SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him] @ SeventyTwoTrillion @hexbear.net

I am the news dude. I do the news megathreads.

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While many Palestinians do hate the Zionists and vice versa, framing the conflict as between two powers that hate each other for religious reasons or racist reasons or what have you is what leads to such terrible "Two religions fighting again for the billionth time!" analysis.

Israel is a modern colonial state. While most outright colonist countries are no longer around, Israel is the exception. One of the reasons why it's allowed to be the exception is because it's a stronghold for American interests in an incredibly important region - whoever controls the world's oil supply, controls everything that depends on oil, which is a LOT of things. Lately, it's also increasingly a weapons manufacturer and cybersecurity base - their technologies are tested out on Palestinians as if they are guinea pigs, and then these systems are sold to various countries for use in their own populations. In general, Palestinians today have low qualities of life and the amount of territory they control shrinks by the year as Israel shoves Palestinians out of their homes and puts Israeli settlers in those homes instead. Naturally, the Palestinians are not happy about this at all, but resistance is difficult even when you're not surrounded on all sides (Gaza has the sea, Israel, and Egypt bordering it, and Egypt is currently sympathetic to the Israeli side due to a coup that put Sisi in power; while the West Bank has Israel and Jordan, and Jordan is also sympathetic to Israel currently).

Palestine wants a state for themselves, which is a fairly reasonable thing to want. Israel absolutely does not want a two-state solution let alone to give Palestine all its land back. The two are therefore at an impasse - there's a fundamental contradiction here that cannot be solved by some middle of the ground solution. Palestine has attempted on numerous occasions to try and resist, both peacefully and violently - both methods get them killed in the thousands while the West says nothing, because again, it's extremely important to have Israel in the region as a Western imperialist outpost. Have you ever noticed that the only time the phrase "... has a right to exist", it's always in reference to Israel? Few other nations seem to have this "right" in the West's eyes. Yugoslavia sure didn't. Neither did the USSR, or for that matter modern-day Russia given the rhetoric going around a year or so ago about how they wanted to subdivide Russia into a dozen oblasts.

There are other powers in the region that are against Israel, with the weaker ones being Syria and Lebanon, while the strongest is Iran. Up until fairly recently, while Hezbollah (a sort of state-within-a-state military force separate from the rest of Lebanon but also integrated into it) has scored a few points on Israel in the past, they were broadly speaking outgunned by Israel. Additionally, Israel has nukes, which made a war to actually overthrow Israel essentially impossible without the risk of nuclear bombs being dropped on Beirut, Damascus, Tehran, etc. This has changed in the last few years, due to a mixture of Israel (and the West broadly speaking) becoming relatively weaker because so much military aid has been sent and destroyed in Ukraine, and Iran and friends becoming stronger. The threat of nuclear annihilation still exists, and it's one of the major problems still for the anti-Israel resistance, but given Hamas' victory in Gaza a week ago, there is blood in the water and the sharks are coming.

I hope this all shows that thinking along the lines of "X hates Y and so they're fighting" obfuscates a lot of what's actually going on geopolitically. It's extremely important to say that the fact that Israel is a Jewish state doesn't mean that they have, according to various right-wing conspiracy theories, some kind of outsized influence over so-and-so countries. Israel does have an influence over various countries because their propaganda department is very active in the West to shut down anti-Zionist (which is unequivocally NOT the same as anti-semitism) viewpoints, and the aforementioned cybersecurity and weapons development programs, but this is a two-way street. The West needs Israel. Israel needs the West. The United States is essentially what has kept Israel alive for the better part of the last century.

This isn't to say that Zionist and Islamic beliefs have no impact on the calculus here - they have a lot to do with it, in fact - but merely to say that this isn't just some inherently religious war.

Left: "Ukraine needs to surrender to save lives and have a country left to rebuild afterwards."

Liberals, MSM: "Fuck off Putinbot tankie, Russia could just retreat you know! Anyway, here's why we should have sent twice the number of Ukrainian conscripts into that minefield..."

