This reply is actually useful, because it reveals a very American assumption:
If a society helps the poor, it must look like America.
Food banks.
Charities.
Veteran shelters.
Nonprofits.
Emergency aid.
A whole misery-management industry built around state failure.
China does not operate that way.
China does not rely on food-bank culture because poverty relief is not supposed to be outsourced to charity.
It is handled through administration:
local governments,
village committees,
neighborhood committees,
household registration,
rural support programs,
micro-credit,
basic medical coverage,
employment assistance,
poverty monitoring,
and targeted help for vulnerable households.
That 82-year-old man in the video was not “abandoned.”
He had lived alone in that rural home for decades.
People came to check on him, talk to him, bring supplies, ask what he needed, and help with daily necessities.
That is precisely the difference.
In America, poverty often becomes a charity case.
In China, poverty is treated as a governance responsibility.
No, China is not perfect.
But pretending an old rural man receiving local assistance is the same as American-style street homelessness is dishonest.
So the real question is not whether China has “food banks.”
The real question is why the richest country on earth needs food banks as a permanent survival mechanism.
Charity is not proof of compassion.
It is just proof that the state has walked away.
@RBReich@NancyHWeaver1 So why did Obama preserve most of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and Biden keep most of Trump's? Democrats are not an opposition party. We need to break from the duopoly to get a fair economy.
Men account for nearly 80% of all suicide deaths. They have higher mortality rates from the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, accidents, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes, and more. Men’s life expectancy is lower than women’s, a gap that has widened in recent decades. Men are the vast majority of overdoses. This isn’t biology alone at play; it’s compounded by very real societal neglect. Neglect that many of us have been sounding the alarm on for a long time to deaf ears.
This men’s health week, let’s make it very clear: men matter, too, and society needs to start giving them the compassion, support and resources they deserve.
The Democrats care more about pleasing their pro-Israel donors than they do about winning the Senate. Something to keep in mind next time they ask you for money or for your vote.
A fundamental principle being lost here - is that if you are charged with terrorism - you can defend yourself by explaining why you are not.
As the Filton 4 were never charged or found guilty of terrorism - the judge who sentenced them as terrorists -has denied them this right.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer caught on a hot mic talking about the controversial Al data center being built despite overwhelming opposition: "We're used to people saying 'f*ck no!', and then doing it anyway."
All pretence cast aside. A vicious attack on the Anti-Zionist movement by the British state acting for the Zionist regime in defence of genocide.
Shameful.
#FreeTheFilton4
The ongoing attacks in the Middle East are deadly serious. The Israeli state has abandoned even the pretence of the so-called ceasefire with the Iranian state.
We need mass movements to end ALL military aid to Israel, and we need leaders who will unambiguously fight for this demand.
I am an independent revolutionary socialist running for Congress. I have two Democratic Party opponents in this race.
One is 29-year incumbent Democrat Adam Smith, who has sent tens of billions of dollars for the genocide in Gaza. Smith is currently pushing for over a TRILLION NEW dollars for Trump’s wars. His new bill would ALSO merge the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
The second Democrat in this race, Melissa Chaudhry, does not call for an end to military aid to Israel. The words Israel, Gaza, Palestine, and occupation DO NOT EVEN APPEAR on her website. She recently said to a Democratic Party audience that she will be a “team player.”
This is how the Democratic Party operates: they give a choice between an openly-pro imperialist candidate, and a candidate who is running an establishment-friendly campaign and telling us she will be a “team player” with the rest of the Democratic Party.
If the Democratic Party wants to stop Trump’s war on Iran, all they need to do is announce that they are fighting for a bill to cut off military aid to Israel and rally hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to support it. This would be HUGELY popular right now. But not only are Democrats not willing to do that, a majority of them, including Adam Smith, voted in December to give over $906 billion dollars for Trump’s wars.
The Democratic and Republican parties both represent the war profiteering billionaire class. And individual politicians build their careers by trying not to rock the boat.
I am not running to build my career. I am running because we need an antiwar fighter in Congress. We don’t need any more status quo politicians. We need someone who will DISRUPT business as usual. I am fighting for an end to all military aid to Israel, to end all weapons and tech for genocide and imperialist war, and slash the trillion-dollar war budget to fund housing and social services instead.
#socialist #israel #iran
It's a war on the human conscience. Sentencing anti-genocide activists as terrorists. Working to deport Trita Parsi for criticizing the war on Iran. They're actually punishing people for not acting like sociopaths.
It's the same war on the conscience that saw the empire persecute Julian Assange, crush pro-Palestine demonstrations on university campuses, investigate peace activists for bringing aid to Cuba, and dramatically ramp up the suppression of free speech to silence criticism of Israel.
In a healthy society, a person of conscience would thrive while a sociopath would be shunned and marginalized. In western society it's the exact opposite: people of conscience are sent to prison, and sociopaths are made president of the United States.
That's what you get when you live under an empire established on and driven by sociopathic values. The agenda to dominate and control the entire human population is evil, because it can only be accomplished through nonstop war, militarism, propaganda, deception, and tyranny.
That's why the truth-tellers are branded traitors, the anti-genocide demonstrators are branded anti-semites, and the peace activists are branded terrorists. We live in a backward dystopia with backward values, so the good are beaten down while the wicked rule the world.
I know I've heard the Obama Center described as "Hope and Change's Tombstone", but it really does look like somewhere you send dissidents to get tortured to death. 😷
Every week a report of a new horror comes out of Gaza. This week in the Financial Times: rats have been eating the corpses under the rubble, multiplying rapidly, getting into everyone's tents and biting their children. The direct consequence of U.S. policy.
Just drove across town to break into someone’s house. He tried to stop me from pouring gasoline all over his living room so I had to murder him in self-defense.