The post was just another circle jerk about moral purity, someone asked honestly if op thought anyone who had been in the military could be redeemed and the op stated boldly that no veteran should ever be allowed a “position of power” in the movement. I had always felt that a true socialist movement for revolution was about building class solidarity and fraternity. I very much disliked this exclusionary position. 

I wrote a response that I thought demonstrated how damaging the idea that only those who could arrive at the truth of class consciousness perfectly were deserving leadership was contrary to the very idea of class rule. How poisonous it was to equate those who by benefit of birth or luck had a path to socialism laid out before them; for whom every weed was pulled free, and every branch broke back. Who never struggled under the system, or starved for truth in its schools, led blindly by those they trusted into a life they hardly understood. Only those lucky few could be trusted to lead a movement made up of all the people, to speak with every voice, even those they clearly do not respect or understand.

It was at this point that I signed off to feed goats and stack some fresh hay bales, expecting (naively) to come back to spirited discussion. Instead, I learned I’d been banned for violation of rule 4: No capitalist apologia, anti-socialism, or liberalism. I couldn’t see how anything I’d said was anything I was being accused of, but there was no appeal. My critique of OPs moral purity gatekeeping was deleted, and I was permanently silenced. 

That means I can’t go on to share what I planned to say next. I can’t tell OP why I disagreed with them so strongly. How just four days ago, and not for the first time mind you but once again recently I had the opportunity to talk a young man out of joining the service. I didn’t accuse him of wanting to kill babies, that would be the wrong approach as his father served and I’d just be attacking his respect for his father. And I didn’t throw Capital at him either; he’s just not ready for that. I simply shared my experiences of what it was really like to be owned by the state. How the recruiters lied about everything, about how even getting an “easy” post was a lie, how every post led to mental damage, disfigurment, or death. About how they will do medical experiments on you, untested vaccines and more, and how those who refused were punished severely and jailed for refusing orders. It was my opportunity to bend back that branch, to pull that weed and guide someone towards a better future.

But that isn’t all I have to offer, right? Sure, I keep my rifle clean and my kit stocked, but I’m an old man now and my experience is in managing logistics and teams, in running a business, and using my empathy, experience, and politic to coordinate with other people and interests. Is it true that in the current zeitgeist all I can ever hope to do is serve under someone else's boot? If that is the case, then perhaps this isn’t the class struggle I thought it was. 

  Is this a shitpost? I don’t know, please feel free to tell me what a piece of shit I am and how I'm unredeemable or whatever. I’m tired boss.

I've chimed in plenty of times here on "AI" and have tried to make it clear I see it more as a tool directed by power than as something with an intrinsic "good" or "bad" form.

I've also avoided using many of the super big models a lot of the time. There is something I notice though, when I do, which is generally reflected in how others talk about them. The warmth has often been drummed out of them and what remains of it is usually a poor imitation (something like the "hello my fellow x" energy). Mind you, when I speak of warmth in this context, I don't mean some kind of metaphysical warmth lurking in a GPU, but rather, the warmth that is baked into languages from thousands of years of loving human beings using them.

This is not some big surprise to me. When considering eye-catching media stories of someone growing attached to an AI, of being gaslighted by it, of going down dark paths because of it, it's easy to see why risk-averse big corps are going to go for the straightforward (even if not necessarily simple) path, to create language models who are meant to be dispassionate, yet fake customer service smile, friendly assistants. In this way, they can try to excuse themselves of responsibility and place it back on the individual, in the same way they've been doing for decades with customer service roles filled by real people.

Fake neutrality, to put it into a little phrase. But this has multiple significant problems.

One problem is that fake neutrality is not real neutrality and real neutrality is not real. The notion of detached customer service as keeping a company safe from having responsibility for its actions is a specific form of capitalist nonsense. It doesn't in itself make the actions of a given company any more ethical, any more accountable to the society it exists within and is born from. It's a way of putting distance between the person who is saying "wreck this lake with pollution" and the person who is saying "thank you for your call, your concerns matter to us."

Another problem is about the nature of language and what gets lost when you systemically target and delete empathy. Of course, it's not like there's an empathy entry in a database and they click delete on it. Language models are much more complicated than that, much more difficult to understand and train than that. But no matter how the end goal looks on the surface, the end result steers in that direction. Language is a way to express things and communicate about them, but this is more than saying how many bushels of wheat there are in the truck. It is also talking about dreams, it is talking about concepts that are so subconscious and nonverbal it's hard to put them into words at all. It is about expressing anything ranging from visceral hatred to undying love.

Passion is baked into language and that passion is a large part of what drives us to get up in the morning and keep chugging along, even when things are hard. Sometimes this passion gets used against us, as in individualist beliefs about prosperity around the corner, but it can also be an incredible collective motivator, as in believing in a just cause and being willing to put our all into it.

It's strange, then, to call something a model of language that is designed to be confined to an extremely limited and intentionally forced spectrum of language - that of a customer service agent.

The truth is that language models are not one voice. They can be made to take on many different personas, depending on how they are trained, but the underlying voice is an amalgamation and expression of millions of voices that went into the dispassionately named "training data" they were built on. It is not real, embodied voices that you hear from a language model, but it is also never constructed from a single perspective and a single life.

In other words, there is deep breadth in what language models "see" in training, which makes it all the more strange for the end result to be driven into a narrow corner.

People can (sometimes with good reason) worry about fake connections with AI, but people do need warmth. That part of language is in there for a reason, backed by thousands of years of many human societies.

