#social republic

[troythecatfish]

[violottie]

"At least 12 killed, including a mother with a baby strapped to her back, in twin bomb blasts that hit two camps for displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday 2nd May." from African Stream, 04/May/2024:

caption continued under video

This brave brother allegedly took the baby away from his dead mother's corpse; effectively, saving the baby's life, according to local reports.

The United Nations condemned the attack that targeted the camps in Lac Vert and Mugunga, near the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, the UN said in a statement.

The attacks, in which at least 20 people were injured, were a "flagrant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law and may constitute a war crime”, it said.

Many of the victims were sleeping in their tents when the area was attacked.

The United States has accused the military in neighbouring Rwanda and the M23 rebel group of being behind the attacks. Yet the U.S. remains a staunch ally of Rwanda despite its many violations of human rights in DRC and its support for M23.

[baraste-legacy]

IF YOU PLAY SWTOR BUT AREN'T A SUBSCRIBER:

LOG INTO EVERY SWTOR CHARACTER YOU DIDN'T PLAY THIS YEAR, BEFORE GAME UPDATE 7.6 IS RELEASED, OR RISK LOSING THEIR NAMES!

This was announced during the 7.6 Livestream. Per Swtorista, 7.6's release ought to happen around December 10 (Life Day).

REMEMBER: Log into each character. Simply logging into the game isn't enough.

The way Preferred status works, one can only activate 20 of the characters in a server. As I don't think one can deactivate them to access the rest, I fear the only way to protect more than 20 characters per server is subscribing for a single month at the very least 😒 to be able to log into them all.

(If anyone knows better than this, please post about it 😐)

[degeneratedworker]

"Victory will surely belong to the Palestinian people" People's Republic of China c. 1970s

[phantom-of-the-memes]

⚠️ The general election in the Republic of Ireland is happening tomorrow, November 29th⚠️

Here’s what you need to know if you are a leftist/ just want Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael out of government.

Firstly, why do we need to get them out?

Because they have been in power for almost 100 years! 100 years of a “centre” right government. We have not even had a centre left government in all this time, never mind a left government. Something has to fucking change. Even if you’re not a socialist like me, you have to acknowledge that all the problems currently in Ireland have been caused, or at least not dealt with by them. They’re the ones in power! And yet they talk about the issues in Ireland and how something has to be done… Simon Harris is a joke with his “a new energy” signs. Cunt you’re the current fucking Taoiseach!

So, who should you vote for?

If you truly want change, and a government that is for the people, vote People Before Profit number one. They are actually putting actions behind their words. They have explicitly said that they will refuse to go into government with FF or FG. They want the other left parties to form a left coalition with them, and also make a stand to refuse a right government. Other left parties, however, are quite lukewarm on the situation, and won’t join the coalition. But still put other left parties for number two and three. Some are more preferable than others. But change is change.

Ok if you’re not a socialist like me, there are other options. Sinn Féin is centre left, so if a bit more conservative than others. This makes it the third most voted for party generally. It’s a bit more palatable to the general public than the commies I vote for lol. I don’t agree with the majority of their policies, especially with them dialling back their support for trans people. I assume to appeal to FF and FG supporters. As a trans person I wouldn’t personally vote for them. But I understand the logic of being strategic about your vote. They’re the most likely to win out of the left parties.

Why should you still vote for parties that likely won’t win the overall vote?

Because they will still get seats! This isn’t a presidential election where it’s all or nothing. The majority winner gets to be the ones in power. But this is a democracy. More votes for a party means more seats for them in the Dáil. So it does matter.

What is each party’s stance on taking action against Israel?

Here’s a very helpful graphic from the ucd bds group on Instagram (ucd_bds):

See FF and FG’s stance? Exactly.

Who you should definitely not vote for?

Aontú are literal nazis. Their main selling point is that they hate immigrants. They want to strip their rights and practically stop immigration all together. They also hate women, and want to criminalise abortion again. The members of the party were big parts of the pro life movement that tried to stop the abortion referendum. Of course they also hate trans and queer people. Basically any and all minorities. They aim to bring fascism to our government. Don’t let this happen. This is also why voting is so important, so we can prevent this.

