Thanks for the summary. I think in cases like this, as uncomfortable as it can be, it’s important to have the full text so I wouldn’t worry about posting relevant links in this comm. I’ve seen the link now. I’ll have a think.

My first thoughts are: what do you and they mean by Rojava? If they mean to limit it to a particular set of relations that amount to a US proxy, that’s one thing (and quite a claim but possibly not a call for genocide). If they’re using Rojava more like you, as the Kurds in that part of the world, it’s quite another. Both readings seem possible, which is problematic.

You’re welcome. It’s a difficult topic. I also had to come to terms with some uncomfortable truths, being in a similar place. I had to realise that I wasn’t just getting paid better than colonised people just because I’m willing to work nights and weird shifts.

As for ‘yanks’, I was over the character limit and saved just enough to get under by replacing ‘settler’ and ‘USian’. I don’t like to use ‘American’ because that label is much broader than settlers the US. It’s not intended as an insult. Well, no more than if I were to call someone British, French, or German lol

They’re great points, actually. I think I’ve lost something in trying to condense and simplify the points within the character count. I’m going to try to have another read of the source and re-check numbers. If I’ve not simplified faithfully, you may be onto a string critique of Cope. I’m not certain just, though—I’ll have to think about it.

I have a feeling that it’s me who’s missed out some of the explanation. I’ve got to figure out where. It could be in suggesting, in the first example, that A and B are buying widgets off each other.

In the second, the $12 is the portion of value created by labour that the employer(s) is willing to give to the workers. The workers there are in the same value chain and contribute to one product. They could both have a pay rise if the bourgeois wasn’t involved. But, crucially, worker A will usually side with the bourgeois before they side with worker B. This is because (and I accept the numbers that I’ve given as my example don’t show this clearly) worker A realises (i) under the current arrangement, they are paid well because worker B is paid so poorly (the functional exploitation) and (ii) it is far easier to collaborate with the employer for another few dollars of the profit than to overthrow the system just so that worker B can have parity (which does not necessarily benefit worker A and may be a positive disbenefit).

Could be worth me quoting directly rather than putting it in my own words but I remember it’s quite complex (hence me using a simplified version). I’ll take a another look.

That looks good! Was it as crispy and flaky as it looks?

If contributors paid e.g. $2,000/year instead of $10,000, the ‘spare’ $8,000 doesn’t disappear, it gets spent elsewhere, driving employment, potentially in less parasitic industries. This is before we get to the fact that the example $2k/each more than pays for those 3 million jobs because you’ve taken out the parasite that takes the $8k for themselves. So in fact, you don’t lose 3 million jobs but keep those and still have the extra employment or increased wages and allow for some of it to be slurped up as profit from the spare $8k.

Obama:

I don’t think in ideological terms…

Is there context?

The doctor and pharmacist are shitheads.

You deserve to be here and to use whatever resources are needed to keep you as healthy and pain-free as possible.

If your neurologist has said to use one tablet a day, they will be annoyed to find out that your GP is denying that because the GP is undermining the neurologist’s work. They will likely support your case for you if you can email the neurologist and ask them to have a word with the GP.

If the GP or pharmacist don’t like it, fuck them, they are an offence to their professions. They could always grow a backbone and stand up to the people who pretend that these things are zero-sum. Your prescription in no way denies anyone else their prescription. If your GP and pharmacist don’t understand basic political economics, that’s not your fault; they are wearing their ignorance on their sleeve and likely proud of it because it means they don’t have to think about their own complicity in such a shit system (and your NHS is supposed to be one of the better health services!!).

I think you’re right. The difficulty is finding yanks who don’t have a grudge lol.

That comes to 1.45 2.9 hours of labor for a pair of Nike shoes.

The median hourly wage of a US worker is $18.12

Two vital stats even if the maths are this simple are: (1) the unit labour costs in Vietnam and (2) unit labour costs of Nike staff in the US (including all those involved in the process, logistics, admin, etc). The former will begin to show the disparity between the average US worker and the Vietnamese shoemaker. The second figure will begin to show the extent to which Nike staff in the US (et al) are better off than Nike staff in Vietnam, and the exploitative realities of that relationship.

