hey its me 矛盾 remade because I lost my pw to hard drive failure woops
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cio of chen weihua fanclub 👺 she/they tme
since Electric Antifada was mentioned earlier... ok so I'm not super familiar with them and I'm not pointing fingers at them specifically, just English-language news media overall, but - maybe a bit conspiracy theory-brained of me, but - I'm questioning where this wave is coming from. China and Russia have been nothing but consistent, and really this is nothing unusual, especially to people who have been actually paying attention and ability to remember milestone events.
the tumblrinas I've seen buoy the "China and Russia are traitors" thing have been, yes, the usual suspects (anticommunist leftists/people with "tankie" as a pejorative in their vocab, tho lately they've been nitpicking since I guess they now identify as 'tankie' and been using "chinese/russian nationalists" as their pejorative, and just straight-up leftcoms) but among them are people who I distinctly recall espousing afro-pessimism* and calling other tumblr users from the periphery (particularly latam) "antiblack" for using the word "usamerican" (to distinguish US americans from other people who live in both continents) -- and for a long time I've suspected these people to be plants at worst but more likely convenient stooges to vector anticommunism and disunity - against budding communists in the imperial core to make connections with those either more seasoned or from the periphery. UGH, name-calling is just such an easy way to shut down peoples' brains and stop them from turning on analysis functions and critical thinking or even just looking for sources.
*uh oh I'm feeling ranty again... alright. you've been warned. afropessimism. whenever and wherever I bump into it, it makes me feel like im going insane, like these people will go onto xiaohongshu and tell chinese people they're all racist against black people because they think chinese people are basically white which automatically makes them antiblack, ,, antiblackness is king, it's above all and it's immutable, but also it's incomparable to racism that nonblack people experience and because they could never intimately understand or experience real true racism at the heart of this world which is antiblackness. please, tell me more about how oppressed peoples of the world could never understand each other and should be forever divided, until maybe some world savior perhaps of the black variety instead of white comes to liberate us all. did i ever mention that afropessimists hate marxism for some reason, hm, maybe that's by design!! maybe, just maybe someone doesn't want a Black Panther Party 2.0, reading ML literature and all, to come back in the heartland of imperialism (edit for moderation: black struggles are real and hard! and yes I can't say I fully understand because I don't live it but it doesn't mean I or any other nonblack folk can't try to understand, including understanding enough to make a difference, and nor is it the struggle that has primacy over all others)
I'm of the opinion (echoing analysis I've seen recently but can't remember who said it, sorry) that a veto in this particular case is actually worse than abstaining because
- playing field for diplomacy is and must be states as the entities - if you go with smaller factions organized in forms that aren't recognizable as such to an international body, we get into shit and muddied fields such as enemies making deals diplomacy etc with separatist groups. Palestinian resistance groups are many and not exactly cohesive as acting as one state-resembling unit and while the 2024 Beijing Declaration had got many of them together, right now most of the international body still sees the Palestinian Authority, which we know are collaborationist with the Zionist entity, as the defacto representative of Palestine. Sticking with the principle of doing diplomacy with states as the actor-entities, aligns with China's steadfast and consistent call for the Two-State solution. This is a thing that has been unpopular since Day 0 with the pro-Palestine crowd in the western left (who I think see the word "solution" and think that would be the end of it and that Palestine would mire in perpetual genocidal relation with its neighbor like Armenia-Azerbaijan, rather than statehood being a very powerful tool!), something I think is quite relevant to this whole shebang. All that as a preface to say, the responsibility and burden to free Palestine should ALSO rest with their neighbors, their cultural brethren-Arab nations. It would be paternalistic/patronizing and against the spirit of respecting other nations' sovereignty (foundational to anti-imperialism) - which would include what happens in ones' neighborhood - to VETO when other Arab states in MENA have voted FOR this plan - HI ALGERIA!!! If more MENA states would have shown up for AGAINST then China and Russia would have more reason to back that consensus and VETO. And in everything but especially in the arena of diplomacy, China (and Russia) cannot simply decide they represent the will of anyone other than themselves including MENA, including Arab nations, including Palestinians. IDK maybe I'm stupid but I think principles with very good reasons should be upheld AND it's not a betrayal because literally the UN/UNSC isn't the only playing field omg because...
