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MarxMadness

@ MarxMadness @lemmygrad.ml

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3 yr. ago

  • Thoughts on Zohran Kwame Mamdani?

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  • https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/zohran-mamdani-stephen-colbert-israel-gaza-b2776390.html

    “Does the state of Israel have the right to exist?” the host asked him.

    “Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist – and a responsibility also to uphold international law,” he answered.

    ...

    “The conclusion I’ve come to, they’re the conclusions of Israeli historians like Amos Goldberg. They are echoing the words of an Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who said just recently: ‘What we are doing in Gaza is a war of devastation.

    “‘It is cruel, it is indiscriminate, it is limitless, it is criminal killing of civilians.’ These are the conclusions I have come to.”

    That answer was also met with cheers and applause from Colbert’s audience.

    Mamdani was rebuked by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last week after he expressed the opinion that the slogan “globalize the intifada” was a legitimate expression of Palestinian advocacy.

    That's not zionism.

  • Read Theory Like Your Survival Depends On It (It Does)

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  • There are three types of conspiracy theories:

    1. Lizard people live in the hollow earth and mind control world leaders
    2. The CIA admitted it on the Congressional record 40 years ago
    3. The Enemy of the State zone, where it's plausible but unconfirmed

  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • rumors of a massacre in the Square would be easy to dispel if foreign journalists were allowed to stay and film. but protests were an embarrassment to China, and China sweeps embarrassments under the rug.

    We don't know how many people U.S. police kill every year, and you could fill volumes with all the other horrible stuff our government does that only leaks out decades later. Governments being shy about publicizing embarrassments is a government thing, not a Chinese thing.

    The specifics of the incident are murky overwhelmingly due to one reason: the western world decided to mythologize it. The vast majority of western discussion on it now falls into two camps: right-wingers who deliberately spread the most lurid campfire stores imaginable (10,000 deaths! Tanks ground people into paste!), and liberals who lazily repeat inaccuracies and falsehoods that are occasionally more plausible (e.g., the legacy media doing this in the Columbia Journalism Review article). Some academics and leftists will try to sort through all this garbage, but they are the distinct minority.

  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • "It's the voters who are wrong, not my genocidal policies"

    "Hey why aren't people voting for me, wait, come back"

  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • I have extreme anxiety talking to people I find attractive and have a very hard time reading people’s body language as to when they’re sexually interested, the only time I’ve ever managed to pick up a random person has been basically when I acted like a pick up artist.

    Just ask them, word for word, "do you want to go on a date sometime?" It's no more anxiety-inducing than anything else, and you don't have to do any weird pick up artist stuff.

    If they are actually interested in you, they'll say yes.

  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • My point was that China ordered the army to do what they did.

    What's your source for this? Had they been ordered to shoot a bunch of protesters, why would they have let protesters in the square leave peacefully?

    The much more likely scenario is soldiers were met with deadly violence at some point and -- as most armed people who face deadly violence will do -- opened fire.

    I'm not making an argument about what violence was justified and what wasn't. I'm pointing out that the facts we agree on contradict your claim that there was some top-down order to massacre people, and that you haven't provided any support for that claim in the first place.

  • [Video] LA cops force their horses to run over protester

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  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • Columbia Journalism Review:

    A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.

    The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.

    The resilient tale of an early morning Tiananmen massacre stems from several false eyewitness accounts in the confused hours and days after the crackdown. Human rights experts George Black and Robin Munro, both outspoken critics of the Chinese government, trace many of the rumor’s roots in their 1993 book, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement. Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of the square. The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness. Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. Student leader Wu’er Kaixi said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described allegedly occurred.

  • Americans that are in the armed forces, What is the current feeling inside it?

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  • I'm certainly not getting my hopes up, but this being in LA instead of Kabul might have a significant effect on how willingly the rank-and-file will just open up on a crowd.

    There's a big Navy base in San Diego; some of the Marines are probably coming from there. Some probably grew up in California, more probably visited LA at some point. Going a few hours to a place where people speak your language and there is an In-and-Out Burger down the street is very different from going halfway across the world to a place where you recognize little and understand far less.

  • Israel is demanding that she signs an illegal deportation order, Even though they were kidnapped on international waters and being held hostage inside Israel.

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  • The U.S. is an empire, and Israel is it's largest military outpost in the Middle East. Israel also gives the U.S. deniability: Israel can do things that align with U.S. interests (e.g., various attacks on Iran), but the U.S. doesn't risk blowback to the same degree it would if the U.S. pulled the trigger itself.

    This is why the U.S. generally supports everything Israel does, only pulling the leash when Israel's actions start to get inconvenient.

    The late state empire problem the U.S. is facing now is that it's stocked its government with too many true believers to recognize this dynamic. They just support Israel full stop now, no matter what Israel does, no matter if (as Democrats just saw) it costs your party an election. Trump is surrounded by these true believers, but doesn't give a shit about anything himself and only understands self-interest, so where we go from here is up in the air.

  • Greta Thunberg refuses to watch Oct. 7 footage after flotilla stopped

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  • According to Defense Minister Israel Katz, the activists refused to continue watching the film after seeing the brutality of the attacks.

    So this headline is probably a lie.

  • Greta Thunberg kidnapped on Gaza flotilla; videos show Israeli forces hijacking Madleen

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  • It's simultaneously:

    1. The broader U.S. imperial apparatus (e.g., the State Department) understands Israel's importance for the U.S. and backs it for that reason
    2. All sorts of minor U.S. politicians who don't really influence foreign policy face a major hurdle from AIPAC if they don't sufficiently support Israel

    The U.S. is predominantly running the show, but Israel has agency too, and its state policy involves filtering out U.S. politicians who might oppose its interests as early as possible. This includes a massive amount of pro-Israel propaganda intended for mainstream consumption, harassing professors at colleges, etc.

  • Why Recognizing Palestine Is Dangerous

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  • The outcome you describe is basically South Africa, right? That's probably the closest point of comparison.

  • 40% of settlers say that they are considering leaving the occupation. Here is what is keeping them there.

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  • I understand your point, that's why I said you have one. I'm saying it can be made without implying you aren't really a worker if you make art or work in an office.

  • 40% of settlers say that they are considering leaving the occupation. Here is what is keeping them there.

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  • You have a point, but we're getting close to "it's not a Real Job unless you wear overalls and carry lunch to work in a pail" territory.

  • Not like anyone wants to shoot up in a bathroom

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  • What about this: give homeless people homes

  • One thousand three hundred of occupied Palestine’s academics call to end Gaza war, citing moral collapse

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  • The best comparison remains apartheid South Africa. This might well end in a wider war, but it's possible that we'll see a less destructive end, too.

  • problem is not Netanyahu, it is not Ben Gvir. it is the white supremacist mindset of Israeli public.

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  • or chose to look the other way.

    "Or" is carrying a lot of weight here.

  • I suck at converting liberals

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  • don’t actively seek out recruits

    Seems pretty contrary to building a mass movement.

    I think the better approach is to talk about leftist approaches to political issues whenever those issues pop up, just don't push too hard/get into struggle sessions. That doesn't convince anyone and it only exhausts you. Put another perspective on the table besides capitalist realism and talk to people to the extent they're interested.