Anti-colonial Marxism is as good as a country breakfast.

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Cake day: Mar 23, 2022

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I do not understand lemmy
I only care about lemmygrad.ml which as far as I know is where the comrades are. Yall are great. I came here to spew word vomit in consentrated bursts to get 3 up votes at a time. I am blissfully ignorant of technology issues or whatever the hell people are on about with reddit nowadays. I would like to avoid the normcore libs and porn distributors that are flooding the site. I use reddit for cyber bullying those types but here is like a sort of home base. How do I keep these worlds from colliding?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm lemmy go study game theory for 20 years and get back to you on this one.


Thanks for asking lol. Overall I’m doing pretty well and going places I never imagined. Id say its hard to complain, but actually all I know is criticism and I’m haunted by burnout. You know how it is.


Yeah im always curious what they think my life is worth


Interesting, but unfortunately running for president is undignified if not downright damning IMO.


The problem was that people were taking the variation that was not specifically for humans.


Not sure how any of this written diarrhea helps frame Zelensky any better.


Its never, “Country how are you doing? How are you feeling? How 'bout them [insert sportsball team]?” Its always, “Mr. Breakfast are you a white dude, or no?”

Edit: survey complete!


There have been many debates and discussions on this and in this case searching ‘Russia’ and reading through those discussions may help. Though do not read this as discouragement from asking questions. It is, understandably, a hot topic worthy of elaboration and there are plenty of people here that will be interested in answering.

Here is my take:

Russia as a nation has a class character that is more easily compared to that of developing countries than that of a core country.

The BRICS countries, especially recently, have gained steam due to the reelection of Lula in Brazil. But also because the war, and subsequent sanctions, many countries are compelled to build an alternative to the global finacial order, aka white supremacist or “western” imperialism, giving the BRICS more vigor and more direction. Russia’s role in this project is crucial. Russia may be viewed as the aggressor if you begin the story 1.5-2 years ago and ignore Donbas, but if you go back further it is not difficult to make the case this conflict began in 2014 during the coup.

The war is obviously disturbing, a major threat to global stability. It has been incredibly violent and destructive in many different ways. The war increases risk of nuclear attack, creates the surge of weapons into the region which is ending up with reactionaries committing atrocities in the Donbas region, to organized criminals and even to places much further away. Sanctions and other factors surrounding the war have caused rising energy prices and increased inflation that has hurt many countries in the global south. This is affecting people subsisting on the countryside already suffering from drought and people toiling in the metro. There is too much pressure on the masses. The war must end.

The problem is that Russia is not the only party involved and NATO will need to make concrete efforts to prove they will be able to build peace as much as Russia and Ukraine. Unfortunately, that has not played out and remains unlikely. So here we are.

I would like to add that the word “support” is commonly used in this discussion but it is not an especially useful word and by my observation is a huge source of confusion to the critics of my position and to our communities position. I do not send money to Russia. I do not send weapons or material aid. I am not a Russian citizen and thus have not voted for Putin and do not serve in the military or government. Nor have I contributed to government policy, war policy, or on the ground support as an independent contractor. Nor do I “root” for Russia as if it is a sports team or a dance contestant. Frankly, I don’t feel obligated to do so either. I have my own problems to attend to.

However, what I am in favor of is the greater project that Russia is part of which is creating a needed alternative for much of the world. I think the global masses will benifit from this process of history but will suffer if it is stopped. The threat of the this development to the imperial core is the primary reason Russia is demonized for its invasion. If they were concerned about the humanitarian crisis they would act differently and pull their weight in ending it, but they hardly even admit their role.


Why is this IdPol?

What im seeing here is that a scholar is saying the Anglo Saxon identity is effectively a retroactive construction that serves a nationalist function.

This seems pretty intuitive to me. It’s hardly the first time history has shown us that ethnicity is a social, cultural construction just as race is.


Its so crazy to me what people think about all that. People genuinely think that people in China just aren’t allowed to talk about it or know about it and will treat you as a drooling knucklehead just for saying otherwise. They don’t even know the most basic facts, the lowest hanging fruit of the ordeal. Meanwhile Americans can barley stomach their own history and move on as if there is no continuity with the present or justify it as progress.


I can’t think of a better way to lead the conspiracy theorists by the mouth than have them defend DoD and ABC institutions they traditionally are skeptical of so they can cling to their fantasy.





Honestly I have no clue what API access is and I don’t want to know but a new influx of users is fun to see


Basically rhetoric doesn’t work in that it leaves everyone vulnerable to dogma, which in turn is easily weaponized. I agree with you that some people can be swayed. But being swayed is not the same as concrete enfranchisment into a socialist or anticolonial process of history.

This is why I stress the discursive nature of politics in the US and its ostensibly civil religious form. It functions to disrupt rhetoric and enfranchise it into it’s own colonial, capitalist project. There is no rhetorical way out of this and those of us who have been swayed are actually still quite vulnerable. There must be something concrete to attach it all to and unfortunately I’m afraid we do not have this in the US and we likley will not in the near future. This is why I say there is no social infrastructure to accomplish what we need, or hope to gain through rhetoric. Without such an infrastructure we may plant seeds that will be harvested by the empire.

Fascists have it incrediblely easy. Their rhetoric synergizes well with a nation of colonizers and an environment of perpetual outrage. The “rise” (is it rising or is it just status quo) of fascism is not entirely because of rhetoric but because of history. The same history that includes a range of communist action that ranges from semi-effective, ineffectual, and even outright colonial outcomes. Fascism is politically natural here. Communism or anticolonialism, on the other hand has little to cling to beyond it’s unity and struggle with capital. This makes our rhetoric potentially dangerous. I think of the Maoist community in my area and how absolutely out of touch they are. They uphold their favorite white saviors and intentionally neglect local Indigenous voices. It’s not unlike how communists of the 19th century were often guilty of exploiting free Black labor for organizing, only to occasionally leave them high and dry when threatened by bosses. Both of these parties are saturated in rhetoric and discourse (dogma really) but what have they achieved? Colonialism.

This is why I want to direct people to more concrete issues. I would expect that by addressing real community needs a number of advantages would emerge. First, building relationships and engaging with the community will illuminate a more concrete politic that can hopefully develop into a line that the community is on board with, and a line that doesn’t align with colonial discourse. Next, you have an emerging infrastructure of information that makes it easier for the politic to grow on it’d own terms, discover it’s own vulnerabilies and weaknesses. This can bring about more awareness of the dangers of American political discourse because there is a community that it’s own collective understanding of it’s needs and can compare it to popular discourse.

Of course none of this happen seamlessly or without setbacks. The union I am in, for example, never goes hard enough with our demands and is usually unable to realize it’s potential, and the real power it has. But if we were more forceful with our demands we could alienate current and prospective members which we cannot afford to do. If we let dogma get in the way we would rip ourselves apart. Sometimes you have to live with that kind of stuff because we can’t lose what we have built up.

As for hope, it’s a tough problem and be warned I am rather callous on this issue because I think it is easily problematized. IMO it is part of the corrosive discourse. Hope is not self evident, it is not to be found, it is made. If it is not made, and if it is not yours, it is capable of betraying you. Our problems are not all always death sentances, and not as dire as those abroad. Our problems should be seen as opportunities to assess the contradictions and move forward. Americans have had it pretty damn good for a long time, and regards of current difficulties this is largely still the case. If we chase hope for its own sake, or to keep us going, we will end up harvested by colonial discourse. Hope in the US has its own imperial affectation and we must be aware of this.

