• 1 Post
  • 43 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
  • My buddy said the police really laid Ambushes for the corrupt cops and the arrests sometimes escalated. So, well, they didn’t got struck down by a drone but they really were at risk of getting taken out by 5.54mm bullets. Sure not everyone was corrupt and violent but still quite a lot.

    If you say violent crime was low I am gonna believe that. Corruption and theft though were everywhere in the Eastern Block really bad, I know it myself from my visits in East Germany and Czechoslovakia and the simple casualness everybody took possession of government property was insane. A fellow of my uncle build his whole house in East Germany with stuff people he stole from the communist government. It was straight forward insane. Violence on the other hand was rather low and mostly because the cops were not shy about getting very violent you up just because they could. I remember when two border guards beat up a class mate in Berlin in 1989 because he had long hair. He stood in a queue waiting for being checked, the two border guards walked by, grabbed him, punched him a couple of times and send him back into the queue. My whole class was starring like “WTF what just happened”…

    I know at least two Soviet/Russian Vehicles in my Munich neighbourhood straight forward stolen from the Soviets/Russia. One 60 year old Ural Truck which an East German buddy used to flee from Iraq in the 1980th to West Germany, another also pretty old GAZ used by a team of Russian soldiers fleeing from Ukraine through Turkey to Munich last Year.

    While I once have been in Communist Romania it was during a holiday when I was eight and in a fenced hotel area. I can only remember it was kinda boring because no kids of my age were around. I should definitely visit the place again when I do my Europe tour after retiring, I guess it changed a lot.


  • If you are living in Romania you might also remember how life was there 20-50 years ago. The stories my buddy told me about his time over there are… wow. The story how his Grandpa as a major of a small village during communism stole enough money from the communist party until he could bribe his way to the West - and actually nobody minded him stealing like 90% of all money going to his village… In the late 1990ths my buddy was robbed at gun point twice. By Highway-Police. When he invited his Uncle to a good restaurant in the capital the simple farmer didn’t dare to step through the door because “I am not worthy”… Nowadays… it is a lot more relaxed. Not perfect but the really big shit is gone. Still he thinks most Romanian youngsters are kinda crazy but most Europeans are, just in a different way. And the tourist regions are actually quite nice.

    The Albanian Government ist pretty well aware of their lack of control and gave full control over shipping lanes to FRONTEX around ten years ago.

    That by the way is the main reason nowadays drugs mostly arrive in Rotterdam again. Easier to hide between millions of metric tons of cargo than in a single fishing boat.


  • I can assure you that there are regions within the European Union where people are even less poor and not trying anything criminal to get rich. I’m referring to parts of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and southern Italy.

    Not to mention Third-Party-Members like Albania, Moldovia, Bosnia or Macedonia who are partially Third-World-Nations.

    You won’t find poppy plants there. And while there is some organized crime - surely more than north of these countries - they are more or less under control and operate in the shadows.

    But then the EU is also relaxed about giving work visas. Lots of people from those nations do some seasonal work within the EU, earning good money. We have all sorts of Ukrainians, Albaniens and even Tunesiens around Germany doing such jobs. Usually they earn enough money within two years to return home and start a family and a business.


  • Weeding out FARC and Shining Path actually did teach valuable lessons which habe been repeatedly reapplied successfully during modern counter-terrorism.

    Both where heavily invested in organized crime but are nowadays toothless or non-existant due to coordinated goverment and civilian efforts.

    The Best example might be “The Sons of Iraq” who helped to pacify Iraq quite well. The Coalition literally hired local people suffering most from extremists to fight the extremists and it worked like a charm. FARC and Shining Path were pushed into insignificance by roughly the same methods.

    Yes, there were “revenge” killings by the “somewhat good guys” against the “really bad guys”. But in hindsight it was necessary to show the “really bad guys” that the tables had turned. As long as the overall violence decreases - deal with it.

