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Cake day: mar 23, 2022

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Thought the 3D was overhyped and fairly pointless, though still one of the better 3D movies. Story entirely forgettable, honestly don’t remember anything. Only watched it once during its cinema run back then and have no push the watch the new one either

Overall mostly a marketing ploy by Big-3D imo


they probably figured it was about time to ruin Star Wars

They did that a while ago lol


Geopolitical Economy Hour

Hate that name change…no recall value at all.

But excellent suggestion. Thought about Michael Hudson too when setting up this post, but nothing specific came to mind. This is exactly it. Richard Wolff did quite a few espidodes last years on the topic too now that I’m thinking about it

Thanks comrade!


This is great, cheers comrade!


I’ve read Wage Labour and Capital a while ago as well as Value, Price and Profit and while essential reading, I don’t think it’s sufficient for me to really talk about inflation on a seminar-level. Capital - don’t really have the time for it for this deep dive and I wanna read it as part of a group


Resources on inflation
Sup comrades, Looking to do a deep dive into current price hikes and inflation with some comrades and looking for resources to explain, critique and solve the problem form a marxist perspective. The term inflation famously doesn't really come up explicitly in Marx, only "money devaluation" afaik, but still if you got relevant material/articles/books/whatever on the topic, I'd love to go through them Cheers

Forget food for a moment, my damn garbage bill went up 25% for this year.

Feels like utilities almost tripled over the past 1.5 years. 20% for food also seems way too low. I track my shopping cost fairly well and on average I’m paying like 50% more than before the war.

“I think the 3% offer is sign of respect to the public sector workers.”

It’s effectively a paycut of at least 5% lol. But I guess succdems being succdems.

most large unions striking and asking for a 10% raise to cover inflation (haha as if)

This is based as though. At least verdi is becoming much more combative compared to most unions docile stance last year. And even 10% is effectively just to balance out inflation, not a real raise.


God damn that G7 trajectory is wild. How did they fuck up their win in the Cold War that much?


Just listening to some good ol’ Creedence and it’s wild anti-war songs at those times of contradictions were ever allowed to get that big. Even wilder is capitalism’s ability to rob things like protest art of all their meaning via commodification and even twist their original meaning into their exact antithesis. Fortunate Son is a literal war song now lol

Still, says something about even liberal democracy and society that we haven’t even gotten that over the past 2 decades


Not only that, it’s such a strange niche issue young radlibs copied from Yankee Twitter, because they’re totally separated from the tangible, material struggles of the average working class woman.

There’s so many real issues they could’ve talked about that women still face or are facing increasingly. They could’ve talked about the effects the fucked up Covid response had on women in particular, how remote work and inflation have heightened double exploitation, how women have been forced to give up their jobs to become housewives again, how they’re forced to stay in abusive household. They could’ve talked about free kindergardens to alleviate this issue, hell they could’ve talked about the struggles and exploitation Ukrainian (refugee) women face currently. They could’ve talked about the horrific misery imposed upon Afghan women by our government and on and on…

But they talked about Rojava…and sex work by styling themselves revolutionary wh*res.

It’s fucking shameful. I know heaps of real feminists - in name and/or praxis - young and old. Some of them have been fighting the struggle in the peace movement, womens movement, unions and socialist orgs since the late 60s. Real, revolutionary women. These are the kinds of people you should see at rallys like that. But you don’t, because at best they’d laugh about this bougie shit, at worst they’d feel insulted.

Fucking whack


Didn’t even realize there was a community for that lol. Could be helpful to revive it though. I feel like that’s one of the most tangible things this medium could be used for to aid real life work


Cheers comrade, extremely helpful stuff. Guess looking to advertisement strategies is kinda obvious, but still good to have it written down like that.

If you got some resources so I could help myself, that’d be awesome.

As for specific help - I don’t wanna be too specific for privacy reasons, still thanks heaps for the offer. Current most pressing work is a flyer for a peace-movement rally against weapon-supplies to Ukraine. If you got some general ideas lying around, I’d be glad to hear them. 😊


Comrade goes to a womens day protest
>womens day protest in town >sweet, some unions and local antifas participate >none of the usual commie groups but ok >listen to the speaker literally screech about rojava and sex work for 30mins >"The wh*re is the symbol of the destruction of patriarchy" >Like 90% of the people are 20yo university students >Whatever, can hand out some flyers, magazines, etc >'leftoids' almost shit themselves soon as you mention the word socialism >leave Man why do radlibs have to ruin everything with their bougie ass bullshit?

Best practices for flyers
Not sure where to post. Just curious if any of yous got some best practices for designing flyers in terms of graphics, texts, layout, etc. A lot of people and orgs I work with are mainly made up of seniors and they got absolutely no idea how to even use social media, let alone a design program...as you can imagine, this *really* shows on their flyers and other materials. Shit's literally just a printed out Word page with 2 columns sometimes. So this stuff is increasingly becoming my job and while I can handle a computer, I've never really done short promotional material for political purposes and I rarely have previous materials to go off, because they're just those bland Word documents usually Thanks for the help comrades

Luckily the West, Europe in particular, has an unending supply of refugees that could, will and are used to undercut the domestic labour market to offset losses from insourcing.


Let’s not even forget the KKKringe-ass use of 733tspeak

Wait what? Leet is making a comeback? I thought people forgot that had even existed some time after ~2010

As for tiktok in general - have you ever had someone use it in the same room as you unmuted? It’s terrifying how that stuff fries your brain. Constant switches between loudass music, weird AI voices, people talking every other second is just infuriating and people subject themselves to this for hours at a time


Ok honestly the Yanks have totally lost the plot. Like wtf are they even trying to do at this point?


The reason why Russian momentum stopped after Severodonetsk was not so much to do with losses but with contracts for a lot of the professional soldiers expiring and not being renewed.

