GenZedong

The 21st Chinese peacekeeping detachment to Lebanon on Wednesday commenced Chinese language courses and traditional Chinese cultural activities.

The move is to enhance cultural exchanges with the other foreign peacekeeping units on the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.

US politicians from both parties agree: the deficit doesn't really matter. In their bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling, Biden and Republicans agreed to boost military spending to $885 billion, while making it more difficult for poor struggling families to receive food stamps and welfare.

Hello comrades!

I want to outline a few potential projects the Lemmygrad community could benefit from and expand its reach. I think they could foster real growth and be not only of help, but actively create counter-spaces to the Right in various domains.

FOSS in this case means free and open source. For more information, check out this.

Privacy Guide

I'm personally interested in tech privacy. The biggest places around are r/privacy, and PrivacyGuides, the de facto flagship website for privacy and security advice.

The sub-Reddit is known to be overtly against China and non-western FOSS communities. It's mostly a circlejerk of Westerners screaming "We don't want to be like 1984 China!" without any kind of material analysis. Besides, Reddit is Reddit and we know how that goes.

Now, PrivacyGuides. It is definitely a helpful resource, but there are a few issues with it. First off, the administrators frequently promote Apple products on their forum, one of them, Jonathan, even being an Apple fanboy. Apple products are non-FOSS and shouldn't be trusted, especially since they're in PRISM and collaborate with the NSA. This leaves out all the drama they've been through since they split with privacytools.io, the latter claiming PrivacyGuides stole thousands of euros from them.

What I'm saying is that I think there's a need for a more community-based approach, with a strong Marxist tendency to counter liberals and conservatives (and sometimes ancaps) in the privacy field. This has the potential to educate people, even radicalize perhaps. This is related to the second project.

edit: We could also add an Internet etiquette guide for Lemmygrad members. This could include safety procedures while posting, general privacy advice and more, in order to not get targeted by the US.

Hosted Services

Lemmygrad can expand itself and offer hosted services for its members. They can include a Git forge, e-mail (although this one is debatable if it's worth it because of security practices), PeerTube, and any other service that is deemed useful by the community. I think the format outlined below could be useful.

I'm tying up my idea here with the concept of public access unix systems, or short for "pubnixes". They've recently had a revival, the tradition dating back to the '80s. In a nutshell, someone provides a Linux/BSD server and gives user accounts to people who request them. It has a strong focus on using the shell, and anti-corporate service alternatives. Sadly, it's dominated by either conservatives or anarcho-capitalists, rarely seeing a ML on there. I think this can be improved a lot upon, because Marxists have missed this opportunity to radicalize people in the "Small Web" communities. We need a healthier and better overall version of the Web, and I think it can provide a useful outlet for not only radicalizing new comrades, but educating everyone on technology and how to use it safely and in a healthy manner. If you're interested in checking out the Small Web movement, check out this manifesto. Gopher and Gemini, being the two most popular non-WWW protocols, are completely dominated by conservatives and such. A ML presence there could help turn the tide in the small/sustainable computing sphere.

I'm also thinking of setting up a mechanism of democratically run services, trying to destroy the "benevolent dictator" mechanism the software administrators have. I'm only aware of one attempt so far at this, here.

Healthy Computing

Speaking of healthy, this could be a potential third project, a mental wellness guide for technology. Of course, with a strong focus on FOSS projects. I think we need better structured resources for people to access, more "polished", in order to garner attention as viable alternatives to what liberals and conservatives are pushing online. There is a lot of pseudo-science regarding mental health in general, and especially regarding computing, so it could be a fully featured guide to say the least.

This could tie in with other resources written from a ML standpoint for people, perhaps countering the whole "self improvement" movement with diverse explanations and such.

Zine

I think Lemmygrad could publish a Zine. ML-themed findings from the Web, personal essays, stories, and anything fitting. Then it can be easily printed. Monthly releases would be neat. Could also include the news of that month, and so on. Could make a fitting alternative for paid Leftist monthly newspapers and such.

Contributing

I want this to be up for public debate so everyone can contribute with ideas! I'm personally versed in hosting things, but additional help is very much needed. If you want to contribute with an idea, or are skilled in contributing directly to any of these projects, let's get in touch. Perhaps we could get the Revolutionary Technical Committee involved in this if they're willing to contribute to a Marxist technological "front".

What do you think of what I've outlined above? Let's discuss.

My work just announced even more layoffs. Everyone is looking for work. Only jobs are contract jobs. Still get turned down for them. I just want out.

Testing a Hexbear-like thread for sharing and commenting on news. Might become a weekly thing if people like it 👀

Rules:

• Include sources in (at least) every top-level comment
• No clearly fake stories
• That's it for now
• Xibucks arrive on the third Sunday of every month

In the U.S. we’re taught that North Korea is a horrible backwards dictatorship where every person is captive to an evil regime run by a mad man who has an inexplicable hatred of the U.S., freedom and democracy – and is always on the edge of launching a nuclear missile to destroy the world. This, we’re told, is the reason we have to isolate the country and occupy South Korea with thousands of U.S. soldiers. The purpose of such a simplistic narrative is to prevent Americans from getting curious about what’s really happening there. Why is North Korea so closed off? What's the relevant history of that region? Why did the U.S. go to war there in the 1950s? What were the consequences? Why is Korea split into two? And is the country really as evil as the mainstream portrays?

