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GenZedong
Welcome back I am so happy to see you could be here agian this week. Please have a seat, feel free to have anything in the fridge, and enjoy this wonderful tradition of our comunity, the weekly discussion thread!! • [Matrix homeserver and space](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1294067)\   ◦ [Theory discussion group on Matrix](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1293864)\ • Find theory on [ProleWiki](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Library), [marxists.org](https://marxists.org), [Anna's Archive](https://annas-archive.org), [libgen](https://libgen.is) P.S. You Too Oppo
One of the members of the GenZedong Matrix space recently created a communist Akkoma instance at [spectreofcommunism.boo](https://spectreofcommunism.boo/)! ## What is Akkoma? Akkoma is like Mastodon but lighter and faster. It's an open source microblogging platform where you can post "microposts". It's kind of similar to Twitter, but actually good :3 Like Lemmy, Akkoma is federated, meaning you can interact with people on other servers regardless of which server you've signed up on (similar to how you can see Hexbear users on Lemmygrad). Akkoma federates with all fediverse platforms, including Lemmy, so you can actually also interact with Akkoma users from Lemmygrad, and vice-versa! ## How do I join? 1. Go to https://spectreofcommunism.boo 2. Click on Register 3. Fill in your account info and then answer the [vetting questions](https://spectreofcommunism.boo/notice/AfUPn9Osj9fVWADl3I) in the "Reason to register" field 4. Wait for your account to be approved
## What is Matrix? `Matrix ≈ Discord - tracking + end-to-end encryption (by default)` Matrix is a protocol for real-time communication (text, audio, and video) implemented by various applications ("clients") -- the official one is [Element](https://element.io/download) for Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS), but there are many others, e.g. those listed [here](https://matrix.org/clients). It's also federated, like Lemmy. To use a Matrix client, you need to make a Matrix account at one of the Matrix *homeservers* (similar to how you can make an account on lemmygrad.ml or lemmy.ml but still access both of them). We have our own Matrix homeserver at `genzedong.xyz`, and you don't need an email address to register an account there. ## How do I join the space? (If you already have a Matrix account, skip to step 3) 1. Download a Matrix client (e.g. [Element](https://element.io/download)) on your device. 2. Create an account in the client. You can select `genzedong.xyz` as your homeserver here; if you choose the default `matrix.org`, you'll need to enter an email address. If it doesn't work on your client, try using [Element Web](https://app.element.io) for registration. 3. Log in. 4. Read the rules in `#rules:genzedong.xyz` and the vetting questions in `#vetting-questions:genzedong.xyz`, and then answer the questions in `#vetting-answers:genzedong.xyz` (don't worry, it shouldn't take long). ## What is the space? A collection of rooms (equivalent to Discord channels) focused on various topics. The space is intended for Marxists-Leninists, although baby leftists may also be accepted depending on their vetting answers.
Primarily for those who don't already have a discussion group, but anyone interested in Marxist-Leninist theory is welcome 👍 It won't require intensive reading/listening; it should be doable for anyone who works or studies full time, and we usually have discussions at the end of every other week. We're currently following a study plan from China, but we can add recommended texts (decided by vote). At the time of writing we're reading "Wage Labour and Capital" but I'm not going to remember to update this post You can join the group at `#reading-group:genzedong.xyz` (an encrypted room) through the GenZedong Matrix space (see [this post](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1294067)). **On /c/genzhou@lemmygrad.ml there'll also be a pinned post for the current text, for those who don't want to join the Matrix space.**
Reform UK being a bunch of Nazis isn't surprising at all
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5694077 > people are already making jokes about america in the comments section lmao > >  > > ::: spoiler ...of course, some also felt the need to drag the pride flag in it as well :/ > >  > > like America ever cared about queer people > > oh right, I forgot, people kissing people of the same gender and people wanting to change their gender is western American imperialism to these people! ...somehow > ___ > ::: > > idk, I thought it was weird and funny lol
Actually completely unrelated, but since this quote is really famous by itself without context here's the full paragraph, formatted for convenience. Every meme quotation is an opportunity to read theory. > Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Chang Kuo-tao), but they must fight for military power for the Party, for military power for the people. > > As a national war of resistance is going on, we must also fight for military power for the nation. Where there is naivety on the question of military power, nothing whatsoever can be achieved. It is very difficult for the labouring people, who have been deceived and intimidated by the reactionary ruling classes for thousands of years, to awaken to the importance of having guns in their own hands. > > Now that Japanese imperialist oppression and the nation-wide resistance to it have pushed our labouring people into the arena of war, Communists should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. **Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."** > > Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. > > According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. > > Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. Source is ["Problems of War and Strategy"](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_12.htm), section II "The War and History of the Kuomintang".
