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Cake day: Mar 23, 2022

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Ask any white Amerikkkan what their family origin is and they’ll say “I’m English/German/Irish/Italian.” Their great-great-grandparents emigrated in the 19th century and they’ve never left the county in which they were born.


I read Superimperialism last year. I think it’s a very important theory with regards to the last century of global politics and economics. It puts into context how we got to where we are today and gives some ideas on how to get out of it. It was a bit of a slow read for me without much academic knowledge on economics but at some point I will read Global Fracture in which Hudson covers the post-gold standard events.

I also like listening to his interviews and this new podcast series. When it comes to money and economics they’re aren’t many other people as interesting and as correct as Hudson.

The things I’d be cautious of are his insistence on mixed systems, the importance of industrial capital (as opposed to financial capital), and his liberal takes on AES. He’s not a principled ML by any means, even though he meaningfully and insightfully extended and expanded Lenin’s theory of imperialism.


That’s basically it. The same temper tantrum happened around various other Disney films as well.


Remember all the unbelievably horrific vitriol Kelly Marie Tran (Rose) got bombarded with by western Star Wars fans who definitely totally wanted to see a PoC star?


I totally agree. I get that Ben Norton wanted to expand the perspective a bit, but Multipolarista was catchy and still covers the gist of his and his guests perspectives.


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my favourite are the 90s kids from eastern Europe who say they experienced the horrors of true socialism.

Anecdotally, I also know a few Gen Xers who grew up in the DDR and they’re all very proud of how exploited they are in the free west.

This guy probably gets what he thinks is a decent salary so he’ll say whatever to keep the job. Doesn’t hurt that he got brainwashed by the imperial military.


The recent Geopolitical Economy Hour on inflation comes to mind. In terms of written works I’m drawing a blank today. In general it’s also a topic I’m interested in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZbB0jjDTM


I do for all my machines except the daily driver and at work.

I want to switch over my main system to Linux but I’m putting it off because I feel like I need a full day or two to just transfer simple things like browser info, save games, find utility apps, etc. Plus a bunch of games that I like playing still don’t work on Linux. I also haven’t looked into how to attempt to play “unlicensed” games on Linux yet.



Wasn’t Malthus basically just some lackey academic who came up with his whole theory as a justification for continued and further oppression of the working classes?


It was definitely one of the final nails in the coffin, in terms of public opinion at least. There was already a lot of anti-nuclear campaigning and sentiment leading up to that point in time (the sixties-seventies environmental movement was all against it But of course the anti-nuclear lobby (ie. oil companies) leveraged the existing anti-communist cultural context to make nuclear seem even more undesirable than it already was after Chernobyl. So much for “atoms for peace” and electricity “too cheap to meter.”


Not quite, but it’s quite onerous. The US taxes based on citizenship, not residency. That being said, unless you’re making well above average or have lots of property, you don’t have much tax liability. In order to renounce your US citizenship you need to already have another citizenship, make sure your tax returns are bulletproof, and pay over $2000. In any case, you have the annual stress of filing an extra tax declaration, and a lot of non-US banks won’t take you as a client because they would have too much regulatory liability.


I recently learned that of the reasons for this neocolonial population control is to make sure that over-exploited regions don’t become problematic once their natural resources are fully extracted.

Over-exploited countries are essentially forced to be dependent on the US for food. They pay for that food with some of the money generated via resource extraction. They have no agriculture of their own beyond cash crops like cocoa or coffee, which obviously cannot feed people. So once those resources are gone, the money to import food is gone, and these countries will have to experience some pretty serious population reduction before local agriculture can sustain the remaining population.

It’s not just individual malthusian billionaires peddling this either, this has been official World Bank and IMF policy since the seventies at least.


Maybe I’m too much of a techno-optimist, but I see the possibility of a sustainable population in the tens if not hundreds of billions. That doesn’t require any technological breakthroughs either, we can do it with what we have already discovered and developed.

Of course in order to have a change at doing that we need a society where sustainability in all aspects is incentivised and kept in focus.


I’m still active and acting normally on there. Still engage with lefty things and try to push people towards ML thought.


Plenty, but actual hate typically doesn’t threaten the capitalist status quo.


I wasn’t. That being said, why am I still on reddit?


The TikTok algorithms do seem to be better, and there’s some manual boosting of creators in the background as well. It’s also just a new platform and there’s a certain draw and hype to that as well.

Another element is that Facebook just can’t compete anymore. They’re not an innovative upstart, they’re an ossifying tech monopoly. Their growth strategy for a while was buy them if you can’t beat them (Instagram for example). But they can’t buy TikTok.

This whole anti TikTok campaign works in the favour of both the US social media monopolies and the military intelligence industrial complex. The monopolies get rid of competition and the intelligence agencies continue to have easy access to the personal information of basically everyone.


