The countries were the German Democratic Republic, where I was born; and Cuba, where I lived from 1985 to 1990.

And what are experiences? By all accounts what I grew up in was normal, because I didn’t know any different. We grew up like any kids really, playing, riding bikes, watching TV, getting up to mischief. I have a lot of good memories from both the GDR and Cuba, and even getting started on them would take me hours.

Sure, we knew about the West. Some of my friends had relatives in the West and occasionally got packages with sweets and other things. We watched Western TV and were exposed to Western toys, comics and music, to a degree. In Cuba there were a lot of Western movies and series on TV. But we also knew that you could get into trouble for being too open about that.

But after it all came down, we learned a lot about what went on. The oppression, the secret police, the lack of basic freedoms.

Once in art class, we were tasked with drawing something we had seen or experienced. Just a short time prior to that, we had gone to see a well known boat lift east of Berlin. The boat that came through the lift was a freight barge flying the West German flag. So that’s what I drew. Only years later my parents told me that they had subsequently been summoned by the school and had to explain that it was nothing more sinister than that - a child drawing a picture of something they had seen.

Another thing that struck me as odd at the time was this. Most of the socialist countries we knew as ‘friendly’ had state-run youth organisations. Ours were called the pioneers. Once there was an afternoon activity with a little quiz, and one of the quiz questions was ‘name three friendly youth organisations’. So I named three that I remembered from my pioneer calendar - and one of them was Finnish. My quiz came back with the correction ‘friendly youth organisations’.

I will always remember and defend the good aspects about the countries I grew up in. By the same token I will always vociferously criticise the bad things, and anyone who wants to try them again.

I don’t know of any person called Engles who would be significant in this context, so I can’t tell you if there is one you should know about. The Engels who said what you quoted above, also said - literally in the sentence preceding your quote:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society.

As always, context matters. And I’ll trust the context created by the words and interpretations of respected historians way more than I’ll trust some randos on Lemmy who only excel at selective quoting.

That quote is extremely hinged on context in which it was made, and it would serve you well to internalise that context before throwing this quote around pretending it to have been something Marx lived by.

Secondly, you have no idea what you’re talking about if you’re pretending Lenin came up with the idea of revolution and using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to suppress fascists and the bourgeoisie.

That was not my claim, but thank you for so generously misinterpreting what I said. Lenin implemented the violent oppression of dissenters and opposition in a socialist system. That was carried further by Stalin, under whom ‘counter-revolutionary’ became an extremely malleable term that could mean anything not fully aligned with his ideas. The fact that you think political violence and terror is a core tenet of Marxism tells me that you’re the one who might need to brush up on their history a little bit.

In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels. The people we have to thank for creating the violent authoritarianism that pervaded communist countries in practice are Lenin and Stalin. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” may have been a phrase used by Marx, but he never fully elaborated on what that should or could look like. And fascism as created by Mussolini and unleashed upon the world by Hitler didn’t even exist during Marx’s lifetime. Even Marx’s views on religion were a lot more complex and multifaceted than what Marxist-Leninist governments turned them into.

I don’t know if either of you have ever lived in a Marxist-Leninist country (as in lived, not just visited). I was born in one. I lived in another for five years. I’ve seen the before and after, first-hand. That’s my pedestal. How’s the weather up there on yours?

When you get anywhere near making a point, just send up a flare, ok?

Marxism-Leninism was not actually thought out by Lenin, but by Stalin. The Stalin.

And how invaluable were Lenin’s ideas about violently suppressing opposition, resistance, and unwanted societal classes?

Marxism and Marxism-Leninism are not the same, and should not be treated as the same. One is an economic theory/philosophy, one is an ideology. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

Actually, he seems to be a guy who’s just gallivanting all over the world and posting about it on social media, while others are doing the hard work.

Then again, all I have to go by is his LinkedIn profile…

That should put paid to the myth that Trump is ‘the antidote to all the wars’.

I always thought that the argument ‘no wars were started during his presidency’ was bullshit.

He was educated. Didn’t make him smart.

I’d say the entire Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison trifecta was terrible.

