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Messages - Reelya

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286
General Discussion / Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« on: October 22, 2020, 01:01:23 am »
Quote from: MaxTheFox on October 22, 2020, 12:52:25 am
Well I'm absolutely sure I'm a girl. Admittedly somewhat tomboyish but still female. It's part of my identity.

There's no such thing as identity, the whole thing is a bourgeois concept.

After all aren't we all Pathos.

287
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 21, 2020, 05:30:20 pm »
Quote from: Dostoevsky on October 21, 2020, 12:17:32 pm
Okay, so I had the chance to have a chat with them, and looks like an apology is in order - my memory was off and I was conflating several countries together.

For Bolivia (and Evo) in particular, there was only one incident of note: a lowlands indigenous leader was a rising star and seen as a potential competitor/threat to Evo and MAS, even though he didn't oppose them. He was badly beaten/tortured (including several limbs broken) by the party and then left the limelight. Several others who had some level of popularity, both inside and outside MAS, were intimidated (but not beaten) into subservience.

(As to the main offenders in violence against indigenous colleagues since 2000, they were in Peru and Honduras- countries with rather different political situations.)

Oh yeah, Honduras is pretty terrible for political violence. I don't know much about what's gone on in Peru however.

288
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 10:12:59 pm »
If there were private companies involved in an infrastructure project it's actually far more likely that someone related to a company was involved to be honest*.

It's extremely unrealistic that Evo was ordering hits on indigenous protest movements to take them out. That's not the sort of thing that happens in the real world, even in the worst dictatorship that's not how the comms works.

After all, you do need to take motives into account. What would Evo's motive be to order such a hit? Nothing would make any sense. As a politician, such an incident would only be a liability, as it proved to be when because of the 2011 police crackdown, Evo cancelled the entire project. You don't sit in a room ordering hits on protestors if your response to protest deaths is going to be to instantly cave into their demands, sack your police minister, then order the police to stand down. So, Evo's motivations to do such a thing are 180 degrees at odds with how he reacted to the aftermath:

"yes, police minister, ruthlessly kill the protestors, then I can give in to their demands and sack you and reprimand the police. all part of the plan".

289
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 10:07:16 pm »
Yeah it's fair enough there' the sentiment that the government is to blame, however it's the matter that you presented it quite as if Evo was sitting in a dark room ordering mob-style hits on opposition politicians, which isn't supported. People dying because of the police at demonstrations is bad, but a very different kettle of fish to suggesting someone is doing targeted assassinations:

Quote from: Dostoevsky on October 20, 2020, 04:47:54 pm
He definitely has had his fair share of opponents/obstacles killed (I know somebody well who has had several colleagues killed by him when he was president), though you are right that here he didn't go down that path.

"had his fair share of opponents/obstacles killed" clearly implies assassinations. Stating that he had his "fair share" of opponents taken out by killing them is pretty prejudicial, given the actual information.

290
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 09:01:46 pm »
The only thing I could find after google bolivia infrastructure killings was an incident in 2011, where police suppressed a protest and anecdotally 4 deaths occured, but the suppression was condemned by Morales basically right away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Bolivian_indigenous_rights_protests

https://web.archive.org/web/20111023185812/https://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/29/world/americas/bolivia-protests/

However, part of the prelude to the conflict was this:

Quote
Following more than a week of protests, the marchers staged a larger demonstration in which they sought to circumvent a police crackdown by forcefully holding Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca to march with them.[9] A group of female marchers grabbed Choquehuanca and insisted that he lead them through the police cordon that separated them from pro-government marchers so they could continue their journey to La Paz.

So, you had a police cordon separating pro and anti government rallies, and the anti government rally people then kidnapped a government official and tried to use him to force their way through the cordon because they were being unfairly hindered in their movements by the police cordon. What the police were doing was merely separating pro and anti government groups to avoid conflict, and the anti-government people here clearly goading things to come to a violent head so they could get the trigger they wanted to topple people. Give it a few more weeks of similar provocations, and the police snapped and actively suppressed the demonstrators, and you had the event they could then blame on Evo Morales.

Basically after the event in question all police were made to stand down in face of the protests, while the minister in charge of that was made to resign.

Quote
As the protesters entered the city, people in La Paz cheered them by waving Bolivian flags and white handkerchiefs. As a gesture of goodwill both police and riot control vehicles were withdrawn from their positions outside the presidential palace, while the information minister offered an official welcome to the protesters.