Ya know, in school the hope question comes up a lot. I will notice students are frustrated to learn things aren’t looking so good. I bring this up to the professor as the TA and it gets addressed in the most awful way with techno optimism, green (or stakeholder) capitalism, sustainablility etc. One section of students will buy it, the other will descend further into melancholy. Both sections further lost in the discourse. IMO hope chasing is dangerous. If we want help we have to do it ourselves. If people aren’t willing to build it, then truly our hopelessness is merely an imperial melancholy resulting from losing privilege and is a feature of colonial discourse.


Understand the difficulties of our time and focus on concrete problems that are recognized by your community. Don’t worry too much about what people think because it can’t be changed through rhetoric. Worry more about how to meet needs of your community and if you can, use the dialectic to navigate the unknown and to avoid falling into the traps.

Its not all on you. We will likely stand little chance without action from around the world, regardless of how well considered our approach is. So don’t pressure yourself too much and learn to appreciate the little progress that might be possible in spite of our challenges.


In the US, as far as information and communication goes, we live in a burning forest with no air to breath. Personally, I can’t get too invested in what other people think. I am more interested in understanding how discourse develops so I can survive this environment and live to contribute to whatever solutions. Convincing others of my so-believed “better” politics is secondary.

Most of the political discourse in the US is harvested from both the “left” and “right” to create outrage and to muddy the waters. If I get caught up in conversations about politics, I always resent the game that has to be played because I simply do not buy into the political spectrum/compass because it is either a failure of a model for understanding politics, or political discourse as we know it is itself actually the absence of political discourse, a simulation of political understanding that ultimately serves various Americanist/Euro, capitalist ventures, sensibilities, identities, and affectations. The left and right are merely a unity and struggle of opposites that develops colonial discourse. Rather than challenge it, the left actually is a feature of it and contributes massively to it.

Whether or not this is the best way to describe it (others might try to rescue the left and that is ok but Im not convinced this is the best understanding) remains to be seen. Of course, understanding dialectical development makes it a lot easier to understand the ideological twists and turns we see. But most people are not interested in that. They want the digestible civil religious enterprise because the dialectic does not provide a means for righteousness and outrage. This goes for everyone. Self-proclaimed Marxists are guilty of this as well, certainly those that can’t get past Vladimir Putin, or Islam in Iran, or market forces in the PRC etc.

I think that politics in the US is synonymous with civil religion. It is highly antagonistic and deeply moralized. IMO the opposite of how healthy, genuine “democratic” politics should be. This is why there is no ability to disagree with the one side without also agreeing with its counterpart. For example, if you talk shit about Biden, you might be called a MAGAt or something. It’s not just that there is no room for alternative discourses or better politics. It’s that “better” or relevant politics only drives the system to adapt. Politics is a moral, and not a practical enterprise in the US. I think this is simultaneously a natural development, and yet is also maintained by power.

The semi-recent migrant caravan for example was largely a spectacle that fueled both left and right wing sentiments. It was heavily covered by the media. Activists from both sides had major roles. BLM was largely coopted by Dems and used to rile up Republicans. Virtually every other headline functions in this way, and virtually every movement gets quickly enfranchised into civil religion. Not just because power demanded it and made it happen, but also because this is the most natural thing that could happen in the US’s political environment. It is also something that has been going on for centuries on this continent.

We don’t really need the CIA to fill us with sinophobic bullshit because we are structurally, materially, and historically, sinophobic already, but this in turn makes propaganda intuitive for US propagandists, activists, and laypersons. Further, we know that the left is heavily associated with state department connections. Activists also routinely seek the spotlight and switch to different causes based on the moral value that can be extracted. It should be no surprise with USAID or some equivalent is involved and it should be no surprise that so many are willing to play these games.

We also know that climate change is both a perilous issue, and a perfect problem to weaponize. Climate change concerns have been used to legitimize imperialist international institutions while also conveniently hindering development in the periphery, which is instrumental to capital, especially as wages rise in Asia. The rhetoric around climate change is used to legitimize jingoist russiaphobia and sinophobia, problematic population concerns, and as a major part of fueling moral outrage. This makes it difficult to be both anti-imperialist while staying oriented with popular discourse on climate change.

Apathy is difficult because it is actually a reasonable reaction, but it is also part of imperial melancholia. A lot of politics in the North is directly related to loss of privilege, loss of the golden years, and a nostalgia for the good old days combined with tireless bemoaning of structural problems, make the soil ripe for opportunists and propagandists to come along. These are not problems that can be solved with rhetoric alone.

I do not think rhetoric alone is able to deliver anyone from our situation, or from any one feature of it. I would ask nothing of you personally in terms of addressing pervasive civil righteousness, sophistry, outrage baiting, apathy etc., because it would be asking far, far too much of you. I do not mean to add to the difficulty of the matter, but I think in many ways we are trudging through a swamp. Just as we can’t easily go back to communal subsistence because of the apocalypse of modernity, we cannot assume we will make an impact on these problems by looking at past successes or without critical vigor of our approach. There is no social infrastructure that can enable what need to be done. In many ways we need help from the developing countries of the world, and we need the patience and courage to face the unknown head-on.

The saying in China used to be that they must cross the brook by feeling for the rocks, but nowadays the water is too deep to touch the bottom.


Like all of your comments on this matter, your incrediblely late reply speaks to absolutely nothing I or any of our other comrades of said. Further, you don’t really substantiate your claim that Russia has symmetrical goals with the US. You don’t even substantiate Russian imperialism, and absolutely you do not substatiate it within any Marxist terms. Anyone one of us could use the exact sophistry you use to make the outrageous claim the Dominican Republic is imperialist or South Africa is imperialist. But you very clearly do not understand the dialectic, you do not understand imperialisms of the last 100 years, you only understand ideology.


The DPRK is the Haiti of Asia. They are punished for winning their freedom and not apologizing.



I was groomed to be a military/state department professional from a young age. There is a long history of anti communism in my family. Not just in a propaganda obsessed kind of way. In a committing war crimes in countries with active communist revolutions sort of way. I always knew my calling was to serve the American project, and, of course, the Christ.

Anyways I slowly grew to hate the US and my family. I was an evangelist for some time and thought my family had a shallow, or otherwise incorrect understanding of Christianity. I started to become more anti war. In the pacifist sense but also structurally I knew there was more to war than religious differences or politics. I would have been a Ron Paul lib at this point. I had some good criticisms of the machine but was ostensibly racist as all fuck and was by no means a socialist.

Later I was exposed to more explicit socialism and Marxism after become interested in the Green Party and losing faith in libertarians and became more aware of what racism is and isn’t. I also burried Christ somewhere out back behind the shed and my old life began to really fade away.

My first thoughts about my experience with marxism is how refreshing it was to find the dialectic. Finally something that could cut through the discourse and understand a dynamic world instead of reducing everything to just ideology, intuition, “human nature,” or morality. Finally a better way to approach history and power.

Through this I was able to begin understanding America as a project and found myself studying more about the conditions that created and developed it into what it has become today, relying especially on Indigenous and Marxist perspectives. I am very interested in what socialism in this place means and what its prospects are. Now I am back in school hoping to see further beyond the veil, and not shying away from my former calling, though this time with new intentions 😈.


