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Kieselguhr [none/use name]

@ Kieselguhr @hexbear.net

Posts
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220
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4 yr. ago

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 23rd to February 28th, 2026 - FIRST IRAN VS US+ZIONISTS WAR MEGATHREAD

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  • Bro, just turn the power off. You provide 70% of their electricity imports. Just turn the power off.

    Not that easy with electricity

    also EU (Germany) still the dominant power in the region and they can slap around Slovakia and Hungary if they really want to

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 23rd to February 28th, 2026 - FIRST IRAN VS US+ZIONISTS WAR MEGATHREAD

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  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 23rd to February 28th, 2026 - FIRST IRAN VS US+ZIONISTS WAR MEGATHREAD

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  • Fico (Druzhba pipeline):

    AFTER A PHONE CALL WITH UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT V. ZELENSKY

    In connection with the state of the oil emergency in Slovakia, I spoke today by phone with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I asked him for information on when, and whether at all, the transit of oil through the territory of Ukraine to Slovakia would be resumed. I argued that we have a legitimate right to such imports based on signed agreements with suppliers, as well as on the EU decision allowing the use of energy resources from Russia until the end of 2027.

    I informed the President that his decision to stop the transit of oil is causing us logistical difficulties and economic damage. The conversation confirmed that we have differing views on the condition of the pipeline. While our intelligence information confirms that the pipeline is not damaged and nothing prevents the transit of oil, the Ukrainian President insisted that repairing the pipeline requires a long time.

    For this reason, in order to avoid misunderstandings, I informed the Ukrainian President that together with the Hungarian Prime Minister V. Orbán, we are proposing the establishment of an inspection group composed of experts nominated by the European Commission and EU Member States, which would directly determine on site the actual state of technological damage to the pipeline or its ability to continue oil transit to the territory of the Slovak Republic.

    I reminded the Ukrainian President that the Ukrainian side has so far not allowed our ambassador in Kyiv to carry out such an inspection and that this opportunity was not given even to the Ambassador of the European Union to Ukraine. President Zelensky rejected such inspection activity, referring to a negative position of the Ukrainian intelligence services.

    The Ukrainian President proposed a joint meeting with the Slovak side on all aspects of Ukrainian-Slovak cooperation. I accepted this invitation and asked the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, in cooperation with the Ukrainian side, to find a suitable date for such a meeting, while I prefer a meeting with the Ukrainian President on the territory of one of the EU Member States that the Ukrainian President frequently visits.

    Pro domo: From the conversation with Ukrainian President V. Zelensky, I gained a clear impression that the Ukrainian side has no interest in resuming the transit of oil through Ukrainian territory.

    Quite obviously the Ukrainians are lying and don't really respect the rule of law...

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 23rd to February 28th, 2026 - FIRST IRAN VS US+ZIONISTS WAR MEGATHREAD

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  • The Guardian published a long form article about the Western intelligence assessment leading up to the unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine SMO.

    It is exactly what you'd expect, NAFO level analysis:

    • Putin is irrational
    • Putin thought it will be over in a few weeks
    • Navalny the brave opposition
    • Nobody listened to the poor CIA agents because of that oopsie in Iraq and so on.

    The article's goal is to reinforce faith in Five Eyes intelligence agencies. I wonder why. This is a PR article disguised as journalism

  • Locked

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

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  • Certifiably false given how quickly they were able to switch to US supplied gas.

    yes but also, it completely contradicts the narrative that "the EU would play with Russia, but Putin is evil"Let's say Navalny doesn't die and him or another Western puppet magically becomes Yeltsin 2.0, what then? Nord Stream is still blown up

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

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  • MSM just pretends that explanation doesn't even exist because it's too plausible and implies direct US involvement

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

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  • It still beggars belief that the "couple of Ukranians with a civilian boat" narrative is right, and not the "they planted the bombs with underwater drones during the naval exercise a month before"

    Second one still sounds more plausible to me

    Nevertheless, the main perpetrator is obvious

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 16th to February 22nd, 2026 - The Neoliberal Fait Accompli of Muhammad Yunus - COTW: Bangladesh

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  • I wasn't watching the Russia-related news closely in the past few weeks

    Just listened to a recent podcast with John Helmer

    He seems to think there is a serious division among the Russians regarding the negotiations, Lavrov and the military deeply distrusts the West, and the other faction led by Naibulina and the neoliberals who want economic normalization with the West ASAP in order to avoid a deep recession. And that President Putin is making a high-risk gamble to trade economic concessions and re-dollarization for relief from a crippling naval and oil blockade.

