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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2025

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  • Commenting because I think the judgement here may have been a little hasty. It’s hard to find any information about these guys.

    What I will say is that this symbol is clearly not the black sun - it has 6 arms whereas the black sun has 12, the black sun has a ring somewhere outside the middle, and it also has that lightning bolt look to each of the arms whereas these ones have one right angle and then terminate. Edit - as someone else noted, it’s a symbol for speed metal.

    They also have a song called “National Front” from one of their earlier albums. Suspicious on its own, but I wanted to find some lyrics to confirm one way or the other. No luck. I listened to the song and couldn’t really understand most of the words, however they repeat “national front [blah blah blah]” several times. The last time they repeat it, they say “national front kills you and me” so on the plus side, that doesn’t sound like an endorsement of far-right politics.

    In this video, you can see an anarchist symbol on the vocalist’s vest. Also, not for nothing, there’s a black guy on bass.


  • Now, granted, the OP didn’t say anything about corporatism, which was originally developed as a comprehensive ideology under Italian fascism. However, it’s not as simple as in the OP - “corporate power protected” and “labor power suppressed”. In fascism, both corporate and labor power are subservient to the state, and fascist corporatism involved the input of both private industrial interests and labor interests. Ultimately it was the state making the decisions, though. I suppose it’s important to remember that fascism arose as a response to class conflict in the aftermath of the industrial revolution - a third way between bourgeois liberalism and communism. In this sense, the point was to establish an equilibrium between capital and labor. Corporatism was the means to that end. In fascism, in practice, this often meant that capital simply colluded with the state, and left-radicalism in labor was violently stamped out so the workers could be brought to heel. Workers were then treated quite well, assuming they didn’t run afoul of the state because they belonged to one of the many groups that fascists considered enemies.

    Many European nations still practice forms of corporatism, although today the state is more like an equal partner to the other parties. So I guess my point is that corporatism is not distinctly fascist, despite developing under fascism.










  • The Big Dig in Boston began planning phases in 1982, and was estimated at $2.8 billion in 1985. It was scheduled to be completed in 1998, but was actually completed in 2007 at a cost of $21.5 billion. From original conception to completion, that’s 25 years and a 768% cost increase (289% adjusted for inflation).

    That seems eggregious until you realize the economic impact eclipses the original costs by an order of magnitude via development of the Seaport, North Station, Cambridge Crossing, Assembly Square, Fenway, and Allston, not to mention the health impact of replacing a traffic-snarled viaduct in the heart of the city with 30 acres of parks.

    As a disclaimer, I also realize that the Big Dig was almost exclusively a highway capacity project. I’m not saying that it was an ideal project in that respect. I’m also not saying that we should ignore the corruption, safety issues, and cost & time overruns, but if we can all agree that these projects are worth doing even if it’s an ugly process, maybe we get fewer overruns and the process is a little less ugly. The cynicism and pessimism that we approach mega projects with is, IMO, part of the problem.