Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star
Image is of Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset, the Israeli parliament building in Jerusalem.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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Roderic definitely in here reading the newsmega lol
lmao that comment of mine was way too pessimistic about de-dollarization to be a “Hudsonite” post.
To be fair, this dude wrote some good articles but I’ve also seen his past bickering with the MMT folks on Twitter before, which fully exposed the fact that he simply doesn’t understand monetary theory and when challenged, started to talk out of his ass about a topic that is clearly out of his depth.
Please read Capital Vol. 3, at the very least, Roderic, if you’re seeing this.
Dude should just make an acct? Where's the fun in taking pot shots from xitter
Yes but that would mean his views might get challenged by Hexbear posters. Imagine getting torn apart by Hexbears. Personally, I have learned to enjoy this process (if you know of my other account lol), but I can understand why others might not be able to take it well.
Imagine getting torn apart by Hexbears.
2 Large Sons 2:23-25, New Internationale Version
Michael Is Memed
23 From there Michael went up to .world. As he was walking along the road, some libs came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, tankie!” they said. “Get out of here, tankie!” 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a post on them in the name of the Problematic Fave. Then two hexbears came out of the woods and mauled seventy two trillion of the libs. 25 And he went on past Mount Dunk and from there returned to the Newsmega.
the account @Jabril@lemmygrad.ml was made 4 days ago and only has 6 comments, most of which were about the hexbear roderic day community
The pot would like the kettle to know that shitposting isn’t praxis
No link because I’m a lib and the grad are friends
lol if this is him his talking about himself in the 3rd person here lol
Look you all should like Roderic Day, he is nice and smart and really attractive, okay?
Watch yourself or you're going in the dunk tank
shit how could I be so obvious...
Hello fwiend
Wait are you Roderick for real or are ya just pulling our leg?
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hewo
I absolutely have critiques of Hudson (just off the top of my head, he's reflexively anti-Stalin and he's not very revolutionary in his views; and not sure if I even want to know the takes of an 85 year old guy on current social issues) but I think @shipwreck@hexbear.net said it best with "He's the only Trot I trust."
I just find it very difficult to take the work of somebody who's been in all these American financial institutions and is like "Hey, here's how they do things and how American imperialism ticks along from my perspective on the inside. The CIA's bought my books so they clearly think I've got their strategy down" and just dismiss that viewpoint.
That being said, I like a lot of Roderic Day's work too and it's influenced my thinking (hello, if you're reading this!) so I hate to see my besties fighting
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He’s the only Trot I trust
China Mieville’s book October is very good. A very readable account of (part of) the revolution.
Actually Trotsky’s book about the revolution is pretty good too, at least the part of it I read.
Anti-Hudson post has "communism is anti-Semitism because they talk about wealthy elites" energy
sure but Hudson isn't talking about communism, he is a PB white guy who made a lot of money from banks and oil companies who writes about economics and intentionally posts his works on a fascist website.
And Roderic is some pasty white Canadian settler who malded about indigeneity being "Heideggerian" despite various Indigenous people repeatedly telling his mayo ass to stfu and read an anticolonial work.
I’m not sure what he’s even implying
I don't think he understands what he is implying either. Roderic day is a bit of a clown from what I have seen of him. Maybe he does good work occasionally but I've never seen it and can't be bothered looking through the below average ranting to find any hidden gems.
The 2 quotes have nothing to do with each other one is shipwreck doing analysis which may or may not be influenced by Hudson's writing. The other is a mediocre takedown of Hudson as a person without any real analysis of his actual opinions. I don't really see how the second post is even "actualy anti-capitalist" its just "antihudson"
Just look at redsails. I find his Twitter often super difficult to parse (I'm also unsure what these two have to do with one another), and he's abrasive, but his work on redsails is really some of the best articles and collections relevant to current events and arguments. He's not some clown. If you just ask him, I'm sure he will answer about how they're related, and based on his track record, it'll likely be at least worth your time to understand
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Maybe he is a smart guy and maybe he has read a ton of theory but I feel that he jumps to conclusions without laying his ground work. He follows that with poor responses to criticism and petty bickering with anyone who disagrees with him. He spends lots of effort to tell people he thinks their ideas are wrong without addressing the ideas themselves and why they are or are not wrong. In my limited exposure to him I have come to see him as a show boater and I get the distinct impression he thinks that he is far more intelligent than he is.
I have read some stuff and it feels like he decides what he wants and then makes up the reasoning and arguments after. That's bad dialectics.
Marx started with the most basic idea and expounded bit by bit, then he put each layer on top of that and made sure it was all lined up before moving on to the next one. This is why the first few chapters of Kapital are so hard, not because they are complex but because they are so stupidly simple it is like watching paint dry but if you don't start at the beginning and work with those stupidly simple ideas you aren't building on a solid foundation. If you don't make sure everything is lining up as you go your gonna realize shit isn't square.
The specific Roderic Day that really bothered me failed at this. Early on he makes a statement as if it is axiomatic and it didn't sit right with me. I reread it again because maybe I misunderstood and it still rang false. He didn't reference where the idea came from or even explain it he just expect me to take it as "truth." I tried to push past that and before I'm even through the opening I realize he is hanging part or the entirety of his thesis on that point that he just pulled out of his ass that doesn't resonate with what I know.