    Hexbears, is this a good take on the current situation?

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • i agree with you if we are assessing the writing produced by the workshop model, but the critique here is how and why mfa programs were created, not necessarily how successful these programs were (or are) at producing the work their originators believed important. and forgive me, i'm mostly cribbing from workshops of empire, which lays out a pretty convincing case (with documentation to back it up) on which styles and aesthetics universities were to encourage (by way of syllabi, readings, students, etc.) and which were sidelined.

    The first comment was explicitly about "aesthetic priorities" btw, so this is taking a turn, but we are converging

    Yeah workshops of empire is pretty convincing provided you don't think about it too much. I think our main disagreement is the claims of this book.

    If we overemphasise grants instead of the artworks, then we don't really need hermeneutics and criticism, only bookkeeping and financial statements...

    Overemphasising syllabi versus the actual artistic production of the teachers and the alumni is similarly misguided. Purpose of the system is what it does..did Iowa churn out vacuous "realism" promoting wide-eyed liberal humanism?

    Yeah the grants themselves might have been pointed, but Iowa teachers and alumni don’t fit that simplification. The people who were leading the program like Engle and Cassil, might have been opportunistic in applying for all kinds of grants, but their aesthetic was a kind of Flaubertian Chekhovian realism, which was already dominant among highbrow literary types all around the west, even the Eastern bloc. Now you can say that's bourgeois, but then you also think about teachers and alumni, especially the actual novels produced, say between 1960 and 1980 and then it will be obvious that it's an oversimplification

    When someone writes a book like Workshops of Empire they need to make the case as forceful and pointed as possible (for a variety of reasons), but the result is often flattens the landscape. But completely agree that institution like MFA programs need proper historical materialist evaluation.

    Workshops of Empire is interesting just don't take it too seriously, it's one of those books that will be an interesting footnote in a literary history 30-40 years from now

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • Vulgar Marxism is thinking there's a crude one way direct causal relationship between base and superstructure. i. e. in a capitalist society, workers are atomized psychologically, and artists working in this society make art promoting this kind of atomistic individualism (or whatever)

    I also include this more recent wave of thinking, "Well, the CIA/NED helped XY financially, therefore their values perfectly aligned with the US State Department"

    The truth is much more nuanced. This was one of the big topics of 20th century Marxism. You can choose randomly (Benjamin, Gramsci, WIlliams et al) and they will touch on this.

    here's a pdf of Raymond Williams's Base and Superstructure

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • I'm gonna need a citation

    Kinda funny you make a broad vibes based comment, but it sounds like you demand sources from me.

    First of all, you didn't mention any names. The NY art and intellectual millieu was heavily left leaning.Second, yes, many of them were anarchists like Newman or Rothko, Pollock participated in the Siqueiros Workshop, unless you think that doesn't count, only CPUSA card carrying commies count,thirdly it's not just them, but the influential critics too like Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Meyer Schapiro too? Or John Berger? "emptiness is the point?" Was it all psyop? I've seen this hot take before, but it's just bad art history dressed up as Marxism. It isn't serious. Actually engage with it.

    I'm not saying all mentioned critics were perfect commies, but don't flatten their contribution. They were interpreting their contemporaries.

    leaves interpretation up to the alienated, atomized viewer.

    (Free interpretation as opposed to what? Revolutionary message in an envelope? Wouldn't free interpretation be the opposite of easy consumerism? The critics I mentioned argued about this a lot. But they did appreciate the art itself.)

    We can argue that the anti-Stalinist leftists like Schapiro were misguided in their politics, but then we are veering to a different topic. Or the commodification of dissent, like seeing Abstract art in IKEA, is, again, I believe is a different topic.

    Sorry for being polemic, but I'm seeing vulgar Marxist hot takes upbeared in this thread left and right. It's silly.

    This is what grinds my gears:

    encouraging a "counterculture" that wasn't actually counter to anything of substance.