- ...obviously China and Russia have more material and meaningful ways to support Palestine outside of the UN/UNSC
- even if the proposal clearly penned by the US that 'passed' is vague and only reports infrequently (iirc it calls for yearly stats reported to the UN/UNSC/appropriate division i think its just called BoP), that's still better than them going ahead with their nefarious plans completely behind closed doors in the dark.
the rock I live under has a time dilation device preinstalled (non-negotiable, un-tinker-able), what about you?
regarding China, I recommend the articles & education pages that Qiao Collective has collated (and some of their larger ones are stuffed full of credible sources including ones from western media for those still skeptical). The 101 for socialism with chinese characteristics (under /education) is pretty good.
I'm sorry none of these are short, however.
However I also don't think short quips without sourcing are good for dispelling short generalizations like "expansionism==imperialist"(for that specifically, gotta point to Grandad Lenin's Imperialism The Highest Stage of Capitalism, to explain/define rather than to correlate by appearances*, right. And also that, the last expansion/border skirmish of China was almost 50 years ago, so China=expansionism==imperialist doesn't even work -- unless the people you're talking to are considering Taiwan not part of China, which Taiwan doesn't even agree - only recently has there been a TW separatism movement. Actually, thinking about it, western propaganda regarding China and painting it as "expansionist" is a good segue back to Qiao Collective. They have good resources particularly for the balkanization/separatism claims of parts of China including but not limited to HK, Taiwan, Xinjiang""East Turkmenistan"", Tibet, and also explainers for BRI also -- my tldr for BRI is that it's a multitool that does many things in regards to anti-imperialism, from eroding US dollar hegemony to assisting materially in development for underdeveloped places)
*I know it's sisyphean talking to western leftists and even newbie commies but. god. why is it so common for people's understanding of imperialism being, like, aesthetic. Imperialism is when bigger country does anything with/to another smaller country. By virtue of power imbalance, there wasn't real consent it means the smaller party was coerced. Expansionism means not just territory acquisition it also means spreading influence and making allies. It's frankly absurd.
I've been too busy to engage that much in social media these days. I've mentioned it offhand before but usually my main haunt is tumblr and I've made many "mutuals" (friends, I suppose) with communists(many whose stripes arent super apparent, but I thought I've been good at filtering out hohxaists trots and generally leftcoms) and leftists (mainly the anti-imperialist sort, avoid the anarchists and anticivs, naturally) - most of them lgbt - from both imperial core and periphery.
Anyways I've been relatively inactive(by my metrics) over there for about a month but had some more time than usual yesterday and, well, I shouldn't be so so surprised but turns out a lot of my mutuals (and I've very selective about who I decide to follow) who I thought were more ML really showing their leftcom colors in regards to the recent UNSC vote regarding Palestine. I've even got one calling anyone who "defends" China anything from "Chinese nationalists(bad)" to "traitors to internationalism" to "actually you're a Zionist"... very disappointed. Emotionally charged idealism over materialism (<- to be fair this is also common in Chinese social media too. maybe these tumblr leftcoms might be surprised that a lot of people they would denounce as "chinese nationalists" are unhappy with how conservative Chinese diplomacy is, and have been very upset about restraint in open direct support to Palestine - though lately of course their attentions have largely been on Japan wanting to (re)annex Taiwan - but I digress)
(Context:
yes Hamas asked China and Russia for a veto in UNSC.Correction below. China and Russia abstained. But if even Algeria and other Arab states who are actually in the same region would not vote against TRUST then why should China be expected to go against the consensus of the other Arab states in the area? Why should anyone expect China to turn into interventionist-style diplomacy, USA-style but communist?)IDK, maybe I'm belittling what's happening but, why would anyone care That much about the farce/kayfabe/circus that is the UN/UNSC. Why does that feel like it's SUPER BIG to them and why have they literally forgotten things like the 2024 Beijing Declaration or brokering and re-establishing relations between Saudi and Iran, i dunno, like the Real diplomacy in MENA (which, surprise surprise, should include MENA states involved. emphasis states, unfortunately, that's the playing field). Why do western leftists get all the excuses when we have failed to reduce/eliminate support for the settler colonial project and literal weapon shipments to Israel but when China doesn't show their cards in the circus lions den and none of the other Arab states don't show either, suddenly aww China is a comprador, China is selfish, is imperialist collaborator (bwuh???), BRI is imperialism with chinese characteristics (if China doesnt bleed herself out in order to uplift global south nations then it's not anti-imperialist, or at least, it's not anti-imperialist enough), China is ~ Zionist ~ (lmao????), China is supplying a genocide (supposedly this statement is because China continues to trade with Israel, and has contracts building civilian port infrastructure. but??!? literally what are we doing here, running the NYT Atlantic? applying zionist logic that civilian infrastructure is also military infrastructure and legit war targets? US/West is supplying the weapons and tech. China does not sell or provide Israel with weapons). I can't believe I've seen all these things come out of self-id'd anti-imperialist communists the last two days. That said, it's only a portion of people, plenty of comrades have been reasonable about it.