We don’t really know that’s the case. Same reason has been given for the Kharkiv debacle which happened months later. It might be the whole reason or at least part of it. It is notable though that the Chechens and LPR soldiers that played a huge part in that offensive all but stopped showing up in any major offensive way after that. The Russian regulars and VDV involved too - some of them definitely went to Kherson I’d say. Nonetheless the only fighting force involved in that battle that demonstrated offensive capabilities after Severodonetsk was Wagner.

I also have no idea what kind of losses Wagner have taken but […] they can’t be too bad.

I very much doubt that. Heavy losses on Wagners side have been acknowledged by everyone. Wagner and Prigozhin himself, Russian commentators and channels all say this is the case, because there’s no way they don’t have heavy losses. I mean, we’ve seen the pictures. They’ve been leading constant, heavy assault operations against mostly urban, heavily fortified and mined areas for almost 9 months now. There’s simply no way any force could go through this without heavy losses. The ratio might be skewed (it almost definitely is), but it’d be very surprising if they could fight another prologed urban battle like this. It’s one thing to close this out, a different beast to start something like Bakhmut all over again.

the Soledar collapse […] is indication that things have gotten really quite desperate for Ukraine in terms of the overall logistical and manpower situation

It could mean that, it could also not. Russia’s pullback from Kherson didn’t mean that and the fall Severodonetsk didn’t mean that for Ukraine. I don’t buy these projections anymore either way. We don’t know if these retreats are routs or orderly, if they’re worth it for them or not. Interpreting has just led to false predictions in the past.

The advances that have happened so far from the Russian side have not been the result of any big planned offensives but of opportunistic pushes at the occasional weak point.

We don’t know though if that’s their choice or if they simply lack the strength to do any sweeping moves though. They have tried much more than opportunistic probing in Ugledar eg and they’ve suffered massive losses there. In the push recently and the storming of Pavlovka some months ago they themselves acknowledged “hundreds” of losses among the marines there daily during offensive actions.

Russia is advancing due to their overwhelming superiority in artillery volumes that prepare the ground beforehand

Very much true, what’s interesting though is reports of shell shortages have popped up recently on all parts of the front afaik. Definitely at Bakhmut, Kremenaya and iirc even around Ugledar. Now we don’t know if that means a reduction from 50 to 40k shells a day or how big that shortage is, but there is something going on here. Still outgunning the Ukrainians, but we don’t know by how much.

But we won’t know for sure until much later after the fact, the fog of war is just too thick right now

100%. I just don’t buy into the big copes, rationalizations and hopes for big, sweeping offensives from either side anymore. Predictions and interpretations have proved pretty futile so far, I’m done with them, especially the optimistic ones.



Wonder how and if they’ll pull out. Apparently the largest part of the professional force has been withdrawn/replaced by TDF units already. Still, an encirclement of thousands of them would be horrible for them.

Will also be interesting to see how much offensive potential Russia has left after this. Wagner should be mostly spent after 6+ months of this butchery. Could be like Severodonetsk after which Chechens, LPR and RAF in that part of the front were mostly spent.


It is, but I think it’s highly unlikely to find people keen for war in any conflict past a certain early euphoria. As propagandized as the Ukrainian people have been these past months and years, I still doubt your average Ukrainian is keen to die a miserable, horrible death in some trench somewhere in Donbass if they can avoid it - no more than the average Russian is.

Them being pulled of the streets could be an indicator of waning morale, but imo it’s plausible that it’s mostly for logistical reasons. It’s just easier to grab someone from the gym, than for some central authority to reach them via their postal address.


Millions of Poles getting a collective erection thinking about them, everyone they know and love vaporizing in nuclear fire

Crazy how it took less than a year for these deluded drones to learn to love the bomb, to love the perspective of nuclear holocaust and mass death and suffering in the fires of a world war.

None of them stand to gain anything from this, but pain and loss and misery, yet they’e gleefully begging for salvation by nuclear fallout. Fucking disturbing


Only 30% of German army’s Leopard tanks ready for combat
[Original interview](https://m.bild.de/politik/inland/politik/bundeswehrverband-chef-stellt-deutschland-auf-mega-konflikt-ein-kriegsjahrzehnt-83024962.bildMobile.html)

RWA had some interesting perspective on this recently that goes a bit against the narrative of “Ukraine is pulling people off the streets, because there’s nobody left”. Essentially what they said was that Ukraine is such a poorly centralized and governed state with a weak bureaucracy nobody knows how many people live in the country and where, the war and refugee situation only exaggerated this. Estimates of Ukrainian population before the war ranged between 30 and 40 mio, because afaik they haven’t been able to administer a census this century.

So the problem according to that isn’t so much that there’s nobody left physically, but that they’re struggling heavily to reach the people that are or should be there, if they even know these people exist. Hence the pulling people off the streets - they just can’t reach them any other way.


Vietnamese social imperialism

Jesus Christ


Damn that’s solid as. Even 16k is amazing compared to Germany (especially per capita), but another 10k in 2 years is crazy good progress - you love to see it.

We have 15 free healthcare clinics at the moment. The largest Union with 1.3 million members is starting to follow us on a lot of points. We have two municipalities in the country under our control, with good results.

That’s awesome, wish we had that kind of infrastructure and influence here. Our communist parties are struggling to stay relevant in any matter at all even in the big cities.


Nah, tagesschau article was just “China demands truce and peace talks” and these hilariously funny libs edited it to look like OP, because they just can’t help themselves but slander even a fucking call for peace with their racist yellow peril bs


Don’t forget Baerbock being a US think-tank creation, being both involved with the German Marshall Fund and Davos Young Global Leaders initiative.



Well and good, that still doesn’t change anything in our day to day work and isn’t reliant on our ‘support’ - whatever that means - at all. These are just geopolitical, historical developments which we certainly have to position ourselves towards and which we have to understand. The thrust of the communist movement remains the same however, regardless of this conflict. Russia fighting or winning in Ukraine might create openings and favorable conditions for us as communists, but it doesn’t change who or how we fight. We still fight our domestic bourgeoisie, as we’ve done before this conflict and as we’ll do once it ends.