    Abstract Expressionism definitely went against capitalist Kitsch (There's a famous essay by Clement Greenberg, originally published in the CPUSA affiliated Partisan Review) Nazis still hate Abstract art. Wonder why.

    My guess is you're confusing it with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_realism

    I am not confusing anything. The commercial art of the era on the billboards and the magazines was the dominant visual code they've rebelled against. (Greenberg called it Kitsch.) Newman doesn't need to say literally that "I'm rebelling against the A&P ad I've seen in The Atlantic", that's just silly.

    Again sorry for being combative, nothing personal, but I truly hate the "postwar modern art is a CIA psyop" take. It's fash adjacent vulgar Marxism.

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • far from it. again, no one is saying that rothko or carver or the majority of us cold war era artists were willing propagandists, but the structural support for their work was part of a larger project to "professionalize" artists -- plugging them into various awards, foundations, grants, and universities -- so that only acceptable "transgressions" against bourgeois norms could be maintained and fostered. it's a system that exists even now. i really don't see how it's that controversial a take.

    yeah sure sure, but you see this above is a much more general and nebulous claim than

    the aesthetic priorities [at the Iowa Workshop] were to center individualist "unknowability" and examination, which re-affirms capitalists' need for people to be atomized units.

    This is just vulgar Marxism

    Remember that Marx admired Balzac...

    Funnily enough between my first comment and this one, I was reading a book, and this page specifically, funny coincidence:

    We have seen that in proper structuralist procedure, the economic determinism professed by Marxism is unacceptable, since it affirms a direct causal link between the content of the discourse and the reality of its enunciation, neglecting the specific role of the code. Take any novel; for orthodox Marxism it will reproduce either the ideology of the ruling class or that of the oppressed class. For structuralism such a view is premature, to say the least, for the novel originates primarily in the code of novelistic discourse, and not in the author's social awareness. It is only secondarily as the analysis progresses, a structural correspondence may perhaps be established between the novelistic code as a whole (but not this or that particular novel) and the relation of subordination which, of all the relations possible in one group's power over another, defines the rule of the bourgeoisie. Should this hypothesis of a relation between novelistic code and bourgeois domination be verified, then the 'progressive' novels would not be those whose content refers to the experiences of the workers ('popular literature', 'socialist realism'), but those which in one way or another transgress the code of the ruling class. The exemplary modern writer will then be Joyce or Mallarmé, not Zola or Aragon.

    • Descombes - Modern French Philosophy

    I like Raymond Williams more than the structuralists, but he's no vulgar Marxist either.

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • This one is also a favourite myth of the new new vulgar Marxist left:

    the aesthetic priorities [at the Iowa Workshop] were to center individualist "unknowability" and examination, which re-affirms capitalists' need for people to be atomized units.

    You are talking about people like Vonnegut and Carver here. May not fit Zhdanovite criteria of good fiction, but come on. Ridiculously philistine take.

  • So.... abstract expressionism was funded and pushed by the CIA, under a shell company CCF, thru grants to the MoMa

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  • NY artists at that time was pretty anti-communist

    Literally opposite of the truth. Mid-20th century NY artists and intellectuals were communists. Not necessarily pro-USSR, many Trots and anarchists, but certainly not anti-communist liberals. Many of them were harassed during the McCarthyist era.

    a "counterculture" that wasn't actually counter to anything of substance.

    Abstract Expressionism is partly, and very deliberately went against the capitalist realism of the 40s and 50s. Think about how the current alt-right slobbers over the nuclear family 50s style coca cola ads? Well, Abstract Expressionism is purposely against that kind of representative art. Simply countering it with the same style but with strong steelworkers instead of happy housewives would have been a weak response. They wanted a radical change.

    Then the so-called counterculture definitely went against US conservative lifestyle in many ways, but they also actively organized against the Vietnam War and so on.

    Now we can talk about how that strand of leftism was "misguided", infantile disorder etc., but thinking that Modern art and later the counterculture was some kind of CIA plot to divert the masses is just a ludicrous oversimplification.

    Yeah they failed to bring revolution to the US. But what the hell are current Amerikkkans doing?

