darkcalling

Being so fucking glib about which monstrous arm runs the evil machine of torture, horror, pain, suffering, death, and agony unto all humankind.

It's like a trolley problem where one track kills orphans, the other also kills orphans but leaves in its wake among the bodies pride flags and #democracy posters so it's better somehow to you indoctrinated westerners.

Mainly that he's not a Marxist, a rad-lib at best. Gives words which are cheap to anti-capitalism but doesn't give solidarity to targets of US imperialist attack unless convenient and costless (Cuba and Palestine at this point, he's in the Russia-bad camp, against China, etc).

I admit he could be amusing but I hope no one here falls for him as anything but window dressing himself on the US political system, the uh far left end of what is permissible in the mainstream which isn't that left at all as I mentioned, no actually risky solidarity (China, DPRK, Russia), no real solutions beyond platitudes about loving your neighbor and brother this, sister that preacher bullshit speaking. Oh he desires for change and probably wishes he could put together an MLK like coalition but doesn't realize as liberals do not that if the USSR hadn't been there banging on about the civil rights and humiliating the US in front of non-aligned states they would have killed MLK a lot sooner and a lot of his followers too rather than compromising for face.

There are many levels of traps and false paths in the US system designed to capture people and prevent them from reaching Marxism. We in no way have to hand it to anyone who is not either a principled Marxist or with us in a principled anti-imperialist stance that they maintain at great cost. He is neither, never has been. Celebrated the fall of the USSR, etc.

A free Africa is one that trades with China, that buys goods from China, that doesn't participate in blockades against China, that sells minerals to China, that has markets open to Chinese goods, etc.

If the west can lock down Africa through a combination of terrorism and sewing instability as they've done in the middle east and installing brutal fascist dictatorships as they did in South America back in the 20th century, well, China is going to have a much tougher time of things because then the west can cut them out of a lot of raw materials as well as most markets and it could be the go-signal for the west to really launch the full embargo and lock-down they're itching to throw on China to create the full new cold war situation where they try and choke them out. Because they have Europe under their thumb, their navy can cut them off from markets in the Americas, Russia while a market isn't big enough to form a healthy, thriving isolated economic bloc with China.

Purely from a tactical standpoint if tomorrow an advanced alien communist civilization showed up, handed China a ton of super advanced weapons and tech knowledge for everything they could possibly need then peaced out, it would be the tactically smart thing to immediately send troops and support Africa. However, as that has not and is not likely to happen, China still wants to benefit from the west and their markets and bringing in capital as long as they can. Also they still have reliance on the west for many things.

For example, Xi has recently been stressing food security and growing more food in China, this is because though the US economy would crash and burn if trade were shut down, people in China would be hungry, not necessarily starving but the age of plenty, of great food whatever you want would be over as they import a ton of food from the US and cutting that off would be disastrous to the quality of life of the Chinese people and would require stringent state-led measures, rationing, etc. So pissing the US off too much in addition to being a trap the USSR fell into and sucked too many of its resources into is simply not one that China can bear without more hardship than the party or most people would find ideal.

I do think though the time is coming where China will have to make choices, not if but when to pull the trigger on confronting the west militarily and standing with oppressed peoples against their exploitation. But there are many things left to be done to fortify China for such a confrontation. China is expected to be potentially able to leap-frog the west in tech within the next 6 years in many areas at which point their blockades and "de-risking" become moot and if the food situation is resolved by then with Chinese growers and deals with Russia and neighboring countries, well then they're in a position of strength.

The explanations in several of your links are confusing and don't seem to really get to the issue. I mean they mention it but not the how the bill might cause the issue.

Here's a good write-up: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/congress-amended-kosa-its-still-censorship-bill

I'm not going to attempt to explain the larger historical context but believe me there is one here and it goes back 80 years (US meddling in Ukraine goes back 70 years by contrast, supporting fascist movements against the USSR in Ukraine).

You start from a false premise. That Russia attacked Ukraine in a vacuum, that they were just peacefully minding their own business when suddenly a horde of barbarians came over in a frenzied rage over their prosperous society which they wanted to seize for their own benefits.

