The text below is from Kevin Ovenden, an Irish marxist who founded an organisation to bring aid to Palestine during the 2009 war, and who as aboard the flotilla in 2010 which tried breaking the Israeli Blockade, which was violently attacked by the IOF.

"It's absolutely true that the impact of Israel's killing of seven WCK aid workers casts a harsh light on those who only now complain about this going "too far" after the slaughter of over 30,000 Palestinians and 196 other aid workers.

We should make that point as we seize on this moment to build more widely and to isolate Israel where we are.

But it is not helped by some memes and lazy arguments going around. Those talk of the deaths of "seven white people" at the hands of Israel.

That isn't true. One was Palestinian and a second was Indian-Australian. Not white.

I think some of this comes from not really pausing to think and find out, combined with an extremely annoying habit of people trying to force everything into North American notions of "white skin privilege".

The perversity of that in this case is that it erases the Palestinian-ness of one of the victims and the mixed heritage of another, of the kind that can still raise eyebrows at passport control in parts of the world."

Michael Hudson talked about how he was approached by the State Department to work with them after Super-imperialism was published, and at first he was a bit worried because of his Marxist background. He said that once they learned about his actual family history (his father was a Trotskyist labor leader in Minneapolis and he himself is the godson of Trotsky) they were like, “ok, good, not a threat to us.”

No fucking way. That's incredible. Do you still have that interview lying around?

Unlike the Houthis, they're away from home with few creature comforts.

Those Houti´s really have all the comforts, unlike American soldiers

horrible

Belgium had something similar until 1883 ("werkmanboekje", for those who are curious), when it was abolished under pressure of socialist trade-unions. Honestly can't believe such an idea is making a comeback.

I second @[email protected] 's point: read the Jakarta Method. The most eye-opening thing about that book was how in every country where it happened, the people living here had the same idea "something that is so outrageous can't happen here".

I had a libertarian manager who used to say "What has Bernie ever actually done?". Hate to hand it to him,

Of al the criticisms one can have of Sanders, this one really annoys me. Offcourse he "doesn't get annything done", because all other people there are the worst monsters imaginable, who're only trying to get tax cuts for their donors. That's a criticism of them, not of Sanders. The problem is that there is no broader movement agitating around these sort of bills, not that they're voted down. These bills are a meager form of pressure on the elite, their existence is a net positive.

At least China hasn't been actively aiding anti communist movements lately.

Are you implying that they did? Which groups?

4/ Forth, Nazis were defeated only after the second front was open. Nazis had to fight against the US, UK, and all their allies.

So, it is plain stupid to attribute victory over Hitler to russia.

The front that never would have opened were it not for Molotov-Ribbentrop

Why is that? I thought that agreement had as only function to delay the German attack on the USSR. Why would it lead to a second front?

Russia, a country that (...) has an economy the size of Italy

Not engaging in the rest of this debate, but this is misleading. If you just look at GDP, that's true, but if you look at GDP PPP (purchasing power parity), it's the §th economy of the world, right after Germany. PPP means that you don't just translate roebels into dollars, but that you check what you can actually buy with it.

The question was if heavier cars should pay more. Heavier cars are more expensive to buy, so this means that people who can afford a big car, will pay more. It's a sort of progressive taxation by proxy.

For context: don't forget that this isn't the US: not everyone drives an SUV/pick-uptruck. Here you can see the size of the most popular car in France, compared to a pick-up truck.

Since the link goes to the homepage, I didn't believe it at first. Here's the archived version of the article, for my fellow skeptics: https://archive.is/1IdVZ