start composting

In my non-existent backyard?

The Toxic Lie of American Recycling: How Plastic Shipments Are Destroying Asia

For decades, the U.S., along with other countries, have been sending much of its plastic “recycling” to Asian countries to process, as running a well-functioning recycling program is more labor intensive and expensive than Americans would care to operate.[1] This relationship began as a way for Asian countries to turn a profit by importing the U.S.’ recycling to manufacture into new plastics.[2] But when the imports became excessive as Americans used more and more plastic, some countries chose to ban them, leaving an even heavier burden on places still accepting the imports.[3] Malaysia is one such country feeling this strain.[4]

In 2018, China, Asia’s largest recycling importer at the time, ceased 99% of its plastic imports.[5] Malaysia learned just how much recycling China had been taking when it much of it began showing up at their ports.[6] While from a legal standpoint, Malaysia still has a say in how much recycling they accept, there is a strong network of illegal imports that fly under the radar and pollute Malaysia’s air, water, and soil.[7] Unlicensed operations in Malaysia import recycling, hire cheap labor, establish factories, and process the plastic in dangerous and toxic ways without adherence to environmental regulations.[8] Not everything that is illegally imported is turned over for manufacturing, leaving a good part of the plastic to rot or burn in illegal landfills, causing plumes of toxic smoke and contaminated groundwater linked to widespread illness.[9] The Malaysian government says enforcement attempts to stop illegal operations has been feeble.[10]

STOP CONSUMING SINGLE USE PLASTICS YOU ASSHOLES.

That goes 1000x for multinationals. But anyone bitching about recycling is either ignorant on this point or outright maliciously perpetrating the problem.

Brother, you’ve got a worse case of brain worms than some Kennedys I could name.

I’d also spout this kind of nonsense

What you’re doing is called “Denialism”. You don’t want to accept that Donald Trump was a staunch friend, financial supporter, and NYC powerbroker working on behalf of the Democratic Party for decades. So instead of facing this reality and what it means about the state of the party, you’re going to cover your ears and pretend it didn’t happen.

If Harris were president right now, would we have gestapo roaming the streets, Nazi ghouls mentioning plenary authority, or giant corporations settling with the FCC to curry favor?

As she seemed intent on continuing the policies of the prior administrations, the answer is clearly “Yes”. We had gestapo doing their dirty work all through the American Southwest going back to the Polk Administration. Bush created ICE, Obama expanded ICE, Trump expanded ICE, Biden expanded ICE, and Kamala Harris campaigned on a platform of anti-immigration that would require her to expand ICE.

Would we have goons like Steven Miller and Curtis Yarvin ranting about unitary executives and divine right of kings under a Harris Administration? Absolutely. Would they be operating in friendly Republican gubernatorial cabinets and think tanks and Congressional offices? Absolutely. Would they be setting national policy through the courts and the legislature and red state executive offices? Absolutely. If Republicans still commanded Congress, would they be authoring national policy that President Harris eventually signed into law? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Would Larry Ellison and Bob Iger and Satya Nadella be kicking back tens of millions of dollars to Republican allies via “settlements”? Would Citadel and JP Morgan be bribing politicians with large purchases of shitcoins to get around campaign contribution limits and other anti-corruption laws? 100% guaranteed. They were doing this shit before Trump took office. Why would they stop now?

Your problem isn’t that these fascist policies exist. Your problem is that they’ve breached “containment” in Red States. Now it’s not just a Texas problem or a Florida problem. Its an Everybody problem. You can’t just ignore the fascism anymore. You can’t say “Those fuckers down south are getting what they deserve”.

Now you’re down in the shit here with the rest of us. Welcome to hell, asshole.

if you think Kamala Harris and Trump were equivalent

Obviously they’re different. One’s got a big “D” next to her name and climbed into her California Senate seat through Jerry Brown’s bed sheets. The other one was a billionaire mega-donor to Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial and Presidential Primary campaigns, and hung out with her husband on trips down to Epstein Island. Also he became a Republican a few weeks after Obama won the Presidency.