  • Locked

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 2nd to February 8th, 2026 - The European Satrapies Are Revolting

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  • Politicos coverage:

    LONDON — Jeffrey Epstein had access to highly-sensitive British government policy discussions at the height of the global financial crisis, emails disclosed in the Epstein files show.

    Epstein, already a convicted sex offender at the time, was forwarded on a June 2009 email written by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s senior policy adviser Nick Butler about the government’s response to the banking crunch — addressed to “Gordon.”

    It appears the note was sent on by-then Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is facing a fresh round of scrutiny over his links to Epstein. The note — disclosed in the latest U.S. Department of Justice releases on Epstein — highlighted the U.K.’s “very substantial asset base,” and said Britain had “saleable assets in hand which are not strategic.”

    The correspondence covers Whitehall thinking at the time of a major economic crisis, and it is highly unusual for such top-level discussions to be circulated outside of the British government. The exchange took place a year after Epstein, the late financier, pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18.

    In the chain, Mandelson wrote: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”

    Epstein replied: “What salable assets?”

    The message by Butler was also sent to Brown’s key civil service aide Jeremy Heywood, his Private Secretary Christina Scott and Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office Shriti Vadera. There is no suggestion any of them were aware the exchange would be forwarded on to Epstein.

    surely this is treason of some kind? probably not by the strict legal definition, as Israel is not an enemy of the UK

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 2nd to February 8th, 2026 - The European Satrapies Are Revolting

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  • Sir Keir Starmer believes Lord Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords, or use his title, Downing Street has said.

    The prime minister has ordered an "urgent" investigation into Lord Mandelson's contact with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while the peer was a government minister.

    The review comes after another tranche of documents were released, showing the former Labour minister's close relationship with Epstein.

    Among those documents, email exchanges appear to show Lord Mandelson, when business secretary in 2009, forwarded internal government information sent to then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown on to Epstein.

    of course, they've known about this for years, they have MI6 after all. They are sorry they have been caught. link

    <ctrl+F Mossad> Phrase not found

    Of course the question remains if Mandelson was just a sex offender + trafficker who got blackmailed to help Mossad, or was he a willing israeli spy, nevertheless, fuck them all, rot in prison

  • Locked

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 26th to February 1st, 2026 - A Powerless Ukraine

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  • It's probably closer to 10k

    What do you base this on?

    For reference: in 1956 Budapest 2500 rebels were killed in action, and it was the Red Army coming with tanks. It was almost 2 weeks of fighting.

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 26th to February 1st, 2026 - A Powerless Ukraine

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  • Are people just uncritically accepting these figures?

    Yes, they just read the headlines.

    They don't realize these are WW2 battle KIA figures

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 26th to February 1st, 2026 - A Powerless Ukraine

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  • A week after Zelensky said Orbán should be slapped, the very neutral Associated Press reports:

    BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused Ukraine on Monday of seeking to meddle in his country’s upcoming elections and ordered Kyiv’s ambassador to be summoned to the foreign ministry.

    The step was the latest in Orbán’s long-running anti-Ukraine campaign as he seeks to convince voters that the neighboring country, embroiled in a war with Russia since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, poses an existential threat to Hungary’s security and sovereignty.

    Orbán, who has maintained close ties with Russia, faces what is expected to be the biggest challenge of his 16 years in power during elections scheduled for April 12.

    With his right-wing nationalist Fidesz party trailing by double digits in most polls, Orbán has campaigned on the unsubstantiated premise that Hungarians would be forcibly conscripted to fight and die on the front lines in Ukraine if his party loses the election.

    In a video posted to social media on Monday, Orbán said Ukraine’s political leaders, and “even the president himself, made grossly offensive and threatening statements against Hungary and the Hungarian government.”

    And Orban's challenger? Disgruntled fourth-tier members of his own party with Western corporate ties, including a Shell exec. The main dude, Peter Magyar, is Orban's ex-Justice minister's ex-husband. He used to be a senior manager at government companies. He literally used to sit in the front row when Orban spoke at conferences. Like he asked for a front row seat. He became opposition leader a week after Orban fired his wife.

    This new party is a rainbow coalition of unknown centrists, but the core is Fidesz defectors.

  • antifascism @hexbear.net
    Kieselguhr [none/use name] @hexbear.net

    Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (pdf)

    library.fes.de /pdf-files/netzquelle/a-37891.pdf