I assume it’s just the standard western liberal whining about Disney and other big US movie producers reportedly cutting out “woke” scenes and characters in order to please “CCP censors.” There’s no factual basis to it, as always, but that never stopped a lib from taking the opportunity to be anti-China.


Pretty high, this is around the time GZ got quarantined on reddit and a bunch of people joined the grad.



Only whatever is uploaded into his head by McKinsey type consultants.



I have a lot of the same struggles. I feel like I got a lot of my “humanist” values (compassion, empathy, desire for everyone to do well) from my mother. And I know she genuinely wants to be a good person as well.

She doesn’t engage with “politics” (ie. party politics) but just about everything she engages with on social media and in her social circles is far right. Even so, when I talk about socialism or communism, without saying those words specifically, she’s on board.

I guess all I’m saying is I hear you and you’re not alone out there. Maybe we have some differing strategies that may work to break through a little bit more, and at least expose the evil of this far right ideology.


Given the thoughts and information in my head right now it’s a toss up between Truman and Johnson. From what I’ve been learning, the American industrialists and financiers who had been collaborating with the Nazis may have been treated extremely differently had Wallace been VP when FDR died - up to and including charged with treason. Instead, Truman oversaw the creation of the modern intelligence agencies headed by some of those very same Nazi collaborators, and gave the order to use nuclear weapons. Later on, JFK was resisting the entire intelligence and military complex advice on basically all foreign affairs, to the point where LBJ was getting briefings JFK wasn’t. The warmongers behind the scenes knew who would and wouldn’t listen to them. One of the last things JFK did as president was emphatically state that there would be no military action with regards to Vietnam. Then he got shot, Johnson became president, and all the MIC’s hopes and dreams came true.


As I’ve come to understand it, Nixon was more or less forced to establish relations with the PRC due to the “dollar dilemma” and related monetary issues. Of course Kissinger probably thought he could use the Sino-Soviet split as a wedge to get China onto his side as well, but the impetus of the whole thing was balance of payments and the contemporary birth of the treasury bill dollar standard.


I much prefer the flavour of robusta as well, but it gives me nasty headaches. Robusta espresso has also got a nice thick consistency which Arabica just doesn’t.


Seriously, like how much of Linux (and “free” software more broadly) development is funded by the US military-intelligence-surveillance industrial complex? Red Hat/IBM for one is all up in that. You know, the IBM that supplied the Nazis with their census taking machines and the Red Hat that’s hard at work optimizing software for Predator drones.

And I can’t even tell you how many open-source/free/“Libre” apps and devs have UA flags all over their websites. Look at the version names of Notepad++.

“Free” software is no cure to the hegemon when the hegemon makes and breaks what’s allowed to be “free.”


I recently learned that that zone was defined by the Americans towards the end of the Chinese Civil War. They then leveraged this wonky air “defense” zone to bomb the PRC even after the war.


The UN investigator who went to China to check on the Uyghurs last year found basically nothing of note and got pressured into resigning. The same could easily happen here.



As I remember Brian Berletic pointing out, these “foreign agents” laws shouldn’t even be necessary, because the UN charter itself prohibits the very same activities these laws seek to limit or prohibit.


I have similar conversations with my partner from time to time. She is, for lack of a better term, a principled pacifist. I think I really scared her when I said I would indeed try use deadly force to protect my family given the need.


Up to the middle of January 2023 the US has lent Ukraine $47B, which excludes the value of the weapons and equipment provided.

I put emphasis on the lending part because this isn’t a giveaway. It’s lend-lease for the 21st century. Ukraine is and will be forced to sell off whatever means of production it still has left after this war to US capitalists in a desperate effort to pay this money back. Back in the WWII era lend-lease was used by the Americans to take over from the British as global hegemon and bring capitalist Europe under its wing.


Declarations of Independence
How should new countries be handled, where the people have clearly chosen that they would like to be their own sovereign nation, with all the rights and responsibilities that comes with? Besides the people withing the territory agreeing that they're a new sovereign country and establishing the institutions thereof, what should the global community expect? As things stand currently, it's simply up to the imperial core countries as to whether or not a territory is recognized as a country.
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Ironically enough there was loads of legit Soviet agitprop about America’s racism. It’s also likely one of the reasons why the American ruling class let civil rights happen.


I know I’ve said a lot of cringey stuff over the years. I was a lib until quite recently. From my perspective you’re being too hard on yourself. We all have our moments, and we all learn over time and through mistakes and as new evidence is presented.

Oddly enough I also try to avoid third reich analogies. Not because I don’t think they’re appropriate, but because fascism broadly and naziism specifically are intentionally misrepresented in mainstream history and media. The analogies I often want to make are based on a historical materialist and diamat understanding of the third reich, but that’s missed by anyone who hasn’t taken the time to learn that history. To most people Nazis were a flash in the pan sparked by a particularly charismatic leader (great man theory), with a little bit of “mass formation psychosis” thrown in for flavour.


