Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Anti-immigration march in australia today had like 1% the turn out of the Free Palestine march a week ago.
USians be like “we want no drug cartel no more” meanwhile their most widely acclaimed media is about either mexican cartels or italian mobs lmao.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/chinese-university-texas-researcher-charged-182811381.html
A Chinese researcher got arrested for trying to smuggle out medical records. They’re apparently looking at him for espionage.
accused of trying to return home with a trove of sensitive research
sensitive research
His work, which focused on research for a breast cancer vaccine, made him an employee of the state of Texas.
They make it sound like he was stealing government secrets, when he was just trying to help people not die.
saw a post: “China steals cancer cure from usa! Who cares we weren’t going to use it”
Yeah that’s how I’m reading it too. He may have been spying but it was definitely not on behalf of the CPC
Do the hasbara ghouls not realize how strange they look when they automatically spew all the talking points on Hamas/Oct7 whenever they’re confronted about Israel? Like do they think they look smart parroting these talking points as fast as possible? 😂
Look at the recent adam friedland interview, the guy sounds like a NPC lmao.
Anyone else exhausted trying to get people around them to understand how capitalism is the root of all their fears and problems?
Like damn… I feel like I’m lucky to change the mind of 1 out of every 100 I talk to. It’s just frustrating that so many people can’t connect to the bigger picture beyond all the culture war slop.
Revolutionary optimism always, but man I feel like I to apply ice directly to my brain
The Liberals are often redefining words like Capitalism to confuse the people. The Western people could not understand how Capitalism is the source of their problem because Capitalism in theory means free market and minimal government intervention even when Capitalism in practice means plutocratic command economy. Furthermore, the definition of dictatorship and Socialism mean absolute authority and command economy in Western school textbooks. Marxists suggest that those two words originally had different definitions when they mention that dictatorship distribute authority to the working class or their opposition to plutocratic government intervention which is a form of command economy.
Gotta focus on the radicalized liberals first, then work backward. Go for the easiest people to talk to first, it’s given me far more success.
1 out of every 100 I talk to.
Geeze I wish it was that high. Agitation feels sisyphean most of the time. Even when someone does agree that capitalism is the root of the problem they will immediately say “communism always fails. human nature… blah blah bullshit”
If I didn’t like arguing and being an asshole I would have given up a long time ago.
Currently in Breizh. Apparently the communist party has a decent presence here. Seen some graffiti already.
Nice, may they free themselves from French cultural oppression. The Occitans, Basque and Catalans as well
A balkanization of France would be funny. And why not given half of their own territory is not French with Basque Country, Breizh, Occitania, Corsica and I’m probably still forgetting some
Is everything on Netflix liberal slop, or are there some good shows or movies on there?
Its mostly garbage yeah. I mostly watch international movies/series in there, i recently saw one India movie called “white tiger?” which left me a bit surprised. It pushed an antiwestern message, and explicitly stated “the century of the white man is over, now is the century of the yellow and brown man”, its not remotely “leftist” but still interesting.
There is also some Thai stuff in there that is fun to watch, like “angry unicorn” and the thai black mirror (don’t remember the name). One great chinese film i saw in there was “me and you”, a great romantic drama. Unfortunately, most of the chinese stuff in Netflix is from Taiwan so they’re a bit westernized and boring to me.
Most of the stuff i imagine is sanitized for western consumers, maybe these are even region locked (theyre available in Mexico Netflix), but nonetheless interesting to watch. Thai stuff is very obviously influenced by china, its very common for characters to speak both Thai/Mandarin in the series and travel to China to do business etc… The “Mad unicorn” series even has thai/chinese characters that regularly switch languages.
From Vietnam
Government is now issuing warnings due to drought in Flanders. I was driving through both The Netherlands and Flanders yesterday and the greenery is looking beige. Some trees are already dropping leaves, going into fall mode early due to drought. Fun times.