We can’t keep pretending that we’re “fighting” anything if we keep trying to work within their system and not reaching out for aid from our governments’ enemies.

What do you mean materially? Western communist parties should write endorsements to Putin and hope he’ll give us money or what? Like, that’s not going to happen and even if it would it’d just be right-opportunism on a geopolitical scale. And what do you mean by ‘work within their system’ that we shouldn’t be doing and what work outside the system should we be doing then?

Honestly I’m not sure what you’re even arguing for in concrete terms at all.


Yes, but we should do that irrespective of Russia. Our bourgeoisie was our enemy before this conflict and it will be our enemy after it. Fighting it has nothing to do with Russia at all. Comrades have been doing that for decades, in their workplaces, unions and communities.


What do you mean by ‘support’? Cheer for them online? Because I’d say that isn’t support and doesn’t matter in any way at all. Material support as in sending money, material or even manpower to Russia? No Western leftist organization has the resources for that anyway and it would be deeply wrong to dedicade any of the scarce resources we have to support a capitalist country’s government, no matter who it’s fighting, instead of the fight for our communites locally.

If you want to ‘support’ Russia, fight your domestic bourgeoisie. If you don’t want to support Russia, still fight your domestic bourgeoisie. All this nonsense about who to support in this conflict is a distraction from our real, main enemy, the one we can actually fight in our work places, schools, communities, etc.


Great comment actually. I mostly framed this in a personal and psychological context, but being on a communist board, it obviously makes sense to connect it to society more broadly.

As such you’re definitely right. The way “self-love” is defined currently can’t be separated from the society that defines it. This society being absurdly compartmentalized, individualistic, alienated, isolated and human relations to others and themselves being increasingly commodified makes a non-narcissistic understanding of it difficult as fuck. Any definition of self-love under capitalism will always be conducive to reinforce the cultural hegemony of liberalism. As such we will always struggle with the concept, because it can never be fully healthy and the question I asked is one that naturally follows from the contradictory definition we get.

However, there is genuinely a place where we have to love ourselves despite our human failures and flaws. We have to take care of ourselves, and make sure we are not completely open to exploitation from those who will walk all over us and use up every crumb we leave unprotected.

100%. We all have flaws, but we don’t all have to hate ourselves for them. That’s not to say we have to celebrate or excuse these flaws, but we can’t hate ourselves for them either, even just from a pragmatic pov. Hating ourselves for our flaws doesn’t help anyone (but maybe some bourgeois looking to profit from the resulting insecurity).

“Do not continue to run on a broken leg or you will never run again” is what I tell myself

Exactly right. There obviously is a line between self-abandonment/-sacrifice and self-absorbtion. That, I’d say, is healthy self-protection and born out of love. It’s out of respect for the self, for our own values and emerges from a belief that we are worthy of standing for our values, that we hold up to them, because we deserve to be that person. However for that to be healthy we need healthy values and that’s the crux of the matter. This deeply anti-social society teaches us anti-social values and actively tries to get us to not stand for social values and morals.

It’s just a sad state of things, one I’ve now witnessed a couple of times, that people start out deeply insecure, with no boundaries and no self-respect to enfroce them or to stand up for their values. They look for help to become healthier - to therapists, books, etc. And after working hard, sometimes for years, they come out the other side with a total disregard for their fellow human beings, because “self-love” or “self-protection”. As if the solution to the deep insecurity and powerlessness they used to feel in this society for commodifying and isolating them was to lean into it and treat other people as disposable commodities.

Ultimately though, definitiely as @TeezyZeezy said, something to be judged on a case by case basis.


What’s the difference between self-love and selfishness to you?
Really wrestling with this question due to various personal things lately and just curious where yous draw the line on this? I've done so many things in life that, at the time, I would've described as self-protective in a self-loving way, but where I really was just being a selfish ass. Not out of malice, but out of a lack of self-love or -esteem and total ignorance of it. I've seen so many people do the same thing. And I've tolerated so much shit over the years I thought was self-loving self-protection which was really just people being selfish asses. I've probably also labelled quite a few people selfish which were just caring for themselves in earnest. People are complicated and it's honestly hard as fuck to make this distinction sometimes imo.

Well who wouldn’t celebrate painful death and suffering of people, because they live in absurdly gerrymandered states so they can’t even realistically choose between the two parties of corporate ghouls?


Who’s making these maps? They seem to be based on geolocations, but they also always seem to be way ahead of other Russian and Western maps.


in this case, the most critical possible) and that one would extend the grace that suc

But that’s not happening in this case, is it? It’s just unironically and uncritically spreading Russian nationalist propaganda. Even in the most generous reading of this, how exactly is it a communists job ever in any way to post shit like this?

without investigating

What’s there to investigate? Self styled communists and edgelords licking RAF boots, because that’s somehow critical support?

And that’s ignoring all the other reactionary shit on that nazbol pipeline


Yeah definitely nothing more based to a communist than unironically licking the boots of a capitalist countrys army. Mega based and principled and 100% the way to raise class consciousness and agitate for peace among the Western working class.


This was posted with clear motive of trolling leftoids

lmao I swear bro it’s just trolling bro just heckin irony looool triggered much leftoid

Literally the same type of nonsense Vaushites push.


What you posted is based though

It’s terminally online cringe garbage. How any self respecting communist can repost stuff like this or take it seriously in any way at all is beyond me.

There’s a clear difference between analyzing the reasons for this war, the benefits a Russian victory might have and the terror a Russian defeat would bring and whatever abomination this bs is and the reddit brain needed to celebrate this or “z post”.


Not been usind reddit much for the past month, but the shit I see on that sub recently is wild

Gender may have biological predispositions, but it’s largely determined by historical conditions.

Not sure if this belongs here, but since a lot of people tend to say trans people are some kind of ‘disproval’ or breaking up of predominant gender-expression/-norms. But isn’t trans then much more a reaffirmation of whatever dominant historical gender-expression/-definition?