Pervasive racism, classism, queerphobia, chuavanism etc. The constant propaganda posts where we all get together to trash a poor person, Black person, or queer person for unsanctioned behavior.

Pervasive sophistry.

The pervasive allegiance to the political spetrum and to partisanship discourses. They police themselves to keep each other in line.

The pervasive scientism and technological optimism which is only countered by doomerism and dogma.

Honestly I just can’t stand the users.


This is why the dialectic is so important and criticism is a tireless, unending trial.



Sinovac COVID vaccine (rant)
I was a captive audience to someone talking about how some countries only had access to China's vaccine. They said the vaccine was terrible and people took it and still got COVID. But like.... I took American vaccines and still got COVID... ...and over a million people in the US died of COVID, some of whom where vaccinated with US subsidized, corporate vaccines. It was brought up because others were talking about global inequality during the pandemic. So having to take the subpar sinovac was apparently all part of global inequalities. I hate talking about COVID and I feel like it's so distracting and people try to make everything about COVID because it's so easy to do. Maybe that is just a hot take but this argument that sinovac sucks because people still contracted COVID is at best a really lazy way to try to say US vaccines are better. Also the same person implied masking prevents people from contracting the virus... instead of preventing you from spreading it to others like was repeated ad nasium by medical representatives for 2 years straight.

Holy shit I hate the NYT more and more everyday.


The problem is that imperialism is in the material interest of Americans and as of now it’s not Americans dying in Ukraine which makes the pressure to let it go less pronounced than Vietnam.

Biden has pushed the whole democracy vs autocracy narrative and I struggle greatly in my day to day life to find anyone that doesn’t align with that narrative one way or another, regardless of partisanship, regardless of education level. This is ultimately nurturing fascism which will present itself as leftist. They are already refining their rhetoric in ways they haven’t dared in decades.

At the end of the day my perspective is tainted by being surrounded by dangerous people that aspire to have professional careers in imperialism, but ultimately I fear their sensibilities will win out and enough Americans will go along. History is just not as on our side as I would like. Not to be intentionally pessimistic but IMO we communists in the US are 100 years too late and $100B short, and meanwhile even the project in China may not be able to move fast enough to outrun history.

IMO the only guaranteed positive is that all paths forward for the US are frustrated by partisanship and ideological dogma. Each side will try to sabatoge the other, but if things grow dire then compromise will become more possible much like during the depression/FDR years.


They raised interest rates back in February-March and it caused all sorts of problems including bank failures. There are a lot of cracks and strains on the economy. Who knows what will happen but it’s certainly possible the US will be in a full blown depression in a few years. But even then, there is so much russiaphobia and resentment it is hard to imagine Europe or the US letting anything force them to back down. There is too much at stake for both sides.


Yes capitalist social relations are absolutely a cancer.

What we really need is a stakeholder cancer that is more sustainable /s


Hoping they get out of the ICC soon but idk


It makes me think of the efforts by the right to control finance in the US. These are mostly Republican state legislatures and treasuries that are divesting from BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity etc. By doing this they appeal to the general public by saying ‘green’ finance is harmful for Texans (or whomever), that finance should be supporting what America needs (more oil production apparently), and of course it is quite easy to rationalize any kind of campaign against capital, but especially when it is painted as ‘woke.’

I can definitely see this kind of situation as a ‘right wing’ reaction against monopoly finance capital. Finance is ostensibly the present mode of governance so it makes sense that if fascists struggle to control the heights of the bourgeois government, they will use the back door through finance. If they gain more control of the government, it will probably intensify their efforts to reign in ‘woke’ ‘green’ finance.

But where the current situation may differ from Sakai’s thoughts here is that, for one, these efforts are almost certainly driven by sections of industry! It may be easy to rile up the rabble with cynical anti-capitalism but it is hardly grassroots.

Secondly, (and this is just an observation on this specific issue) they have not yet been successful even though they are fairly organized. I have seen more finance led divestments from fossil fuels in the news over the last week and I’m curious to see if reaction intensifies globally or if this is a uniquely American sort of fascism. Anyway, its deeply strange to imagine climate change could be holding fascism back…

Part of what I think he is getting at is the right-wing resentment of cosmopolitanism and how it can, through propaganda and through class ontologies, get married to the capitalist system as a whole. I think of this dynamic among the classic contradictions of colonialism that drove many of the political debates of the 18th, 19th, 20th centuries. Ultimately these are existential questions for the empire that are answered differently by the different poles of the discourse. Clinton and Obama prize globalization (cosmopolitanism), while Bush and Trump prioritize American fascism.


I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Best to just try an understand the political environment and try to survive these perilous times.


I wish I knew anything at all about military logistics because I really just can’t contribute much to understanding it but I don’t think there is a magic bullet to ending the war. My guess is the war will drag on for some time.


All things considered, Ukraine has lost a lot. Millions have fled the country. It’s media is supresessed. Assets sold off to wall street. Lives lost to war and future generations lost to the confusion of history.

But yeah the fact that it just keeps going it’s disheartening


Anti imperialism goes beyond states and their present ruling parties. Getting caught up in the political spectrum will not make anti imperialist positions clearer, but actually muddier.

The classes that rule “problematic” states are susceptible to the global system. Anti imperialist politics is a necessity, regardless of the contradictions istcreates for these classes. The fallacy is to say it is entirely cynical because it is actually still threatening to them. It is perilous.

In Russia for example, Putin must both resist and protect neoliberalism, but this only fosters and enables more resistance to it because it both creates a path away from it while not taking it with satisfactory vigor. This is contradiction in action and it is dangerous to imperialism.

Anti imperialism isnt necessarily about being “based,” it’s about a process of history that is ultimately corrosive to the capitalist system. IMO getting caught up in “they are theocratic over there,” “they are nationalists over here,” “the rhetoric of these leaders is too problematic,” “these people here are not communists,” completely misses the forest for the trees. To me, when people distract themselves with holier than thou politics, it results in something quite similar to howpeople say China is strickly capitalist but then go and ignore or are ambivalent towards how lethal rising wages in China are to the capitalist system.



meanwhile many traditional societies have way more than 2 genders



In the state I lived previously I saw many nazi tattoos and people spoke rather openly about their fascist affiliations, or that of the people close to them. Also it was saturated with outrageous conspiracy theories and undying loyalty to Alex Jones and others.



Has anyone here played Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic?
Probably one of the most complex builder games out there

Not sure if this has been posted on lemmy yet but I was so excited to see Roland on Ben Norton's podcast yesterday. His work has been instrumental to how I see the PRC. If you can get ahold of his book I would highly recommend.

Basically US oil and gas is becoming more associated with Europe



Andor was the best Star Wars creation ever
Not only did it take me back to the Star Wars in my head that existed before the prequels existed but it was the most sobering depiction of struggle that Star Wars has ever achieved on screen. The prison episodes were especially moving. What do yall think about the show?

Roger Penrose as a conversation starter
Penrose is a physicist that has worked on the great mysteries like cosmology and consciousness. For Penrose, he reluctantly calls himself a materialist because he admits he doesn't know what matter really is even tho he ostensibly is a materialist in practice. What do you make of this? In light of the recent "religion" decree on lemmy, how does Penrose's reluctance interact with notions of religon? If there is a non-physical world that interacts with the physical world, then is the non-physical world somehow immaterial? Or could it be material? Can the material be subdivided into "alternative materials" with seperate functions, similar to how structural forces give rise to attitudes, and attitudes give direction to maintain or change structures? Sometimes ideas become so entrenched that they become structural and affect matter beyond what happens in the brain. Similarly, material forces that are not present still affect us (and then those affects re affect us as we contextualize things), for example the actions of our ancestors or the past itself. Furthermore, with any amount of predictive ability, the looming, foreseen future affects the present even though it has not materialized. Oftentimes we may be off put by a seperation between material and spiritual or non physical, but what if they are still basically the same thing and the distinction is a red herring.