For the past 5 years, the acceleration of climate change here in west germany has become too obvious to ignore.
I’m not old enough to remember ever seeing much snow laying around, but I do know that having up to 25 degrees in april isn’t something that was supposed to be.
Also, what about the greenery in our cities? I fear we would have to replace every tree and plant manually, to not live with permanent dead wood around us.
I think a military invasion by the US in Venezuela is imminent… they got some cartel de sinaloa members to spread the narrative that Maduro is the leader of “cartel del sol (lmao)” in exchange for shortening their sentences. It is pretty clear now that the only reason the US takes these drug cartel guys to the court in the US is to fabricate these claims in order to invade latin america.
There’s less than 5000 men on those boats. Maybe if Trump is looking to get those men killed and start ww3 it could happen but I kinda doubt it. Of course the man is crazy so I dunno for sure.
Honestly this may end up being an even worse disaster than Afghanistan. I don’t think the empire can endure yet another unjust war; Venezuela could very well end up the final nail in the coffin for American hegemony - if not in the world at large then at least in Latin America.
They won’t invade, just do airstrikes and domestic color revolution shit like they do in Lebanon.
I fear you’re likely correct. Full support to Venezuela in the face of imperialist aggression.
Has there been some recent escalation beyond the ship movements?
Frida Kahlo self portrait with Stalin
Finished updating my ML reading list pet project! Took some inspo in the order I presented it in from the Chinese Marxist Syllabus rainpizza found. I’d love any feedback, especially where I can reasonably trim, reformat, and add to the “Resources” section.
this is another list which is supposedly based on one or more Chinese universities’ curricula for Marxist studies
as for feedback, I’d recommend prioritizing shorter works over lengthy books (Elementary Principles of Philosophy, etc.) in the introductory sections
and some nitpicking: “D. Xiaoping” is analogous to “Karl M.”
I’ve got that one saved! I plan on following it starting next year, once I finish Capital volumes 2 and 3.
For the names, I didn’t realize, may have to go back through those.
For Elementary Principles of Philosophy, I personally really enjoy that one. I debated replacing it with Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but landed on Politzer for being especially clear and basic. Do you have a suggestion on what to replace it with?
I’ve never found a single source that perfectly explains dialectical materialism (I’ve refined my own understanding using several texts and discussions), so I can’t give a good suggestion. Dialectical and Historical Materialism is a fairly good introduction to historical materialism specifically. I haven’t read Elementary Principles of Philosophy yet so I can’t comment on how suitable it is, I just wouldn’t put it at the top of the list in its section, and I’d probably note the approximate length of every text.
Blackshirts and Reds is another one – I’d probably mention the “yellow Parenti” clip first and then recommend B&R as a follow-up
Gotcha, I’m working on adding the times. Personally, I’ve read both Dialectical and Historical Materialism and Elementary Principles of Philosophy, and although I love how clear and calm Stalin’s writing style is, Politzer really walks you through, and it’s ball-park within range of On Practice combined with On Contradiction in length.
Will look at swapping Yellow Parenti and B&R!
Love the random white looking guy in between lol
Which makes me think that from a sociological POV the DPRK must be really interesting since it is almost untouched by migration and tourism. I’m guessing it will make for some interesting scenes when the country inevitably does get the chance to open up more.
This is from the Chinese side, I imagine?
Yes! It is from the Chinese side
Two Israeli tourists got beaten down by a 15 year old in my hometown. Media cried antisemitism for days afterwards. Police now released him stating antisemitism wasn’t the case. The guy didn’t even know they were Israeli until he was arrested and brought to the station. Also, the Israeli tourists were being dicks during a paintball game and that’s how the fight happened eventually.
What’s really funny to me is that a 15 year old manages to beat two Israeli dudes lol.
What happens when you’re so privileged you’ve never had someone fight back in your life.
I would have just turned the PSI way up on my regulator and used some frozen paintballs when playing them