Abbott was definitely out of his depth as PM, he never stopped being the leader of the opposition and was always pugilistic, impulsive and didn’t think things through. He promised stable leadership but didn’t have his party under enough control to ensure it - probably because he sort of skated into the role because those who the party actually wanted didn’t make it. He got into power on the back of a campaign focused on debt and deficit, but had no policies to address it and I don’t think he ever intended to. He played his pet issues but was aggressively ineffective at everything else.

Turnbull was a devastating disappointment. Hated by his own party, only used as a more popular and sensible replacement for the ousted Abbott, but never having any party backing for his agenda. I’d say he flamed out, but he was never even on fire. Reneged on his promises and ambitions for fear of reprisals from his party - a spineless creature whose years in power were an absolute waste and a net loss for the country.

And then of course Morrison. A sociopath who bradbury’d into the role because enough people in the party room had the self-awareness to realise Dutton as party leader would be a disaster. Obviously Morrison schemed his way through that entire leadership crisis and lied whenever he opened his mouth, not least when professing his support for the embattled Turnbull. He was probably the most useless PM, out of the country in times of crisis and actively refusing to show leadership. Not to mention the shameful mishandling of the pandemic.

Collectively these three set back social, economic and political development in this country back by at least a decade. We’re all worse off thanks to the nine years of having these three clowns in power.

Howard was to Australia what Thatcher was to the UK and Reagan to the US. He ushered in neoliberalism and set the Liberal Party on an accelerated course towards right wing christian fundamentalism.

Riva TNT 16MB, brand name Elsa, card called Erazor.

Good on this kid for going to such lengths to verify his hypothesis and show a serious weakness in railway infrastructure. I hope he goes on to become a serious railway enthusiast and advocate for safe, efficient rail.

However, there are way too many factors in the number of derailments and safety incidents in US rail operations to pin them down to this one issue. Once the major operators embarked on a journey to squeeze more and more money out of the business, a lot of things happened. Trains became longer - excessively so. Used to be that a train 1.4 miles long was considered massive. These days they are the norm. Can you imagine a train so long that, in hilly terrain, sections of it are being dragged uphill while other sections are pushing downhill?

Reductions in staff, motive power fleets and maintenance have led to trains being badly composed, with loads being distributed in a less than optimal way. An old railway man once told me that the only time he broke a train was when he, in a rush and under pressure, agreed to attach a rake of fully loaded freight cars to the end of a train of empties. Unequal load distribution played a role in a number major derailment incidents, among them a derailment in Hyndman, PA, which required the town to be evacuated for several days.

ProPublica have a series of articles regarding rail safety, and specifically one about the dangers of long trains. So while the worn out springs certainly don’t help, they are only one of many things that are impacting rail safety, and probably not even the lowest hanging fruit.

That’s nice, but how does that help people who, to this day, can’t get any ‘NBN’ other than satellite?

By that token, I would also recommend the one-season X-Files spin-off ‘The Lone Gunmen’. It can come across as a bit hokey for the first few episodes, but they found their pace and it became really enjoyable. I don’t think it was ever meant to be more than a single - and, by then-current standards, short - season but I really enjoyed it. The show blended the comic relief of the three geeks from the main series with some more serious storytelling and even had an episode with a plot that resembled a later real-life world-changing event.

Devil’s advocacy is supposed to be, ultimately, constructive to the discussion. If that’s what you’re doing, then good on you. A lot of people just do it to throw a spanner in the works.

The only thing worse than people misusing the term ‘enshittification’ are people who criticise that but can’t be bothered to get their facts straight.

No, it’s not a meaningless buzzword. And no, it was not made up by nostalgic millennials. It would have taken you a mere minute of online research to figure that out yourself.

‘Playing Devil’s advocate’.

Mostly because most people who use it do so in glaringly wrong ways.

I suggest you read up a bit on how and by whom the term was coined and what it actually means. It’s by no means ‘vague’ and it is also a bit more than just repackaging and selling something already known. I suspect many people using the term aren’t even fully aware of what it describes and, crucially, what is being proposed to reduce the effects it describes.

Lucky Number Slevin

Man On Fire

Syriana

Equilibrium

And for some solid Australian cinema: Mystery Road