The current issues started really in 2004, the orange color revolution by the US, it alarmed Russia but they were still pretty weak and fragmented, Yeltsin was compromised by the CIA and had given away much in the 90s. So Russia did nothing but sit by and continue waving at NATO asking if maybe they could join or if they could become part of an economic bloc with Europe or otherwise join the western order as a big-seat, respected (not junior) partner.

Fast forward to 2014, Maidan, a fascist coup takes place in Ukraine, people are murdered by fascist groups, bad things happen, this is a US backed color revolution of sorts as well. Russia moves to annex Crimea as the fascists are viciously anti-Russian, pro-Nazi collaborators like Bandera/OUN and Crimea has historically been Russian and was only granted to Ukraine under the USSR in the 50s. Crimean citizens support this for the most part (guess what, no independence movement has complete support, there were many in the US at its founding who were loyal to Britain and didn't want to leave that family). Ukraine complains but can't do anything about it other than a few isolated terrorist attacks on infrastructure and cutting off water. Tensions flare in the east of Ukraine, in parts of the country that predominantly speak Russian, are Russian culturally and when looking at things like voting patterns, language, etc stand out brightly on maps as clearly delineated and having strong differences from western parts of Ukraine. They do not like new restrictions on their languages (Russian), their culture, etc. Fighting breaks out, fascist paramilitaries start attacking these areas. The residents fight back, they manage to push them out of many areas, a civil war in essence breaks out. Over the following years Ukraine, including fascist paramilitaries that are either part of the armed forces or are soon integrated shell those regions indiscriminately, killing civilians.

Russia tries not once, but twice to arrange with the west peace guarantees called the Minsk agreements, round 1 fails, they come back once it's fallen through for round 2 and hope the Ukrainians abide by it, respect the Russian people there, their culture, stop the violence and bloodshed, maintain neutrality towards Russia as agreed to in the agreements. Fast forward to 2021, Ukraine has been visibly arming up, the US has been sending them weapons, they are building their armed forces, there are US senators visiting Nazi regiments there and telling them the US stands with them and will support them. 2022, the special operation launches in response to a Ukrainian troop-build-up pointed towards the east which Russia judges to be part of a push to take over the break-away Russian regions by force and give them to the authority of the Nazi battalions among others while suppressing their language, culture, etc. In other words to commit atrocities against Russian peoples. Russia intervenes for humanitarian reasons begrudgingly (if they were war-mongers or wanted land they could have jumped at the opportunity in 2014 to take all of eastern Ukraine). They make a push for Kiev, try to pressure them into talks, Boris Johnson personally goes to Ukraine to stop such talks and continue Ukrainians being fed into the meat grinder.

This is like a neighbor who has been punching you, throwing rocks through your windows for years and suddenly you hit them back and they spin it as you starting a war against them. Many people have had siblings who liked doing this and just as some of them have the favor of their parents, the US's line here has the favor of those who listen to its media.

No war was started by Russia in 2022, they merely brought into the open and responded with force to a war that had been raging for years after years of failed, dishonest peace attempts with the west and Ukrainians (Angela Merkel and the French president both admit that Minsk was a ruse from the start to give a chance for Ukraine to build a military, they never intended for them to honor it, it was a deception of the Russians).

Sources? I'm not going to compile any for you because I doubt you are good faith and frankly my sources are a mess that I should organize one of these days but haven't yet on this subject. With some searching determination you can find all this info yourself if you so desire to challenge your beliefs.

I really hope they don't succeed. It will without a doubt allow capitalism to limp on longer, western hegemony and dominance to last another 20-50 years. It could lead to unforeseen things like revolutions in Europe as a result of hollowing them out buuut I'm pessimistic about that, I think the US will point to Africa and tell Europe if they don't want to starve, they better get those Africans under their boot again, get to exploiting, and get them away from China and Russia's orbit, start stealing, installing fascist dictatorships, start up the mass murders again, we know the playbook as do they, Indonesia, occupied Korea, Chile, etc.

Because Africa too is a threat to this plan. It's a developing continent, full of young people, full of potential, minerals, China is forming partnerships, that has to be stopped, African markets cannot be allowed to be grown and opened up to Chinese goods or kicking them out of Europe will merely slow China and drive them and Africa closer together. So a lot of moving pieces but it does center on Africa in a way. If China wins Africa, can with Russia keep them from controlling the continent (big IF), it won't matter if Europe is under the US boot and obediently not buying a thing, it maybe set's China's final triumph and the west's complete demise back a decade but it locks them out of a lot of resources and makes decoupling from the new China/Russia sphere rather hard for them but relatively easier for Russia/China/free-Africa to do.