Amateur historian wehraboo probably hits the mark. It’s some smug anonymous asshole who does “scientific investigations” on mostly tech libertarian topics. He wrote a whole series on the economic history of the USSR, another on how publicly funded R&D isn’t all that, and a libertarian take on women in STEM fields (they’re just not interested in those jobs guys). In a subsequent breath he says he doesn’t engage with political issues too much. Ok buddy. His USSR bit got picked up by the Adam Smith Institute and his blog got a grant from a Peter Thiel associated “research center.”


It’s super revealing how selective these people are.

Just yesterday someone on reddit linked to a super long statistical and literature analysis meant to show that actually the CIA report on USSR food/calorie availability is completely misleading if not simply incorrect.


My utility bills haven’t been affected just yet as we’re in the middle of contracts, but when it does hit it’ll hurt. 20% does seem low, so it’s worth noting that official inflation figures are adjusted based on what the government/statistics agency wants to show. Tracking your own expenses and personal inflation is definitely the way to go. That’s also what I meant with “haha as if” with regards to even a 10% raise - even that doesn’t cover real inflation anymore. Meanwhile the government wants to allow hospitals and clinics to actually cut pay by up to 6% to help with tight budgets.

I’m really glad Ver.di are getting more combative. That’s the kind of workers representation we need right now. The public sector unions are also trying to coordinate strikes for maximum effectiveness. Speaking of which I’ve really gotta be agitpropping in my workplace… I have a feeling we’re gonna get a nice round 0 this year, and there’s no union in sight.


Forget food for a moment, my damn garbage bill went up 25% for this year. Meanwhile in response to most large unions striking and asking for a 10% raise to cover inflation (haha as if) the German interior minister responded with “I think the 3% offer is sign of respect to the public sector workers.” Representatives in the Bundestag are trying to figure out how to limit the already significantly conditional right to strike in this country.


This story is incredibly strange and unnerving. How can a relatively well known and respected journalist simply disappear for six months before other journalists finally notice and start asking questions? Meek isn't even meaningfully anti-establishment although he's pissed off the military from time to time. It looks like he's pretty tight with the military and intelligence communities. It's clear to all of us that we cannot trust bourgeois media, but this is really something else, especially with new conspiracy theories of Chinese and Russian public figures disappearing being generated seemingly on a weekly basis yet nobody publicly stated that they noticed this guy's disappearance for six months.
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Workers of the World, Unite!
In memory of the destroyed project of socialism in Germany, what better way to spend October 3rd (Germany's so-called German Reunification Day) than to discuss the successes, mistakes, and lessons of the DDR. Putting such a positive light on this topic is still beyond taboo in mainstream circles, and anti-communist mythology runs deep in Germany even today. One way we can make revolutionary inroads in any capitalist nation is to educate the working people about the successes of their socialist peers and all the tried and tested ways we can work towards making life more meaningful for all of us.
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Which one of you legends is responsible for this?
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Maintaining Personal Relationships with non-Communists
I really stepped in it last night. My partner is livid with me for suggesting Stalin wasn't the evil dictator he's made out to be in the west. For a German who grew up with anti-communism and went to some very liberal universities for political science it was too much. They said something to the effect of "this feels exactly like if you said, oh Hitler wasn't that bad, he was actually a good guy." We're in the midst of planning our wedding and they were suddenly at the point of doubting that they know who I am and if this is a relationship they want to maintain. We have a hard time discussing politics as it is. We are still not so great at interpreting the nuances of way each other speaks, and our background knowledge is very different. So we have to figure out what we do from here. I can't come at this from the direction of "trying to convert them." They already think I have gone into a conspiracy theory ridden and propaganda laden hole, and believe me, I ask myself the same thing every day. It really weighs heavily on me, as some of our close family members have fallen into conspiracy theory echo chambers. We've decided we need to go back to basics and make sure our core values align, which I genuinely believe they do. They're an anti-capitalist as well, although don't have a strong idea of what to would be better, just that it shouldn't be communism. I'm not sure where to go after we sort out what our shared values are. There's a certain condescension I sense when it comes to the leftist sources I read, many on recommendation from GenZedong members. I'm often met with "leftists just make up all kinds of stuff to suit their narrative," or "how do you know that's a primary or reliable secondary source, it's so easy to fake anything these days." Meanwhile they go to Wikipedia and see that Stalin killed millions and signed a treaty with the Nazis, even as they understand that much of western capitalist media is propaganda as well. We can't have any useful discussion on current events at the moment because we have vastly different knowledge of what's happening, as well as entirely different analytical tools to pick it apart with. They're also terrified I'm going to say very extreme things in front of their family (privileged petite bourgeois liberals). I try to be careful but at the same time I won't pretend to not be a communist. We have political discussions often and I'm not one to just sit those out. I'm sure my family would react poorly as well, but with the geographical distance to them it's not as present an issue in our minds. How do you all deal with this? How do you have these discussions and share these ideas with the more soc-dem or liberal minded people in your lives?
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