mycorrhiza they/them
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1·8 months agoit appears to have been mutually understood
After the Seige of Perekop, Makhno’s aide-de-camp Grigori Vassilevsky, announced the agreement was over:
That’s the end for the agreement! Take my word for it, within one week the Bolsheviks are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks!
— Grigori Vassilevsky, quoted in the same book
Here is Makhno in 1920 after agreeing to a temporary ceasefire:
"Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased. Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?
What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists.
We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, ‘fusion’ or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case."
— quoted in Nestor Makhno: Anarchy’s Cossack, a pro-Makhno book
The UN working in Libya as peacekeeping forces would’ve prevented the monstrous situation we’re in now
Because it’s that easy to counter Islamic extremism in a power vacuum. ISIS was active and gaining power in 2011, including in Libya.
to deny Iraq is currently a functional, if very deeply flawed, democracy is, in my view, to devalue the Iraqi citizens and the fledgling democracy they have.
The state of Iraq’s corrupt democracy as of 2023 is little better than under Saddam
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/16/the-long-shadow-of-saddams-dictatorship-in-iraq
And all it cost was over a million Iraqi civilian deaths, millions of refugees, and the birth of ISIS in 2007.
The 2015 British Parliament inquiry found that the Islamic extremists fighting Qaddafi would not have succeeded without western air power, weapons, intelligence, and personnel, meaning the best way to prevent the humanitarian crisis in Libya would have been to fucking leave Libya alone in the first place. The inquiry also found that the intervention was economically motivated rather than humanitarian.
5·8 months agohouses and cars are inanimate objects.
Juries acquited these activists of theft in previous cases, because they were shown footage of the awful condition the stolen animals were in. Which was why, in this case, the prosecutors dropped the theft charges, put a gag order on the footage, and instead threw a “felony conspiracy to commit trespassing” charge at the leader of the group, who didn’t even participate directly in stealing the animals.
2·8 months agovote for who you’d rather negotiate with
I’m not saying don’t vote, but is it reasonable to expect that we can negotiate for much of anything?
“If Nixon wins again, we’re in real trouble.” He picked up his drink, then saw it was empty and put it down again. “That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon. It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”
I nodded. The argument was familiar. I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it. How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions? And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?
. . .
Now, with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer. I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing, this year, is Beating Nixon. But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960—and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
America is a dictatorship of money disguised as a democracy, and the others are vassal states in lockstep with American foreign policy. Most of them have colonized and exploited the rest of the world for centuries and they’re still doing it now, to the tune of over $10 trillion a year in net extraction from the global south.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.
Calling for the invasion of Libya is fucking monstrous.
Over a million Iraqis died due to the US invasion of Iraq.
Libya now has open-air slave markets and has been described as a humanitarian disaster.
The obvious context of this meme is articles that express the “consensus opinion of the international community” on some foreign issue. Like “international community condemns antisemetic criticism of Israel.” Or “international community condemns Niger coup, calls for original government to be reinstated so France can keep buying cheap Uranium from the second poorest country on the planet.”
I have to get to work after this, this might be my last response today
not for cats
I gave it a quick google, and while there aren't many actual studies, the few recent ones I saw seemed to indicate it works fine for cats. Here are three abstracts (click on this sentence to uncollapse them):
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132 (Sep. 2023)
Increasing concerns about environmental sustainability, farmed animal welfare and competition for traditional protein sources, are driving considerable development of alternative pet foods. These include raw meat diets, in vitro meat products, and diets based on novel protein sources including terrestrial plants, insects, yeast, fungi and potentially seaweed. To study health outcomes in cats fed vegan diets compared to those fed meat, we surveyed 1,418 cat guardians, asking about one cat living with them, for at least one year. Among 1,380 respondents involved in cat diet decision-making, health and nutrition was the factor considered most important. 1,369 respondents provided information relating to a single cat fed a meat-based (1,242–91%) or vegan (127–9%) diet for at least a year. We examined seven general indicators of illness. After controlling for age, sex, neutering status and primary location via regression models, the following risk reductions were associated with a vegan diet for average cats: increased veterinary visits– 7.3% reduction, medication use– 14.9% reduction, progression onto therapeutic diet– 54.7% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of being unwell– 3.6% reduction, reported veterinary assessment of more severe illness– 7.6% reduction, guardian opinion of more severe illness– 22.8% reduction. Additionally, the number of health disorders per unwell cat decreased by 15.5%. No reductions were statistically significant. We also examined the prevalence of 22 specific health disorders, using reported veterinary assessments. Forty two percent of cats fed meat, and 37% of those fed vegan diets suffered from at least one disorder. Of these 22 disorders, 15 were most common in cats fed meat, and seven in cats fed vegan diets. Only one difference was statistically significant. Considering these results overall, cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets. This trend was clear and consistent. These results largely concur with previous, similar studies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9860667/ (Jan. 2023)
