Welcome again to everybody, and happy anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam . Make yourself at home and pay your respects to Ho Chi Minh. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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— 🇺🇸/🇮🇷 Iranian Member of Parliament, Mahmoud Nabavian:
'Before the negotiations, Trump contacted Iran through a regional country, conveying a message saying ‘let us strike two locations in Iran—and you can respond symbolically’
Iran rejected this offer, and replied that any attack would lead to a response in which at least 3000 to 4000 American soldiers would be killed. Furthermore, we would strike every single major company in the region that is U.S.-owned or has ties to America.’
@Middle_East_Spectator (on telegram)
Ironically, I think Iran would be much more willing to negotiate this into symbolic strikes if not for the kidnapping of Maduro. It makes sense to be so much more willing to escalate now if they see the US as an actual threat.
im at the function insisting i wont get political but i lowkey think russians and chinese and dprkorean people are humans
i bring a subtly pro-AES lean to the function that the ‘CCP’-memers dont like
my two kazakh friends call soviet union empire and say that famine was intentional (well one says it was just to send food to frontlines but still said ‘intentional’). how do u approach conversations like these when they have familial experiences that are very bad but also without validating perspective that this was intentional? didnt have sources + things that disprove common narrative off top of my head, but yeah
i just went there was a famine but it wasn’t intentional. and also i will have a hard time selling stalin to them
all the central asian ppl around me got rlly scared during 2022 for ukraine war which is like obviously valid but mostly in a maybe we should join nato way, and it’s like, i don’t believe russia should annex kazakhstan, but i don’t want to let misinfo spread about soviet union, nor nato. i am dying
Dating in 2026 is a balancing act between knowing enough about the K-pop scene to understand the info dumps, but not knowing too much so that the other person can have the joy of explaining it to you.
so interested in what topics u mean bc i am a reactionary kpop fan that will be killed as per Sankara (PBUH)’s orders. will not infodump when u tell me the topic i am just collecting data
Usual stuff is lots of conjecture over some boyband singers being in secret relationships with each other, and apparently some guy named G-Dragon is very controversial. Definitely not my special interest and most of it doesn’t stick with me, but it’s endearing to listen to somebody you like talking about their hobbies.
that’s so nice that u are niceys about listening to it! lol at the first part about boyband dating gossip. when will this end!
also g-dragon does have a project called ubermensch that released like last year, and painted himself black in tribute to trayvon martin in 2013, to which YG (his ent. agency,) decided to respond with saying it wasn’t political, he was just doing something for his new album, which is somehow categorically worse. so. yeah a bit of controversy. his group is always embroiled in it and has had some really bad stains on it (seungri and burning sun, but one of the guys got thrown out for just smoking weed in the military lol) so somehow he’s faring better than the others. sorry i said i wouldnt say anything but i had to add the stuff about g-dragon controversy bc i had heard about it tangentially but did not realize he did all that. k-pop is a weird affair.
MAGA meltdowns are really enjoyable to me. They have to have their own Super Bowl halftime show because a brown man in a dress offends them, they think every Olympic athlete should bow to Trump or be off the team.
Racists are never going to beat the coward allegations
I had a dream where Zelenski, frustrated with waning western support, went full mask off and did a nazi salute. It was only when I saw an article about him a few days later I realized this didn’t actually happen.
whats w ppl here and very cogent and coherent dreams? i had one recently of erika kirk youtube shorts where she was eulogizing her husband explaining that he had a certain particularity for law that made him misogynistic, as well as being turkish (i am not turkish and havent thought of turkey in a month, no clue why it appeared and ashamed that i was slandering it subconsciously via association with kirky), but i knew it was absurd dream when i realized her tone was very loving and sincere. in comparison yours seem like divine knowledge being imparted
Took up sketching again. I liked to draw when I was a kid and figured it could be a creative outlet for now. Went to Reddit to look up inspo or tips but ten seconds in the sketching sub I found Harry Potter shit and bounced. If anyone has some useful tips or cool people to follow, let me know.
follow ME
100 million views in 9 days. For comparison Japan’s population is around 120 million
I had a dream (literally) that I was talking to someone and saying how the financialization of the US is correlated with the rise in “influencers” who don’t really do anything other than market product and opinions (or words to that effect). As dreams go, it may be one of the most coherent dream thoughts I’ve had and I’m like… “was I onto something??” Like I guess the general idea was this type of influencer role exemplifies the hollowness resulting from financialization.