Again, this isn't how wannabe dictators conduct matters.

BTW for comparison there have been 19 deaths related to BLM protest crackdowns in the USA, and I don't see too many people who would see the 2011 protest deaths as being Evo Morale's fault making much of that.

I'm fairly certain this is the event you were talking about, but the reality is extremely far from the insinuation that Evo Morales routinely orders the murders of political opponents.

291
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 05:09:19 pm »
Ah, that's possible. I did a pretty exhaustive search after all to try and find accusations that he killed anyone, couldn't find even a whiff of that. Not even on fringe far right sites. However, it's possible some people working for an opposition group were killed and they pinned it on Evo Morale's government as rumor mongering.

But if any even moderately well known opposition leaders were being murdered then there would be conspiracies and/or rumors implicating Morales in the killings, so from the lack of any reporting, we can deduce that there aren't any such killings - consider the conspiracy theories about the Clintons and Vince Foster's suicide. So whoever has been murdered must be of sufficiently low public profile that their death isn't generating any press. This fact makes if far less credible that Morales is involved in any way. If they're not actually important people to the opposition movement, why would Morales be personally targeting them? And if they were important people, why is nobody in the media kicking up a stink about it or using it to implicate Morales?

292
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 04:51:07 pm »
Do you have sources for those killings. I'm trying to find articles with those allegations in them, found nothing yet. Checked Wikipedia, BBC and New York Times, none of which are particularly friendly to Chavista types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12166905

The only relevant thing I can find is this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/17/bolivia-assassination-plot-evo-morales

Quote
Police in Bolivia have shot dead three men, including one identified by local officials as an Irish national, over an alleged plot to assassinate the country's president, Evo Morales.

The three were shot during a fierce gun battle after police uncovered an apparent plot which involved suspects believed to come from countries including Hungary and Croatia, as well as Ireland, government officials said yesterday.

Police attempted to arrest a group of men in the centre of Santa Cruz, an eastern Bolivian city and hub of anti-Morales sentiment, but they fled to a hotel where the shootout took place around 4am (9am BST), witnesses and police said.

The alleged assassins detonated a grenade inside the hotel, blowing out its windows during the gunfight, according to police.

Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't look like any reputable publication is publishing those allegations. I can't even find a hint of the allegations.

Even FOX News didn't mention a whiff of that when they covered his resignation:
https://www.foxnews.com/world/bolivia-president-evo-morales-resigns-election-fraud-allegations

Quote
Morales became the first president from Bolivia’s indigenous population in 2006 and presided over a commodities-fed economic boom in South America’s poorest country. The former leader of a coca growers union, he paved roads, sent Bolivia’s first satellite into space and curbed inflation.

Basically that's FOX's entire bio on his presidency. Infrastructure and cutting inflation. No mention of political assassinations or even hinting at any allegations. If there are stories about that, they're pretty deep down some rabbit hole or other. So yeah, I'm open to the accusations that I'm glossing over less salubrious aspects of his regime here, but i literally can't find corroboration that such claims exist.

I just googled "killed by evo morales" in quotes to limit the search, and got literally one google result, some random no-name website, and the story was about some 20 year old kid killed in street clashes between pro and anti government groups, and opposition groups claiming it was like Evo had killed him. So, no the term "killed by evo morales" brings up literally zero google hits except for that one. So, it's not like I haven't checked for this stuff.

If there are people who have had colleagues murdered and they accuse Evo Morales as being behind the murders, well there don't seem to be any sources whatsoever which back up the idea that this is a thing. Perhaps the same security forces which ousted Evo Morales were behind some killings of these people, and the people then blame Evo Morales as being "behind" the killings. But there's no evidence that Evo had his own personal hit squad. Quite the opposite since he clearly can't control the military.

293
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 20, 2020, 04:32:01 pm »
Quote from: Cheesy Honkers on October 20, 2020, 10:17:56 am
Quote from: Reelya on October 19, 2020, 11:10:59 pm
One thing you're wrong about: Evo didn't resign willingly. It was only after the military suggested that unless he does so the country would fall to violence. So, it was more like a coup than a resignation.