    Oh, by the way, did you know that the Mafia once was an organized military organization fighting for Sicilian independence? Over the last 200 years they slowly degraded into a bunch of sometimes wealthy oligarchic stock market fraudsters, but mostly pick pockets and low level fraudsters, at most bribing officials for construction jobs, if at all. 40 years ago they killed judges and police officers in the dozen. Nowadays they get beat up if they show up in Palermos shops and demanding the Pizzo (protection money). And the police stands by and collects the beaten gangster afterwards without minding the locals doing local justice. Works fine.



  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldHot take
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 months ago

    PopOS is a sure way of getting into ten times more problems than Ubuntu.

    Seriously, I know them all. Started with NetBSD in 1991, used pretty much everything.

    If your system isn’t super weird then Ubuntu is the most relaxed experience you will ever have as a newby.

    (And yes, I am not using Ubuntu currently. But then, I hat 35 years of POSIX/Unix/Linux experience)


  • I am an old timer. I started with BSD before there was even a Linux. NetBSD on an Amiga 3000 before the AT&T law suite against NetBSD, then heared about Linux which was twice as clean as NetBSD and without legal issues - Later NetBSD removed all legal issues nonetheless.

    First Linux was a Watch-Tower Distribution, basically a big RAM-Disk with a rudimentary Linux system which you copied to HD. No package manager, nothing. tar, make was the way to do installations. Shortly after Slackware and SuSE which basically was the same back then. Then a lot of SuSE then Debian, then Ubuntu. Don’t care much about the distribution nowadays as long as it is DEB-based.

    But now something to scare all of you: Today my most used POSIX environment is… Cygwin. Well, I got a Windows-Notebook for development and a VM is really clunky in comparison to a fully integrated POSIX-layer like Cygwin. For developing Stuff it actually matters very little if you use BSD, Linux, Cygwin or even Solaris.



  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    No, Pacificm is not always Extremist.

    The Green party of Germany is Pacifist.

    But they also have been the loudest about rearming the German Bundeswehr in face of Russian Aggression since 2008. I cite their defence speaker from 2010: “Peace is worth fighting for”.


  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Actually Mao claimed his great leap forward was “Anti-Racism” (and also Anti-Classism and whatever) because he forcefully removed all differences by murdering pretty much any one standing out. Pol Pot never claimed that but technically speaking he was doing the same: Forcefully removing everything making people different. Yes, there is “Extremist Anti-Racism”.

    Being different is as much a basic right as being treated equally.

    An interesting excursus: The Woke movement labelled it “racist” when Non-Rasta-People wore Rasta curls. I on the other hand call it racist to deny people the right to freely chose or reject traditions based on their origin. Because one side is Extremist and the other is liberal. Now tell me where the truth lies.

    There is a Bavarian Pro-Verb: Cats enjoy mice, but not me. Again, tell me where the truth lies.



  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    the left taking peoples property for no reason and fighting people for not being left

    Great Purge

    Cultural Revolution

    Killing Fields

    “Socialism does not mean the equal distribution of wealth between the wealthy and the poor, this would be too inflexible. Rather, socialism is a means of increasing productivity.” - Saddam Hussein, Leader of the Arab socialist Movement: in: ath-thawra

    Best Definition of “Fascism” I have ever heared. From an Extremist Socialist trying to redefine Socialism.

    You may argue “how Extremist” Fa, Anti-Fa and Anti-Anti-Fa are. But you can not argue that they are all Extremists.

    Now answer me with your usual emotional one-liners. Add some foot stomping. I do not expect anything more from you.


  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Learn to quote. I wrote “Extremists”. You claim I wrote “Leftists”. You need to learn that the Extreme Wings are much further away from the middle than the left and right middle to each other.

    Also, I see you are doing the 101 of populism:

    1. make up an enemy
    2. secondly, lying pays off
    3. become more and more radical

    Oh, and by the way, I am living in Germany. You fucking have you idea what you are talking about if you are talking about left and right politics, extremists and middle. Honestly, you sound like someone with an extreme case of borderline syndrome who only know “THEM” vs “US”, only knows Extreme Counterpositions.