There has been an increase in vegetarianism and veganism in human populations. This trend also appears to be occurring in companion animals, with guardians preferring to feed their animals in accordance with their own dietary values and choices. However, there has been controversy amongst vets and online commentators about the safety of feeding vegan diets to carnivorous species, such as cats and dogs. In spite of this controversy, to date there has been no systematic evaluation of the evidence on this topic. A systematic search of Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science was performed, identifying 16 studies on the impact of vegan diets on cat and dog health. Studies were appraised for quality using established critical appraisal tools or reporting guidelines. There was considerable heterogeneity in the outcomes measured, and study designs employed, with few studies evaluating key outcomes of interest. Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) was utilized for assessment of certainty in the evidence, with the evidence for most outcomes being assessed as low or very low. Whilst the quality and amount of evidence needs to be considered in formulating recommendations, there was no overwhelming evidence of adverse effects arising from use of these diets and there was some evidence of benefits. It is, however, recommended that future high-quality studies, with standardized outcome measures and large sample sizes, be conducted. At the current time, if guardians wish to feed their companion animals vegan diets, a cautious approach should be taken using commercially produced diets which have been formulated considering the nutritional needs of the target species.
https://bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-021-02754-8
Background
Cats, being obligate carnivores, have unique dietary requirements for nutrients most commonly found in dietary ingredients of animal origin. As such, feeding a diet devoid of animal-derived ingredients has been postulated as a possible cause of nutrient imbalances and adverse health outcomes. A small proportion of cat owners feed strictly plant-based diets to the cats in their care, yet the health and wellness of cats fed these diets has not been well documented.
Results
A total of 1325 questionnaires were complete enough for inclusion. The only exclusion criterion was failure to answer all questions. Most cats, 65% (667/1026), represented in the survey were fed a meat-based diet and 18.2% (187/1026) were fed a plant-based diet, with the rest fed either a combination of plant-based with meat-based (69/1026, 6.7%) or indeterminable (103/1026, 10%). Cat age ranged from 4 months to 23 years, with a median of 7 years, and was not associated with diet type. No differences in reported lifespan were detected between diet types. Fewer cats fed plant-based diets reported to have gastrointestinal and hepatic disorders. Cats fed plant-based diets were reported to have more ideal body condition scores than cats fed a meat-based diet. More owners of cats fed plant-based diets reported their cat to be in very good health.
Most of the time, the nutrient is extracted, purified, and concentrated from its usual source [meat].
Do you have a source that this is true for vegan food? Also, is this actually necessary to meet nutritional needs?
I think there’s some nutrients that we’re able to engineer bacteria to produce, which is certainly better from a vegan perspective.
I’m not aware of any nutrients that bacteria, yeast, or other cell cultures cannot be engineered to produce, but I could be wrong
Although it begs the question of what vegan ethics around bioengineering bacteria are.
I’m not sure what the angle is here. Microbes are no more sentient than plants.
What about raising dogs for meat?
Juries didn’t view it as wrong in past court cases. This was the first one to land a conviction, and they did it by putting a gag order on all the footage the activists took, which in previous cases was instrumental in swaying juries.
I’m pretty sure there are vegan pet foods with similar nutritional profiles
Medical cadavers and organ donors are, first of all, volunteers not raised for that purpose, and second of all, we do not view them as commodities. There are rituals of respect when working with medical cadavers. I have heard of the families of organ donors visiting the recipients in emotional meetings.
What about dog fighting rings where the motive is profit? Or workplaces that expose workers to carcinogens for profit?
Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others
Ordinary people are not rich capitalists who can earn massive profits by cutting corners. That’s not just against animals either, think of the conditions human workers have been subjected to.
Their ultimate motives don’t make the question any less valid.
They are stealing sick animals of no commercial value in order to render medical aid. In cases where they have actually gone to trial for theft, they have won, because they show jurors footage of the awful condition these stolen animals were in.
Which was why the prosecutors dropped the theft charges, put a gag order on the footage, and instead threw a “felony conspiracy to commit trespassing” charge at the leader of the group, who didn’t even participate directly in stealing the animals.
This is a nazi discussing lebesraum.