It may not be as many think. Sure there are those delusional types who think they can beat China.

But there is a more important thing at hand. Just as the Ukraine conflict allowed the US to force Europe to decouple from and embargo Russia at the expense of themselves (economic suicide), I am now certain that certain prominent thinkers in the US are certain a conflict over Taiwan regardless of outcome, especially in fact with decisive Chinese victory and reclamation will allow them to force Europe to decouple from China at least to a larger degree than they have and to speed up tech embargoes against them.

Do not miss the grand strategy on the chessboard for the movements of individual pieces (US victory or defeat over another military power). The US may not even get directly involved. If anything I'd suspect they'd plan to stick mainly to pulling something to humiliate China like say arranging for the looted treasures from the mainland the KMT took with them to be loaded onto US military ships just before the fighting starts to deny China it's national treasures. Crate them over to the US in full British style and claim they're safer with the US than the ebil history hating gommies. That plus bombing TSMC by missile strikes as any PLA assault begins would be a less risky playbook. They could claim the PLA attacked the foundry or that Taiwan's forces themselves destroyed it heroically to deny the ebil gommunists it or just not report on it. The main reporting would be in the vein of "the r*pe of democracy, evil Chinese communist invasion of peaceful, western-style Taiwan democracy" to stir up public sentiment. Demands for China to be isolated and punished, claims of atrocities being committed, of imposition of the horrible Chinese dictatorship on the poor westernized honorary whites of Taiwan, etc.

The US cannot make Europe decouple from China otherwise. It would just be too bad for them, they have their own interests but Ukraine has shown them to be fools easily taken in the name of upholding liberal values and if anything may have been a test run for Taiwan to test the obedience and reaction. Because make no mistakes, the US knows it is doomed, its hegemony at an end if it cannot encircle and destroy China.

The population at large would be upset and restless by a sudden unexplained decoupling because of the damage it would do. But as shown by Europeans enduring harsh winters without gas, they will most likely grumble and shift the blame for their woes to China if the US can first justify such a harsh decoupling with preserving democracy and liberal values. Maybe the US won't decouple as much, maybe they're just soaking Europe and will try and force industry that had relocated from Europe to China to the US instead. Maybe they intend to go all the way. Plunge the proles into a lower quality of life while having a prepared excuse for blaming the evil communist foreign power.

That plus some "worker disciplining tools" (treasury dept official quote) like inflation could mean the ability to slowly re-shore some small amount of stuff to the US, oh most of it would be moved to "friendly" capitalist nations like India and other places in south-east-Asia. That the proles no longer have as nice of a quality of life, that there are shortages would be a short-term problem for a decade that they are sure their propaganda would ensure the proles would endure while blaming anyone and everyone but them.

There are two things standing in the way of this. 1) the financial bourgeoisie in the US have invested heavily in China, a full embargo and decoupling would be disastrous. Unfortunately for them, the industrial bourgeoisie representing the domestic defense and intelligence industries seem to have the ear of politicians on matters of foreign policy, ooops. 2) China refusing to be drawn and just giving up Taiwan for the time being (likely decades). This would be an incredible sacrifice and not one I am even sure they should make because if they allow the US this bottom line to cross the US will attempt to cross all others and show them not a bit of respect in a desperate attempt to goad them into something else should this fail. It would also mean China would eventually have to retake Taiwan by force decades into the future when more of its population is westernized, has been taught to hate China, hate their Chinese heritage, identify as something else and is otherwise heavily propagandized and divorced from the mainland.

Analysts criticized an earlier draft of the regulations released in April as deeply unfriendly to the industry. Some requirements, they said, like that companies should verify the accuracy of the data their AI models learned on — which in many cases includes huge chunks of text from the internet like Reddit and Wikipedia, both banned in China — would be nearly impossible to comply with.

I find it insane how ensuring the input’s accuracy is something they balk at.

Exactly.

It's like uh they could just use verified sources to begin with instead of user edited stuff mainly staffed by the CIA and corporate influence peddlers? Like maybe China has a state encyclopedia, volumes of academic works that have been peer reviewed.