Then it is necessary to consider all the previous nodes in the value chain before the trainers are finished in Vietnam to discover deeper levels of exploitation.

It’s dated, but see this: https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm1997/031997/ballinger.html

Examples are good, although a broader perspective is better. Still, let’s stick with the example and unpack the relation following Jeff Ballinger’s analysis for 1997.

Median hourly wage in the US in 1997 was $8.75

Nike was paying Vietnamese workers less than minimum wage ($42/month). Assuming (wrongly, I suspect) that they were working 42 hours:

• 42 x 4 = 168 hours
• $42 / 168 hours = $0.25/hour Ignoring the physical and sexual violence needed to keep the workers productive in the factories for the sake of focussing on the numbers, the results are still not good.

The US sports fan in 1997 can buy their Nike sneakers after $149.50 / $8.75/hr = 17.1 hours, or roughly 2 days of work (excluding taxes). The Vietnamese worker would have to work at least (we know they were being underpaid and can assumed were overworked) $149.50 / $0.25/hr = 598 hours, or roughly 14.24 months (excluding taxes) for the same shoes.

Of course, poor Americans might find that they don’t have 17/hours worth of expendable cash after the end of each working week. But neither would Vietnamese worker after 14 months and a week. Shoe prices might have been cheaper in Vietnam if they could be bought in legitimate stores but why should that favour the US worker in the equation? They could travel to Vietnam to benefit from the lower prices while the Vietnamese worker could never afford to use their 10 days annual leave on a trip to the US. I realise that 10-days leave would be a luxury for modern-day US workers, even if lower than Nike’s official ‘30-day’ leave policy but this may only account for weekends, etc, considering reports of mandatory overtime.

These are still rough sums, which only relate to one (luxury) example, and the data will have changed since 1997. The difference is staggering, still. The other factor to consider is that the average US worker only gets paid its $8.75 (1997) or $18.12 (today) because their employer shifts value around with clever accounting and significantly underpays in the global south part of its production chains.

(As for the 50/hours labour-per-item, I’m not the OP but that must be an average and it’s unfair to reject that figure by finding a commodity that seems to take 2.5 hours of production; a figure itself that (incorrectly) assumes the only labour is in the assembly factory.)

You may be thinking about this in the wrong way. You say, for instance:

It’s often suggested that white Americans in particular love third-world exploitation because it directly benefits those same white Americans.

I don’t know who would say that white yanks love exploiting the global south. It’s simply a fact that they benefit disproportionately from imperialism. Minnesotan Joe Cracker may not even want “child slavery in southern Africa so he can get his cheap electronics” but that child slavery and US-imposed oppression is the mechanism by which he can enjoy his cheap electronics.

Nobody is claiming that yanks can’t be poor, suffering, or oppressed. Look at Joe Cracker, who drinks tap water, enjoys the odd McDonald’s, and uses an iPhone. These are luxuries for many, many people who lack:

• potable water
• a fully nutritional diet
• road infrastructure
• access to consistent electricity or any kind of telecommunications network, including/never mind WiFi (and yes, it’s a luxury—have you considered what it might be like to give birth at night in a place that has no electricity and where you cannot contact a medic to talk you through the process, never mind arrive in time to help?)
• safe indoor ovens for cooking
• it’s an endless list – and as bad as things are in the US, for most people that list is substantially shorter.

As Parenti argues, the US ruling class wants the third-worldisation of the US. There is homelessness, non-potable water in Flint, and roads and rail that barely function. Let’s look at some statistics to see the other side of the equation.

Note: another comment in this thread tries to work out and explain why a Vietnamese worker is no worse off than a US worker. The logic, unfortunately, distorts the picture. I’ll use four examples to demonstrate that yanks do benefit materially from imperialism, whether they ‘love’ it or choose it or hate it.

On average, yanks benefit materially and significantly from imperialism and suffer less from its harms. Many of these will see themselves as poor. They may be poor. Still, yanks will generally demand a higher stake from the loot and demand not to suffer the consequences long before they consider turning off the tap. This does not mean that yanks cannot be educated to realise their position in imperialism but it’s an uphill struggle. For more: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/497897

Is this who’s attacked who?

