darkernations

Thanks (again)! (Never thought about telegram subscriptions as a resource for news aggregate)

Thanks for sharing these stories from the global south.

Can I ask what news aggregate source you use if any? There are sites I frequent but the only "aggregate" resource I know is MR Online.

1. It may be that faced with overwhelming bourgois societal pressures including the culture of personal capital accumultation and a liberal/fascist education system both formal (schooling) and informal (media; news and entertainment) bends one's personal worldviews towards a certain arc. Personal material wealth can of course be a factor here but one only needs to look in the west the perspective of some older poor folks and how reactionary they can be despite their experiences. Their experiences are real but they fail to understand the contradictions of their environment.

2. However, it is objectively not universally true especially when you consider the bulk of MLs in the west and global south come from backgrounds of bourgois indoctrination.

3. I suspect a significant amount of us MLs are labour aristocrats.

4. There are many older folks who are leftist educators including more famous ones whose books and articles we have read / reading, whose interviews and videos we listen and watch (I am going to include non-ML here as well because the perspective was people become more conservative as they grow older, this proves that it is certainly not the case)

5. "You can't resist for very long a truth you discover for yourself." ― Nikolai Chernyshevsky (via Roderic Day)

/edits for clarity

We only want the earth.

“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry, Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.

“ You ask too much and people fly From you aghast in wonder.”

’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth,

For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth.

(James Connelly)

So China (and Hamas) effectively helped force their hand into considering multipolarity and the most they can say is some relatively tepid condemnation at this stage; how about they stop their own trade with the fascist state, use that oil for leverage and also send reparations to Yemen (pro tip: not the puppet government)?

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/12629

Yet, at the same time, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi also stand to benefit immensely from the not-so-secret 1963 plan to build the Ben Gurion canal, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Eastern Mediterranean, arriving – what a coincidence – very close to now devastated northern Gaza.

The canal would allow Israel to become a key energy transit hub, dislodging Egypt's Suez Canal, and that happens to dovetail nicely with Israel’s role as the de facto key node in the latest chapter of the War of Economic Corridors: the US-concocted India-MidEast Corridor (IMEC).

https://thecradle.co/articles/how-turkiye-bypasses-its-own-israel-trade-ban-via-greece

Despite Ankara’s official ban on trade with Israel, data from May reveals ongoing commerce between the two states, with Greece likely acting as an intermediary to facilitate continued trade.

A lot of IMF "warnings" can be summarised as:

• you are not / may not be able to pay off the privatised national debt in the timely manner the private banks have requested

• solution is to raid public wealth even more to pay off this debt

• let's give you some funds to help with you that in the form of more privatised debt; if you are from the global south then it is your wealth we have exploited from you which we are lending back to you as a loan with interest to be paid along with some structural adjusments to help plunder your country even more. We can help you by installing our own agents in your governing bodies and if you resist our help we can encourage you with some gunboat diplomacy, sanctioning and coups.

• if you are from the imperialist core then we advise on austerity while we help you plunder the global south some more in the interim

Thank you for posting the translation.

At no point does he explain:

• how he will defend the "revolution"
• how further coups will be prevented
• how he is going to meaningfully improve democracy if he is concerned the poor only get a democratic voice every few years during election season
• how he will prevent the imperialist forces and the bourgoisie dictating economic policy

If he doesn't think one needs to read Marx or learn from Castro, Mao or Lenin then he giving the awful impression that he does not have a viable alternative. If one does not have an understanding of the status quo then how will one fight it? How will they understand lessons of the past of those who did fight it and was successful if they do not learn from them? Where is this new theory of successful political economic development that apparently supercedes Marx scientifically?

Critical support indeed.

Without understanding dialectical and historical materialism, without developing a socialist vanguard and without democratic centralism it feels like the seeds for capitulating towards fascism.

Do you know any literature you could recommend please - if possible - that explores what you said? (Well before I came across ML I have long thought the flipside of the coin you are mentioning; that capitalism brings out the worst in society, the most sociopathic and malignant characteristics of what we consider the human condition is what is amplified, promoted and successful. However, I do not have a background in philosophy and I feel I have only scratched the surface of dialectics and materialism)

Thanks for sharing; glad to see bourgois fear in a socialist country.

So much cope and weasel words in a typical liberal article.

"The large number of rich Chinese heading elsewhere could add to the strain on the nation's fragile economy"

Fragile? Based on what?

Capital flight controls appear to be an alien concept to these kind of esteemed journalists (nevermind the labour theory of value).

I am also seeing a global theme with a lot of non-western bourgoisie there appears to be an internalised inferiority complex where the ideal is to be some sort of Honorary Aryan.

It's probably worthwhile reading some Frantz Fanon at this stage to soothe the soul.

/edits: grammar/clarity

I am not sure if these are currently (ongoing inflation woes aside) competitive enough from a western market perspective given the built-in sinophobia; they have to be exceptionally good value for quality or have no meaningful competition for a chinese name brand (security cameras such as Dahua as an example amongst others, and another tangent example would be Polestar which though is owned by Geely is considered "swedish" ). However, I don't think that's the point; like you said these may be the beginning of much more competitive products given track records in all other fields.

If one takes a less eurocentric view; the above board/cpu bundle is nothing short of amazing. A middle income country while undergoing military seige, sanctions and hybrid wars is able to produce and sell a consumer product higher in the tech-chain in a market that openly declares the producing country a national enemy is market strategy all of these MBAs could not concuct in their wildest dreams. And obviously this is not the only - let alone first - example of this.

It's almost as if marxists know how to play in the game of capitalism better than liberals through a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the system.

Ironically one of the best investor's handbook over the past century still remains to be Das Kapital.

Feels like this is a good time to post some of Hakim's primers for those who are interested/curious:

What if North Korea was a democracy? (Starts at 22 seconds if you want to skip the intro, approx 30 min; can watch in 2x speed if so inclined) https://youtu.be/1f4rKycK6Gg

Why is North Korea so weird? (Approx 12 min long) https://youtu.be/EzDhqXuELjo

What is the deal with defectors? (Again approx 12 min long) https://youtu.be/vBwZjBMbsK0

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Tangent articles

On Brainwashing (1st: 17 min, 2nd: 77 min):

• https://redsails.org/brainwashing/
• https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/