What I really mean is that if he was the kind of thug some were making him out to be then he wouldn't have stepped down, he'd have converted his supporters into makeshift meatshields to prop himself up in office and/or have already converted the military into his personal army. So yeah, he stood down to avoid violence in the end. A lot of leaders wouldn't have done that. There are plenty of populists who, faced with that situation, would have called their supporters to rally at the capital building and built a wall of humans around the place, so that if the military wanted to take over, they'd have to shoot their way though men women and children, effectively calling their bluff.

I wasn't really debating the motives of the other side or whether it was a coup or legitimate resignation, but the fact that he peacefully stood aside to avoid that clash.

Part of the point here is that the means by which he left power is more than a little at odds with the narrative they were trying to push. So, on one hand, the story is that he's a heavy handed defacto dictator who rigs the polls, so he's like Saddam Hussein, yet apparently he has no control whatsoever over the military's response to said manipulation. The story doesn't add up. So there are allegations, then a few weeks of protests against the allegations, then the military demands the president stand down. That's clearly not how things go in a "dictatorship".

It's also comical how some on the right started labeling democracies as a dictatorship based on the fact that the supporters of the guy they don't like has majority support, and that's fundamentally unfair. If it's someone like Evo or Chavez, who is popular, but not with the "right" people then the true ruling elite is being oppressed at the ballot box by the unfair dictatorial means of the mass population turning up to vote.

294
General Discussion / Re: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc
« on: October 20, 2020, 03:39:42 pm »
Just clearing out my backlog of randomly saved articles

Came across this story about a music artist who went viral with a track on Spotify, hit #1, but then they hit him with a copyright claim on a sample he used.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-worst-best-day-of-my-life-how-a-song-went-viral-then-suddenly-disappeared-871991/

However, looking into it, the "sample" is someone else's entire song by an indie artists from Japan, which he cut down to 2 minutes, and merely added an extra drum track. It got taken down, but then because of some complaints, they put in back.

"sample" version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6LB6nrkoJU

original song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB7XFQgJHBI

Wow, is it easy to get an article written about you, just appropriate an entire song, cut it shorter, add drums, then post it everywhere. I guess this is ok now, mainly because an "obscure" Japanese indie group doesn't have lawyers that will come after Spotify and Youtube to follow up on take downs.

295
General Discussion / Re: Latin American Politics: Fashes gona fash
« on: October 19, 2020, 11:10:59 pm »
I was just reading that trade unions supported the ouster of Evo Morales. You might think that trade unions would support a progressive candidate, but just think of the role that trade unions play - they're a middle-man between management and workers. Ultimately, the organizations that persist are ones that act in ways that persist their organization, not the ones that are the most effective at obtaining their 'stated' goals. Consider that you can make more money from treating the symptoms of a disease that from curing it. So, trade unions persist where there's ongoing conflict or tension between workers and management, and if those problems get solved then the union isn't needed any more. Hence, quite a few unions are anti-progressive: a lot of them have pacts or understandings with the management class. They have a role to play in a well regulated machine.

Evo is a good guy. You can tell that because of how he left office. There were unsubstantiated rumors of electoral irregularities following his election victory. But, just about everywhere has those and they're an easy claim for the opposition to make. Then there were three weeks of protests, and they demanded Evo resign. The critical point is: he did resign, even though he probably had no reason to. He didn't dig his heels in or use law enforcement to crack down on the protests or rally his supporters. Basically, he stood down to avoid violence and chaos from the other guys.

Quote
On 4 December 2019, the OAS released its final report related to 20 October election, detailing what they called "deliberate" and "malicious" tactics to rig that election in favor of President Evo Morales.[21][22] Two subsequent independent non-peer-reviewed analyses of election data from different sources disagreed with the statistical analysis of election data presented by the OAS, with CEPR accusing OAS of doing a "basic coding error" resulting in what appeared to be inexplicable changes in trend.[23] OAS's counter-response stated that doing statistical exercises on what they described as falsified data does not prove the data is not false, and said that the counter-analyses do not address or discount other alleged evidence of fraud in the report.

The OAS is basically a tool of Washington. They had election data, and used bogus math to make it look like the data was rigged. However, when other academics pointed out their glaring math flaws and that there was no smoking gun, they moved the goalposts and said that of course there was no "smoking gun" since the data itself was false to start with. So, the data was supposed to be fake because of telltale signs, but when those telltale signs were debunked, they moved to the idea that since the data was fake, then they could rig things without telltale signs, so not having any signs of false data is in fact now a trait of false data. See the logic here?

