It wouldn't surprise me if this were in fact true, but if you or @yogthos@lemmy.ml can point me to where you saw this, I would really appreciate being able to read about it. Regardless of what heinous crimes against humanity and all life on earth that the US would actually perpetrate in a large scale nuclear war scenario, I was under the impression that their nuclear posture and targeting strategies are "highly classified" and even though they don't have any NFU policy, they still at least pretend it's about deterrence.
It was Target that was well known for doing this, tracking shoplifters and waiting until someone could get arrested for a felony when a minimum amount of dollar worth was stolen. I never did, but from my understanding, Target was the place shoplifters knew not to shoplift as it was and likely still is extremely aggressive this way and more likely to break the law itself by detaining you against your will (which in the US is technically not legal but that doesn't always stop them from doing it, especially if they think you don't know that). Walmart on the other hand, was actually surprisingly hands-off and one of the easiest of those kinds of stores to steal from, I was told. It's possible this has changed in the last couple years that I haven't kept up, but well into "post"-covid times, if you were shoplifting from one of the big box stores like that, a good bet was Walmart while Target was regarded as the hard-ass goon-hiring bastards and hence the one to avoid.
-- EDIT: Removing a bunch of stuff I'm not 100% sure is wise to leave up
I will note here, that while these are among the laws you should know about and use to your full potential benefit, it doesn't mean that the stores necessarily will, know them or follow them. Regular grocery stores, from everything I know, really don't give a shit. The method I described above works so well because even if someone does eye what you're doing and get suspicious, it will be underpaid retail workers and grocery baggers that almost certainly don't care or are even glad to see that kind of thing happening. BUT other kinds of stores are not necessarily like that. Part of why Target was so bad is because they were known for not caring that they themselves and their thugs were the ones breaking the law. A time could be coming when even grocery stores start getting more like this, and there are probably ones that already do. It can't hurt to test out the situation on something light. A single bottle of shampoo. Get a feel for the store. Items do matter. Don't steal the alcohol. THIS is watched heavily in large part because of minors who frequently try to steal it for obvious reasons. I knew someone else who often stole from grocery stores literally by walking in, taking shit and walking out. None of this trying to look legit shit. He was shockingly successful until he tried doing it with liquor. That ended his shoplifting career. At least from grocery stores. In that town. For a little while.
I hope this has been a helpful comment.
Mods: If any of this shouldn't be here, I get it, no hard feelings if it's deleted. I'll also gladly be the creator who removes it if that's better.
But the US isn't getting everything it wants and it is in decline. It's flipping its shit as China continues to slowly eclipse it economically. Its loss of its proxy war in Ukraine (that it was so certain it was going to win) is imminent. Its iron-gripped stranglehold on South America is weakening while it's having to cannibalize its vassals in Europe just to try to maintain falling rates of profit. All of this (and more) is a clear indication of the emergence of a multipolar world that the US thought it could prevent from ever happening. Israel also can't survive without a strong US supporting it, and there is a real possibility this (inshallah!) could be its terminal crisis. These are conclusions that many communists analyzing the situation from a materialist framework have come to, and that doesn't mean they're trying to dismiss the west's complicity. Pointing these things out doesn't make the genocide that the US and Israel are perpetrating any less heinous or that that genocide will end up being any less thorough. It definitely doesn't mean that any thinking, feeling person should not be doing everything in their power to stop the genocide.
I mean, the earlier attempts google/youtube made to block adblockers by putting up a notice to turn it off, etc., were openly stated as being tested only on some users. As expected, only some users experienced that. You're just part of the more fortunate majority that isn't an unwilling guinea pig for google's attempts to force everyone to watch ads or pay premium.
The Preacher and the Slave as performed by Utah Phillips
Written by Joe Hill
Joe Hill was a labor activist and songwriter, active during the Progressive Era.
He was executed in 1915 at the age of 36, after being convicted of murder in Salt Lake City, Utah. The subsequent appeals garnered international publicity, with many activists alleging that Hill was an innocent scapegoat.
Different tactics work on different people. I was swayed from liberalism to communism much more by long form argumentation, stuff I had to read and really think about and examine, before concluding that my liberal beliefs were the garbage they were. Just saying "bad thing bad" to me would have made me roll my eyes and think you didn't have any valid arguments. And to be honest, current me doesn't blame past me for thinking that. Maybe that works on some people, but again, that's why there are different tactics. Yours is no more valid than VILenin's, and were it me on the other side, yours would be less valid than his by far. That's not me calling you anti-intellectual, but neither should you act like using reasoned argumentation is too high brow to influence anyone who isn't already a committed pro-Palestinian communist.
because again everyone understands that genocide is bad.
Clearly they don't understand that it's bad enough, seeing as this whole conversation is centered around the "calculus of deciding that a genocide is an acceptable trade-off." Many people who do recognize genocide is bad, still think "well, it's a complicated situation" or they have fallen for the both-sides lie and think that the Palestinians would be genociding Israelis if the zionists weren't doing it first. These are the kinds of lies that would be good to disabuse them of. Which is something we can do in numerous cases, since it has happened, and one effective way of doing that is to used reasoned argumentation with healthy rhetoric. Which is what VILenin was talking about. Coming in and saying "Nah, it's useless" or "that tactic doesn't work, but my short pithy one does" is weird and unhelpful. I'm not sure why you insist on putting down what he came up with.
I've been here since the r/cth days, but I rotate names (without wiping accounts). That may not be the best solution either, but it works for me. Then again, I'm not a famous (nazi) cartoonist, so I doubt anyone would go to the trouble of even trying to dox me. It's also not like hexbear has the kind of tracking apparatus that major social media sites do.
Catching a ban for merely upvoting comments critical of the US empire on reddit had a major chilling effect on me 3 years ago (back when I actually still frequented that shithole of a site) to the point that I always think twice about who and what I engage with on most sites, let alone specifically what I say. At least here, I figure if it's not bad enough to be removed by mods for fedposting, it's probably not going to get me added to any more lists than I and everyone else here are already on.
This. I have no doubt we would have communism if given enough time. The contradictions of capitalism (and therefore imperialism) make it an inherently temporary system. And oh are those contradictions intensifying! It can't last simply because it expects infinity from the finite. Contradictions that only socialism then communism can fix, even if that happens after a wave of horrifying reaction and fascism. But I don't think people take the severity of climate change, its pace, and its consequences seriously enough, even here. It's not "doomer" to recognize how bad the range of very real possibilities actually is. If anything, it's important that we know how much we're fighting the ultimate clock, and hoping it isn't already too late.
Fundamentals of Marx: Surplus Labor and Value. (video is only 10 min long)
E: This one goes into more depth, is a bit more polished of a production, and is 17min: Marx's Law of Value: Intro to Marxist Economics | Socialism 101
All germans are Nazis
InappropriateEmote
joined 3 years ago
Yes you are. You're racist if you enforce a deeply racist system, especially one that regularly executes black people with and without trial.