Capitalism on the one hand, communism on the other... man, I just support a Third Position!

people like the hexbear news threads I guess

It's dependent on too many factors, many of which we have no real idea about, to give informed opinions on it. The fact that Lukashenko and Putin are saying that they think that Poland might go for it is very notable though. Emphasis on "are saying that they think", because there's (at least) three possibilities here: a) they don't know one way or another but might suspect it and thus might be trying to signal to Poland's leaders that they know they might be thinking about it and are prepared to respond, b) they have actual intelligence that Poland's leadership is planning something and are trying to dissuade their plans (putting nukes in Belarus probably helps), or c) they have intelligence that Poland isn't thinking about it but Russia and Belarus are planning some 5D chess move where Ukraine has to keep forces on the northern border just in case Russia decides to send their troops and/or Wagner out towards northwestern Ukraine.

That's fine. It took me... I think from 2018 (when I gave up on the Democrats fully) until 2020, and the whole way I was like "Well, I'm not sure if I'm ready to accept THAT position yet, but I am willing to admit that I don't actually know much about it." And you might even stop at a certain point and decide, actually, I am comfortable being a socdem or a demsoc or a socialist or an anarchist or a trot or whatever, and I won't be where this other guy is.

Being open-minded like you are is the most important part of that psychological development. It is so incredibly important to admit that you literally just don't know anything, or hardly anything, about - idk, the USSR, or Chinese history from the 1940s to the 1970s, or the history of socialist movements in Latin America. None of us come out of the womb knowing that. The only reason people should ever dunk on you for not knowing about these things is if you come in pretending you know a lot without actually knowing a lot, few of us are so cruel as to respond to genuine, good-faith questions even about sensitive topics with insults. We are all comrades here.

But it won't just be propelled by communists online, it'll also be influenced (I would even say mostly influenced) by your experiences, and the experiences of your family and friends, and what you read in the news. Back in 2016 I wouldn't have called for Maoist actions against landlords, but after nearly a decade of experience and watching others suffer under them, well...

And, of course, reading books. It's daunting but even a medium-sized book every two months, for a year or two, will put you lightyears ahead of most other people in the political playing field. Even some of your fellow leftists.

I hope you and fellow lurkers in your boat have a good time here!

apparently it's the replacement for the 195 subreddit, which was the apartment number of the people who posted it

people walking around in suits and ties during Liberal Faires (everybody else has moved on to superior juche-produced advanced clothing) doing their best impersonations of 20th and 21st century politicians, talking a lot about means-testing and values and competition and the free market. yeah, I could see it

Assuming for the sake of argument that all your positions are 100% correct

Even I don't think all my positions are 100% correct, just like how not all scientific claims are always accurate and have to be backed up by replication studies and there has to be experiments and theoretical models and everything, and even then those models are mere approximations of reality. We're all mortal human beings with incomplete knowledge based on propaganda, whether one calls it propaganda or not, and to be even approximately correct on a majority of issues is about as good as one can truly hope for. My problem is when people are unaware of these things and believe that their very clever brains with perfect information (supplied via Washington Post articles or some thinktank or whatever) have Solved The Issue™ and everybody who argues against it must be in bad faith or an evil person or just simply not understand that what they're saying is wrong and bad.

this'd be like saying most of the major high schools and universities are teaching flat earth theory, and it's commonly accepted as true. An argumentum ad populum is of course not logically sound, but to a layperson is compelling. Especially when they grew up surrounded by those that believe in the flat earth. Not only that, but that a flat earth is the morally superior position.

Yeah, I agree, this is a very good point, and it's why it feels like you're so routinely punching a self-reinforcing steel wall when you try and engage with liberals and conservatives (and even sometimes other baby leftists) on some issues. I feel like I had to undergo a sort of ego death - maybe not that drastic - when I transitioned from social democrat to democratic socialist to socialist to Marxist, where I had to let go of my previous programming to do with politics. Of course, we aren't going into dipshit QAnon territory here - scientific facts are facts, and if a scientific study adequately performed (so like, not a climate study backed by ex-fossil fuel industry workers) disproves a part of my worldview then I must let it go; we aren't cranks. Many of us would even say that we take the most scientific approach to politics, hence the half-serious, half-ironic use of "The immortal science of Marxism-Leninism" sometimes.