Bourgeoisie freaks can run but can't hide.


Red Skin, White Masks: Introduction and Primitive Accumulation
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/516254 Over the last several years I have, in song with others, pushed for priorities to be directed toward a “socialism with American characteristics.” The discourse that the quest has generated has often been a disaster. The obvious worst of this being the “patsoc” thinking that has thankfully quieted for the most part. In order to better advance this cause of creating a revolutionary theory, and to combat my personal angst which arises in the face of Maoists trying to force me to read about the Philippines instead of something that could be even more relevant for North America, I believe it would be generative to show an example of how Marxist theory has been used by Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard. Not entirely unlike how Mao and the communists of China facilitated a “sinophication” of Marxism, some scholars and activists are arguably indigenizing Marxism, or making it “transformed in conversation with critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples” to make it compatible for North American realities (p. 9). In his book, Red Skin, White Masks, Coulthard explores the subjectivity that is enforced on Indigenous people by colonialism and the complications that arise. Coulthard may not be an explicit Marxist, he probably does not go around claiming to be ML, his aim is more to mold Marxism into a weapon for Indigenous people and not the other way around. Personally, I find this to be a worthy cause that more should be aware of. I can’t do justice to a full summary at this time, but to partially summarize the book I will focus primarily on the context shift toward colonialism that Coulthard uses alongside his views on primitive accumulation. Most of this will be from just the introduction. I’ve chosen this because I believe this text provides a bridge between Indigenous thinkers and Marxist thinkers and can be a kind of gateway for a complex topic. Hopefully, this can expose comrades here to Indigenous thinking that can help us understand what is to be done. Subheading: Into the Weeds This context shift is a move toward a context of colonial instead of just capital relations by way of primitive accumulation. He defines colonialism as structured dispossession and utilizes chapters 26-32 of Capital vol I to stand on this. He writes (p.7): In Capital these formative acts of violent dispossession set the stage for the emergence of capitalist accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production by tearing Indigenous societies, peasants and other small-scale, self-sufficient agricultural producers from the source of their livelihood—the land. Many are already familiar with Primitive Accumulation, but I will attempt to flesh it out regardless. Primitive accumulation often seen as a temporary state of brutality were it forcefully opens up “what were once collectively held territories and resources to privatization” which inevitably leads to proletarianization. It is this violent transformation of non-capitalist relations into capitalist, market relations that constitutes primitive accumulation. Before continuing on to how Coulthard would like to recontextualize primitive accumulation he briefly touches on the fact that Indigenous thinking and Marxist thinking are oftentimes at odds. Part of his goal is to rescue both Indigenous people from the oftentimes racist, chauvinist, reactionary attitudes that Marxists often deploy and rescue Marxism from a “premature rejection” by Indigenous thinkers (p. 8). By doing so (he holds that feminist, queer, anarchist, and post-colonial thinking will be helpful) he believes more light can be shed on colonial domination and resistance. Transforming Primitive Accumulation In order to transform Marx’s primitive accumulation, he addresses three problematic features, and several important insights about these features. Some of these criticisms you may already be familiar with. The first feature is “Marx’s rigidly temporal framing of the phenomenon” (p9). The idea here is that PA (primitive accumulation) is confined to a specific phase in time. For example, in England PA has passed and completed but in the colonies PA is present. Along with many other Marxian thinkers (like Harvey et al), a persistent role of PA is what we should see, and certainly with neoliberal hegemony. “[U]nconcealed, violent dispossession continues to play in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations in both the domestic and global contexts” (p9). The second feature is normative developmentalism. This is basically what was especially present in early Marx, a modernist view of history. This leads some of Marx’s work to portray PA as a historical inevitability that is apart of a historical metanarrative. Coulthard seeks to rescue Marx from this fallacy by shifting emphasis from capital relations to colonial relations. Marx sees PA as a process of dispossession that leads to proletarianization. His concern was with understanding capital as a social relation dependent on the separation of workers from the means of production. Thus Marx was not nearly as preoccupied with dispossession as he was with arriving at proletarianization as a focus (p11). He writes (p11): By repositioning the colonial frame as our overarching lens of analysis it becomes far more difficult to justify in antiquated developmental terms (from either the right or left) the assimilation of non-capitalist, non-Western, Indigenous modes of life based on the racist assumption that this assimilation will somehow magically redeem itself by bringing the fruits of capitalist modernity into the supposedly ‘backward’ world of the colonized. This is something late Marx was more comfortable with. However, his point is well taken. I personally have seen “patsocs” of the last few years attempt to say what happened to Indigenous people was merely them being added to the work force. Proletarianization, but ignoring the colonial relations in order to assert this was a natural and inevitable event, even a desirable one. Also, I find that within the academy, Marx is often taught as a snapshot of his early self, so this criticism is good for those who have been confined to early Marx (Tangentially I think the academy misrepresents Marx’s totality regularly so its good to have criticisms that are not based in liberal chauvinisms.) It is evident that “egalitarian” voices will use modernist fallacies to reproduce dispossession. For example, advocates who seek a return of the commons fail to understand that there are no “commons” in Canada or the US. There is only the land of the First Peoples. He writes (pg12) By ignoring or downplaying the injustice of colonial dispossession, critical theory and left political strategy not only risks becoming complicit in the very structures and processes of domination that it out to oppose, but it also risks overlooking what could probe to be invaluable glimpses into the ethical practices and preconditions required for the construction of a more just and sustainable world order. Further insight into this critique regards the role of Indigenous labor. As industrial capitalism matured in North America, Indigenous labor was rendered increasingly (though not entirely) superfluous. This helps us furthure understand why the context of colonial relations and the emphasis on dispossession can illuminate more than the normative developmentalist views that prioritize proletarianization can. Forgive my metaphor, but in many ways the civilization policies that were levied against Indigenous peoples were the John the Baptist that preceded the Christ of industrialism. This is seen in how slavery was spread through Henry Knox’s civilization policy, something I’d be happy to post about separately another time. As Canada’s commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote in 1890, “The work of sub-dividing reserves has begun in earnest. The policy of destroying the tribal or communist system is assailed in every possible way and every effort has been made to implant a spirit of individual responsibility instead.” (Note the red scare language. This is something that is present throughout the history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism.) However, you could point to proletarianization as a distraction, usually it is said dispossession was meant to facilitate proletarianization, but for Indigenous people dispossession was meant to acquire land and resources for capital. Dispossession is the “dominant background structure” and “continues to inform the dominant modes of Indigenous resistance (p13).” He writes further: (p13) The theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism, including Indigenous anticapitalism, is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land—a struggle not only for land in the material sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondomination and nonexploitative terms—and less around our emergent status as ‘rightless proletarians.” Grounded normativity cannot be stressed enough as a key for understanding pan-Indigenous philosophies and how they can interact with Marxism. For Indigenous philosophers, ethics cannot be simply separated from cosmology, or from anything, certainly not from land. The universe itself has a moral character that is revealed by co-relationality. I would recommend works by Vine Deloria Jr and Richard Atleo to have a better feel for how this works although Coulthard himself gives good insights himself later in the book. For now, grounded normativity can by defined as “the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (p13). I will focus on this more in later posts if I can. Another insight into normative developmentalism that is briefly mentioned, is that it doesn’t always see the land itself as exploitable, people are. There is a tendency to deploy poor understandings of the environment and a presumption that Marxism is designed to ignore ecocriticism. I did not go into detail about grounded normativity, but we can already see that if we see Land as a system of relations then this anti-environmental tendency is problematic for Indigenous thinking in unique ways even when it is routinely levied by ecological thinkers. A final insight into normative developmentalism is economic reductionism. I’ll let quotes take this one as other authors tackle this regularly and I’d rather his voice shine for this article. He writes: (pg 14-15) …the colonial relation should not be understood as a primary locus or base from which these other forms of oppression flow, but rather as the inherited background field within which market, racist, patriarchal, and stat relations converge to facilitate a certain power effect—in our case, the reproduction of hierarchical social relations that facilitate the dispossession of our lands and self-determining capacities. Like capital, colonialism, as a structure of domination predicated on dispossession, is not ‘a thing,’ but rather the sum effect of the diversity of inter locking oppressive social relations that constitute it.” Basically, shifting toward colonial relations doesn’t “displace” class struggle, but “situates these questions more firmly alongside and in relation to the other sites and relations of power that inform our settler-colonial present.” OK so now on to the 3rd and final problematic feature. Which is more of a question on governmentality. This one is interesting because I think his peers have pushed against this. Basically, he believes that because the liberal Canadian state is developing less overtly brutal methods of subjugation it differs from the explicitly and incredible violence that Marx asserts goes hand in hand with primitive accumulation—as Marx says, “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, in blood and dirt.” He asks readers: (p15) What are we to make of contexts where state violence no longer constitutes the regulative norm governing the process of colonial dispossession, as appears to be the case in ostensibly tolerant, multinational, liberal settler polities such as Canada? Stated in Marx’s own terms, if neither ‘blood and fire’ nor the ‘silent compulsion’ of capitalist economics can adequately account for the reproduction of colonial hierarchies in liberal democratic contexts, what can? I take this as more of a question of understanding what the state is up to than a statement that violence has lost its place in primitive accumulation. Much of the book is about “recognition” and how relying on state recognition is bunk, so in that light, it makes sense to me to ask these questions in hopes of understanding the role that pursuing state recognition plays in primitive accumulation. But clearly violence is still the status quo for Indigenous people, thus I find this to be his weakest but most intriguing point. Conclusion So, I have laid out Coulthard’s initial points on primitive accumulation. In the future I hope to make a post on more parts of this book, and maybe others as well. I especially intend to flesh out grounded normativity and recognition, which the book is mostly about in the first place as I think these can be helpful concepts for comrades.