    But that is not how the world works. Even our local conservative parties are much more leftist than eg the US Democrats and that is a good thing. I vote mostly Green and Social Democrats. But I HATE the Extremists, the Maoists, Stalinists, the Alternative Truthers, the national party, the skin heads (there are left and right skinheads in Germany so… pick your poison). And I see the Extremists changing without a second thought from Left Extremism to Right Extremism. Hell, I have even seen Left Extremists convert to Islam Extremism so they have Gods blessing in hating others. You can not make up how stupid Extremists are.



  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    8 months ago

    Whenever a Left-Extremist does something stupid his buddies just claim “Well, he wasn’t Left anyway. Lets just pretend he was a Nazi instead, haha.”

    Brilliant. But easy to see through.

    The Right-Extremist takes peoples property and life because they are the wrong race. The Left-Extremists takes peples property without reason and life because we wasn’t left enough.


  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    8 months ago

    Stalin and Pol Pot and Saddam used mostly the same methods as Hitler and as Pinochet and just like the Taliban.

    They wanted total power to reform the society to their day dreams. There is not much difference if you call your Economy Plan “Five Year Plan” or “Maximale Kriegswirtschaft”. In the end everyone gets under the foot of the Big Brother, the Grosser Führer, вождь woschd (Yes, Stalin let himself call Führer as did several other Extremist leaders).

    We need to learn that the Extremists are much further away from the middle than the parties of the middle to each other. But also the Extremists are much closer to themselves.

    Even Trump and Putin show a lot of those methods and while Trump dreams of US Fascism and Putin dreams of Reviving Stalinism their Objectives are just the same: Total power for themselfes.

    Oh, I hear you already screaming “But they weren’t Socialists/Fascists” - well, they were part of the Socialist International, they called themselves Socialists and people travelled there to see Socialism. “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

    The Way less extreme people defend themselves from the more extreme people is just “But they weren’t true right/left wing. They were something else!” - Boy, I am so tired of it. If 99% if your ventures into Extremism always end the same then I see a pattern that the results will ALWAYS be the same.

    And seeing how easily East Germans nowadays change from Ultra-Left to Ultra-Right and visa versa I say: Proof by Observation in the Wild.

    I am not even talking about the US where 90% of the people simply don’t even understand what left, right, middle, liberal and Extremism means. When giving a kid free health care is socialism and people think free voting is disrespectable liberalism.


  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Well, I can tell you, in Europe Extremist Voters switch without thinking twice between far left and far right.

    Methods, Objectives and Goals are the same, just the arguments differ slightly.

    Both hate the West, especially the US and Israel, both hate the way we live but without offering a better way. Both want to burn down the house just to see who survives. Only the Arguments differ, the left hate the people running their own society, the right hate the people running other society.

    And always remember, Hitler was a National-SOCIALIST.


  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    The difference between the extreme wings is miniscule. Methods, Objectives and Goals are the same, just the arguments differ slightly.

    In Germany half of the voters of the Ultra-Left Party “Linkspartei” went within one election to the Ultra-Right Party “Alternative für Deutschland”. Even starnger, the AfD is financed by Putin who wants to recreate Stalinism, which is Ultra-Leftist, while the AfD wants to recreate a Führer-Cult which is Ultra-Right. And still both cooperate perfectly.

    But don’t think the US is better. While Linkspartei and AfD together are 15% in the US the equally Extremist-Trumpists are close to 50%.

    People need to understand that the Extremists on the wings are closer to each other than to the middle. While the middle tries to better things in small steps the Extremists want to burn the house down with everyone inside and then see who survives.



  • Crass Spektakel@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldHot take
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    #You are perfectly right.

    All major distributions offer all major Environments. I currently use either Debian or Ubuntu and usually install by booting the Netinstall.iso right from the official Servers which installs just the base system without any GUI at all. Then I use tasksel to select the environment. Ok, not every Environment is part of Tasksel but often it is just adding another Repository and running another apt install operation.

    And yes, on my experimental computer I often install a dozen environments just because I can. Selectable at Login-Screen.

    But now somethings VERY important from someone with 35 years of POSIX experience:

    If you are a newby FOR GODS SAKE USE UBUNTU.

    And if you are a pro… Ubuntu still is a very good option. Only if your have VERY GOOD REASONS which you COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND, only then use something else. Which is Debian for me.