I'm reading the murderbot series and the light bringer series. And about to start the latest on the bobiverse. At some point I want to go back to Asimov's. You can probably see a pattern there.
Bangladesh is to be ravaged by the west it seems
youtube.com
I find it funny when colonizers project their own barbarism on the people they colonize. In fact most of the shit they do are just as barbaric (if not even more) than tying a woman on a table and cutting her heart out, widows burning themselves alive, and whatever reason the bastards give on why x indigenous group is barbaric real or fabricated. If anything if we objectively try to figure out which civilization is the most barbaric then the answer is the West. I'll list a few things western colonizers do that are even more barbaric than that: - expelling almost all the Jews from Spain for the most insane reason possible; - deliberately infecting native populations with smallpox (yes, that's a real thing); - the Roman empire expanding itself to gain more slaves (which is a terrible idea unsurprisingly); - supporting colonizing regimes in their reign of terror on the indigenous population; - deliberately destabilizing entire regions for both the profits of their [...] ultra-wealthy "benefactors" and to stop the masses from figuring out what's really going on; - waging bullshit wars like in Iraq, the War on Drugs, the recent debacle in Afghanistan, Korea, and now Palestine.
I'm just surprised that we're at the point where even Legal Eagle is spinning this story. Makes me worried for how this New Cold War will affect the country.
*SHOCKING report on the total collapse of business in China by the Financial Times was yesterday blown out of the water by users on x dotcom—and then the newspaper's own source joined critics of the news outlet.* *The FT reported on Thursday that Chinese entrepreneurship had virtually disappeared, with just 1,202 companies launched last year. Evidence was data from a monitoring service called IT-Juzi.* *The grim report by FT writer Eleanor Olcott and its eye-catching graph was viewed more than a million times on x dotcom, slotting naturally into the excessively negative narrative the paper carries every day on mainland China and Hong Kong.* *'VOICE OF REASON'* *The first person to raise an objection was Arnaud Bertrand, a China-based Chinese medicine specialist who has become a popular "voice of reason" against the western narrative that is poisoning minds against the country.* *He pointed out yesterday morning that if you looked at a single business sector, such as restaurants, in a single location, such as one city, you could immediately tell that there were large numbers of new companies.* *Multiply that over a country of 1.4 billion people and you ended up with millions of new companies—exactly as Chinese government figures said.* *ERROR IDENTIFIED* *Then investment specialist Glenn Luk stepped in and pointed out the precise mistake that the Financial Times had made. It had taken its figures from a narrow list that limited itself to new start-ups funded by institutional investors time-lagged to a specific period.* *The data in no way could be used to determine how many new companies had been started in China, Luk pointed out.* *FT writer Eleanor Olcott fought back by posting that: "IT Juzi is China’s leading data provider on startups, tracking companies across basically every conceivable vertical that a VC would be investing in."* *HE SHOULD KNOW* *Then, yesterday, a message appeared from Wen Feixiang, the head of the company whose data was used by the Financial Times for its shocking graph.* *"Hey, I am Feixiang, the ITJUZI. COM Founder and CEO," he wrote. "The citation in this article regarding the number of Chinese startup companies From ITJUZI is inaccurate."* *He confirmed that his research firm's list in no way showed the total number of new firms in China.* *"The only ethical thing to do at this stage for the FT is to apologize to its readers, and withdraw the article," Arnaud Bertrand posted last night.*
How entitled do you have to be to freely expose this kind of theory on a post about consipary theories? Original comment: "I once heard of a pediatrician who successfully convinced a concerned mother that anti-vax ideology was likely a psyop by the Russians to weaken the health of the American populace starting with our children. Doesn’t hurt that it’s probably true. EDIT: My personal conspiracy theory is that the Chinese government did engineer (or at least selectively cultivate) COVID, but not to kill Americans. In the early days of the pandemic there was some speculation that it affected some blood types more than others, particularly type A. While no link to blood type specifically was found, type A is a more common genetic trait as you move out of Asia and towards the middle east. China has been heavily persecuting the Uyghurs (Chinese Muslims), and those who have managed to get out of the camps have reported medical experimentation and being injected with unknown substances. In addition, the virus would also kill a significant number of the older population, which is important because of the population crunch they’re about to experience due to one-child policies resulting in a high amount of female-specific infanticide. They’re about to have a bunch of old people and a massive shortage of able bodied young people to care for them. Even if they didn’t directly “engineer” the virus in a gene-sequencing manner, they have a lot off motive to just generally cultivate and spread (you can’t really “breed” a virus) an infectious disease targeting people of middle eastern descent and elders. Thank you for coming to my tinfoil-hat Ted Talk." https://sh.itjust.works/comment/13862295
