seems sarcastic in Tweet..? lol.

Versus...

Academics, accounts of blacks in North Korea.


:lol:

You haven't shared anything to support your position that the people of the DPRK and their government support racism aside from your opinion that's based on ignorance, considering you've never been to the DPRK and thus far have only projected your own state's racism onto an anti-racist state. Share something!

That is absolutely not the case - the South Koreans probably can repel any invasion, and definitely have zero interest reuniting under the Kim dynasty, while the Kim dynasty has zero interest in reuniting in a democratic manner.


Who said anything about the DPRK invading their brothers and sisters in the South? :eh: I said the people believe their country to be one and it will be one again when you and your state stop occupying the South.


I do support easing that blockade and normalizing relationships as fast as possible.


:up:

Maybe you should try to appeal to your government in the U.S., which is preventing this. Granted, Trump eased on the hostility front a few years ago and that was one of about three good things he did.

Most sane countries support Palestine, though, and this cannot be a remark about what the lived experience of non-Koreans in NK is like, which is particularly racist towards non-whites and opposes miscegenation (see my first post).


Citation needed. I know a handful of white people who've visited the DPRK and no such thing has been reported.

More individual liberty and a freer economy.


You don't know anything about the liberty of the people of the DPRK and if anything, they blame it on the imperialist aggresors. As for the economy, it's wild you demand a freer economy when it's the U.S. state's blockade on its economy that is strangling it. :lol:

I feel like the onus would actually be on you to prove some radical theories about the formation of racism.


Socialists understand racism is a product of capitalists dividing workers and accumulating wealth on their behalf. Marx wrote about it on the Irish over a century ago, talking about racism within whites. It is not natural. It is learned.

There are many tests of putting black and white and brown and whatever else babies together and they see no difference until the culture they're raised in or upbringings might make note of it negatively.
#15283732
Negotiator wrote:Racism is one of the fundamental types of stupidity and ignorance.

And I'm sorry, but there will always be stupid and ignorant people. Thats just a fact of life.

So we cant get rid of racism for the very same reasons that we cant get rid of, say, murder.

All you can do is create a human society where there is little reason for racism or murder. But you can never get completely rid of it.


There are plenty of smart racists, though... Many even use science that is hard to impugn - it seems to absolutely be the case that, beyond a reasonable doubt, IQ is inherited. From this point, guys like Steve Sailer point out things like the heritability of physical prowess in athletics - he points out how West African descent people dominate sprinting and E. African descent people dominate distance running. Distance running in particular is fascinating since it is even so specifically dominated by just one to two ethnic groups in E. Africa.

... If we see such disparity in things like skeletal structure, speed, endurance, etc, between Inca descent Peruvians, West Africans, East Africans, Japanese, and ethnic Germans... Why would it be absurd to suggest that there are differences in cognitive skill that result in radical disparities in academic performance and prosocial vs. antisocial behavior..?

So some amount of racists simply believe nature beats nurture.

... I also think that class resentment is a huge driving force in racism!

The issues concerning the Chinese diaspora in Asia, the Jewish diaspora in the West, the Christian middle minority throughout the Middle East, etc., show that some groups establish themselves in urban niche occupations and tend to acquire a lot of wealth. Due to the fact that people notice this, and they often function as regime toadies, in some cases even being the historic tax collectors of the feudal lords, they have a natural antagonism with the local population, which results in animosity and high tension relationships...

And they then will practice a lot of ethnonepotism out of fear of reprisals, giving one another opportunities and advancement since they can trust each other and have one another's backs, plus the natural tribalism of any group... Which succeeds in ratcheting up the anti-minority sentiment.

When you look at this from the big scale of what is happening, you could say oh, that's stupid, but when you are an ethnic Malay growing up in a slum in JB and both here and across the bridge in Singapore there are ethnic Chinese attending Chinese speaking schools, who have the best money and the best connections, who end up becoming your boss who treat you like garbage and never give you raises and hire younger Chinese to take positions above you, these are very real issues that create resentment and a desire for political change...

And this will be done on racial lines, though the primary conflict is about class.

You never hear about the Malays talking about how they have an ax to grind with the Orang Asli -- they do not have real political power. There aren't anti-Orang riots historically... The problem is with the Chinese because there is real economic conflict in addition to the racial & religious differences.

The racism out of ignorance/stupidity is more like if some ethnic Malays and Chinese are making fun of some very poor, shitty aboriginal Indonesians. It's just ugly and silly...