@KommandoGZDtoGenZedongAirship?
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342 måneder

with F-35s and whatnot constantly circling it

lmao the picture of these billion dollar planes circling this balloon while an entire nation of 350mio is coping and seething below is just too hysterical. It’s such a beautiful, absurd allegory for the US as a state


@KommandoGZDtoGenZedongAirship?
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152 måneder

I mean…fair point lol. At least people are calling it a weather balloon now if you can believe it


@KommandoGZDtoGenZedongAirship?
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272 måneder

It’s only Feb, but this already has to be the dumbest story of the year


Geopolitical Economy Report? What happened to Multipolarista?


[Rant] The ‘is Russia imperialist’ question is pointless bullshit and I’m tired of pretending otherwise
Sup comrades, I was at a decently sized protest today and this Western Maoist lady came up to me and some other comrades and immediately started ranting to us about Ukraine, Russia and our org's position towards them. Russia is imperialist, China is imperialist, yadda yadda, you know the drill. "It's so important to discuss this question these days" You know what? It's fucking not. Our enemy is at home. The Russian comrades - the Russian people have to figure out the question of Russia. Whether Russia can be called imperialist in the Leninist sense is entirely irrelevant to our praxis at home. Endlessly wanking ourselves off about this question does nothing but distract us from building class consciousness at home. Being a good, brave purist and fractionalizing due to muh Russian imperialism does nothing to aid or guide the working class. Bourgeois media does a good enough job talking about this anyway. It is nothing but a convenient excuse for people, especially non-communists, to stay home and not fight the real enemy here, in our communities. It does nothing but distract us from fighting NATO, demanding peace and fighting the MIC at home. It's a pointless, masturbatory exercise in liberal individualism to make dogmatic fuckers feel smug about themselves. "B-but Mao said, b-but Lenin said, b-but Liebknecht said" First, I don't give a fuck, think for yourselves, adapt theory to changing material and historical conditions and direct it in a way to advance the cause of the working class. The Russian question has literally no impact either way on our strategy at home and in our specific localities. Call for peace, that's it. Second, if you want to refer to Liebknecht, he said it best: The main enemy is at home. "Why don't you demand x, y and z of Russia" Because I'm a Germany communist in a local org and I'm neither chauvinistic enough nor do I suffer from Main Character syndrom to such an extent I'd *demand* anything from a country like Russia. How fucking deluded are these people? The 2 communist parties in Germany have about 2k members each, it's fucking pathetic and delusional for any of these fuckers to demand anything from a country of almost 150mio people. Wasting our scarce energy, resources and human potential on shit like this is counterproductive at best, subversive at worst. Shut the fuck up, sit your ass down and organize your community, school, uni or workplace in a meaningful way. If you want to have discussions like this, have them behind closed doors with your comrades at chapter meetings and stop annoying people organizing and taking to the streets in real life every chance you get. Fuck me, I'm tired of this sectarian bullshit ::: spoiler PS Just to be clear, I'm mostly venting here. Discussions about theory are important and I believe there is a need to talk about the concept of imperialism, but not everywhere all the time and especially not as priority #1 ffs :::

Multipolarity & socialization
Sup comrades, Over the past couple of weeks I've heard more and more comrades posit something along the lines of: Multipolarity is a material reality resulting from increased levels of **global** socialization of production. I think it's an interesting explanation, because it leads us away from the vague, normative position many liberals and right-wingers are currently adopting when talking about multipolarity. But here's my question/issue: On the regional/national level increased socialization of production leads to greater interdependencies between regions, industries, etc. Okay, we're seeing this on a global scale too. Problem is, from my understanding, these interdependencies and other mechanisms led to increasing levels of centralization of capital. Arguably we've seen this over time leading to the large, centralized modern bourgeois nation-states and monopolies. So the question is - how would this result in anything but unipolarity over time? In fact, we've seen this happen in the first half of the 20th century. Centralization on the national level led to the development of multiple competing "poles" before WW1, then WW2 and then after 1945. However, these, as argued, developed exactly one thing: unipolarity after 1990 and up until today (questionable). **So how does an increase in socialization of production globally explain a move *away* from unipolarity and centralization of capital and power?** Is the contradiction between socialized production vs privatized appropriation that, as marxism argues, brings forth the necessity of socialization of ownership on the regional/national level sufficient to explain this phenomenon globally or what am I missing?

Creative, therapeutic outlet
Comrades, I got some shit to work through that I meant to work through for a while and I'm doing all the usual stuff to process it, but I really feel like expressing my thoughts and feelings in some kind of creative way, I just don't really know what and how. Some years ago I used to draw and that helped a bit, but I could never draw from my head so only really re-drew pictures/drawings. That's not really what I'm looking for atm tho. I used to write creatively many years ago and I'd love to do it now, but I just don't know what and how. Can't think of anything the moment I open a page. Any suggestions how to start? What to start? What are yous doing? Anything that helped you? How did you get started? Cheers

Lmao 45 days. Superb democracy lassy


Nooo don't pull your troops out of there, alienate Opec, undermine the petro dollar, leave weapons exports to SA to countries like Russia, creating a vested interest in their reorientation noooooo Honestly tho, how the fuck are they still continuing with this? You can't sanction and threaten the entire world (anymore), especially not when your domestic economies are failing and they have leverage over you. Even these imperialist swine have to realize that at this point

Incredible stuff. Thousands of sanctions, hundreds of billions seized and they're mostly cruising with things already bouncing back to normal after only half a year. No matter our opinions on the war, it's fascinating that there is a way beyond Western domination now.

