Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. Sit down around the fire place, if you have fire wood, please place it on the rack beside the fire. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!

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Join our Discord if you are so inclined

Short reading list for new MLs here. To find theory (and other books), you can use z-lib, libgen, or Sci-Hub (for scientific articles). If an article is unavailable, try the Wayback Machine.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    I’m watching the Harry and Meghan thing, might regret it though. I hope it’s not too much royalty propaganda.

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        I’m always wary for the agenda these Netflix shows want to push, as they tend to be quite liberal. But it’s a pretty interesting insight in how things are going behind the scenes on Normal Island.

        • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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          2 years ago

          Like, the family has a (probably multiple) literal nonce but the black woman is controversial.

          Also, Harry being proud of his Afghanistan tours is proper shit as well. Wanker.

          • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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            2 years ago

            Meghan making a cookbook to help Grenfell victims was a bit much as well. It is a pretty liberal show with some good parts lol. But it seems to be a reformist wet dream.

  • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Huawei is shutting down the telecom equipment sales branch in Russia. The branch employed approximately two thousand people. They are advised to either move to other countries or quit.

    Source.

      • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Not that I know of. However the suggestion to move to other countries is what other foreign tech companies did to avoid getting sanctioned (i.e. Wargaming, Harman, etc).

        Also apparently Huawei is heavily involved in the current Russian satcom project Sphera. Can’t help but wonder if the matters are related somehow

  • ash! [they/them]@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Are there good resources for Vietnam and Laos? (Admittedly haven’t looked into them much, especially the latter.)

    Optional but I would also appreciate stuff for Cuba and the DPRK, I mainly check Granma and KCNA for those two.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Two homeless people froze to death this week in Belgium and one of our party members went off in Parliament. He says that no one should sleep outside, we have empty buildings ready to be used, he calculated how many people were to be hired to accommodate 300 homeless people (8) and he said that no one in the government is doing something. Finally he closed his speech with an explanation of why there are so many refugees in Europe: we bomb them, we destroy their countries and we exploit their resources and wealth.

    It was such a based speech and he was so passionate about it.

      • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Some of them applauded the guy actually. But the minister in charge of housing seemed like she couldn’t care less, which sucks.

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 years ago

          the minister in charge of housing seemed like she couldn’t care less

          Yeah guess I expected something like that. Did the speech get any coverage?

          • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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            2 years ago

            Seen it around social media and Reddit. I don’t know what the Parliament meeting was about actually. It didn’t seem like something big was in the agenda, it just randomly got in between some agenda points I guess.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Some comrades and I eventually managed to get a little over thirty big bags of clothing and a few boxes of care products to give away to an org in the city ✊🏼 I’m hoping it can become a regular thing

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      I’ve got my outfit ready for a bit of midnight dancing on the Solstice. I’ve been wearing it all year! Might be a bit chilly to be outside in, though.

      Or do you mean the other one, the one the church stole and pretended was Jesus’ birthday?

      Edit: if whoever down voted this and commiewolf’s post dislikes the supposed blasphemy, we’re talking about Yule. A festival that predates Christianity, but which may have been borrowed by Christians, renamed, and reinterpreted. Odin worshippers would burn a huge log that would stay lit for so many days to keep the hall warm during the shortest days of the year. Hence the season’s best dessert: the Yule log. (It’s a tie with Panettone and mince pies.) As for which celebration came first, who knows, but the Solstices were significant long before the church was instituted and had formalised its calendar. This is not the only such festival. There’s also e.g. Samhain / Halloween and Eostre’s feast / Easter, with parallel, earlier stories of souls / ghosts, birth, rabbits / hares, and eggs.

      • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Didn’t know that about Halloween, I just assumed it was some bullshit made up by the Americans in the US about the ghosts of the natives they genocided coming back to haunt them or something.

    • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      How’s your deportation process going if you don’t mind me asking? Hope all is well comrade.

      I am actually looking forward to Christmas but as a family gathering.

      • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        I appreciate your concern, its been very tough. Mostly just working my ass off lately to make a living and settle in here. I’m a bit estranged with my family around here so its tougher than it would be but I’m staying focused. Hope you guys enjoy your Christmas, with plenty of pepernoten if there’s any left on the shelves.

        • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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          2 years ago

          Lmao yeah one of my coworkers had leftover pepernoten from Sinterklaas and brought them with her. They were all hard as fuck.

          I hope you can find your place soon, I wish you all the best.

    • Beat_da_Rich@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      I’ve been taking a break from politics for the past 2 weeks. Trying to get my mental health to a good place. Feel a little guilty not keeping up with stuff though.

      • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Don’t feel guilty! It’s good to get out of the depressing news cycle. Got to look after yourself!

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    I love the european health system! I need to spend 2k euros just to keep my luxury bones!

  • SomeGuy@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    I gotta ask, anyone know what happened to Grace? I remember they were a pretty active mod on reddit and here for a while but then fell off the face of the planet.

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    Just discovered the national health (and mental health, pedagogy and a lit of other stuff) state company can sell my data to insurance companies, data brokers and “loss-adjusters” I can’t see how this can go wrong…

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    My country is about to re-introduce mandatory military service, but with a twist, now it isn’t mandatory, but if you do it you’ll be “heavily helped” in regards to school votes etc, they’re basically coercing people with bad grades (basically 80% of young Italians, according to a statistic I just made up) to enroll and fight for nato interest, at least its 40 days and not 2 years like before (but still, in case of war [and the threat is there] it will be prolonged indefitievly)

    • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Step 1: gut education, double gut public education

      Step 2: lament falling grades and quality of life

      Step 3: promise a way out in exchange for murdering some children to further interests of the capital noble service to democracy

  • 陈卫华是我的英雄@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    The head of Mozart Group PMC (Milburn) and the 25th Secheslav Airmobile Brigade (Ukrainian) have confirmed that Ukrainian casualties in Bakhmut are as high as 70%. According to the brigade:

    “This is a message we are conveying to the command of the Airborne Troops and the command of the AFU from the 3rd Airmobile Company of the Separate Airmobile Battalion of the 25th Secheslav Airmobile Brigade.

    We were sent on a combat mission to hold separate combat positions. We did not receive proper armament and artillery support. As a result, 70% of the company was killed or wounded. We did not have and do not have combat equipment and proper armament. We did not even have the equipment to evacuate the injured, due to which several wounded did not survive.

    We spent more than a month in the trenches transmitting coordinates never fired upon by artillery. Platoon sergeants fled their positions in the first days and were transferred by Chief of Staff Kipinach, now acting battalion commander. We are demanding the transfer of the entire unit.”

    https://t.me/sonar_21/81

  • Neptium@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    I went on a spiral by reading a report from a free market think tank and then came across some self described “centrist liberal” news site, with their token non-white authors of course.

    And they are all so bad. Like not only through their misuse of statistics, but in general, I can’t help but after reading it their very Western, and White, worldview that plagues everything they write.

    Not to mention their protestations of “trans ideology”.

    The rest are just some funny quotes I like to share with you all.

    It’s time for us all to recognise that China is hostile to the West, and bent on world domination by any means. We need to bite the bullet and be prepared to pay extra for products not made in China.

    After reading that, I genuinely burst out into tears. I was expecting something more sadistic, ie. justifying war, but instead it’s the painfully liberal “lets not buy any made in China products”, that broke me.

    You make an excellent point, imo. The fear I have for the West is not China, but the so-called progressive movement. It has become detached from reality and, among other things, seeks to silence (aka cancel) its critics and redefine language to suit its own ends. It is attempting to dismantle the freedom of speech you identify as so important. So far, the progressives seem to be winning. Western society so lacks core values it seems incapable, even unwilling, to effectively oppose the progressive nonsense. China’s greatest threat is its own totalitarian ideology, not the West. The West’s greatest threat is its homegrown progressive ideology. I don’t know how we stop the internal rot.

    Both taken from the comments of this article, which is funny in on itself.

    And of course this amazing quote from this article:

    One of the signature aspects of the culture war is the weaponisation of history, particularly by the new, academically-aligned Left. Decolonisation now dominates thinking about university curricula, as well as hiring practice, while museums have embraced its agenda with open arms.

    The first sentence already a marvel to read.

    Meanwhile, the ongoing return of Benin Bronzes from museums and, most enthusiastically of all, from Cambridge (116 are in the latest planned shipment back to Nigeria) involves an even more naked use of history as a grenade; most reports on the Bronzes’ return don’t even refer to the massacre of the British that preceded the looting, nor the fact that they belonged to slave-traders in the first place.

    NOOO not the deaths of colonizers. I’m crying rn.

  • DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Some madlad in the group I collect clothes with for school wrote a statement we’re putting out saying structural change is needed, people shouldn’t be dependent on a week of grace from rich people and that the politicians wearing buttons for the nationwide action, while at the same time making budget cuts year round, can absolutely go and fuck themselves. And sent it to the school.

    And it wasn’t even me lol. I’m shook y’all. People are getting radical.