Anyway, I'm glad to not see that kind of nonsense discourse appear here. Thanks for reading my small rant
edit: nvm lol. everyone's acting like Russia and China voted FOR if they didn't veto (they both abstained). anyway you can actually read what China has said about their reasonings here instead of thinking or saying frankly weird stuff like "china is zionist"
2nd edit/correction: this is on me for not seeking primary sources and just relying on what the naysayers were saying. Palestinian groups did not ask for it to be vetoed specifically, but asked for it to be condemned and an alternative put forth (Russia is doing that/has penned one) and yes Russia and China both abstained and condemned it. Now I'm even more confused why people were so mad. PFLP's statement | I can't find a definitive statement BEFORE the vote was called from Hamas - if anyone has it, please point me to it thanks
I'm not fully versed on TCM but as chinese diaspora/being casually exposed to parts of it, I know it's some serious stuff (as in, definitely has effects. that I have personally experienced..) and it's not "Just" "traditional" (connotation: some ancient rites that have never changed or evolved in use/practice). Also my layman understanding is that TCM and general culture regarding health/healthcare is that TCM is more preventative in nature, while attitudes about western ("modern") medicine is that it's for ailments/conditions that require immediate attention or reactive in nature... Additionally it's important to note that TCM and western medicine aren't in conflict, or at least it's discouraged for people to believe that TCM is superior or should be the sole mode of healthcare to follow, if that makes sense (I have to note this because in the west I believe it's very common for pseudoscientific/cultish "alternative medicine" to purport that all of modern medicine is bogus or unreliable while their alternative practice is superior).
Also I don't have links on hand but iirc there have been modern scientific medical research into aspects of TCM, such as acupuncture being better than placebo for specific conditions... oh, and my personal observation that dermarolling and microneedling have an odd resemblance to guasha (tho I also see influencers/beauty bloggers telling people to use both/all. two comments: beauty industry has been ramping into skincare/dermatology territory for a while now... also the facial version of guasha popularized by beauty industry/influencers both eastern and western is Different from TCM guasha, which leaves marks that should fade relatively quickly).
Lastly I'll die on this hill: TCM is [mostly]* real medicine while chiropractice is full-on quackery. *moxibustion spooks me and I have the least confidence about that. also cupping
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writing this post made me actually look up cupping, even if only briefly, which I thought was a TCM-only thing, but I learned that cupping and different variants are used in health practices associated with other non-sinosphere cultures, specifically wet cupping which I had never heard of until today. also learned that cupping wasn't prevalent in TCM until 1950s ??