Terrorism and nuclear brinkmanship good akshully

“Tigers” in the snow. The sad story of the storming of Kharkov on February 27 by the forces of the 2nd Brigade Special Forces of the RF Armed Forces
Autotranslate of a story that's currently circulating on Russian TG channels. Original article has pictures and videos related to the story. Shades of Grozny and paints a shocking picture of the initial invasion and the state of the Russian army. ----------------------------------------- "We were contacted by the participants in the assault on Kharkov from the 2nd Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade (2nd ObrSpN) to convey the true picture of what was happening during the battles for the city on February 27th. According to the original plan, the forces of the 2nd ObrSpN, the 25th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade (25th Motorized Rifle Brigade) and part of the FSVNG (Rosguard) were supposed to take part in the assault on Kharkov. It sounds solid, however, as it turns out later, neither the motorized riflemen nor the Russian Guardsmen made it into the city itself. According to one version, their columns came under fire on the approach to Kharkov and stood up, according to another, they did not even advance into the city. One way or another, but the special forces soldiers continued to act according to the plan and began to enter the Kharkov streets alone, with the forces of only two companies from different detachments of the brigade. The fighters were given a preliminary order not to open fire on civilians. But already in the city itself, the special forces faced a different reality: armed and unarmed local residents, often without any insignia and uniforms, tried in every possible way to block the columns, disarm the fighters and block traffic routes with the help of tires. The special forces in their "Tigers" desperately meandered along the unfamiliar streets between the barricades, periodically coming under fire from the roofs of neighboring houses by the newly formed Ukrainian defense forces. The whole situation painfully began to resemble the "Fall of the Black Hawk", only without the black hawks themselves, covering the special forces from the air, but with snow on the streets and well-aimed fire from Ukrainian National Guard snipers, who supported the indiscriminate shooting of local residents from the therodefense with machine guns handed out right there on the spot. At one point, a group of four "Tigers" passes along Sidor Kovpak Street, then along Shevchenko, and jumps out in the area of ​​the now infamous School No. 134 , where they finally get up due to breakdowns. The enemy starts shelling such a tasty target and the special forces are forced to leave the armored vehicles on the road. Having lost their transport, the slaughterhouses decide to organize defense within the walls of the school, as they receive information about the approach of the main forces to the rescue. In the meantime, the Ukrainians, having seized the abandoned walkie-talkies, began to listen to the negotiations and even try to get in touch using the callsigns sounding on the air. After this incident, a decision is made to switch to complete radio silence and begin to withdraw from the city. SWAT disappears from the air. Most of the fighting groups successfully make their way back from Kharkov. One of the units under fire left their equipment in the area of ​​the Pavlovo Pole residential area in the north of the city and was already retreating on foot. However, the group that went the farthest in the area of ​​school No. 134 was the least fortunate. The Ukrainians are shouting about the Russian soldiers who have entrenched themselves in the school, and almost all enemy units that are nearby are quickly pulled up to its walls: armored vehicles of the 92nd mechanized brigade, Kord police special forces, the national guard, nationalists from Freikorps and other scattered territorial defense units. A fierce gunfight ensues. At first, the Ukrainians shout for the Russians to surrender - our fighters return fire. The enemy fails to take the entrenched special forces with a swoop, and, having suffered losses, the Ukrainians drive the BTR-4E to the school , which our soldiers quickly burn from the RPG-30 and finish off with a burst from the removed Kord. After that, by the evening, the Ukrainians wait for the T-64BV to approach and begin to fold the building with tank fire. The company commander, another officer and a sergeant decide to make a breakthrough in order to bring help to the blocked unit under radio silence. Two other officers remain with the staff at the school. Alas, the attempt was doomed to failure. The company commander is mortally wounded before he even reaches the fence. Two other commandos try to help him and return, but it's too late. Meanwhile, the fighters remaining at the school are fighting an unequal battle with the enemy, continuing to repulse attacks even when almost all floors in the building were already on fire. Only under the cover of night and smoky smoke from their last refuge, the surviving fighters make a second, this time successful attempt to exit Kharkov in the direction of their forces. In a situation of complete confusion, several special forces soldiers were captured by the enemy in the school area. According to a pre-agreed legend, they told the Ukrainians that they were soldiers of the 25th motorized rifle brigade and gave fictitious names. To date, all captured fighters have been returned home as a result of past exchanges. Thus ended the unsuccessful attempt to storm Kharkov on February 27, 2022. Our soldiers still do not have an answer why they were sent to such an operation alone, why they were supplied with incorrect intelligence, why they did not establish interaction with other units. However, all fighters are proud of their brigade. The enemy had a total numerical superiority, positions in urban areas and had good command of the area. But due to the coherence of the groups, the nature and training of the fighters, the special forces were able to get out of the critical situation with minimal losses. The special forces inflicted painful losses on the Ukrainian formations both during the attempt to storm the school and during the withdrawal from the city. Eternal glory and eternal memory to the soldiers of the 2nd ObrSpN who died during the storming of Kharkov."

What can we expect from the new Italian gov?
I've heard people say Meloni's a Pro-EU, Pro-NATO hawk, some rightwingers are convinced she'll push through Italexit and start rapprochement with Russia and whatever else they dream about. What's actually a reasonable expectation for this government's behaviour, especially in regards to foreign policy?