It's maddening that this is seen as a burden. Go back to conceptions of intelligent machines in like the 60s through 80s and many of the futurists there had them being carefully taught by ingesting written works separated into fiction and non-fiction, being taught by teachers, etc. These lazy western companies like chatgpt just want to skip all the hard work of actually making machines that have and can give correct answers, they want to skip to the finish line to collect the money and paper over and correct after the fact to the extent they can models built on falsity only as problems appear. China's approach to make sure the models are built correctly off of only good data to start with will likely be better to manage down the road.

I mean he is detained. Anyone who enters another country without authorization tends to be detained, more so when they are or were recently part of a hostile armed force. He's not free to just wander around. He entered the country illegally, was last part of an occupying force that wants to destroy the DPRK, is legally at war with them for 70 years, and they're likely trying to decide what to do with him, investigate his story, ascertain if he's a spy or there's anything off about him like if he's a threat, etc.

The thing is, what skills does he have to offer them? He probably can't speak the native language (if he can that would make a huge difference in being accepted because he could actually integrate), he's going to have culture shock. He's frankly a risk that if they do accept him, he'll leave anyways after a while because of the quality of life (no iPhone, no Facebook, no holidays or cultural norms like he's used to, language barrier, etc), go back to the US, be coached to spin a story of his torture and the horrors of the place in exchange for a book deal or speaking tour and money and then it will have blown up in the DPRK's face. They consider these things and many others when deciding.

If he's sincere I wish him only the best and hope he can find a great life in the DPRK but there are many barriers to success.

Gateway? Just because some people go from Anarchism to Marxism doesn't mean it's a natural pipeline or that most do. Some people go from being a Republican straight to being a Marxist, some people go straight from being a liberal to being a Marxist and some people go from being a left-anarchist to a fascist so anecdotes aren't really anything.

I'd say it exists and is maintained as a false path more than anything. The capitalists are smart, they know you can't just keep all the pressure in, some people are going to realize what a bunch of nonsense capitalism is, you have to have relief vales, as long as they flow in directions that can't threaten things all the better.

False paths such as anarchism are intentionally promoted and allowed more exposure (including positive) than principled Marxism-Leninism in media and elsewhere for a reason and that's because the ruling class would much rather someone upset with capitalism become an anarchist than a Marxist-Leninist. They'd also much rather they become an MLM Gonzaloist or Trot for that matter as sitting in arm-chairs screaming about theory and revisionism before organizing the 15th split isn't a threat either.

People are steered towards individualistic ideologies like anarchism to keep them away from Marxism. The leap from anarchism to Marxism is in many ways no greater than the leap from being a social democrat liberal. Both tendencies that emphasize the individual, that see "authoritarianism" as a scary thing and a snarl word to be uttered at states but mostly states the US State Dept and media tells them are the worst.

"When you are an idealist who thinks all hierarchy is bad, and everywhere you look has hierarchy, you start to flatten everything out. Everything is equally bad.

If everything is equally bad then you can just criticize whatever is in front of your face and never take a side.

This makes you extremely easy to manipulate by powerful forces that decide what the media topic of the day is. Anarchists are blown around in the wind, ungrounded by anything. The capitalist media simply needs to grab you and point you in a direction to make you their tool."

-Anonymous_Ascendent

In such a trap it's in some ways harder to get out and become a Marxist-Leninist who supports AES because you're continuing to accept the propaganda, you're continuing to deep down like the "free" west more for its emphasis on individual liberty even to the point of harm of the collective and individual over the more "controlling" AES states that emphasize responsibilities, have rules, and yes security against counter-revolution, etc.

You believe as an anarchist that China ran over thousands of people in tanks in 1989 because they're authoritarians and a government and those two things do bad things and would definitely do that in your mind. You believe as an anarchist that Stalin murdered a billion people because that's what happens when one person gets such incredible authority over others (and why you're against it, why you need it to be true to justify your thinking), always a bad thing and soon enough as an anarchist you're saying despite how much you hate the west, you like their checks and balances and accept they definitely work unlike .