I think sometimes I get the rageful revenge feeling that people can have at times about injustices. It’s not something that tends to linger, but there are moments. I suspect it comes from wanting justice to be done, for consequences to be brought upon a wrongdoer and the like. The issue is, revengeful punishment is more or less in line with the colonizer’s idea of justice, so I don’t really trust it in myself. It is precisely the colonizer in my head that I need to put an end to, in order to be equipped to help transition to something else. But it gets confusing sometimes, all the misleading pathways. What does justice really look like under liberation forces? I guess I don’t know enough about its history. The paths I’m most familiar with are the openly barbaric conservative and the cunning liberal pacifist, and these are both in opposition to liberation, whether those who embody them are always really aware of it or not. I know some about ML, but embodying it is its own challenge.
Don’t be so quick to denounce your rage. There will be plenty of time for calmly measured justice after the revolution but we won’t get there without our anger. “when our time comes we will make no excuses for the terror”
I’m not sure I agree, but maybe you mean something different by anger and rage than I do. In my experience, they are usually volatile feelings that get in the way of clear-headed strategy, planning, and cooperation, and can cause great harm when people deal with it a chronic basis. I don’t dismiss them entirely, as rage toward injustice has its place. But also, rage toward injustice without strategy and planning is just riot, not revolution, and can easily fizzle out and be stamped out. Somehow, the righteous anger has to be channeled and that is the part that I’m getting at when I talk about the two kind of deceiving paths of openly barbaric conservative and cunning liberal pacifist. The conservative says, blindly use your anger. The liberal says, anger bad. It is clear to me that from a liberation perspective, neither of these are effective. So then the question becomes, what is the alternative, the liberation perspective on it. I think it is something to do with channeling the energy that arises from anger rather than dismissing it or blindly leaning into it.
I also mean to distinguish between righteous justice and desire for revenge. Along the lines of what the rizzler emphasized, I think righteous justice in the liberation context is more about doing what is needed to liberate and then retain that power against the reaction, which obviously can include violence against the oppressor but isn’t about, like, “eye for an eye” or something, so much as it is about resolving lingering disputes and contradictions. Whereas desire for revenge may lead in a more adventurist direction, expending resources in an “eye for an eye” mentality rather than focusing on protecting and building a base of power. It is the revengeful side of things that I am most dismissive of in myself and don’t trust.
(don’t mistake my tone as preaching its just coming out that way. I’m not 100% wedded to this line of thinking but its where I am at.)
Rage needs to be kept in check so you don’t do anything tactically stupid that ruins the overall strategy. But complete repression of our justified rage is in the interest of the ruling class and it is the hallmark of the “Compatible Left.”
Rage is a good motivator and planning tool provided your longing for revenge/justice is based in your solidarity with the working class. (your suffering is the suffering of the working class, if they did it to you as a worker they would have done it to any other worker.) When you are class conscious, revenge and justice overlap because what makes you fill with rage is exploitation of the Working class.
I think Revenge, Justice, Anger, and Planning can coexist. Say you keep a plan for operations on specific reactionary petite bourgeoisie, or uniformed regime thugs who have done you wrong, with the goal to secure supplies and weapons, and you know they will be counter revolutionaries till their last breath so getting them to that point is a part of the plan.
I totally understand the fear of getting lost in the anger but if you are grounded in class consciousness and looking to the vanguard party you’ll know when the time of rage is over. Chances are you wont even get to indulge in revenge because there are way more angry workers than there are bourgeoisie. The chaos period of revolutions doesn’t last very long. The Russian revolution was a couple weeks of chaos. After that it becomes time to build class consciousness and prepare to resist counter revolution.
This is a class war and when we counter attack we need to blitz and hit as many tactically important points as fast as we can before they know what is going on. If your list of targets is based on their acts against you as a member of the Working Class that is a good enough target. As you go, you will meet people with a similar list of grievances and coordinating with those revenge seekers is how you build a Peoples Army.