Thanks comrade Obvious, we know about the Nazi battalions and the rascism of the Ukrainian state. What more's there to discuss? Well, we're scientific socialists and thus our understanding of fascism and our analysis of the state of capitalism in any one moment should be based on materialism. We can't reduce our use of the word "fascism" to that of liberals using it as a generic swear-word hauled at people they don't agree with, even reactionaries. It isn't simply "when rascism", it isn't simply "when nationalism" and it also isn't "when authoritarianism". If we decide to use this word it should be based on a clear assessment of the material conditions and whether they fit the criteria of fascism. Fascism, to keep this short, is a state of capitalism in crisis advanced by the forces of finance capital which is characterized by a total destruction of organized labour brought about by a merging of private and public property. On the ideological side it is naturally and necessarily accompanied by and gives rise to violent anti-communism, racism, sexism and ultra-nationalism. Enter Ukraine. It is ostensibly a capitalist state in deep crisis. Its pretense of seperation between private and public interest, already a sham before the war, has been destroyed in its entirety. Zelensky is a billionaire's puppet, one by the broader bourgeoisie and at this point a comprador for US finance capital. All forms of organized labour have been destroyed and outlawed. Collective bargaining is abolished. Any form of proletarian participation in its fake democracy has been ruled out. The press is gleichgeschaltet. It has opened its gates for the plunder by international finance capital, because the interest of the state and that of finance capital in Ukraine have become synonymous. Symbolically Zelensky himself opened the NY stock exchange a couple weeks ago, inviting the robber barons on wall street to "invest" in the limitless opportunities of exploitation of the wealth of his country with the guarantee of a docile and defenceless working class. [He also wrote an ad-ed in the Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/invest-in-the-future-of-ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-stem-graduates-business-technology-sector-billions-partnerships-11662404585), emphasizing this invitation. That's what fascism means. Fascism isn't some metaphysical quality seperate from all this, it is per definition this state of capitalism. The ideological components should be obvious by now. Zelensky is a fascist, but more importantly Ukraine is a fascist state. Crucially this is an assessment we can now confidently make independent from Russia's narrative, however justified that may be. It is also undoubtedly a victim of US imperialism. Ukraine is also clear evidence that imperialism with its manufacturing of crisis and its exploitation of them via shock therapy measures neccessarily demands and brings about those forces and those conditions we call fascism. This is important, because it increasingly looks like the natural next target of US imperialism, the next crisis it needs to exploit is currently arising and being manufactured in all of Europe. This means the conditions for European fascism are developing as we speak. Being cold is the acute threat we're facing within the next months. But we're at risk of being so literally frozen in shock we'll be missing the neoliberal therapy that's coming for us. Finance capital will not leave this crisis unexploited. This will lead to conditions ever closer to fascism if we don't fight back. I highly recommend [Ben Norton's interview with Michael Hudson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZBOaPKWjw) on the topic and [Multipolarista's reporting on it in general](https://multipolarista.com/2022/09/09/zelensky-selling-ukraine-wall-street/).
54

Good geopolitical context for the current flare-up in relation to Russia and US interests. Shocking how blatant it all is really. Also everyone has to read the 2019 RAND report which he constantly quotes. It's essential reading at this point to understand US behaviour in regards to Russia and its frontiers since 2020.

How do you feel about prepping?
With things being as crazy as they are and have been the past 2 years I've been seriously considering building up a stock of emergency supplies to last for a week or two ever since the first Covid lockdown. You know, not to survive the apocalypse, but to bridge short-term supply disruptions (eg toilet paper, sunflower oil, pasta, etc) and just to be safe and not rely on delivery services in cases like quarantine. But I'm not exactly loaded, so I've put it off so far to save the money. Winter slowly approaching has me thinking again tho. How do you feel about this? Already got your bunker set up? Think it's a waste of time, space and money? What would you reckon is essential? Any guides/lists?

Apparently they withdrew from Izyum behind the Oskol river during the night. Unconfirmed reports are UAF crosses the Siversky Donets river largerly uncontested and are either fighting in or have already pushed the Russians out of Lyman. All of this in the span of a few days without much resistance in crucial areas that took the allies months to take. No idea what to even say to this tbh.

Ukrainian landing party just tried to seize Zaporizhzhia NPP ahead of IAEA inspection
I can't link the relevant Telegram and Twitter posts atm, but reports are about 60 Ukrainian commandos landed just east of the power plant this morning. RAF started shelling the area and engaged them with planes and helicopters. The Russians also claim they sunk 2 more landing ships due west of the plant. Situation isn't yet fully resolved from what I can tell. First, just wtf are these lunatics doing. Second, the inspectors arrived in the region yesterday iirc and were supposed to inspect the plant today or in the coming days. The Russians pulled out their forces from neighboring Enerhodar for this visit. Essentially the Ukrainians used the visit as shield for an amphibious assault on a *nuclear power plant*. That's the least nefarious interpretation here. What in the world would they have done had they seized the plant. Take the inspectors hostage? Do a PR piece for the world showing the planet they themselves shelled and attacked under their controlled to the world, using the inspectors to give the story credit? Just wtf. Edit: Seems like the UAF are currently detaining the column of inspectors at a checkpoint about 20km from the frontline.

What’s going on in Baghdad/Iraq?
There's fighting going on in the city that started after Shia militas stormed the Green Zone and the presidential palace. Combat footage is all over twitter right now, talks of civil war is coming up, neighbors are closing their borders, but honestly I don't really get what's going on. Pro-Iran vs Anti-Iran militias and interests are playing a role from what I've gathered, but that's about it. Anyone more familiar with Iraq and today's events?


In case anyone still has a doubt about wiki's leanings

[Source](https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1562725207118594048) Bro I don't even know how I'll be able to use my PC let alone heat my house this winter lol