Because the western states are good at appearing to be relatively weak domestically compared to other countries because they're working behind the scenes with capitalist media to control the populace (whereas China overtly regulates its media which is just another sign of its authoritarianism to these types), because they placate them with higher living conditions built off exploitation, because the current superstructure is theirs (a liberal, capitalist one), because there are no powerful external actors (who having long infiltrated, cultivated people, corrupt officials, ideology, even weapons, along with real time intelligence) who can or would turn a large protest movement or riot into a color revolution that brings down the American government unlike what socialist states face from the west. Or indeed not even bring it down, just do gladio type terrorism shit (as they did in East Germany after the partition). Unthinkable in the US because only the US government does that to its own populace.

To be an anarchist you get to keep believing the State Dept propaganda, you get to keep believing what the nightly news says about far-away countries. You get to keep your liberal friends because you unlike those dirty tankies don't deny atrocity propaganda. You get to be a liberal but more smug about it, because you're above other liberals, you want better more, but you get to be snide and join hand in hand with the liberals in attacking Marxists, in attacking the "authoritarians", attacking Assad, cheering CIA "friendly radicals" who do the west's work for them in dividing, conquering, and weakening regions, states, etc all with a veneer of anarchism. And on and on. In other words it doesn't require great sacrifice or change.

And all of that is part of a self-aggrandizing pathology that makes it so attractive in the west. Because you get to be above it all, better than it all, pure, holy, unstained, much as MLM's who support every revolution but the ones which succeeded are towards their version of Marxism. Part of a larger pathology of the Christian influence and the fetish for humble defeat and martyrdom as being ideals to aspire to.

Burning things is like masturbation. It feels good to you but it doesn't achieve anything but a mess for everyone else.

Also it further justifies expansion of the security state, crackdowns, targeting of anyone vaguely anti-capitalist as a terrorist, allows easy infiltration by feds who proceed to commit acts of unpopular violence to tarnish the name of any movement against capitalism, etc.

There is a reason why the feds are okay relegating management of anarchists to the local police. There is a reason why the feds have historically not suppressed anarchists as hard and that is because their acts tend to be either gestures which the ruling class couldn't care less about (mutual aid, which I am not claiming to be useless but you also can't claim on its own it's a threat to the status quo or ruling class) or adventurist violence easily spun for sensation on the nightly news and round condemnation by all ends of the liberal spectrum. That plus as I mentioned, anyone can put on some black clothes, wear some anarchist symbols and then say burn down a library or rob people near a demonstration at gun-point, and it goes on and on. Not that they can't stage false flags against ML's, it's just easier with anarchists as there's no central authority to at least condemn the acts and state they were not carried out by anyone among them.

I'm not saying any revolution won't have burning things, I'm just saying you're not going to set one off by starting with that and expecting it to inspire anything more than at best copycat acts of burning things for personal pleasure and chaos.

Without some rhyme or reason, some justification among the masses violence and acts of fire and terror don't do anything but harden a lot of ordinary citizens who are frightened of you and your movement and push them into the arms of state repression to make it safe so they can thoughtlessly go about their lives again. There's a difference between say the type of things the Black Panthers did which wasn't actually just going around doming cops or other acts of adventurism for fun but standing as a line together against the violence of the state, threatening the ability to engage in retribution or hit back but couching it in discipline and a knowledge they couldn't be too easily drawn into just fighting and burning and alienating communities from them.

Because if burning shit is what you're after, you'll attract hoodlums, you'll attract criminals who want to use violence and chaos as a smokescreen to commit crimes under, you'll attract people who will harm those in your very movement, who will attack marginalized communities without thought because the car of a local black resident burns just as well as a cop car.

What's funny to me is your username is the name of a (maybe defunct, not sure) VPN service. It was known to be shitty and shady.

Go with a company at least not located in the US. Avoid PIA, they were bought by a shady company. The ones the piracy community tends to trust would be: ProtonVPN, Mullvad, IVPN, AirVPN. Be warned Mullvad recently dropped port forwarding which really hurts torrenting connectivity and speeds. I would try for a provider that continues to allow port forwarding if you're doing any torrent stuff.

Privacy. Books can and are written on the subject. I'll just say try and avoid doing things that link back to you while on the VPN. Don't log into your bank account or email accounts (except those you have registered and only use over VPN) while on a VPN if you can help it. If you sign up for accounts on torrent sites (public or private trackers), use an email not associated with your real identity.