https://www.rt.com/russia/603929-ukraine-concentration-camps-kursk/ > Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Region have rounded up local civilians and placed them in “something like concentration camps,” RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing a Russian Foreign Ministry report. > > When Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into Kursk Region last month, thousands of civilians were evacuated or themselves fled deeper into the Russian heartland. Some however, including elderly people and those with disabilities, were unable to leave, and their settlements fell under Ukrainian control. > > According to a new report seen by RIA Novosti, those left behind were subjected to detention methods synonymous with World War II. > > “In a number of territories controlled by militants, something like ‘concentration camps’ were created, which civilians who did not want or were unable to leave the territory captured by the enemy were forcibly driven into,” the report said, according to RIA Novosti. These claims were based on eyewitness accounts collected by the Russian Red Cross in Kursk. > > Of those detained, between 70 and 100 were taken to a school in Sudzha, where some of the fiercest fighting took place. Once there, they were subjected to psychological abuse and presented to foreign journalists, RIA Novosti claimed. ***** https://www.rt.com/news/603943-taiwan-beijing-navy-seal/ > The US Navy’s elite special operations unit, SEAL Team Six, has been training to “help Taiwan” in case of a “Chinese invasion,” according to the Financial Times. The unit is most famous for the 2011 mission that killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. > > SEAL Team Six “has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington,” FT reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. > > So far, the only hints of US plans for a potential conflict around Taiwan have come from Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, in an interview in June. > > “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything,” Paparo told the Washington Post. ***** https://www.rt.com/business/603925-china-western-investment-drop/ > Western firms pulling back from China > Declining economic growth and the rise of other manufacturing centers in Asia are slowing investment, lobby groups claim > China is gradually losing its appeal as an investment destination for Western companies, according to reports released this week by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. > > The two lobby groups conducted surveys among investors and owners of businesses in China. According to their findings, many respondents have been consolidating their operations in the country and no longer see the Chinese market as a primary investment destination. > > An annual poll by the American Chamber of Commerce shows that the number of businesses considering China as their top investment destination has dropped to 47%, the lowest in 25 years. A survey by the EU chamber shows that only 15% of respondents named China as their top investment destination, while previously the figure stood at 20%. > > “Some European Chamber members have begun both siloing their China supply chains and operations, and shifting investments previously planned for China to other markets to increase supply chain resilience, take advantage of comparatively lower labor costs and hedge against future geopolitical shocks,” the EU lobby group stated in its report. > > Experts from both lobbies suggest that one of the main drivers behind the trend is the slump in China’s economic growth. According to official figures, China’s growth slowed to the worst pace in five quarters in April-June this year, at 4.7%. Other factors are intensifying competition from local companies and the appearance of alternative manufacturing centers in Asia. > > For instance, around 20% of the businesses surveyed by the US business lobby said they would be slashing investment in China this year, while 40% stated they would be redirecting it to countries such as India and Vietnam. > > Many of those surveyed said China’s trade tensions with the US were also affecting investor confidence. Washington has been tightening economic restrictions and hiking tariffs on Chinese goods since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump launched a trade war with Beijing. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, has taken a similarly hostile approach, despite Beijing’s repeated warnings that these measures violate the principles of fair trade. Around 70% of respondents in the survey by the American chamber called US measures targeting China the greatest challenge to the country’s economic growth.