Comrades, what are your thoughts on the state of the war?
With almost 6 months of this war approaching, I think it's time to kinda recap, reevaluate and redicuss this war. Curious what yous think about the state of the armies, the strategies of either side, what are your predictions, what do you think the goals are and who's closer to achieving them? I'll go first and mostly talk about the Russian side to keep it shorter and because it's the active party mostly. # Strategy Honestly even after 6 months I find this incredibly hard to pin down. What are their plans with this war geopolitically and on the ground? Yes, we've heard "demilitarization" and "denazification" when things first started, talk about creating a multipolar world has since started too. But let's be real, that's all incredibly vague and the Russians really aren't communicating anything more specific at all. The liberation of Donbass is the one concrete goal I can make out. Do they want a landlocked Ukraine, destroy it completely, demilitarize and destabilize the entire West, just liberate Donbass? I don't know and to me it feels like they didn't start this war with a clear, concrete goal. Maybe they had one but didn't anticipate the dimensions this would take, maybe it's all going according to plan - I'm just unable to tell and to me it feels like nobody on either side is able to tell either. What's the strategy on the ground? Again, Russia is obv tight lipped about this, but I still can't tell this one either. What feels somewhat certain is the following - The pace is absurdly slow - This whole thing has mostly become a positional artillery war of attrition - Russia is unwilling or incapable of sacrificing large amounts of men, civilians and equipment in big armored assaults - Size of the invasion force has been constant despite Russia being outnumbered So where does that leave us? My most generous interpretation is that Russia is content with shelling the Ukrainians to hell, while fixing its own economy, doing its best to erode US and EU positions around the world and deepening their internal crises. That they're unimpressed with the fallout of sanctions, they don't care about completing things fast at all and really the kinetic war has been relegated to second priority, behind the larger economic and geopolitical calculations. That it's useful, because the West needs to dig itself deeper into the mess the longer this goes on and because it allows Russia to demilitarize NATO at a comfy pace without engaging it directly. The least favourable interpretation is that Russia is not capable of going any faster than it is currently, either because it isn't viable politically (eg declaration of war, higher casualties) or it militarily just can't. That they didn't have a clear plan going into this, got caught off-guard by the Wests rabid response and now don't have the means or the plans to end both the kinetic war and the fires it started. No idea which is closer to the truth and I'm not going to be a smartass and just say it's something in the middle. It doesn't feel super well thought out and planned, it doesn't feel like a panicked, incompetent adventure at all either and it also doesn't feel like some mix of the two. # Predictions Always hard to make in war and politics, but especially so in this war. Just a couple I feel somewhat confident in - This war isn't ending this year - Ukraine doesn't have and won't have any offensive potential - Russian offensives on Kharkiv, Odessa, Nikolaev, etc are hopium. They won't assault them, they won't encircle them and they won't besiege them this year. If they could or wanted to they would've done so early in the war - Bakhmut-Siversk line will take at least another month to take/break - Unless UAF collapses somehow, Slavyansk & Kramatorsk won't fall this year Fall and winter are approaching and I'd imagine that'll slow the absurdly slow pace even further at some point. But I reckon winter will decide this war anyway with the economic and social crisis really kicking the EU in the gut by then. They won't be able to support Ukraine past a point and Ukraine is simply not capable of surviving without foreign help anymore. Other than that I only see a few options how this whole thing could change its dynamic. A declaration of war and mobilization, a collapse of the West, a collapse of the UAF or deployment of Russian reserves in Ukraine after the referendums to free up more regulars for combat. Last one seems most likely, but no idea if that'll really change things that much. # Bottom line Rereading this feels like a whole lot of "idk", but honestly, despite heavily engaging with this conflict almost everyday for the past 6 months, that's still pretty much where I'm at. It's uniquely strange to me and just very hard to really make sense of - propaganda and fog of war certainly aren't helping. Keen on reading your opinions and whether you guys have been able to make more sense of it than my dumbass. Cheers

As Italy turns fascist, Cuba sends 500 doctors to Calabria 🇨🇺
Has there ever been a more based country?

>The United States has shipped about a third of its existing arsenal of Stinger anti-air and Javelin anti-armor missiles to Ukraine >Ellen Lord [...] said Stingers cannot be replaced “within the next couple of years” because its production line has been shut down. Even simple items, such as diodes, used to regulate voltage for these systems could be difficult to obtain. >“Even with Javelin, we are probably five years” away from replenishing that stock despite its manufacturing line remaining open, she added. World class economy. 5 years to replenish 1/3 of its stockpile...

Shock Doctrine’s anti-communism worth it?
So I've had this as audiobook in my library for a while and thought I'd finally give it a go on a long train ride, because I'm out of other stuff to listen to. But my god...there's some useful stuff here, but I'm barely a chapter in and she's already insinuated the Tinyman massacre (on students wanting neoliberal reforms) happened so China could implement neoliberal reforms/shock doctrine, repeatedly compared China's economic model to Russia and the US and coined the term "corporatism", because neoliberalisms natural conlusion "isn't capitalism or neoliberalism or neoconservatism". Is it even worth going through the rest of it or could other works provide the same info without this anti-communist libshit? Edit: >From Chile to China to Iraq torture has been a silent partner in the free-market crusade I'm going insane. Also why in the world would anyone describe torture as a SILENT partner ffs