Conspicuous bottom left corner row.

But are they happy?

I need a protective bubble around my speech and it better not extend to people I disagree with or you’re being too sensitive to people who need a protective bubble around their speech.

My question is whether a jury would find him not guilty. If it were e.g. a grieving father who didn’t have to lose their child if UHC had covered some treatment, I could see a jury throwing the verdict. With this guy?

Who lied about China? Multitotal? It doesn’t read like that to me.

It is muddied, I agree. The question is who maintains those policies and by what processes of production and reproduction. Legislators don’t achieve anything by writing a new policy or law; it takes thousands to carry out their will, either consciously or accidentally.

Two other important points are that (1) settler isn’t necessarily a permanent description—settlers can choose a different path—and (2) in the US context, settler-coloniser involves internal and external relations (in terms of inside and outside the US)—being a US settler means e.g. demanding a redistribution of wealth to provide social services and healthcare without acknowledging that most of that wealth flows in from the periphery and much of the ‘domestic’ wealth creation is clever ‘value added’ accounting.

Doing something about the problem is a quick way of negating the description of settler even for those who objectively and clearly fit it (e.g. middle managers in arms factories, officers in the military, the police, and haute bourgeois ranchers on the border of reserves). Things that can be done:

• reading revolutionary theory and educating others about necessary changes
• organising to prevent the continued pollution of and resource extraction on land that is still clearly designated as native land
• going on strike over issues of institutional racism and/or imperialism
• getting involved in prison abolition
• not voting for and therefore supporting the very people responsible for no tolerance policing in racially targeted zipcodes
• getting written signatures on a petition to fairly fund schools
• attending government meetings and repeatedly asking, ‘what about reparations’
• striking in solidarity with workers in the global south who are in the same value chain as one’s industry
• not compromising on shipping weapons when one’s transport union is on the verge of winning a pay rise
• campaigning against the interference of US capital in other countries
• doing anything to oppose the US military industrial complex

There are a lot of ongoing manifestations and practices of settler colonialism. It’s difficult to pick out and articulate the role of specific individuals who are settlers but it’s not impossible to consider the system as a whole and then analyse any individual’s or group’s position/role in the system.

Have a look at Michael Parenti’s Make-Believe Media or his lecture ‘Rambo and the Swarthy Hordes’. I’m not sure if this counts as ‘Marxist Film Theory’ because schools of thought can be weirdly exclusionary and not what they appear to be. But it’s Parenti criticising entertainment media and it’s production from a Marxist perspective.

Essentially, he finds that most movies are pro-capitalism and anti-communist and it’s partly because of the way they are produced and who pays for them.

Take a show with blue collar workers and notice how they’re all portrayed as being a bit stupid. Watch any movie with military or police vehicles and weapons and ask how the studio got their hands on all that gear to make it look realistic (answer: the police and military lend the equipment on the condition that they have editorial control over the final product). Consider why anti-capitalist movies and shows are poorly distributed – they can be made but you won’t be able to watch them (e.g. 1900). Ask why even ‘poor’ people in movies and shows love in massive apartments or houses.

Any media, not just overtly political media, can be criticised from a Marxist perspective. Have s quick look at this short article: https://redsails.org/the-swerve/ . Again, I can’t confirm whether this is what Marxist Film Theory is about.

This seems to be a category error. Settler and white aren’t synonyms even if there is significant overlap in a white supremacist system.

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Helped along by a class-biased legal system no doubt.

Juries can only answer the questions they’re asked. I can see how easy it is for the judge to emphasise the relevance of any ‘doubt’ and how much a $3 million legal team would be able to cast that doubt.

Especially in the high profile theatre of a case like this. No way did those jurors not go online or pick up a paper for the whole duration of the trial and the run up.

On top of that, you have the prosecution backing down step by step until the jurors would say, well if even the victim’s supposed defenders don’t think this was murder, what are we supposed to do?