More like Rode-a-dick Gay hah gotteem
:nick-mullen-portrait:
Don't know a lot about Unz Review so if Hudson has actually said anything antisemitic I'd like that to be pointed out.
Is it fair to discount his ideas? because dumbass Nazis can take anything saying "hey rich people tend to have power and that's bad" and force that into their Global Judeo Conspiracy box. I'm sure you could find Nazis who would even quote Marx uncharitably, On the Jewish Question is very commonly misunderstood and reframed in ways Marx had no intention for.
I think Hudson's takes on early Christianity and debt are interesting historically and I have enjoyed reading them, especially put into the context of bronze age class struggles between farmers/debtors and creditors, how palace economies were a sort of proto command economy, what the role of "tyrants" were and the debt reformers of the Roman period, etc. Ancient slave and pre slave societies are something I haven't read a lot of Marxist analysis on (or even much class analysis as such) and so I feel exploring the material origin of debt has historical merit.
Hudson is focused on debt and this is both a strength and a weakness of his. It's not entirely wrong to frame the current age of capital in terms of debt since it's a form of economic penance I would bet almost everyone here has first or second hand experience with. But it is true that his critiques of capital are not particularly cutting, and this framing prevents a more full encapsulation of capitalism.
ramble
For a higher view I have been looking more to Michael Roberts lately, currently halfway through the book Capitalism in the 21st Century: Through the Prism of Value
What is important to understand is why debt is risen so highly to prominence in the west alongside various rent seeking behaviours, financialisation/rise of the FIRE sector which Hudson mentions, and a general stagnation of economic life for the last few decades. This is because capital must operate within certain laws, one of these is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
Firms in capitalism are constantly trying to increase their surplus value relative to their competition, and there are many ways to do this. One way of accomplishing this is with new technology. Imagine you and I are competing cloth makers. I produce cloth by hand, and you have a spinning jenny. Who will produce more commodities in a given time, be able to price their cloth lower, and therefore succeed in the market? I will have no choice but to either adopt the spinning jenny, or be forced out of business. Now, imagine someone else comes along with a steam powered cloth loom...
So capitalism has historically been real good at replacing human labour (variable capital) with machine work (constant capital) in order to temporarily increase a given firms profits. Over time the ratio of constant capital and variable capital (called the organic composition of capital) will tend in favour of constant capital, and the relative investment in labour falls. Astute Marx-enjoyers cry out - "Now hold on, I thought only human labour could produce value?" That is right and is exactly the contradiction capital falls into during its technological race.
As capitalists put relatively more surplus value into constant capital rather than variable capital, relatively less labour is employed to produce surplus value and the overall rate of profit falls, even as the mass of profits may rise. Put another way, if the organic composition of capital (how many machines there are) rises faster than the rate of surplus value (how much juice that can be squeezed out of a worker) then the rate of profit falls. This tendency eventually manifests a crisis in which capitalists have to find a way to juice their profits back up.
Note that this is only a tendency, and that capitalists can employ a few different tricks to temporarily stop and even reverse this process.
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lower labours costs of living (
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They can increase relative surplus value and pay people less and less and make them work harder (has a limit as paying too little means your workers die)
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try to increase absolute surplus and make people work longer (only so many hours in a day. also people die.)
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use foreign trade profits (harder and harder in a multipolar world)
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They can go abroad and enter less technologically intensive countries and appropriate surplus value that way. (ditto)
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they can flee into speculating on fictitious capital where the points are made up and the rules don't matter (this is by and large the stock market and FIRE sector fyi)
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war, and destroy all the constant capital like ww2 europe
This is why the capitalists are doing the things Hudson talks about, western capital is stuck in a drawn out sinking of profit rates and, as they are not leashed a la China, flee into things like finance, bitcoin, nft, saudi golf course ice sculptures, wework, internet and technology startups, whatever the fuck promises a way to juice your rate of profit. Industrialisation is gone, China makes everyone's shit already and what's left here is basically the high fructose corn syrup version of capitalism
Just to be clear, I don't know Hudson personally and haven't heard him say anything antisemitic. I am looking at all the info I have as someone that doesn't know him (PB academic, long history paid by banks and oil companies, has chosen to post on a fascist website for many many years and was made aware of it and said he'd investigate and chose to stay, doesn't write about anything revolutionary - just economics, gets a lot of traction on the left over the last few years with the idea that the US needs to reindustrialize as if supporting industrial capitalists against financial capitalists will save the US economy, writes about jews being financiers who killed jesus to keep their jewish financial control...) and the pattern starts to become pretty clear.
The reality of bigotry, antisemitism especially, is that people can learn and harbor it their whole lives without ever realizing it. They can replicate and disseminate it and explain it in ways that might seem logical, couching it in what they believe to be totally unrelated, but really be driven by it on a fundamental level. It did not take many Jewish comrades of mine very long to get red flags from the info that is available about Hudson that I mentioned above, to many Jewish people it was pretty obvious pretty quickly when he was self publishing on a website that literally has schematics for gas chambers on it.
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