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//not really TCM related but recently I saw a post floating on rednote that was like "[foreign visitor posting]: I noticed yall don't really use pain medications even ibuprofen, what's up with that" and many cn responses being something to the tune of "don't need to mask the pain in order to keep going, we try to find and treat the cause not the symptom eg pain. only use pain medications when it's very hard/impossible to cure the cause such as chronic conditions"
Right on. Sorry if I misread what was intended to be voiced from "average centrist" pov, there's been a ton of ai/tech reactionary buzz even among nominally "communist" circles recently, to the point where I'm even irked when people call generative tools "slop machines" in the same way they say "chinese goods" to insinuate cheap/bad product, when it's like, that's what you (or rather, walmart and amazon and they've monopolized and limited what alternative options you have) ordered the cheapest crap (for highest markup). Does nobody remember handmade slop content farms like 5minutecrafts? Same "market forces" (if you wanna call it that) are just ordering the same "slop" just from different sources, it's not like before genai came to wider prominence there was actually that much less "slop" and un-factual/poor quality/misleading content.
um. factories [physical and organizational structures of productive labor] aren't a "means of oppression". Capitalists owning them and workers not having control or ownership of the conditions, operations, product etc of them are the "means of oppression", not the factories themselves. Do we at the 'grad need a rehash of marxism/ML basics...?
so like... were these all diaspora from the fleeing aristocrat/theocrat class when the theocracy was ousted (obligatory "my recent ancestor had a monopoly on all eggs in china and the see see pee is evil" screenshot, except replace it with "my recent ancestor owned human skin drums of ritual importance") or..?
anyway "I cry for freedom thousands of miles away while my country is inhabited by a language that is foreign to us" while congregating on the anglophone webbed site
I don't have personal experience here, but something I looked into for myself in the past (and don't currently have much opportunity to get into atm) as a starting point is workforwater.org -- more or less similar advice re:look at prospective career paths specific to what you're looking for. That website/org seems to have a (nation)wide but not super deep network to help connect mentors, apprenticeships/ish (depending on the role/location), and intern programs, at least for both water utilities and wastewater treatment industry. Either way, it's a leg up in terms of networking for that specific area. Many of the higher positions require engineering, although I can't recall if it's mechanical or civil or either/both.
Just thought to put it out there in case you had some interest in that field, infrastructure might be crumbling in this country but it's still sorely needed, and will be needed always... so, points for job availability and stability.
Dark factories sounds really awesome (best bet would be mechanical->robotics or electrical??) but unless you plan to leave the US I can't see heavy or innovative automation getting off the ground here unless it's under the graces of bezos or musk or their ilk, or a startup looking to eventually get acquired by venture capital (this is an extremely precarious position to be in, startups fail all the time but even when they "succeed" eg get bought out, your position may be eliminated in the acquisition process).
obligatory posting quote from han suyin (specifically, a mortal flower 1966) regarding [western] sinology
spoilered for suicide mention
One evening in March 1965, I was at the University of Columbia Library of East Asian studies in New York. There, upon the steel shelves, were the publications delineating the beginning and the growth o the Chinese Communist Party. With almost hysterical passion, with an ecstasy of hatred akin to love, the American experts on China seek to document China for themselves. China is an abiding passion with them, they scarcely talk or think of anything else. And the phenomenon, so unexpected, of an Asian nation driven to the depths of abject misery, and rising again so swiftly, against all the rules and maxims of their expertise, is a frustration “which makes them foam at the mouth,” as my friend Colonel David Barrett writes. “We can never forget that we lost China, we’re going crazy about it, we’re half insane, like people who kill what they cannot possess and then commit suicide.
wanted to draw China and Japan (both of which were hostile towards the USSR) into a costly war with one-another in order to weaken them both
I mean that alone is bullshit for the time period. sino-soviet relations didn't go south before prc was even established..
I didn't say that "we should agitate people with petit bourgeois aspirations to side with the working class [their real class] via gen ai tools". I guess I got ahead of myself when I said there already have been efforts to convince artists that gen ai or tech in general isn't their enemy, corporate monopolization etc of tech however is because capitalists are;; (eg yes there should be said efforts, maybe better/more efforts in that regard. but anti-ai is very entrenched at this point)
However I did point out that these people are, influenced by a combination of (self-circulated and corporate) propaganda and their own petit bourgeois aspiring class interest (resisting acceptance of proletarian status), pitching their weight with our (and their own) class enemies; with gen ai/ai art as the driving wedge at this present moment but any new tech that reshapes the material landscape would be treated similarly -- my comment isn't about ai in particular, rather it's more about the art community in question.