Red Skin, White Masks: Introduction and Primitive Accumulation
Over the last several years I have, in song with others, pushed for priorities to be directed toward a “socialism with American characteristics.” The discourse that the quest has generated has often been a disaster. The obvious worst of this being the “patsoc” thinking that has thankfully quieted for the most part. In order to better advance this cause of creating a revolutionary theory, and to combat my personal angst which arises in the face of Maoists trying to force me to read about the Philippines instead of something that could be even more relevant for North America, I believe it would be generative to show an example of how Marxist theory has been used by Dene scholar Glen Sean Coulthard. Not entirely unlike how Mao and the communists of China facilitated a “sinophication” of Marxism, some scholars and activists are arguably indigenizing Marxism, or making it “transformed in conversation with critical thought and practices of Indigenous peoples” to make it compatible for North American realities (p. 9). In his book, Red Skin, White Masks, Coulthard explores the subjectivity that is enforced on Indigenous people by colonialism and the complications that arise. Coulthard may not be an explicit Marxist, he probably does not go around claiming to be ML, his aim is more to mold Marxism into a weapon for Indigenous people and not the other way around. Personally, I find this to be a worthy cause that more should be aware of. I can’t do justice to a full summary at this time, but to partially summarize the book I will focus primarily on the context shift toward colonialism that Coulthard uses alongside his views on primitive accumulation. Most of this will be from just the introduction. I’ve chosen this because I believe this text provides a bridge between Indigenous thinkers and Marxist thinkers and can be a kind of gateway for a complex topic. Hopefully, this can expose comrades here to Indigenous thinking that can help us understand what is to be done. Subheading: Into the Weeds This context shift is a move toward a context of colonial instead of just capital relations by way of primitive accumulation. He defines colonialism as structured dispossession and utilizes chapters 26-32 of Capital vol I to stand on this. He writes (p.7): In Capital these formative acts of violent dispossession set the stage for the emergence of capitalist accumulation and the reproduction of capitalist relations of production by tearing Indigenous societies, peasants and other small-scale, self-sufficient agricultural producers from the source of their livelihood—the land. Many are already familiar with Primitive Accumulation, but I will attempt to flesh it out regardless. Primitive accumulation often seen as a temporary state of brutality were it forcefully opens up “what were once collectively held territories and resources to privatization” which inevitably leads to proletarianization. It is this violent transformation of non-capitalist relations into capitalist, market relations that constitutes primitive accumulation. Before continuing on to how Coulthard would like to recontextualize primitive accumulation he briefly touches on the fact that Indigenous thinking and Marxist thinking are oftentimes at odds. Part of his goal is to rescue both Indigenous people from the oftentimes racist, chauvinist, reactionary attitudes that Marxists often deploy and rescue Marxism from a “premature rejection” by Indigenous thinkers (p. 8). By doing so (he holds that feminist, queer, anarchist, and post-colonial thinking will be helpful) he believes more light can be shed on colonial domination and resistance. Transforming Primitive Accumulation In order to transform Marx’s primitive accumulation, he addresses three problematic features, and several important insights about these features. Some of these criticisms you may already be familiar with. 1) The first feature is “Marx’s rigidly temporal framing of the phenomenon” (p9). The idea here is that PA (primitive accumulation) is confined to a specific phase in time. For example, in England PA has passed and completed but in the colonies PA is present. Along with many other Marxian thinkers (like Harvey et al), a persistent role of PA is what we should see, and certainly with neoliberal hegemony. “[U]nconcealed, violent dispossession continues to play in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations in both the domestic and global contexts” (p9). 2) The second feature is normative developmentalism. This is basically what was especially present in early Marx, a modernist view of history. This leads some of Marx’s work to portray PA as a historical inevitability that is apart of a historical metanarrative. Coulthard seeks to rescue Marx from this fallacy by shifting emphasis from capital relations to colonial relations. Marx sees PA as a process of dispossession that leads to proletarianization. His concern was with understanding capital as a social relation dependent on the separation of workers from the means of production. Thus Marx was not nearly as preoccupied with dispossession as he was with arriving at proletarianization as a focus (p11). He writes (p11): By repositioning the colonial frame as our overarching lens of analysis it becomes far more difficult to justify in antiquated developmental terms (from either the right or left) the assimilation of non-capitalist, non-Western, Indigenous modes of life based on the racist assumption that this assimilation will somehow magically redeem itself by bringing the fruits of capitalist modernity into the supposedly ‘backward’ world of the colonized. This is something late Marx was more comfortable with. However, his point is well taken. I personally have seen “patsocs” of the last few years attempt to say what happened to Indigenous people was merely them being added to the work force. Proletarianization, but ignoring the colonial relations in order to assert this was a natural and inevitable event, even a desirable one. Also, I find that within the academy, Marx is often taught as a snapshot of his early self, so this criticism is good for those who have been confined to early Marx (Tangentially I think the academy misrepresents Marx’s totality regularly so its good to have criticisms that are not based in liberal chauvinisms.) It is evident that “egalitarian” voices will use modernist fallacies to reproduce dispossession. For example, advocates who seek a return of the commons fail to understand that there are no “commons” in Canada or the US. There is only the land of the First Peoples. He writes (pg12) By ignoring or downplaying the injustice of colonial dispossession, critical theory and left