To help break it all down, Rania Khalek was joined by Ju-Hyun Park, a member of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, an anti-imperialist organization of Koreans in the U.S. struggling for Korean reunification and national liberation. They are also engagement editor at The Real News.

It’s a new era of global power dynamics where countries sometimes have the option to say no to the U.S. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Middle East. Almost 12 years after being kicked out of the Arab League, Syria has been welcomed back into the fold by many of the U.S.-allied countries that tried to destroy it. All this time Israel was banking on normalization with Saudi Arabia and the opposite happened, with China overseeing a Saudi peace deal with Iran. Why? What does this multipolarity mean for the region? And how might it impact Palestine and the broader resistance axis? To discuss this and more Rania Khalek was joined by Ali Abunimah, executive director of the Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

Welcome again to everybody! Please sit down, stay awhile and enjoy our groups most honoured tradition, our weekly discussion thread! Oh and if you find the giant spoon, please let me know, I seem to have miss placed it when changing the thread over this week.

We have a Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz. See this thread for information about our Matrix space.

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

I'm not even kidding.

Libs and reactionaries will constantly bring up the Wagner group in response to having the existence of the Azovites pointed out to them. This counterargument strikes me as lazy and equivocating, but I've always had trouble responding to it.

What would people here recommend I say to this point? Assuming I say anything at all.

This is a line I’ve read today. There’s an exhibition about the history of the town that I used to live in (and came to visit because my parents live here). It detailed the history of local industry.

It started off at the beginning of the 20th century with a couple of mentions of landowners, petite bourgeoise and private farmers independently developing rudimentary confectionery and baking industry.

Then came the socialist era, during which all this industry was nationalized and transformed into worker cooperatives. It detailed how the industry prospered during socialism and the factories grew exponentially under the guidance of the communist party, but of course, had to throw in “despite great successes of the socialist system in developing the region significantly, it’s totalitarian tyranny left much in the way of personal freedoms to be desired”.

And last, it mentioned the disaster that was the privatizations of 1991. Right after that line in the title, it highlighted a couple of capitalists who came to own most of the previously-collectivized industry, and fired most of the workers, who then left the region, leaving the town in shambles and the local industry to collapse.

The exhibition then concluded with the line “despite many workers being let go, they, compared to the totalitarian socialist regime, had the freedom to find employment elsewhere”

Man, I gotta stop reading this shit.

If you want to download it, here's the link to do that. If you wanna buy it as a print (it's in A2 size, so 42 x 59.4 cm / 16.5 x 23.4 in), go here.

I was arguing with someone in the V**shite subreddit because I'm a masochist. That was the first time I'd ever heard the term "little green men." Apparently, not knowing who these guys are disqualifies me from having an opinion on Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, so I'm trying to learn. Who are these people? Did they do something awful and genocidal that I'm not aware of? Or is this person just talking out of their ass?

In my research, I encountered more of Stalin's infamous deportations, namely that of the Crimean Tartars to the Central Asian SSRs. It seems downright ghoulish to me that he would do that, especially given the death and suffering it caused. Is anyone familiar with the rationale behind these deportations? Is it not as bad as it seems, or is this a black mark on his record? If it's a black mark, how do we make sense of that while still upholding Stalin's legacy?

And of course, whenever Russia comes up, the radlibs and the anarchists all flock together to insist that Russia is a colonizing, imperialist power. I'm aware that imperialism is something pretty specific, and not something that Russia can be rightfully accused of. Even so, I have to admit that I'm not fresh on what DOES count as imperialism. Will someone elucidate this for me?

Thanks in advance.

Media whirlwind or legitimate threat to average people?

Personally, I don't support either Ukraine or Russia, I see Ukraine as harboring nazis and they should answer for their crimes in the Donbas. However, when Russia invaded Ukraine I saw it as an imperialist invasion for Putin to conquer Ukraine. After He annexed the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, this became a very blatant imperialist invasion. Secondly, I found this post, which talks about the Russian capture of Bakhmut. I was suprised about the number of people who supported Russia. Am I wrong here for not supporting Russia? I would love to hear you opinions on this matter.

Welcome again to everybody! Make yourself at home. I deeply apologize for the underwhelming spoon size. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is our weekly discussion thread!

We have a Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz. See this thread for information about our Matrix space.

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

First of all, it's written in the most flowery and self aggrandizing way possible. The group is referred too as a "successful counter to Russian propaganda", meanwhile their actual sponsors and leaders are left notably unmentioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFO_(group)

What do they actually do? Oh they just post irrevent memes. NOT PROPAGANDA, memes. Nothing meant to be taken seriously of course lol.

There is a reception section, and a recognition section, but no "criticism" section. Surely there are people out there who don't support this group right? According to Wikipedia, there is not. Every pushback comes from the Russians, the vatniks, and the orcs. No one cares about the harassment or the slurs, at least no one who matters.

As you can see in this image, the way Wikipedia is set up you'd need some notable source that claims that the group is divisive in some way...except there are no notable sources because all of the approved media says they're the heroes.

If there was ever any doubt that the doge pfps had government/corporate backing here you go. You aren't even allowed to mention them in a negative context.