So you use rage as a guide for planning. When the conditions are right let your rage drive you to action as it will drive the masses. When you meet others on a similar path it is time to sober up and direct the rage filled mob to strategic ends. Directing the mob by having a good long list of targets (formed while holding rage in check) provides intellectual clout and having performed front line actions (letting your rage loose) give the emotional appeal to increase your position in the mob allowing you to promote Class consciousness and Marxist Thought amongst the mob converting it into a Peoples Army.
“Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder with some interpretation by me in brackets:
The first questions to arise are: how is the discipline of the proletariat’s revolutionary party maintained? How is it tested? How is it reinforced?
First, by the class-consciousness of the proletarian vanguard and by its devotion to the revolution, by its tenacity, self-sacrifice and heroism. (This sounds like a nice way of describing angry MFs with class consciousness.)
Second, by its ability to link up, maintain the closest contact, and—if you wish—merge, in certain measure, with the broadest masses of the working people—primarily with the proletariat, but also with the non-proletarian masses of working people. (appeal to the masses emotionally through actions)
Third, by the correctness of the political leadership exercised by this vanguard, by the correctness of its political strategy and tactics, provided the broad masses have seen, from their own experience, that they are correct. (appeal to them intellectually with good targets that serve the strategic goal of the permanent overthrow of the ruling class)
i would think the way the communists handled emperor puyi is a great example of what you’re looking for. it’s not always feasible to do that, as with tzar nicholas. at the end of the day i think the difference between justice and revenge is that justice centers the best interests of the oppressed, and revenge centers punishment of the oppressor. that’s why i would consider both the treatment of puyi and nicholas “just”. whatever was done, it was done to further the interests of the proletariat and the peasantry, not to enact some secular-calvinist notion of karmic retribution.
Thanks for weighing in, that makes sense to me. And I agree with you and have had similar thoughts about those events in the past, that both are valid responses to conditions because the conditions were not the same, essentially. In the moment, the revolution had to determine what would be most effective for gaining and securing power, and that can produce different outcomes for handling the oppressor, depending. So yeah, well said: focus on what is in the best interests of the oppressed.
I have received a new job; very well-paying with great benefits. However, if you’re a marxist, it really blows your mind.
They make medical devices. These medical devices cost roughly 20-30 dollars to manufacture; with the equipment being at most a half a decade old, already paid off. Each one of these medical devices can cost up to 200-500 dollars at purchase. There is legit just a 300-400 dollar profit margin on each medical device (over a thousand made and shipped a day) while people are getting paid 17-19 an hour.
Crazy stuff!
Good ol’ honest merchants amirite
the most honest, the best, the best merchants folks.
what are the economics behind this? is it a lot of labor or is it a monopoly/cartel thing or is it something the hexbear capital group hasn’t gotten to yet?
It’s a medical device that is glass and glass only. I actually do think it’s a slight monopoly thing; but it’s sort of a monopoly because there really is no way to get into the market these days without budging into the giant entity that controls it. Like they won’t stop you…but good luck.
I feel like everyone (and maybe Marxists especially) should get a manufacturing job at one point to see how outrageous some companies’ profit margins are. I used to be a carpenter making doors. I’d make probably around 8 or so doors and hour at 13 euro an hour. Each door would sell for around 300 euro. Sure, you need some wood for that but I’d guess the average door cost around 50 euro including salary to make. It’s insanity to realize that for every 13 euro you receive you make the company like 1800 euro.
I think for every 18usd the staff get, they make them well over 50,000 dollars in a day.