political strategy not only risks becoming complicit in the very structures and processes of domination that it out to oppose, but it also risks overlooking what could probe to be invaluable glimpses into the ethical practices and preconditions required for the construction of a more just and sustainable world order. Further insight into this critique regards the role of Indigenous labor. As industrial capitalism matured in North America, Indigenous labor was rendered increasingly (though not entirely) superfluous. This helps us furthure understand why the context of colonial relations and the emphasis on dispossession can illuminate more than the normative developmentalist views that prioritize proletarianization can. Forgive my metaphor, but in many ways the civilization policies that were levied against Indigenous peoples were the John the Baptist that preceded the Christ of industrialism. This is seen in how slavery was spread through Henry Knox's civilization policy, something I'd be happy to post about separately another time. As Canada’s commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote in 1890, “The work of sub-dividing reserves has begun in earnest. The policy of destroying the tribal or communist system is assailed in every possible way and every effort has been made to implant a spirit of individual responsibility instead.” (Note the red scare language. This is something that is present throughout the history of Indigenous resistance to colonialism.) However, you could point to proletarianization as a distraction, usually it is said dispossession was meant to facilitate proletarianization, but for Indigenous people dispossession was meant to acquire land and resources for capital. Dispossession is the “dominant background structure” and “continues to inform the dominant modes of Indigenous resistance (p13).” He writes further: (p13) The theory and practice of Indigenous anticolonialism, including Indigenous anticapitalism, is best understood as a struggle primarily inspired by and oriented around the question of land—a struggle not only for land in the material sense, but also deeply informed by what the land as a system of reciprocal relations and obligations can teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and the natural world in nondomination and nonexploitative terms—and less around our emergent status as ‘rightless proletarians.” Grounded normativity cannot be stressed enough as a key for understanding pan-Indigenous philosophies and how they can interact with Marxism. For Indigenous philosophers, ethics cannot be simply separated from cosmology, or from anything, certainly not from land. The universe itself has a moral character that is revealed by co-relationality. I would recommend works by Vine Deloria Jr and Richard Atleo to have a better feel for how this works although Coulthard himself gives good insights himself later in the book. For now, grounded normativity can by defined as “the modalities of Indigenous land-connected practices and longstanding experiential knowledge that inform and structure our ethical engagements with the world and our relationships with human and nonhuman others over time” (p13). I will focus on this more in later posts if I can. Another insight into normative developmentalism that is briefly mentioned, is that it doesn’t always see the land itself as exploitable, people are. There is a tendency to deploy poor understandings of the environment and a presumption that Marxism is designed to ignore ecocriticism. I did not go into detail about grounded normativity, but we can already see that if we see Land as a system of relations then this anti-environmental tendency is problematic for Indigenous thinking in unique ways even when it is routinely levied by ecological thinkers. A final insight into normative developmentalism is economic reductionism. I’ll let quotes take this one as other authors tackle this regularly and I’d rather his voice shine for this article. He writes: (pg 14-15) …the colonial relation should not be understood as a primary locus or base from which these other forms of oppression flow, but rather as the inherited background field within which market, racist, patriarchal, and state relations converge to facilitate a certain power effect—in our case, the reproduction of hierarchical social relations that facilitate the dispossession of our lands and self-determining capacities. Like capital, colonialism, as a structure of domination predicated on dispossession, is not ‘a thing,’ but rather the sum effect of the diversity of inter locking oppressive social relations that constitute it.” Basically, shifting toward colonial relations doesn’t “displace” class struggle, but “situates these questions more firmly alongside and in relation to the other sites and relations of power that inform our settler-colonial present.” 3) OK so now on to the 3rd and final problematic feature. Which is more of a question on governmentality. This one is interesting because I think his peers have pushed against this. Basically, he believes that because the liberal Canadian state is developing less overtly brutal methods of subjugation it differs from the explicit and incredible violence that Marx asserts goes hand in hand with primitive accumulation—as Marx says, “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, in blood and dirt.” He asks readers: (p15) What are we to make of contexts where state violence no longer constitutes the regulative norm governing the process of colonial dispossession, as appears to be the case in ostensibly tolerant, multinational, liberal settler polities such as Canada? Stated in Marx’s own terms, if neither ‘blood and fire’ nor the ‘silent compulsion’ of capitalist economics can adequately account for the reproduction of colonial hierarchies in liberal democratic contexts, what can? I take this as more of a question of understanding what the state is up to than a statement that violence has lost its place in primitive accumulation. Much of the book is about "recognition" and how relying on state recognition is bunk, so in that light, it makes sense to me to ask these questions in hopes of understanding the role that pursuing state recognition plays in primitive accumulation. But clearly violence is still the status quo for Indigenous people, thus I find this to be his weakest but most intriguing point. Conclusion So, I have laid out Coulthard’s initial points on primitive accumulation. In the future I hope to make a post on more parts of this book, and maybe others as well. I especially intend to flesh out grounded normativity and recognition, which the book is mostly about in the first place as I think these can be helpful concepts for comrades.