But so much of politics is up to interpretation, and facts are so often either omitted or overly emphasized to make a point (libs typically call the discussion of these facts "whataboutisms"), and communists can take entirely different framings of issues or reality itself, which makes it extra difficult to communicate effectively with liberals. The political compass is a good example, as most of us simply believe it's a bunch of nonsense that doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny, politicians are almost arbitrarily placed throughout it, left and right, let alone authoritarianism and libertarianism have basically entirely different definitions to a liberal and a communist, and so we laugh at people who make it their identity and have their position in their profile picture. To that person (let's say a 21 year old frequent Reddit user whose only post-school political education has come from memes on social media and the occasional article that comes up on their phone or home page) saying "This is a bunch of bullshit!" might just come across as "We're all in the top/bottom left corner and so are detached from what reality looks like!" but they don't even really know anything. As I said, it's the Dunning-Krueger effect.

To those shouting insults at you and making shit up, not worth even engaging imho, but I'd argue it's at least understandable where they're coming from.

Indeed, and this is why - as much as I grumble - some patience is needed with people. Nobody is born with a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other, and I certainly wasn't. I could make fun of all the people who joined the Left only in 2016, when Trump made politics too difficult to ignore anymore, for being "late to the program", but I'd be making fun of myself also.

Sankara said it best: “As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.”

Lukashenko, to Ukrainian journalist, emphasis mine:

Lukashenko: "I've drawn this map specifically for you. Russia will crush your personnel and hardware over there. Those motivated, ideologically strong, Nazis as they are called, those ideologically strong men are no longer around. All of them have died already. Who is fighting here, then? Those you can catch in the streets and bring here. They are not prepared. Well, and a bit of military personnel. They will not be able to defeat this machine. Russia has changed. At present, Russia has cutting edge weapons at the front. There are plenty of drones now. Well, it is a totally different army now. And the most dangerous thing... I don't know whether I should tell you or not..."

Reporter: "Please do!"

L: "They have 250,000 volunteers! Russia has 250,000! Who are not at the front yet!"

R: "In reserve now?"

L: "Volunteers! They have been trained and they are in reserve. Do you understand how many people 250,000 are? Russia has fewer people at the front now. So they are staying on the defensive. Not because they cannot advance. They don't have to! And you keep walking like people who have had too much drugs and alcohol. You walk [with assault rifles] at the ready like German Nazis in movies. You walk towards these barricades. But you cannot even reach them. We can see it, and it is so. You cannot even reach the minefields. You are just getting slaughtered in thousands. Your counteroffensive cost 45,000 in dead and maimed. 45,000! So they are on the defensive. Your losses are 1 to 8. 1 to 8 at the front line. And 250,000 in reserve with cutting edge hardware. You will be crushed. Then they will do what you and your leadership fear the most. They will cut you off by advancing towards Moldova, towards Transdniestria. What will you do after that? And Poles rub their hands in glee. Pushed by Americans, they will cut off the western regions. You will have only this little bit left, if any at all. This is what will happen to you. And the state, the Ukraine you and I know, will cease to me. Our native land. Yours and mine."

R: "Has this history been determined? What you are saying now..."

L: "If you don't stop now, it will happen! If you don't start negotiations now. Russia suggests it. You don't want it? Well, if you don't want it, we don't need it! Russia is powerful enough. No West will help you in this regard. You have to take your head into your hands and act on the basis of reality. Act in the interests of this huge and beautiful territory. The West is already starting to understand that nothing will come out of it. Ukraine will not be able to survive even with the West's aid."

