"losses based on data from rural towns"

What does this mean and how would someone be able to verify these numbers?

Barring some unforeseen demographic situation in the electoral college

What do you mean by that?

Computer science isn't science

Why not?

Fun fact! In the Netherlands, Elsevier publishes a weekly magazine about politics, which is basically the written version of Fox News for that country. Very nice that those people control like 50% of all academic publishing.

Thank you!

Do you remember where you read that?

protesting over something so insignificant and inconsequential

Yes and no. The thing itself is small and inconsequential, but the subtext is a protest in favour of joining the EU and joining Schengen. The fact that relatively important EU-politicians are there to speech to the protesters makes that all the more clear.

(Imagine the opposite: like the head of the foreign affairs committe of Belarus talking to anti-governement-protsters in a EU-country. They'd be kicked out of the country immediatly and Belarus got themselves some extra sanctions.)

Psy was revealed to be singing metal songs advocating for the killing and torture of American soldiers as revenge for the murders of Koreans and Iraqis

Hahaha, no fucking way. Can you link that?

our pressure isn't working

That's not true. Evergreen state college is divesting because of student demands. Basically every university in Spain as well, in Belgium the Free University of Brussels is divesting and in Ireland Trinity college as well. This is just the beginning.

You're forgetting PTB-PVDA: the only marxist-leninst party in Europe with amazing poll numbers. Currently around second place (in a landscape with twelve parties) in the polls for the election in June.

1. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves, including militarily. That is not in dispute.

2. Civilian casualties are always regrettable. Resistance ideally targets the state's apparatus of repression.

3. Just as there were white South Africans who took a role in resisting apartheid, there are Israeli Jews doing so now.µ

4. It is indeed important not to alienate liberals. We are at a point where we are gaining wider support among the masses. The size of the protest and the extent to which it is supported by broad sections of the population do matter.

5. Pro-Hamas slogans have no positive role in the current wave of protests. Why do we protest? To achieve concrete victories that complicate Israeli imperialism (and in the process grow revolutionary organisations), in casu cease cooperation with Israeli universities (which often have ties to the military) and to disinvest in that country. These things are achievable, which we know because similar demands have already won in quieter contexts. However, shouting pro-hamas slogans now unnecessarily alienates us from people who agree with our demands.

6. People's political consciousness follows from their lived experience. If they see or experience repression at a protest with demands they agree with, their political awareness will progress by leaps and bounds. The chances of that happening because of a slogan is much smaller.

7. Hamas was supported for years by the Israeli state because it was to their advantage to divide the Palestinian resistance and it was a strategic goal to limit the influence of revolutionary Marxists. This has been partially successful.

8. Despite the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance, we should also be aware of who is organising the resistance and what kind of society they want to create. In the Iranian revolution, the communist party collaborated with the religious movement. Immediately after the revolution, the communists were massacred by the clerics. The society Hamas wants to create is not the one Marxists aspire to. So why alienate yourself from potential allies in your immediate environment by unequivocally supporting Hamas?

9. A quote from Lenin to end of with:

“[If we] were to make “recognition of the dictatorship” a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly “Left” slogans.

The same atittude towards pro-Palestinian protesters who are currently insufficiently revolutionary can be witnessed in this thread.

Please do not use Wikipedia as a source.

I know wikipedia has it's problems, but where else can you follow South-African polls? I just think it always provides a nice overview of polls in any country. Very happy to hear other suggestions!

This is a bastardized reading of Mao

Here's what PFLP has to say about the authors of that text:

On behalf of the fighters, cadre, members and Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, we extend our comradely greetings to every member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. As the relationship between our organization and yours grows stronger, we would like to congratulate you for your revolutionary work (...) The challenge of upholding Marxist-Leninist principles in the main imperialist country of the world is a difficult one. But FRSO has done so admirably, and the PFLP is proud to have you as partners in the worldwide M-L movement for socialist revolution.

I'm afraid you're gonna stay a very lonely anti-imperialist in that way.

Here's a quote from Some Points on The Mass Line for you:

Start from where people are at. Since building the struggle is at the core of our agenda, we can then proceed to outline some key principles and methods of work. The first is that our starting point needs to be the felt needs and wants of the masses of people. Good intentions will not do in this case. They might bring us to the demonstration, but we are likely to be lonely there. So to build struggle, we had better have a handle on what these felt needs are and what people are likely to do in order to achieve them. We have probably all been in meetings where some particular is under discussion, and somebody jumps up and says, “The real issue is X or Y.” Maybe that person is extremely insightful or maybe they are dead wrong (more likely). It really does not matter, we need to start from where people are at.

when the DA (white liberal opposition party) loses their official opposition status in the next elections this year. There is a huge chance of this happening.

Why do you think that? It's not evident from the polls

Thank you very much for taking the effort to link the source!

Michael Hudson talked about how he was approached by the State Department to work with them after Super-imperialism was published, and at first he was a bit worried because of his Marxist background. He said that once they learned about his actual family history (his father was a Trotskyist labor leader in Minneapolis and he himself is the godson of Trotsky) they were like, “ok, good, not a threat to us.”

No fucking way. That's incredible. Do you still have that interview lying around?

The current elite in Indonesia came to power by desposing the left-wing nationalist Sukarno and by murdering 2 million people suspected of being members of the Communist Party. It had 1 million members at that time. To this day, the perpetrators of that genocide walk around freely, and are celebrated as heroes for "saving the nation" from the "communist traitors". There's a museum which celebrates the genocide of the communists and the purpetrators are often on TV talking about how they murdered the inhabitants of village X or Y because it was a hotbed of communism.

For those who want to learn more about this forgotten history, read The Jakarta Method, a book about the Indonesian Genocide and how it functioned as a model for anti-communists all over the Globe (Guatemala, Chile...) and watch the film The Act of Killing, in this film a couple of participants are asked to reenact their killing of communists for a documentary (which they happely do, and in painstaking detail, because the only feedback they're accustomed to is praise for their acts) which provides a horryfying insight into the way the killing of our comrades is looked at. It's basically impossible to watch the film in Indonesia, to quote wikipedia.

it is highly risky to submit The Act of Killing, titled Jagal in Indonesian, to the Film Censorship Board, since the probability of it being banned would mean Indonesians can face charges for watching the film, and allowing paramilitary groups to heckle screenings

horrible

Belgium had something similar until 1883 ("werkmanboekje", for those who are curious), when it was abolished under pressure of socialist trade-unions. Honestly can't believe such an idea is making a comeback.