Edit: [this](https://vizthis.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/i-want-to-believe-ufo-sightings-around-the-world/) article is the source



Seems like the narative around demand from China has changed every few hours for like a year. Either too many covid restrictions or too much covid. Either opening up will drive prices up or opening up is underwhelming but still driving prices up? It's hard to follow I swear the last year or so China narratives are just market manipulation tactics

Rant: The political compass (yes, the cumpiss)
Honestly I wish the political compass was actually useful. It would be a nice heuristic if it had any basis in reality. Instead it is a red herring, or worse. Many know this already. However because I am forced against my will (authority 🤬) to engage with it, I will now talk shit about the fucking cumpiss here. The sin of the cumpiss: The greatest flaw in the political compass is without a doubt the fact that half of the compass relies on the Authoritarian vs Libertarian binary. This binary is more than foolishness. I would argue that it is a component of neoliberalism and its ability to produce de-mobilizing ideologies which actually reinforce and reproduce neoliberalism. Leading up to the neoliberal era imperialists relied on the devolpment theories of modernization. You gotta maintain labor discipline, you gotta get your technology up, promote individualism, be western, accumulate capital (you need IMF loans so be sure to get into debt please), and get those liberal institutions that Jesus loves so much up and running. Importantly, use the state to do this, but within reason, you still gotta be libs of course, but the state is a great tool for this. All of this is connected, so if you start on one place (promote individualism for example) then it will intuitively and naturally spread into another aspect (forming liberal institutions). In effect, this model just fucking steamrolls over the peoples and cultures of the world and drew them into dependency and exploitation. Neocolonialism basically enforced by your own government. Now this next part important. After the west corrupted the "post colonial" governments and left the people justifiably pissed at their governments, they pivoted. Neoliberalism is like a response to the reactions against the post WW2 modernization theory. Oh so you don't like the government now?? Well how about yall just privatize and deregulate?? Who needs the government anyway? It must be part of the problem! There is a lot more to the rise of neoliberalism that I am ignoring but it's quite possible to just see it as a weaponized distrust of government that came from imperialists enforcing liberal development models accross the word. The point is that general "anti-government" sensibilities (libertarianism) are, in part, more popular as a result of bourgeoisie development models. It's why anarchism is not only underwhelming as a path to revolution, but arguably part of the problem. It is a perfect de-mobilizing ideology because it lauds libertarian (cough liberal cough) ideals while attempting to resist capitalism and thus the authoritarianism it opposes. Back to the cumpiss: western "analysis" (deragotry) Neoliberalism is usually placed in the authoritarian right. But we can see how libertarianism, the bottom half of the cumpiss, is actually part of neoliberalism as a demobilizing ideology that helps perpetrate the totality. Neoliberalism of requires both authoritarianism and libertarianism to function! How can a fucking 4 quadrant cumpiss ever fucking show this?!?!? It cant! If this is true then how can neoliberalism exist as both authoritarian and libertarian? But in fact, this contradiction is evident in how neoliberalism is enforced. Labor discipline (read class warfare) is still a mjaor point in neoliberal models, but this can't really be enforced without the state. So the same state that neoliberalism seeks to undermine because government is the problem, is actually still needed. So some hypocrisy is actually encouraged and built in. (it's a grift) So in order to use the political cumpiss you have to begin by saying that development models, ideologies, and the actual practices differ wildly and actually demand hypocrisy. Otherwise none of it makes any sense. How is this acceptable??? The answer is "analysis." It is baked into western thought to dissect, seperate, and categorize things. This is "analysis." By removing the context, the relationships, connections, and contradictions between everything, analysis will create ideology that does not line up with practice. Yet this is how western epistemology believes is the best way to understand the world. "Analysis" (derogatory) is what leads us to want the political cumpiss in the first place. It's why, deep down, I wish that it was a heuristic that actually helped us understand politics. Luckily Marxism is more able to take a totalistic view that can see things in context, relation, contradiction etc, than other western views might and so it is more intuitive for the marxist (or non liberal) to be put off by the cumpiss, even before reading On Authority or getting into more explicit politics and class analysis (not deragotry 😜). The needless and unhelpful seperation and isolation of things and ideas is what I believe drives people to treat ideology as they would candy in a candy shop. Believing somehow that through the sheer magic of their objectivity and "analysis" the liberal can merely decide the candy that looks most appealing (like the nazi in The Last Crusade) without the context and relations that are just as crucial to understanding nature as are its divisible parts. Ultimately we can't do this if we want to understand the world and craft useful models that can explain it.

My relationship with balloon is over. Airship is now my best friend.
68

It will probably continue to outlive its welcome, but the storyline regarding Saudi Arabia and the seemingly terminally ill petrodollar gives us hope that US hegemony cannot last forever. It's fun that the Mises Institute is concerned lol

While it's not clear US energy is interested in acquiring European oil assets, apparently they are in a position to do so because of the polycrisis. Chevron recently spent many billions on stock buy backs so maybe it won't happen. Many of us have predicted this situation would arise so im curious how it will pan out.

IMO the politics around the war in Ukraine among other things has emboldened oil nerds in a profoundly dangerous way.


Trotskyist to Imperialist pipeline
So I discovered that there are trotskyists in my circle of acquaintances. I typically only meet Maoists and Anarchists, so this is a change. It's weird that it is so easy to find all these communists without finding any ML types. Anyways.... Im curious about the so called trot to imperialist pipeline that I have heard people talk about. My only point of reference is Christopher Hitchens, who iirc went from criticizing Kissenger from a leftist point of view to the face of liberal imperialism and atheist Islamophobia. Edit: I also think it is interesting that Michael Hudson seems to have avoided this. Idk that he calls himself a trot anymore, but he was DEEP in the trotskyist scene as he grew up. His contributions have been very important and he hasn't fallen down the imperialist slide the way Hitchens did.


Basically Oil/Gas is using state legislatures to strong arm and punish shadow banks for not investing *enough* into oil/gas. They use a mix of "its a woke corporate agenda" and raw sinophobia to accuse these major investors of basically working against the American people. Reactionaries are welding the state to bring the capitalist class in line with the imperialist interests of the US. This is an era of oil wars and oil/gas is working to become the leading force in American politics. Soon these accusations will be made in the US Congress. The article: The Texas Legislature subpoenaed BlackRock on Wednesday over its ESG investment practices, accusing the Wall Street firm of refusing to turn over previously requested documents about how the company’s environmental, social and governance policies affect its handling of the state’s public pensions. The chairman of the Texas Senate Committee of State Affairs, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, demanded information from BlackRock and three other major investment firms in August about how its stances on left-leaning priorities like climate change and social issues influence its investing practices while operating in the energy-rich state. Mr. Hughes, a Republican, said that while BlackRock and the other financial institutions produced at least some documents, BlackRock “refused to provide documents it considers internal or confidential.” “The committee needs these documents to uncover the extent to which these firms have been playing politics using Texans’ hard-earned money,” Mr. Hughes said. “We will not allow these firms to continue to use Texans’ money to force a narrow political agenda. They have a legal duty to put their investors’ interests first, and we intend to make sure they do.” The subpoena demands that further information be delivered in person. In addition, Mr. Hughes requested that BlackRock and the three other firms that his committee has received documents from — State Street Global Advisors, Vanguard Group and investment advisory group Institutional Shareholder Services — voluntarily testify before his panel on Dec. 15 during a hearing on the effects of ESG on state pensions. In a statement, BlackRock did not address the accusations or its future plans regarding additional documents and testimony. “We look forward to continuing our engagement with the committee to share BlackRock’s work on behalf of millions of investors,” a spokesperson said. The action taken by the Texas committee marked an escalation in the GOP’s fight against financial institutions that’ve gone woke for ESG, policies that Republicans say are anti-fossil fuel because firms consider issues like climate change rather than focus solely on maximizing returns. Red states, especially those whose economies are reliant on oil and natural gas production, have put firms like BlackRock on notice. BlackRock is one of the world’s largest asset managers with roughly $10 trillion under its control. But even as Republican officials in several states have cumulatively divested more than $1 billion in public retirement funds, BlackRock has largely avoided facing public questions about its ESG policies. That could change if Texas is successful in getting the company and others to testify. BlackRock has previously pushed back on the notion that it’s “boycotting” fossil fuels, noting that it has invested tens of billions of dollars in public energy companies. Still, GOP officials have refused to let up, with Republicans like West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore seeking to take the anti-ESG fight to Congress. “We are witnessing a reckoning for these asset management firms that have until recently thought they could take hardworking Americans’ money and use it to drive their progressive agenda, and in some cases send those dollars to the Chinese Communist Party, with no consequence for their malfeasance,” said Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research. The conservative nonprofit advocacy group launched a multimillion-dollar campaign against BlackRock and CEO Larry Fink in August for “weaponizing” retirement funds. “Now you can’t turn on the TV or read the news without BlackRock claiming to be a good steward of the assets they’re mismanaging via their ESG charade,” Mr. Hild said.