A statement from a Nigerian socialist group:

As in Nigeria, the mass of the population in Niger suffer horrendous poverty. The military coup will not help these people. It is also likely to see more repression against the much-needed mass movement against poverty and the other anti-people policies. However, an invasion by Nigeria would only make matters so much worse.

Many people will celebrate the coup in Niger against one of the most pro-western governments in West Africa. The removal of French soldiers and their possible replacement with mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group will be interpreted as a victory. But this will not help most Nigeriens. They need a mass movement against poverty and inequality. This is the only way to fundamentally address the problems of inequality, corruption and insecurity.

Half the population of Niger exist below the national poverty line. One and five of the population cannot reliably meet their food needs. Fighting between the corrupt political elite and the military will not fundamentally change the situation.

Niger is Africa’s most important uranium ore exporter (75% of the country’s total exports) and the fourth largest exporter in the world. Other exports include: gold, onions, beans and meat. Niger’s main export partners are France (55% of total exports), the United States, Switzerland, Nigeria and Ghana. Around a third of the uranium for the extensive French nuclear reactors comes from Niger.

So again, like Nigeria, Niger is largely dependent on the exports of a single natural resource. Most of the uranium mines are controlled by Orano (previously named Areva), the French state-owned nuclear power company. The people of Niger suffer environmental devastation comparable to the Niger Delta. “The air, water and land are polluted around the mining towns,” reports a journalist based in the Nigerien capital of Niamey. “And the animals of the pastoralists are constantly falling sick due to their grazing pastures being contaminated with radioactive dust,” he adds.

Studies prove that the concentration of radiation around the uranium mines is almost 500 times higher than normal background levels. Even spending one hour per day over one year at this location can expose a person to 10 times the annual radiation dose.

The Union of Workers’ Trade Unions of Niger (USTN) is the largest of the three main trade union centres with a membership of 60,000. On 25 June 2009, the second largest trade union confederation led a 24-hour general strike across the nation to protest the President’s [constitutional] referendum plans, after a previous strike had been indefinitely postponed on 18 June. All seven trade union confederations took part, in the first general strike since the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1999, and the first joint action by all seven major confederations.

Niger, like all countries, is situated within a global economy and suffers interference from the major imperialist powers, in this case, mainly France. The French government controls the major export from Niger (uranium) and also the currency. This and the French army base in Niger means that there is significant anti-French feeling in Niger. Four days after the coup there was a demonstration involving thousands of people against the French embassy.

The working people of Niger do not need a military coup to further constrain their ability to organise. They do not need the current military “support” provided by Western governments. Equally they do not need interference from the Russian Wagner group or a possible ECOWAS invasion led by Nigeria. As in Nigeria, we need a mass campaign to increase wages of the working people and increase government spending on health and education.

I can provide a little insight here, perhaps: from the average Hexbear dunker's point of view, it's a little like you're an astronomer and all you've been talking about for the last three years is astronomy and all sorts of scientific studies and your average discussion is like "Well, actually, I believe the percentage uncertainty in the diameter of Alpha Centauri's orbit around the galactic center may be off by 2% due to these newly discovered variables..." and then one day, your community is joined at the hip to a bunch of flat earthers. So if somebody comes to your instance (or even if you see a take in a different instance) and says something like "these astronomers are such fucking gullible idiots, holy shit. the level of denialism that the Earth is a flat disc, which is what everybody agrees on, and that the stars aren't just satellites, is unbelievable. have these people never read a single book? we have a bunch of respectable flat earther philosophers and scientists and they instead hide away in their tiny conspiracy websites posting 'studies' to each other. ok, if the stars are real, explain why they aren't all as big as the sun then, as you seem to think the sun is also a star. owned with your own logic, moron."

and it's like, holy shit, I have spent the last three years doing so much learning about all these different things and systems and histories, and seeing somebody come along with arguments that have been debunked for years, no, decades, no, over a century, and they repeat them and expect them to be "owns" or something? they're calling me the moron? these people have literally no idea what they're talking about!