So they rigged a report and then branded that with their 'authority', then when their own rigging was exposed, they resorted to sheer rumor mongering without any evidential basis. As for the 'other alleged evidence' - I'm guessing that this was rumors from right-wing groups in the nation. Basically a form of the Gish Gallop- present a million unconnected bits of 'evidence' then when any one of them is debunked you merely state that they didn't debunk all the bits of evidence. This works because disproving rumors takes more effort than just stating and accepting the rumors without any critical analysis.

296
General Discussion / Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« on: October 19, 2020, 10:21:54 pm »
Quote from: scriver on October 19, 2020, 05:05:56 am
I mean. Americans do still mean negroid when they say black and mongoloid when they say asian, so...

Which is why 'caucasian' is itself a problematic term. A co-worker got upset at another co-worker for using the word 'White'. Someone suggested 'European' but they weren't happy with that since it suggests non-white Europeans aren't European, so co-worker#1 suggested 'Caucasian' as the appropriate term. This person is an idiot though (a bully who just happens to occasionally include out-SJW-ing people as one of her bullying tactics) and I didn't want to engage with them, so I didn't bring up the fact that 'Caucasian' is part of historical Germanic "race 'science'" that was a precursor to Nazi ideology, and has been discredited and is no longer used outside of police descriptions as a 'euphemism' to mean white.

Hence, there isn't any term for white that isn't any less problematic, and at least 'white' doesn't have links to proto-Nazi Aryan race science. Saying white and black aren't perfect but they're the best options. "African-American" is problematic because then white people are the default Americans who don't need a subtype while suggesting that they're never going to be fully American since Africa =/= America, while 'people of color' suggests white people are the default people who don't need to be labeled.

297
General Discussion / Re: Untamed Virus Containment Thread: COVID-19:Mask of +1 Disease Resistance Edition
« on: October 16, 2020, 11:21:10 am »
They spent too long bullshitting on masks to the point they need to shut down actual productive stuff. Mandatory masks are basically the least obstructive thing you can do in terms of the economics, despite being a highly 'visible' thing. If governments had done that from the start the economies of the world wouldn't be tanking anywhere near as hard as they are now.

298
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: October 16, 2020, 09:36:35 am »
I doubt he read the article. Any of it. You see the paraphrase I did of the article's contents? That's not condensed down, it's basically the whole article. This is literally the entire article:

Quote
In a last-ditch effort to stop negative stories about Joe Biden and his family from spreading, Twitter shut down its entire social network Thursday.

After seeing account after account tweet out one particularly bad story, CEO Jack Dorsey realized he had to take action. Dorsey smashed a glass box in his office reading "Break In Case Of Bad Publicity For Democrats." Inside the case was a sledgehammer for smashing Twitter's servers.

"Red alert -- shut the servers down! Shut them all down!"

Dorsey ran downstairs and started smashing as many computers as he could, but he did need to ask for some help, as the hammer was pretty heavy. None of the programmers could lift the hammer, either. Eventually, they managed to program a robot to pick up the sledgehammer and smash the servers.

After hearing the Twitter employees talk about critical theory, the robot got woke and began attacking all the cis white males.

So, yeah, it's headline scraping only here. This is not like an Onion parody article, it's far more barebones than that. You get to the thing about the special Democrat Hammer for self-destructing Twitter by the third sentence in.

299
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: October 16, 2020, 09:18:43 am »
Donald Trump just shared a parody news article from The Babylon Bee on Twitter. The "news" article was about how Jack Dorsey completely shut down Twitter to prevent a negative story about Biden from spreading.

As an aside, according to the story, Dorsey used a special sledgehammer set behind glass you're meant to break in case of negative news about Democrats, then you can smash the servers with the hammer. However, the people at twitter pioved too spindly-armed to lift the sledgehammer so they programmed a robot to do it, but the robot accidentally got Woke and started attacking all the cis white male employees instead.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/donald-trump-shares-satirical-babylon-bee-story-as-though-it-is-real-news/news-story/c4c8d54d0e3da3ef7e527edde1b72577

300
General Discussion / Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« on: October 16, 2020, 12:40:14 am »
Considering that most trials don't work out, you're better off being the control.

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