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Herman&Chomsky provide some good insights, but there are major shortcomings and points where they are outright false. Among others, it is often cited by anti-democratic propagandists. China uses this book, it’s among the very view Western books that are not censored in China, there is even a Chinese translation. They use Chomsky&Herman to criticize democracy and human rights (China’s criticism of capitalism is sort of a pretext).

Tankies and other communities use it as some sort of ultimate truth. This is rubbish.

Chomsky is even conveying pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian viewpoints in the meantime (here is an older article, I am sure you know Chomsky’s hypotheses).

Don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I am wondering how many of those citing the book have really read it.

As someone already wrote in another thread, the moderation in this community seems to follow personal preferences rather than justifyable rules.

That’s perfectly alright. As I asked above in this threat, I don’t understand why this has been just deleted. But, again, it’s on you. That’s your server. No two people agree on everything.

Why has this been deleted then if I may ask?

As I said, I fully support that this is an issue, and it’s a good article. I wouldn’t have expected to be in this commmunity. When I see a comm called ‘Socialism’ I wouldn’t expext an analysis on the Haji in Saudi Arabia. But it’s a big problem for all of us, and especially for countries like SA where it’s already been hot even before the climate change, of course.

Addition: Global coal demand is on the rise as you might have read, just posted something. Why has that been deleted?

Let me say that this is on you and Beehaw, I just think it is an article about the Haji. The solution here is to just provide enough cooling methods I would say. I feel putting this in a wider ‘capitalist and climate’ frame is a bit overdone.

Climate change is our all issue, and it’s caused by self-defined capitalist and socialist countries alike. Similar things happen in Brazil’s Amazon region, in Asia, almost across China’s BRI, and across the globe. It’s not unique to socialism.

But, again, it’s on you and I don’t want to make that a big issue. Sometimes it’s better to agree to disagree :-)

Saudi authorities have installed air-conditioned shelters and other cooling methods. But these are only available to pilgrims with official permits. Most of those who died did not have permits, meaning they could not access cool relief.

This is absolutely devastating, there’s absolutely no doubt. When reading the article, though, I didn’t understand why this is an article in this particular community. Maybe Saudi Arabia should provide more cooling methods, or not let too many people in?

Although climate change is, of course, caused by Western-style capitalism, it is by far not the only reason. China, a socialist country, is the world’s largest coal producer and importer, and coal likely remains the bedrock of China’s energy system for at least another decade.

I feel this is a well-researched article, but maybe the wrong community?

@zante@slrpnk.net

When they do it, it’s “subsidies” When we do it, it’s “investment”The list of government incentives in the UK is long but If china is doing even more , that’s up to them right ? But it’s always implied it’s some kind of foul play.

Just look at the Chinese ‘subsidies’ system and you’ll see it can’t be compared to those in the West for a variety of reasons. And then add to that the forced labour regimes in Xinjiang and at BYD’s factory in Brazil (the authorities in Brazil just closed a BYD factory because of ‘slavery’-like conditions).

flango@lemmy.eco.br

Read his research, it’ll be illuminating.

Russian missile shot down Azerbaijani passenger plane, preliminary findings suggest

A Russian surface-to-air missile was responsible for the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432, which killed 38 passengers, Azerbaijani media reported Thursday.

Unnamed Azerbaijani officials cited by the Baku-based news agency AnewZ said preliminary findings suggest the missile was fired from a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system as the plane approached Grozny in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya on Wednesday morning.

GPS jamming, previously reported by Flight Radar 24, caused the aircraft to lose communication with air traffic control while flying over Russian territory, the officials added.

Chechnya and surrounding North Caucasus regions were targeted by drone strikes early Wednesday. AnewZ said that, under such conditions, Russian authorities were required to close airspace to civilian aircraft, but for unknown reasons, this was not done.

Addition: NATO calls for full investigation of Azerbaijan Airlines crash

@InevitableList

I thought you might be familiar with Australia’s threats to ban tiktok whilst ignoring the crimes other tech companies commit and making no effort to protect Australians from them.

Are you sure you read the thelucky8’s comment?

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@InevitableList

Your answer has nothing to do with my question.

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

@InevitableList

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

As AP reports on the same issue:

There has been increasing concern from Albanian parents after reports of children taking knives and other objects to school to use in quarrels or cases of bullying promoted by stories they see on TikTok.