(like, I used to be one of those "we need to oppose authoritarian governments and promote democracy and freedom and justice for the poor people living in those countries" people and now I'm just very embarrassed about that opinion, it's barely even scratching at the surface of a vast ocean of so much history and philosophy and economics. it's the Dunning-Krueger effect in action.)

and even in their more concillatory posts, it's like "Fine, we need to learn to coexist. I certainly don't support their blatant conspiratorial authoritarian nonsense - sorry, opinion - that the Earth is round, but maybe we can have a discussion and come to some compromise that maybe stars are real and far away." and you're still grumbling because they're still obviously, just, wrong. Like, unequivocally just still incorrect.

so you basically have the option of being one of those scientists who are like "Hey! It's nice that you're making scientific arguments about the consequences of a flat earth theory, but maybe we can help you out by talking about the mechanics of how a round earth might work, and it might even make more sense than a flat earth!", or, more likely, you're exhausted already and you think that no amount of niceness and reasoning is going to get through to them so you just start calling them names and shit and hoping that the dunking will be enough to make them see the errors of their ways, but even if they don't, it at least might make them leave you alone.

that being said, I think it's best to approach people at the level of their own good faith while on the instance you're on, and be even slightly more polite than them on foreign instances. so if somebody comes along on Hexbear from another instance and is like "Hey, I've heard a lot of things about Venezuela/Cuba/China/etc, are these true?" then dunking on them would obviously be inappropriate (and to be fair, most of us already know to not dunk in that situation). But if somebody comes on here and starts saying that, for example, downplaying the negative impact that the Democrats had on America's response to coronavirus, or starts saying shit like "The CCP is a bunch of redfash," then nobody should be surprised if we get angry at them and start spamming PPB.

But if I heard those two things on foreign instances, I might not be particularly nice to them, but I might at least explain my position and why they might be wrong. If they then continue to be morons without trying to rise to my level of good faith, then my patience will wear thin.

Hearing rumors that the Russian government is authoritarian. Yes, I know, I was shocked too. Even China's, and Cuba's. Can anybody substantial these rumors? It's the first I'm hearing these critiques and I have no response to them.

Deeply disturbing to me if these nations have actually created authoritarian governments, quite unlike every other countries' governments. Authoritarian governments are deeply unnatural and it's always frightening when a leader manages to access the Tyranny Nexus deep under their government building and convince everybody through psionic networks to support them.

Lawmakers urge Biden to resolve offloading delay of seized Iran oil tanker

That Iranian oil tanker floating off the coast of Texas is still there and has been since May. US companies are still too afraid to touch it due to fear of Iranian retribution. This is extremely funny.

Senators Joni Ernst, a Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and other lawmakers in the Senate and U.S. House said in the letter to Biden and senior administration officials that enforcement of petroleum sanctions will become irrelevant if American citizens and companies involved constantly live in fear of Iranian retaliation.

a specter is haunting America

#Tradle #530 3/6
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https://oec.world/en/tradle

1 Putinbux is equal to 8.38 Xibux. The common misconception is that Sorocoins are their own distinct currency when in reality it's like a multiplier on other foreign government's propaganda payments, so like, you can increase the value of Kimbux and Canelbux as well as Putinbux and Xibux because under this program, Soros only cares that you're spreading disinformation, not that it's being done in his name specifically. And you can use multiple Soroscoins to boost the value of your monthly Putinbux payout, which is right now the best one to use it on due to exchange rates. It's like how multiple slurp juices can be used on one ape, which I think everybody understands.

The workload was too high to maintain I think?

yes and no. back in December or early January I talked about the problems I was having to do double (well, more like 1.5x) the work and so I united the site posts and the megathread posts to the same standard so it was only like 1.05x the work. then the site broke a few months ago.

once it's back up again, I will be posting them there again, but the devs have obviously been busy with the rest of the site so understandably it's not received much attention.

what an adventure of a sentence

come on Prigozhin, do something funny