From a Trot-paper, still a decent summary of the speech and some explanations and context for non-Germans I reckon. If anyone's interested I can put up her speech in full as well. # **Baerbock's New York war speech** The foreign-policy keynote address, which German foreign minister and Green-politician Annalena Baerbock held in the New School in New York on 2. August, demands a reply. Some lies are so outrageous they can develop a devastating momentum if they stay unchallenged. Embedded in phrases about freedom, democracy and human rights and reminiscences about Hannah Arendt, who as a Jew fled Germany from the Nazis and taught from 1967-1975 at New School, Baerbock created the vision of a world dominated by the USA and Germany. She not only declared to fight Russia but China as well and justified this imperialistic great-power fantasy with breathtaking falsifications, omissions and distortions. In 1989 US-president George Bush had made Germany the famous offer of a "joint partnership in leadership", claimed Baerbock. But then Germany had been to busy with reunification to accept the offer. Today this has changed: "Now is the moment that we have to create it: a joint partnership in leadership." Such a partnership in leadership would be "no romantic project to bring back good old transatlantic times", Baerbock continued. By good old romantic times she meant the Cold War, over the course of which the world teethered on the edge of nuclear annihilation multiple times. Back then the Greens had still protested against nuclear weapons. But meanwhile Baerbock has - like Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubricks famous movie - learned to love the Bomb and thinks about using it herself. In a particularily bizarre part of her speech she describes children asking at breakfast: "Mum, what are nuclear weapons?", to then assure: "I really do like NATO" These children's grandparents had taken to the streets in the 80s to protest against rearmament. "Now these grandparents, mothers, fathers and their childrens discuss rearmament at breakfast." Baerbock here is obviously talking about herself and about the well-off clientele of the Greens, not about the large majority of the population that doesn't have the slightest inclination to be turned to ashes for German great-power fantasies. Over the entire course of her speech Baerbock repeatedly makes the point that the desired "partnership in leadership" has to be understood militarily. "In Germany we have given up on the long cherished German conviction of 'change by trade'", she said. It seems change by military force has taken its place. Russia's war against Ukraine has prompted the German government to "question some long cherished sercurity-policy positions: Germany has set up a special budget of €100bn with which we want to strengthen our Bundeswehr. We have revised principles of arms exports that were established for decades so that Germany now counts to Ukraines strongest military and financial supporters. And we have increased our contribution to NATO." But this is only the beginning: "It's our goal to strengthen the European pillar of NATO further...and for the long term." The EU has to be aligned strategically - "as a union which is capable to act eye to eye with the United States: in a partnership in leadership". And one that has to "become a stronger security-political actor", integrate its arms industries further and be "capable of carrying out military missions to stabilize regions in its neighborhood". **Brazen lies** After its barbaric crimes in two world wars German militarism had to measure itself. Now Baerbock is chaining one brazen lie after the other to justify its resurgence. This starts with the claim 24. February - the day of the Russian attack on Ukraine - has "changed our world": "President Putin wants a world in which might makes right rules, not the might of rights, in which great powers can consume smaller states at will." "I'm 40 years old, have been born in West-Germany and have luckily never experienced war or dictatorship", Baerbock continues. But now president Putin is supposedly assaulting "the European peace order, the international order not theoretically - his atttack is brutal reality". Baerbock may be relatively young (in truth she's 41). Yet the claim she has "never experienced war or dictatorship", is plainly absurd. Since her 10th birthday the USA, with which she's striving for a "partnership in leadership", is parctically continuously at war. Not only is it following "might makes right" in that and ignoring all the rules of international law, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria it has destroyed entire societies, killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. By now it's openly preparing for war against its economic rival China. Baerbock was 18 when then Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer gave green light for the involvement of the Bundeswehr in the illegal NATO-war against Yugoslavia. And she was 33, MoP and member of the leadership of the Greens, when they played an active role in the right-wing coup in Kiew, which laid the foundation for todays war. Elected president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown with the aid of fascistic militias and replaced by a pro-Western puppet. Already then the German government announced it wanted to become a political and military great-power again. Just before the coup in Kiew three high-ranking officials of the state and government - president Joachim Gauck, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) and minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) - had declared this in almost identical speeches at the Munich security conference. Baerbock's claim the massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr is a reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine is thus an obvious lie. Rather the war has been a welcome pretext to realize the rearmament plans, which the population strongly disaproves, at break-neck speed. Since the coup in 2014 NATO has armed Ukraine systematically, promised NATO-membership and sabotaged all efforts for a peaceful solution. Russian president Putin reacted as expected of a right-wing nationalist and a representative of the Russian oligarchy and as hoped by NATO: He struck militarily. Ever since NATO has exploited this reactionary attack ruthelessly. It's waging a proxy war against Russia on the back of the Ukrainian population and is doing everything to continue it to the defeat of the Russian army - even if it costs a massive amount of human lives. Its goal: Neutralize Russia as geopolitical rival, unhindered access to its enormous resources and splitting up of its enormous territory. Domestically, in the USA as in Europe, the war against Russia and the offensive against China are destractions from increasing social tensions. Against this background Baerbock's invocation of "transatlantic community of values" and "irrevocable transatlantic partnership" - she uses the word "transatlantic" no less than 30 times over the course of her speech - can only cause nausea. It's a partnership of bandits. Baerbock wants the "transatlantic partnership in leadership" explicitly to extend to the conflict with China. "It can not be in our interest that China creates excessive economic dependencies", she declares and announces a new "China strategy" in her ministry "which is to be released next year and which comprehensively takes into account the strategic considerations here in the United States". Baerbock meanders about the daily fight for "peace, freedom and security" and the "irrevocable human dignity", while she's really preparing another explosion of German militarism. Yet she's markedly selective when it comes to human dignity and human rights. Violations - real and alledged - are always invoked when they harm a geopolitical rival, as in the case of the Uyghurs in China. They are ignored and minimized when they're committed by allies. Baerbock just three weeks ago greeted Egyptian dictator and butcher of Kairo, Abdelfattah al-Sisi, in Germany as ally in the fight against climate change. Al-Sisi's police has killed thousands of protesters, tortured tens of thousands in its dungeons and executes hundreds every year. **Leading party of German militarism** The Greens have become the leading party of German militarism. For it they're even sacrificing their political core topic, environment politics. To continue the war in Ukraine they're now for longer runtimes for nuclear- and coal-powerplants, for the suspension of renaturation of agricultural land and for the abolition of other environmental protection measures they've been fighting for for decades. Spiegel-reporter Dirk Kurbjuweit recently attested the Greens they've replaced the conservative CDU "as German state-party". "They are for arms deliveries, despite having pacifistic roots, they are temporarily for coal, despite it harming the climate, they are open for a debate about nuclear power, despite emerging from the anti-nuclear-power movement." They're supposedly doing all of this not to increase their chances of winning elections, but "so that Germany and Europe manage the crisis better. Thus the Greens, former protest-party, have become the German state-party, a title which so far has been claimed by the CDU." 1/2

[Source](https://mobile.twitter.com/sashasjason/status/1555819445297115136) These schmucks are literally calling the Amnesty report a display of white privilege and "totalitarianism" lmao

Don't know what to say to this honestly. Modern Russia with its history in the USSR, the devastation of the 90s and its current place in the world is just such a uniquely interesting and weird player.

Lowest hanging fruit, I know, but it's the first post of his I've seen in months and it's so utterly and unabashedly pro-imperialist, just had to post it. Man's literally sporting the US, Taiwan and Kosov flag now too. Beyond parody.

China's tech independence advancing despite heavy sanctions. Should be great news for Russia too, because tech sanctions have been a big blow. Curious timing of this news though with the CHIPS bill up for voting.


🦀

And, don't be fooled at all, people will take this. But hey, at least we're cutting off Russian coal in August and oil in December

Unwomanly face of war by Svetlana Alexievich
Has anyone here read this? Thinking about gifting it, but don't want to hand out anticommunist pseudo history a la Archipelago.