Peral Harbor Day Soap Box
Happy Pearl Harbor Day comrades. On that day US president FDR forced it upon himself the impossible task of telling Americans to care about a place that some still don't even see as legitimately part the US even today due to their racist, colonial understandings of themselves and the world. Americans (especially in the military) definitely did not care about the millions of Filipino people, and other pacific peoples, that both Japanese and American imperialists would kill in their war for dominance over the Pacific Ocean, its nations of both people and more than human, and their resources. Few Americans know the incredible death toll inflicted on the people of the Philippines and much less the death toll the US military inflicted during "liberation," particularly in Manila. None of these deaths were seen as an American death, none of the US soldiers believed they were liberating US territory or American people. To this day many believe that the US has not been invaded for centuries, forgetting that the Philippines was legally a US territory and that Philipino people were part of the US Empire. This common and inaccurate view of history is the child of racism, colonialism, and the incredible privilege and arrogance it takes to forget you used to litterally own another nation not even a century ago. This apathy, this callous colonial mindset, enabled imperialists to view colonized people as a burden on the metropole leading up to WW2, and after. This drove American "post-colonial" history toward privatizing much of its empire, including the Philippines, with neocolonial policies that synergized with the post war world. It is also seen in the coinciding Termination era that destroyed many Native institutions in the US mainland for timber capital, leading to a new era of settler-colonial genocide after the wars end. Today we can still see this mindset in plain view with strangleholds on remaining US territories such as Puerto Rico, yet too few understand that these places exist and are part of the the US Empire. Glory to the Nations of the Pacific, glory to the PLA, the Soviet Red Army, the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, and the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army (and all I am ignorant of) for driving Japanese imperialism off of the Asian mainland and securing a future with many possibilities. May the Pacific Ocean one day be liberated from its imperialist occupation that was reinforced by the devestating war waged between Japanese Empire and the US Empire and may solidarity between the Pacific Nations and North American Indigenous Nations and their accomplices grow stronger with international kinship. (Sources: https://youtu.be/ZaKOOqXDnqA)

Some developments in Iran.
They are abolishing the "morality police" and discussing more issues as well. It sounds positive, though I doubt this addresses all concerns. The title links to the article. I saw a comment on reddit saying in the news tomorrow they will have made an "ethics police." Very funny lib. The news tomorrow will probably be warmongering because the state department can't control protests any more.

The article: Investment in German and EU industrial projects such as battery-cell factories will be unfeasible if the region’s policymakers fail to control ballooning energy prices in the long-term, the head of Volkswagen’s namesake brand said. “Unless we manage to reduce energy prices in Germany and Europe quickly and reliably, investments in energy-intensive production or new battery-cell factories in Germany and the EU will be practically unviable,” VW brand chief executive Thomas Schaefer wrote Monday on LinkedIn. “The value creation in this area will take place elsewhere.” An outline for industrial-policy co-operation hatched by the French and German economy ministers last week “falls short in crucial areas, and does not address the envisaged priorities”, Schaefer said. Europe’s energy crisis is compounding pressure on how to respond to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s climate and tax law that aims to boost domestic production of electric cars and reduce reliance on China for battery components and materials. EU officials have said the subsidy programme violates World Trade Organisation rules and discriminates against non-US companies. Schaefer said the EU’s programmes don’t focus enough on “the short-term ramp-up, scaling and industrialisation of production” , criticising what he called “outdated and bureaucratic state-aid rules”. Volkswagen plans to have six battery factories in full operation across Europe by 2030 under its battery company PowerCo, which broke ground on its lead plant in Germany in July of this year and signed a €3 billion joint venture with Umicore in September for cathode material production. – Bloomberg

My suspicion has been that the narrative around China's covid protests and restrictions, has functioned to manipulate markets and investors by illustrating a collapse in demand in China. Many are championing gas prices in the US because they are going down (which could save Biden's upcoming presidential bid), but this may not stand as things develop because the situation in China has been misrepresented by the media.

So this is something that gets brought up at school, usually in lectures about corruption. The narrative goes that corruption becomes more likely every time a leader is elected and so long tenured leaders are prone to corruption. So an African billionaire (they don't mention he has British citizenship in my experience) set up a $5M prize to give to African leaders for being good. It has been highlighted that this is a major anti corruption initiative because it encourages leaders to not stay too long in office and thus limit corruption. However to me this smells like a sham. A billionaire rewarding people for a lack of corruption and promoting good governance sounds like corruption. It sounds like interference with government, with the democratic process that libs tirelessly espouse, as well as a healthy side of reputation laundering. There is never much discussion on if this has been found to actually help at all but there is definitely no discussion on if this is actually part of the problem, or if $5M is even enough to insentivise anti corruption, nor is there much nuance when it comes to the whole "long term leaders are corrupt" narrative.

That is all.

Should have been nicer to Algeria I guess? Cope, oil nerds.



Racism
It is not easy to discuss publicly. I have read some books on racism that encourage white people to try to frustrate and challenge the racist actions, sensibilities, and comments of other white people. For years I have been convinced of this and have wanted to make the locker room talk unwelcome. But here are the problem I find, many of these are laid out in literature,but are no less difficult to deal with. No one knows what racism is. Colloquial racism functions to obfuscate racism as a system and boils it down to a moral failing and thus a perceived lack of racism as moral capital. Basically, talking about racism seems to function as an avenue for ethical posturing or promoting liberal dogma. No one believes they are racist or reproduce racism. The whole classic racism without racists thing. It's only blatant bigotry or voting republican that can make someone racist, not the history of colonialism and class society that define whiteness. Everyone in my work environment is white. Also communist spaces I've been in are all but exclusively white. It's only in a few academic and some other spaces I'm in that aren't this way, but its in the exclusively white spaces like my workplace what racism is discussed most. I am constantly fielding comments about my birthplace, the southern US, or Osage country if you are based. "Oh they must be really racist there." Like holy shit as if the west coast isn't? There were multiple Trails of Tears here. Black people were banned from living here entirely. Miners would just murder Chinese people. This history has hardly been reversed. Many comminsts I meet get too riled up about "Black capitalism," have awful ideas about Land Back, and too quickly go off about how white people are basically not inherently racist or "inherently evil" as they frame it. While they are forced to sit and listen to my rebuttals because of certain communist procedures it's clear to me my positions on this keep me on the periphery in these spaces. So I say all this to say that my intuition is now quite loudly signaling to me that anytime racism comes up when it is an exclusively white environment to just leave and not engage. But this is the opposite of what I have learned. I am coming to the conclusion that it does not work to rhetorically intervene, especially when it comes to this very heavy topic as well as others. So I am asking for advice, encouragement, or constructive criticism that anyone might have on my thoughts here because I feel very lost and alone about how racism seems to manifest around me these days. Simultaneously I feel a responsibly to challenge whiteness in myself and my community.

Furthermore we are seeing major euro chemical corps taking preservation measures that may be a signal for a death spiral for the competitiveness of European capital. We also see leaders like Macron pissed that the US is in such a good spot relatively speaking. All of this is only getting harder to watch. The US truly is cannabalizing the west.

Seems ridiculous that the US could do so much damage with their own legislature that it actually destroys Saudi Aramco and OPEC+'s ability to set prices. Also forgive the bourgeoisie source, but it sets up Washington's perspective pretty well.

It is from The Future Results of British Rule in India, New York Daily Tribune, 08 August 1853