cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36603369
Italy is sending a ship to accompany the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, who said its activists remain shaken but determined following an Israeli attack on Wednesday morning.
Organisers of expedition, which is attempting to carry aid to the Gaza Strip, shared footage this morning appears to show an explosion that detonated on one of the flotilla’s vessels.
Late on Tuesday activists heard explosions and saw drones that targeted some of their boats, currently situated off Greece. “Multiple drones, unidentified objects dropped, communications jammed and explosions heard from a number of boats,” the Global Sumud Flotilla said.
“I have authorised the immediate intervention of the Navy’s frigate Fasan, which was sailing north of Crete and is heading towards the area,” Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said in a statement.
I never said them having one ruling party is bad, I think that’s a good thing, and I don’t have anything against them also being very popular. I don’t doubt the elections that much in the sense that I think there were fake or overtly coerced votes, even if there were serious procedural issues that undermine their integrity (most of all the ballots being somewhat less secret than they should be), but I think they’ve generally also been slowly improving on that issue.
This is a funny question because it’s old-hat to talk about how, even in the circumstance of stronger electoral procedures, there are many other ways that a system can be rendered functionally undemocratic. Look at the voting record of the SPA, insofar as such a thing is even available. Class antagonism cannot account for every difference in what people want, e.g. Stalin talks about how a substantial, perhaps the main, force of revisionism is simple ignorance and not some sort of capitalist sabotage (though he of course was very concerned with that as well). Here’s a place to start: Can you show me a single time in the past several decades where there is evidence of any disagreement within the SPA? Even DPRK supporters (which I functionally am, believe it or not) often admit to it being a rubber stamp.
Yes, obviously the fetishization of disagreement on the part of liberal democrats is awful and itself ideologically backwards, but the idea that things can be unanimous all the time rather than operate on a basis of majority rule where a minority still at least sometimes exists, especially in pre-communist society, is a fantasy.
A Kim and many SPA members being elected with over 90% of the vote? I genuinely believe this would probably still happen even if my complaints about election procedures were all totally invalidated by future reforms, as much as I wish they’d retire the functionally-hereditary leadership too (and I recognize that there’s been a diffusing of authority over time trending toward this being a ceremonial role, to be clear). The SPA membership coming together in unanimous votes every single time, on the other hand, is a sign that something is probably wrong.