Or, maybe I wasn't clear enough? Anti-ai art frenzy in the artist community is being funnelled towards support for harsher ip and trademark laws, by companies who would actually still be using gen ai but want to hoard and control (and expand) "their" datasets. Yes more people on the side of the working class is good but class traitors exist and if these people, after explaining that technology itself isn't their enemy but capitalists are, still want to be willing pawns then, well, for on,e I have better uses for my time and energy, and yeah I'd agree with m532 they're "dumbasses"
case in point: this is a project borne of the anti-ai craze: unvale.io ; here's a tumblr post they circulated (since there's a sizeable art/artist community on tumblr who are anti-ai) but digging into the replies, people are fully disambiguating the draconian, PG, family friendly TOS and pointing out that posting to their platform makes an oddly convenient place to harvest virgin (un-touched by gen ai tools) and corporate-friendly data. Not everyone looks through the notes however and plenty of people are still reblogging just the first post and "spreading word about an awesome new no-ai platform!!". Also, lol @ #supportourtroops shit :: no oct 7 or 9/11
*outside of this direct discussion there's also extreme ableism among the artist anti-ai crowds as well.
I think the anti- "anti ai artist" sentiment at least online is (or rather should?) be more directed towards the semi-hobbyist to small-business-petit-bourgeois types that pitch their weight with our class enemies, eg will side with stricter intellectual property laws to the point of agreeing that "art style" should be included in trademark/ip law. They also happen to be the loudest crowd when it comes to anti-ai art noise, to the point of also attacking and brigading professional artists who use ai tools. In my observation, the "small business owner" type artists are the most resistant to being proletarianized and act accordingly; in any case, many wage laborer artists also have self-biz hustles like online stores for periodic sketchbook/artbooks/prints (I point this out in a neutral manner not to detract from their primary[assuming] wage income but to color the discussion of petit bourgeois aspirations among the "[digital] artist" community).
I have seen efforts to "convert"/"deprogram" parts of the artist community away from supporting harsher ip laws and explain why Disney or record companies etc benefit the most and supporting harsher ip/etc does not benefit them, and in fact works to empower exploitative schemes of capitalists, but these efforts have a harder time gaining foothold amongst the typical anti-ai/ai art black-and-white views entrenched in the community, especially as call-out and cancellation brigades roll out regularly in those circles.
edit: I dunno if yall were around from deviantart to [idk what platforms certain art communities use anymore][idk artstation?] era but the absolute EASE that online "artists" throw the word "steal/theft" to apply to whatever they didn't like (petit capitalist mindset where "inspiration" becomes "mimickery" becomes "copying" becomes "stealing" eg "actually deprived me of money") has been around for decades at this point. I think there are still circles who treat tracing(for practice) and even referencing as untouchable/sacrilege.
I think this depends on where/what platforms said fandoms are on. If you're on somewhere with a lot of performative liberals, "antiship" largely ""won"" those spaces and, combined with aforementioned performatism (ie lots of virtue-signalling), naturally leads to a lot of reactionary tendencies.
edit: I should probably define stuff better. "ship" means character relationship pairings, many are "canon" as in appears in the source media, but many ships are not canon, or have altered scenarios, such as age or race or what have you. "proship" basically means, "don't like, don't read" - just leave it alone. "antiship" is its antithesis, and takes on a keyboard "social justice" warrior mantle, and demonizes ""problematic"" ships, frequently "antishippers" go around and harass fandom creators who create content they find distasteful/evil -- the most common scenario is claiming x or y thing in a fandom with fictional characters constitutes abuse, and then assuming it means the person who created depiction of said thing "supports" or does said thing IRL.
The "performative liberal" aspect - typically consists of over-emphasis of identity politics and oppression olympics, often to where their id intersections that have privilege are downplayed (whiteness, masc, cis, etc) and their underprivileged ids are forefront.
Additionally, I've noticed that fandom spaces filled with the above tend to treat Fandom as like, the Hegelian center of the world from which ideas and ideals spring forward and materialize into the real world, where the power of fiction and ideas are what shape the world we live in, rather than fiction largely being reflective of the authors inherent biases and conditional on their own relationships to structures IRL.
Combined factors above, you get people who think policing content - content type, access, availability - is their greatest duty, particularly as it signals to others about how righteous they are.