Ah, but the great thing about Communist jokes is that everyone gets them.

Hey OP, you wanna go ahead and go to any neighborhood that’s been raided by ICE and tell them how the Dems are exactly just as bad as the GOP?

Obama Leaves Office As ‘Deporter-In-Chief’

Democrats tried so fucking hard to outflank the Republicans from the Right for eight long years. But as soon as they lost, its those damned leftists at fault for not voting harder.

Hell, go tell a bunch of drag queens and trans people.

I’ve got a trans friend who has more rotten things to say about Joe Biden than your eardrums can handle.

This kind of false equivalency is how you end up with Trump.

The fact that there’s no discernible difference between the parties (or, worse, that Trump rhetorically can outflank Dems from the popular left) should cause Democrats to soul-search and come back with a better political strategy. Instead, we just get this dogmatic insistence that Liz Cheney and Michael Bloomberg are better options than Donald Trump, so you have to go pound pavement in the 100° weather knocking doors, begging friends and neighbors over the phone, and dipping into your kids’ college funds to “donate till it hurts” in an effort to get them elected.

It’s perfectly fine to dislike both

It clearly is not. That’s the fucking problem. Telling people “go eat dogshit because its tastier than horseshit” and then bitching when your shit stand can’t break even is the root of the problem.

Time and time and time again, liberal Democrats run away from the popular candidates in favor of the candidates that can raise the most money. Time and time and time again, these candidates lose to Republicans who are raising money from the exact same evil assholes.

And when we finally fucking see a populist start winning in a bright blue city like NYC, you get the liberal media leadership saying this shit on national television.

Bill Maher raises concerns over Mamdani’s Ugandan citizenship on ‘Real Time’

It’s Birtherism all over again.

Labor of love, I suspect

https://newpipe.net/

We call him Frank’s Monster, for short

Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action.

The Soviet Union was one of the latest. Yeltsin taking office, failing to get his way, and then shelling parliament into surrender being the most prominent example of the failures of electoralism, even in an ostensibly proletarian state.

Gaza also a great instance of the wages of strict electoralism. You rally your people behind a more militant political body (Hamas in 2006) and the end result is your heavily armed neighbors using the results of an election as causa belli. Hell, the American Civil War is another great example, what with a Southern coup government rising up after a Presidential election defeat.

It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.

It gives us a fighting chance, at least. But it is also hard, painful, and requiring enormous self-sacrifice particularly among the early adopters.

Thank you

In a society where the will of the majority is ignored in favour of the will of the few I think most people would agree it’s an authoritarian society

Sure. But then the reverse is true, as well. Libertarians call it “mob rule”

Continuing this off-site drama will result in temp bans for an three accounts

Normal Mod Behavior

Hitler’s government qualifies as “authoritarian” in the same way that FDR’s government does. It can describe Starmer’s UK. Or Sheinbaum’s Mexico. It can be applied as easily to Lai Ching-te’s Taiwan as Xi’s China. It’s a nothingburger of a word, mostly implying you don’t like the policies of the person in charge.

I mean, it’s definitely a deliberately ill-defined term that’s used to conflate dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and dictatorships of proletariat. Also, mysteriously, never seems to describe friendly oligarchies like MBS’s Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu’s Israel, Milei’s Argentina, or Bukele’s El Salvador.

But its language that’s very intentionally borrowed from Anarcho-Capitalism, intended to defame any kind of public governing structure. The end goal of describing every governing body we don’t like as “authoritarian” is to venerate “free markets” as a utopian alternative to popular governance.

It’s not just about communism. It’s a term intended to denigrate any kind of popular government.

Far-Right: Donald Trump and Xi Jinping

Far-Left: DSA

The Middle: ducking Amy Klobacher throwing a stapler

Sure. But the meme still holds.

Being stupid is ignoring a question

Bro, what?