... Or like how every white European will talk about how shit the gypsies of Europe are, and how problematic they really are, f*** those guys for real, they're thieves..! But these people can still embrace left wing talking points and join the bandwagon to shout at some Spanish guy who threw a banana at a soccer player because racism against anyone but gypsies has no place in Europe.
#15283735
skinster wrote::lol:

You haven't shared anything to support your position that the people of the DPRK and their government support racism aside from your opinion that's based on ignorance, considering you've never been to the DPRK and thus far have only projected your own state's racism onto an anti-racist state. Share something!


I did not show up to South Korea ever thinking that North Koreans are probably racist and ethnonationalist. In fact, my biases against North Koreans came from the fact that they were Communists, whose vices concern economic illiteracy and totalitarianism... In fact, the one good thing you would think about the North Koreans is that they would be a society that is thoroughly against racialism and views it as primitive, and is also very progressive in terms of gender.

It's just not true...

... and the irony is that South Korean leftists also have within them some ethnic consciousness that you often see lacking in the right..! During the great Hines Ward period after the mixed black & Korean Hines Ward played a key role in the victory, back in 2005, there was increased discussion about mixed race Koreans, migration to South Korea, etc., and it was actually the conservatives like Lee Myeongbak that had pro-immigration stances, while the left frequently invoked both economic natioanalism and Korean identitarianism. Korean Gen X leftists specifically seem inclined to view the Korean war as a colonial war that separated the two states, and have this view of Koreans as the pure victims of history who, if they had united, would be prosperous because of Korean skill...

Not to mention, the racist stereotypes of Koreans towards Chinese and their visceral hatred of the Japanese (the latter is something that has faded a little) show that there is not much challenge at all in having the Koreans view things along racial lines...

... So when I hear about vegetarian academics like B. R. Myers saying actually, surprisingly... These guys are ethnonationalists..! and writing an entire book on the topic, I tend to think there is some validity to it....

But I haven't sat and chatted with North Koreans for a while - I can organize a meeting, I actually got the phone number of one of the North Korean women in the cafe who was interested in learning English, and I also know a Korean-Chinese from the borderlands between the two that I know has a lot of contact with North Korean diaspora since they speak the same kind of Korean and tend to even have family connections often enough across the border... I could go and chat about the perception of race in North Korea.

Would be fun.

Who said anything about the DPRK invading their brothers and sisters in the South? :eh: I said the people believe their country to be one and it will be one again when you and your state stop occupying the South.



It is ridiculous to think that either side would allow for there to just be some sort of peaceful reunion through a single election or something.

But OK.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that. In fact, if I coudl snap my fingers and make it happen... I would!

And the election would be free, fair, internationally observed, binding, and would create a new government designed to be reflective of majority opinion while enshrining the rights of individuals... That's good, yes?


Maybe you should try to appeal to your government in the U.S., which is preventing this. Granted, Trump eased on the hostility front a few years ago and that was one of about three good things he did.


Yes, he did do that, and that was great.

Citation needed. I know a handful of white people who've visited the DPRK and no such thing has been reported.


See my first post.

You don't know anything about the liberty of the people of the DPRK and if anything, they blame it on the imperialist aggresors. As for the economy, it's wild you demand a freer economy when it's the U.S. state's blockade on its economy that is strangling it. :lol:


I do, actually. I've sat and talked with North Koreans...

North Koreans who aren't political junkies. Completely normal people who don't really talk politics... who told me that everyone is monitored and nobody is free to talk about politics. One said that they saw parts of the local policies as good and the general vision fo r the country as not bad, but later in the conversation bluntly stated that if I went back to North Korea, they'd kill me.

... It's just not a free place, by all accounts.

It's not as poor and desperate as it is made out to be, but it is certainly a place where shit is monitored and they do not take any challenge to power lightly.

Socialists understand racism is a product of capitalists dividing workers and accumulating wealth on their behalf. Marx wrote about it on the Irish over a century ago, talking about racism within whites. It is not natural. It is learned.

There are many tests of putting black and white and brown and whatever else babies together and they see no difference until the culture they're raised in or upbringings might make note of it negatively.


It's natural because people everywhere do it. I do not think it needs to even be understood in terms fo class consciousness... But that is certainly a component...

I think it's funny that in the year 2023 you're like "Ummm, haven't you heard of my wonderful, pure Marxist reasoning on the origins of racism before..? Isn't that enough to show I have won the argument - the fact that I have cited a philosopher who is responsible for a political philosophy that killed tens of millions through incompetence and totalitarianism?"

Grrrl, you can cite Marx all day, and the arguments can be tight and reasonable, as they often are, but responding to my own very rational take with "Nuh-uh! Marx said it ain't so!" is anti-persuasive.

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