Isn’t it somewhat strange that Tiktok, whose parent company is forced to closely surveill and censor each politically undesired content in its home country, while it is at the same time not only unable to suppress but reportedly even promotes obviously harmful content on its platforms outside China?

[Edit typo.]

It’s a good article, I have just one remark.

The article says:

Increased state spending is also driving a growing threat to Russia’s economy: inflation. Prices rose 8.9% in November 2024 compared to the previous year, more than twice the state’s 4% target.

This is the (likely) correct official inflation rate, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. I’d argue that things are worse.

In November, prices for food rose +9.9% (compared to +9% in October), most notably butter +34.1% (compared to +29.7% in October).

So the situation is much worse, especially for Russia’s poor described in the article (the poorer you are, the higher the proportion of your income spent for food).

The Russian research center ROMIR calculates the “Deflator Index,” which tracks real changes in prices for everyday goods (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, FMCG), describing it as “the average personal inflation rate for each consumer.”

ROMIR’s latest update for September 2024 puts annual inflation in Russia at 22.1% (Here again, this is much more important for people in the lower income groups which the article refers to.)

Although it is true that median salaries in Russia rose by 19.8% (Sberbank’s SberIndex latest data shows median salaries rose from 52,272 rubles in October 2023 to 62,632 rubles in October 2024), we must conclude that purchasing power in Russia continues to decline at a much faster pace than official data show us.

Putin’s recent statements that Russians’ “disposable incomes have also increased [and are outpacing inflation]”, and “the overall situation is stable and reliable,” is outright false.

The Prospect provides some more details:

This is the first scandal of the second Trump term, and take a long look, because it’s going to look like all the other scandals: a conflict of interest among his impossibly wealthy advisers and aides (or from Trump himself) seeps over into policy.

The measure at issue is known as the “outbound investment” provision. We have heard for years about the problem of manufacturing businesses shipping jobs overseas to China, with its low worker wages and low environmental standards. China typically forces businesses wanting to locate factories in its country to transfer their technology and intellectual property to Chinese firms, which can then use that to undercut competitors in global markets, with state support.

Congress […] finally came up with a way to deal with this issue. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bob Casey (D-PA) have the flagship bill, which would either prohibit U.S. companies from investing in “sensitive technologies” in China, including semiconductors and artificial intelligence, or set up a broad notification regime around it.

[…] Cornyn-Casey [which added some reporting requirements and enhanced reviews] passed the Senate last year, and after about a year of legislative wrangling, a final outbound investment package made it into the year-end bill. “We’re taking a necessary step to safeguard American innovation against bad actors and ensure our lasting dominance on the world stage,” Cornyn said in a statement.

Funny story: Elon Musk’s car company has a significant amount of, well, outbound investment. A Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai opened in 2019; maybe a quarter of the company’s revenue comes from China. Musk has endorsed building a second Tesla factory in China, where his grip on the electric-vehicle market has completely loosened amid domestic competition. He is working with the Chinese government to bring “Full Self-Driving” technology to China, in other words, importing a technology that may be seen as sensitive. Musk has battery and solar panel factories that are not yet in China, but he may want them there in the future.

You can argue about whether the U.S. should be restricting investment in China. But it’s incontrovertible that a billionaire who has a bunch of investments in China and wants to make more all of a sudden disrupted a normal congressional process that was going to restrict that investment with a bunch of lies from his media platform. And lo and behold, when the new funding bill emerged, the outbound investment feature was dropped. In fact, all traces of provisions related to China were removed from the bill.

Limesurvey appears to be good (among other sites, Switching Software is good to find alternatives).

From the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation::

War criminals are the new elite of Russia: Temirlan Abutalimov – (archived)

Temirlan Abutalimov is a Russian soldier from Dagestan and a participant in Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine.

He serves in the 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 58th Army from Dagestan. Before the full-scale invasion, he worked as an investigator in the local police. Following Putin’s announcement of mobilization in September 2022, Abutalimov decided to go to the front.

In 2023, during the battles for Robotyne, he rose to the position of assault company commander. Ukrainian intelligence has identified him as one of the perpetrators who ordered the execution of four captured Ukrainian soldiers. It is also suspected that Abutalimov was involved in other similar crimes. For his actions in the Robotyne area, Abutalimov was awarded the Order of Courage and later received the Hero of Russia Star.

Now, this war criminal is being positioned as part of so-called “Russian new elite”. He became a finalist in the Kremlin’s “Time of Heroes” program, completed an internship, and is preparing for a career as an official.