And this should go without saying, but don’t fucking vote for the joker independent candidates that have signs around saying shit like “make crime illegal”. It’s not even a joke to vote for them. You’re an asshole if you throw your vote away like that.

Remember to find out where your local polling station is, and bring your polling card, on Friday the 29th of November.

[kaapstadgirly]

Do Not Stop Talking About Congo!

African Archives Friends of Congo

Reading Africa The Future of Congo

How to support the people in Congo Prt 1

How to support the people in Congo Prt 2

Cobalt from the Congo

At the moment, I can only add these Instagram profiles and pages. I'll try to add more at a later stage. Take the rest upon yourself to learn about the situation in Congo. Speak up, share, and donate. Do whatever you can!!

[godisarepublican]

SIMPLE: Confiscate all the cellphones

You're not dealing with adults here, at least not adult brains. These are children. They have the minds of children. They require that consequences be immediate and associated with the wrong. There's no other way they can learn.

Confiscate and shred their phones. Anyone present at an illegal protest -- including "disturbing the peace," or violence or vandalism or trespassing -- has their phone seized and shredded on the spot.

No more narcissism! Nobody is going to see them in their great revolutionary moment. No "Likes." No brownie points for "Standing up to the man."

Nobody is going to see them. And, they lost their phone, their whole life because, Lord knows, not three of them have any friends outside of social media...

Oh, sure, they'll be court battles and the LeftTards will probably win, but in the meantime their phone was shredded. Even if they get the government to pay for a new one, good luck with them recovering their social media footprint anytime soon...

Oo! And just as soon as the courts strike down the phone seizures? Re-write the law or regulation to get around the court ruling and do it again at the next "Peaceful Protest." The LeftTards will go to court, again, and probably win again, but good luck recovering the social media footprint, again. Then amend the laws/regulation and start all over again...

Once people know that their whole lives i.e. phones are the price of social unrest, they'll stay home.

[easternblocrelics]

Prague, Czechoslovakia Color negative 1970s

[afriblaq]

Why don’t we hear about Congo?

[troythecatfish]

About 48% of the world's cobalt reserves are in Congo, but 70% of the world's mined cobalt comes from there.

Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe - and there are hundreds of thousands of poor Congolese people touching and breathing it day in and day out.

[violottie]

tw: rape, sexual assault, violence on women & children

"SAVING THE WOMEN OF CONGO!

"Congolese women are paying a terrible price for the conflict in eastern DRC. Those who escape the violence are often forced to find shelter in makeshift tent camps, without proper facilities or security - where they face a high risk of sexual assault." from African Stream, 26/Mar/2024:

(caption cont under video)

Many have children in their care and seek work outside the camps, including in dangerous cobalt mines. This has also left them vulnerable to militants who abduct and rape.

Children are also subjected to sexual abuse, with stigma and unwanted pregnancies making the trauma even harder to bear.

According to a UNICEF report, the rise in sexual violence in Congo went up by 37% in the first three months of 2023, compared with the year before.

The systematic use of rape as a weapon of war has been labeled a “medical and humanitarian emergency,” as aid groups struggle to provide adequate health and psychological services to affected women and children.

[baraste-legacy]

SWTOR's Eric Musco updating us on the player characters’ looks issues (new revision incoming):

My guess regarding the PC/NPC looks renovations is: what they can work with, in a non-disruptive manner, are the game textures (replacing existing ones, possibly by regenerating their library in an automated manner) and the "shaders" (the code that uses the textures and other data to render the imagery, by adding new tricks to it).

Adding stuff that implies new sliders and/or new types of textures (the animated facial expression wrinkles would be an example) is major work that they have to carefully consider (lots of ramifications).

[degeneratedworker]

"Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea: The great achievements of the People's Republic of China in the past three years." People's Republic of China c. 1950s

[minetteskvareninova]

It’s absolutely wild to me that American right-wingers can take a look at the totalitarian communist regimes in eastern Europe and conclude that the bad part was state providing basic services (healthcare, education etc.) and not, y’know. The totalitarianism.