[source](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rwkk9r51jo)
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5680856 > I'm just surprised that we're at the point where even Legal Eagle is spinning this story. > > Makes me worried for how this New Cold War will affect the country.
>Was Hamas really created by "Isr*el"? >That's the argument which is often made in good faith by re-visiting the "Isr*eli" dealings with the precursor to Hamas, known as the Mujamma al-Islammiyah, yet is an oversimplification of history . >However, this assumption is rooted in some key misunderstandings about the Hamas origin story and is also why this argument is not often accepted by Palestinians who carry a greater understanding of the history. >While some elements of the corporate media have attempted to paint "Isr*eli" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being the "bad apple" in "Isr*el", the narrative that Hamas was created by "Isr*el" and sustained by the "Isr*eli" PM helps fuel this notion. >MintPress staff writer Robert Inlakesh debunks the myth that Hamas was a creation of "Isr*el" >While sweeping statements regarding the origins of Hamas miss nuance, a greater understanding of the national liberation movement of the Palestinians fills in the gaps.
lemmygrad.ml
English translation: Juan Perón Madrid, July 15, 1965 To Mr. President MAO TSE TUNG PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA My dear President and friend: From this difficult exile, I take advantage of the magnificent opportunity offered by the trip of the young Peronist leaders of the MRP, kindly invited by you, to bring you along with my most fraternal and friendly greetings, the expressions of our admiration for you, your Government and your Party; who have been able to lead the Chinese Nation to the achievement of so many important victories, which the capitalist world has already begun to recognize and accept. Your thought and your words as a Revolutionary Master have penetrated deeply into the souls of the peoples who are struggling to liberate themselves and we who have been struggling, in these last ten years, in the marches and counter-marches typical of the process of a people, which is preparing the most favorable conditions for the final struggle. American Imperialism and its permanent allies -among them now, the current Soviet leaders- are mistaken when they think that with the deception of a false peaceful coexistence, they will be able to stop the march of these peoples thirsty for justice in pursuit of their liberation. The example of PEOPLE'S CHINA, today the unshakable basis of the World Revolution, allows the men of the new generations to prepare themselves for the long struggle with more clarity and firm determination. The nefarious action of Imperialism, with the complicity of the traitorous classes, have prevented us in 1955 from fulfilling the stage of the Democratic Revolution in order to prepare the working class for the full and subsequent realization of the Socialist Revolution. But from the defeat of that date, we have gathered great examples that allow us to prepare ourselves much more firmly, so that our people can take power and thus establish the era of government of the oppressed -the working class- the only one capable of carrying out a policy of peace and happiness for our people. Our objectives are common -that is why I welcome this contact of our fighters, with that great reality that you are.
I also have a version in Spanish if any comrades want to share it somewhere else. 
RIP socialist Chile
Just when you thought you couldn't take things less seriously.
criticalresist.substack.com
twitter went wild because the guardian published an essay with the headline "we each have a nazi within us" and this is my response to that article (from aaron maté's dad no less)