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i will just make here a small correction, on the sense that i personally don’t believe that putin and the russian elites live in some sort of hyperreality. i do believe that they assess reality, but one can question this assessment. however trump and his cronies really shat on their pants because they truly freaked out on a small denture on their shining armor: people questioning why the u.s. is the way it is, people organizing, making strikes, protesting against racism, and then of course luigi happened. they totally freaked out because they didn’t wanted to even have the “nightmare” of being toppled down of their positions (economical, social, etc.)
no one has got to do everything. the reasons that make some particular software bad for people using them sometimes cannot be simply addressed by technical skills alone, and politics here is the tool.
apart from foss content in which you can simply pick the source code and compile on your machine, or fork or reverse engineer them, in some cases you can either p!rate it outright (hello, ms and riaa!) or have already well established alternatives in your country (sodas, online commerce platform).
either way, you’re not taking down the u.s. by claiming ethical consumption. there’s no such thing under capitalism. the best thing you can do is organize and take down the system that enables big companies that own us.
i know it’s wrong to make assumptions, but it seems that, on top of all that rust/c war, her partner was undergoing some serious problems. it seems that she chose to prioritize her personal life and assessed that developing those drivers wasn’t worth all the harassment in this situation.
to anyone who says “why don’t you compare communist eastern europe to democratic western europe?”. sure, first thing to notice is that eastern europe didn’t had companies exploiting underdeveloped nations for their cheap labour and raw materials, their oppression of labour organizations and the support of corrupt rulers. since brazil was mentioned (heh), let us remember that west german companies such as vw or mercedes-benz used to report on syndicalists and communists working and organizing on their plants to the brazilian military during the dictatorship, and sold equipment to the military and police. that siemens sold nuclear reactors to the dictatorship during the late 70s. that many former officials of the dictatorship got leadership jobs in these companies and in basf, hoescht, atlas-schindler, mwm. behind the “economic success” of the rich countries of the west there’s always some degree of exploitation of poorer countries.
you know, i tell you what. i’m fed up with all this gringo self-righteousness when you talk about “oh communism was bad, oh people where killed, oh people had no food, oh people had no liberty, oh people could not buy ataris, oh our countries are so democratic”. your countries were democratic during the cold war in the first place because you had people to sort things out for you here in the global south. for each person complaining about how the food rations in eastern europe were not tasty enough, there were 10 dying of hunger or malnourishment here in the global south. for every person complaining they had to wait 5 years in a queue to buy a trabant or an oka, there were 10 who got no school in a range of 50 km. for every person complaining that their 8 hour shifts in state owned factories were overwhelming, there were 10 who were indentured workers. for every person complaining about how the stasi, kgb or the stb had bugged their apartment, there were 10 suffering the most horrific tortures inside black sites of the military of u.s. allies here in the “third world”. for every person complaining about dull standard apartment blocks in mikrorayons, there were 10 who lived in mud shacks and slums, and those are just who were lucky enough to have a roof over their heads. finally, for everyone complaining about chinese sweatshops, which are indeed a problem, there are 10 americans who work and yet cannot afford proper housing.
you wanna complain about how communism was bad? go ahead. you wanna complain how your parents lived under communism and could not drink coke? do so if you wish. but there are still millions of people down here who would give an arm and a leg to have a polish ration, an apartment in a russian gray building, or a yugoslav job. and while the chinese maoist red guard was bad, surely it won’t be an inch closer to the harassement people endured on a daily basis by our police forces.
again: you wanna complain? be my guest. but for me that’s an encyclopedic example of white privilege.
me irl.