Awoo [she/her]

  • 28 Posts
  • 72 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2020

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  • I don’t think it’s an appeal.

    It’s a show. This kind of thing forms part of a narrative of natural overthrow of the regime, and that the people wanted it so much that they would even burn down mosques to achieve it. The playbook of western regime change is to generate unrest as part of the narrative of regime change then to quietly prepare their replacement behind the scenes. What actually achieves the regime change is a coup of some sort that occurs behind the backdrop of all the unrest, but the story that is told in the media is of the people performing a revolution and naturally overthrowing the regime.

    Something bigger is probably coming if that is what this is.


  • The only possible way this goes well for the protest is if wider society blames the government for failing to protect the mosque from this and gets mad at them for it rather than blaming the protest itself and losing support.

    Perhaps if people are upset enough it becomes a symbol of “we don’t care” or “yes this was to be expected” in the current events, but I don’t think so. It’s not the same as a government building or large palace residence burning that people might be indifferent to in somewhere like Ukraine during Maidan. Those things tend to benefit the atmosphere of the ongoing revolution whereas I’m pretty doubtful of this. Perhaps the point is not to help the protests but as a spectacle for the outside world immediately before the US and Israel start bombing.





  • UK threatened with sanctions if Starmer blocks Musk’s X

    https://www.cityam.com/uk-threatened-with-sanctions-if-starmer-blocks-musks-x/

    spoiler

    The UK has been warned it could face US sanctions if Sir Keir Starmer attempts to block Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, amid mounting concern over its AI tool generating sexualised images of women and children.

    Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican Congresswoman and ally of Donald Trump, said she was drafting legislation that would allow the US to sanction the UK if the UK bans or restricts X under the Online Safety Act.

    Luna, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said any move against the platform would amount to “a political war against Elon Musk and free speech”.

    Her intervention follows revelations that users have been exploiting X’s AI chatbot, Grok, to create non-consensual sexual images, including images involving children.

    The Internet Watch Foundation has confirmed it identified criminal child sexual abuse imagery, involving children aged between 11 and 13, which appeared to have been generated using Grok and shared on dark web forums.

    The controversy has put Downing Street under pressure to explain why the government continues to use X as its official communications channel.

    Starmer said this week that “all options are on the table” to force compliance with UK law, including backing enforcement action by Ofcom.

    The Online Safety Act gives the regulator powers to levy fines running into billions of pounds or, in extreme cases, seek court orders that could result in services being blocked in the UK.

    Ofcom has historically never exercised its strongest powers, and any ban would require a lengthy legal process.

    Luna said legislation was “being drafted” in the US that would mirror previous actions taken against countries or officials seen as restricting X.

    She pointed to Washington’s decision last year to sanction a Brazilian judge who temporarily blocked the platform, as well as travel restrictions imposed on former EU digital chief Thierry Breton.

    Downing Street has dismissed suggestions that recent changes by X go far enough.

    After criticism mounted, X limited Grok’s image-generation features to paid subscribers.

    A Number 10 spokesman said the move was “not a solution”, adding that it merely turned “an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service”.

    “What it does prove is that X can move swiftly when it wants to do so,” the spokesperson said, confirming that Ofcom has the government’s full backing to take enforcement action.

    The row has also triggered debate within Labour over whether the party and government should leave the platform altogether.

    Anna Turley, Labour’s party Chair and a cabinet office minister, said conversations were taking place about continued use of X, describing the images generated by Grok as “completely unacceptable”.

    Several MPs and committees, including the Commons women and equalities committee, have already stopped using the platform.

    Others argue the government should remain on X to reach voters where they are active.

    A ban on X, which hosts around 20 million users across the country, would mark a significant escalation in tensions between London and Washington, pitting online safety enforcement against free-speech concerns and adding a new flashpoint to transatlantic tech relations.



  • Though as your conversation shows with that person from mander.xyz, the term “Tankie” is just a floating signifier with no real meaning and just means whatever a person wants it to mean, so an “anti-tankie” is probably not going to have any sort of coherent worldview.

    Mmmmmm. There’s a whole thing to unpack there where a “tankie” is an unreasonable boogieman that some people have been convinced exists but really does not. It’s a caricature of a marxist-leninist who reverts to “stalin should’ve sent more tanks” with no understanding that statements like that are unserious and the real position held by that person in a reasonable conversation is quite different.


  • I see.

    I define it as the people who deny any wrongdoing by governments and call anyone who does liberal.

    The thing is that there really aren’t any people that fit that. No really. That’s not a particularly common position among any communists at all. At most it occurs when a communist is particularly fed up with a person’s behaviour as most conversations tend to occur in bad-faith and at that point they default to a sort of “fuck you stalin didn’t throw enough nazis in pits” sort of attitude.

    For the majority of communists, Stalin is like, 70 good 30 bad. Similar situation with Mao, in fact that’s the official position of the CPC as well.

    My experience with people throwing the word tankie around is they actually just tend to mean any communist, and when you ask them to clarify further the goalposts continually move around to a degree where basically any communist falls into the definition. That does not seem to be the case in your example, but I would argue that, generally speaking, you’re not anti-communist at all in any way because the “tankie” that you oppose is a boogie man that doesn’t actually exist outside of weird situations or examples of teens being teens.