It truly is absurd money when each device costs like 200-600 and they ship out over a 1000 a day.
the classic “it would cost me an entire day’s pay to buy one of the widgets that my line makes a thousand of an hour”
They were at least cognizant enough to offer the devices for free to their employees. I got to be a bit vague when talking about it. Feel free to come to your own conclusions though, hehe.
learning about ukraine from non bourgeois western rags/corepig sources is so scary genuinely what the fuck. like what the fuck. this is a terrible war for all involved yes and i wish it wasn’t happening and that it wasn’t basically sending ukrainians off to die, but also, what the fuck? what the fuck??? keep in mind this is my first taste of just parsing the sources of the post on genzhou/death to nato (also seeing one blogger from russia i kept up with share posts about the topic/donbass) but like, what the fuck
when al-aqsa flood started i immediately learned and became an adamant defender of palestine and their armed resistance (and it was so easy, really, like, genuinely so easy, retrospectively i’m awed by the abundance of pro palestine information on social media counter to the mainstream narratives), and it was kind of surreal watching many people, even those who weren’t aware prior, shed off the endless barrage of misinformation about palestine despite how much hasbara tried. that was a triumph over factual reality over deeply evil sludge, but even till now, ukraine war to me has been a simplified conflict because every source has been correctly like it’s bad people are dying and as such we must balkanize/obliterate russia. i started questioning the latter half of that sentiment early on and it has always been a bit bizarre to me how racist it all was in regards to dehumanizing russians (not to say that i didn’t fall in that hole as a libbed up kid) but now i am trying to learn more, and as i find something out about nato, or about ukraine far-right, etc. etc., the donbass, i feel incredibly fucking sick. what the hell
i have had ukrainian friends and other central asian friends nowadays that were rightfully exhausted and disillusioned and scared by the war. but now i feel even more lost and angry and confused–nato is sending ukraine off for destruction for what? but then i know!! and i feel like throwing up. how many people are suffering??? how is this acceptable to anyone!!! (not placing htis above ‘israel’ as a crime, but. what the fuck)
pardon this utterly bizarre crop, okay
i dont use tumblr and no longer have an account (mainstream social media is stupid anyway) but i found this rb from another blog i look at anonymously for takes on geopol/ukraine conflict and uh. yeah haha. wow
also, yes wikipedia is rags for anything regarding geopol, yesyes, but it’s also funny seeing how people can first see how their stuff on palestine is wrong (endlessly charitable to israel, we know this), but then ukraine: since ppl cant see western bias and lean towards ukraine, you can go to stuff like stepan bandera’s wikipedia page and just see 'he’s a far right figure who SOME call a fascist (because his followers killed jews and poles en masse, it’s truly so complicated)" like wow
from something called genevasolutions / https://genevasolutions.news/ukraine-stories/who-was-stepan-bandera-ukraine-s-controversial-nationalist-figure as i did cursory search for stepan bandera. wow thank u. this is utterly horrifying to see posted publicly, and distills every evil part of western propaganda into one poison. italics my own
Revered by many (who??? who in specific? azov???) as a national hero who fought Soviet domination, and as a fascist responsible for killing tens of thousands by others, Stepan Bandera remains a deeply divisive figure in Ukraine. …Who was he and what do we know?
After the war, Stepan Bandera continued to oppose Russia’s Soviet regime, which ended up assassinating him in 1959.
During WWII, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) was formed, and ethnic cleansings were carried out in Volynia, Poland. Although Bandera was the leader of the liberation movement, he didn’t personally take part in these actions, nor did he directly participate in the anti-Soviet movement of western Ukraine. Despite these ambiguities, today, he is considered a symbol of resistance by many Ukrainians. His idolisation and that of the Ukrainian nationalists who fought against the USSR began in the 1990s, when far right activists (son) emerged in western Ukraine.
trying to follow no investigation no right to speak and trying to find good sources but im on the western interwebs… ha…
and dont worry they DO equate nazi germany and soviets as totallytarian this is beyond satire what if we all just shat
I’m starting to think Trump’s main strategic goal is to personally give me anxiety by always making it seem like we’ll finally get to see XXI century weaponry live-tested against aircraft carriers, but never following through.
Anyways, some OSINT chatter has been indicating materiel transfers directly from China to Iran, so China seems to be holding to their word on mutual defense. Some Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles have been launched at Ukraine today and CENTCOM deployment remains at full readiness. But eh, nothing ever happens.
I just can’t imagine what is so important to hide that they released these files and are also trying to start a war with Iran. Is it just to distract people from the Gaza genocide, the crashing american economy, or is there something else we are all missing?
From the Philippines!
Salamat po.
:)