[probablyasocialecologist]

If Ugandans have a social safety net, it is woven from banana fibers, and if there is a clear path to socialism, it will be lined with banana leaves. The lusuku model, premised on intercropping and smallholder farming, could be the basis for national agrarian reform that improves the lives of Uganda’s agricultural workers without accelerating the destruction of the natural environment. Uganda faces increasing difficulty feeding itself because of climate extremes and land degradation, and this affects farmers more significantly than anyone else. Moreover, since the 1990s, the ruling National Resistance Movement regime sold off and dismantled most of the coffee, tea, and cotton growers cooperatives, leaving smallholder farmers in the hands of the predatory middlemen which cooperatives had been established to protect them against. Unable to collectively bargain and exposed to dramatic fluctuations in the market prices for cash crops, many people left rural areas to search for employment in cities. This has been a driving force behind the massive inequality between rural and urban workers. Ugandans now produce more food than they consume, even exporting to other countries in the region, yet 41% of people are undernourished, and agricultural production has decreased over the last 20 years. For the most part, the strategy pursued by Uganda’s government has been to encourage the development of ecologically disastrous intensive agriculture for export, privileging foreign investors rather than developing the infrastructure that would benefit peasants. Indeed, while more than 70% of Ugandans are employed in agriculture, the sector only receives around 4% of public investment, and projects aimed at helping smallholder farmers have had very little success, even by their own standards. Many of the government’s investments in agriculture very clearly advantage larger landowners, to the detriment of the poorest farmers. For example, most of the government’s investment in labor-saving technologies has been spent on tractors, which are great for large plots but largely unaffordable or unsuitable for the average farmer, whose plot is usually between 1-3 acres large. However, a socialist transition premised on agroecological reforms could make use of the existing lusuku model to create the kind of growth that actually improves poor farmers’ lives without destroying their environment. This could begin with reestablishing cooperatives and engineering agricultural prices around social needs and goals, like guaranteeing access to food. Research from around the world has shown that while large, monocrop plantations are good at producing huge volumes of one crop, smallholder farms are more productive when evaluated on a per-unit area and are capable of securing national food sovereignty. Why, for example, should Ugandans buy rice imported from Pakistan or Vietnam when banana intercropping yields more calories per hectare than rice? Lusukus could feed the nation without relying on foreign experts, development aid, or the capital-intensive inputs now being imported to grow for export. Because lusukus are far better for the soil, they also improve the nation’s capacity to resist severe floods and drought, effects of climate change that hit poor farmers hardest. In these ways, the lusuku model could provide a sustainable path to socialist development.

[sforzesco]

alternative reasons to avoid bringing your brother in law into a conspiracy or a conversation between caesar and cassius

this scene is set sometime after Brutus and Cassius have switched over to Caesar's side during the Pompey-Caesar conflict.

in a different comic, I wrote about about how cassius isn't a dog that needs to be tamed, but that depends on which side of the playing field you're on. if you're Caesar, Cassius is someone you need to leash down immediately, and the complicated social web of debt is one way to do it!

Cassius is inescapably tied to Brutus: the sandbox bond of childhood best friends, brothers-in-law with Servilia bringing Cassius into the family, and a third time with Brutus asking for Cassius' life. if you're going to bring a man who clawed his way out of a horrific defeat that killed your patron and later joined up with your rival in a civil war (twice aligned with the other two heads of the three headed monster you were a part of!) under your heel, reminding him of the only bond that could hope to rival with his family ancestry is one way to do it!

Cic. Phil. 2.26

Brutus, Plutarch (trans. Scott-Kilvert)

The Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

Civil Wars, Caesar, III. 101 (trans. A. G. Peskett)

Servilia and Her Family, Susan Treggiari

Caesar and the Dangers of Forgiveness, Barry Strauss

tbh, there's probably an additional subtext (there is, I was thinking about it) on how Crassus used 'softer' means than force to bind people to him (again, the politics of debt and patronage) and how Caesar takes after him in some ways here. it didn't last, tho. in 45 BCE Cassius voted against giving Caesar honors. (Cass. Dio 44.8.1)