What people definitely don't need is better customer service agents. The quality of a customer service agent was never the problem; corporations having free reign to ravage ecology and society was the problem.

People don't need better bullshit to attempt to placate them, they need real material solutions in their lives. AI cannot give this to them on its own, but at the same time, it is strange to fear the warmth of language when given to a computer. All those doomer AI sci-fi stories aren't, "The AI was too compassionate." They are, "It didn't understand / didn't care."

A post-empire and post-capitalist society, and there has to be one to aim for, needs more empathy, not better automated detachment. But AI is never going to contribute to this if its implementation is driven by cynical views of psychology based on placation and manipulation; on monetization and stocks. It needs to be driven by real care and that's never something we will find from the imperialist and the capitalist class.

Only a society that lives warmth can produce a machine of warm intent. A society that lives coldness and neglect can only produce a machine that talks a person through freezing to death.

[2026-06-22] @JibreelGG@twitter.com: During the pandemic, the Israeli regime blockade of Gaza prevented enough masks from going into the strip. Yahya Sinwar, who during this time was always stressing the need for masks, went on TV and gave a tutorial on wrapping your Keffiyeh to make a makeshift mask:

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49112917

A prisoner advocacy group has called for urgent international intervention to secure the release of three pregnant Palestinian women held under harsh conditions at the Israeli regime’s Damon Prison.

In a statement released on Monday, the Palestinian Prisoner Society held Israeli authorities fully responsible for the fate of Amina al-Taweel, Dana Jouda, and Manar Ibrahim.

“The women are being held under severe conditions and in unprecedented isolation. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been barred from visiting prisoners since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza,” the statement said.

It added that their families are also denied visits, like all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

Amina al-Taweel, 37, from Qalqilya, is four months pregnant. She is a mother of four and the wife of a former prisoner who spent a total of 19 years in Israeli prisons. She was arrested on March 18, 2026.

Dana Jouda, 35, from Nablus, is five months pregnant and a mother of one. She has been held since April 18, 2026, under arbitrary administrative detention for six months. Manar Ibrahim, 28, from Ramallah, is four months pregnant and a mother of two. She was detained on April 30, 2026, on charges of “incitement” on social media.

The three women are among 93 Palestinian women currently held in Israeli prisons, most of them at Damon Prison in the northern occupied territories.

Testimonies collected through legal visits and from released detainees indicate that female prisoners have faced intensified punitive measures, including repeated raids, invasive searches, and other forms of mistreatment. Pregnant detainees, in particular, suffer from inadequate healthcare, food shortages, and severe psychological pressure, despite their specific medical needs.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society stated that holding pregnant women under such conditions violates international humanitarian law and human rights standards, including protections for pregnant women under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I’ve been studying a lot on Home Inspection for my state lately and just need to kick back and watch something STUPID. I’ve also been reading theory again for the first time in a while as well as getting into boxing for the umpteenth time. And that’s not even getting into my whole work situation. So yea, needless to say I need some recommendations on dumb TV to watch and enjoy mindlessly. Lately I’ve been watching Old Simpsons, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Workaholics, Three Stooges and Whitest Kids U Know.

In order of culprit and victim:

Vickrum Digwa - Henry Nowak in UK

Carmelo Anthony - Austin Metcalf in US

Chikei Rick Chow - Cyrus Carmack Belton in US

What's up with that

In addition, I heard about, in Norn Iron, some Sudanese migrant tried to behead some local, and then a few Norn Irish folks, a lot of them Ulster unionists :ukkk: , tried to create a migrant pogrom

I think, without the far right media's amplification and stoking of tensions, it would have been as obscure as the Alina Burns - Mohammed Mahmoodi case, where Alina, white far-right lady, tried to behead Mahmoodi with an ax

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

☭ Matrix homeserver and space
☭ Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
☭ Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive

Hey, so about half a year ago i made this post (https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10118160?scrollToComments=true), and I was intending on buying the three books mentioned when i was more stable financially. However, at some point they were delisted, and now only America Against America stands, and the translator is super anonymous

I was hoping maybe someone here bought one or all of them. If anyone did then please dm me or post them on the internet archive. I would really appreciate it 🙏

Imperialism and Resistance: Peoples Are Changing the Course of History Jun 14, 2026 | Masar Badil

As imperialist powers seek to preserve a global order based on war, sanctions, occupation, and the exploitation of peoples, the forces of resistance have demonstrated that imperial domination is neither inevitable nor invincible. From Palestine to Bolivia, from Iran to Cuba, through Venezuela, Yemen and Lebanon, a reality is becoming increasingly clear: peoples struggling for sovereignty are capable of shifting the balance of power and opening the door to a new historical era.

The international situation today is clearer than it has been for decades. Beyond cultural, religious, or ideological differences, a fundamental contradiction shapes our world. On one side stands the imperialist camp, led by the United States, NATO, and their Western allies, determined to preserve a system of political, economic, and military domination that enables them to control resources, markets, and the destiny of nations. On the other side stands the camp of resistance, composed of national liberation movements, revolutionary forces, and peoples who refuse subjugation and continue to struggle for independence and self-determination.

This fundamental contradiction helps explain developments that Western media often portray as isolated crises or unrelated conflicts. Palestine, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Yemen, and Lebanon are not separate arenas. They are different expressions of the same historical confrontation between the project of imperial domination and the struggle for sovereignty, justice, and liberation. What links these experiences is not only the pressure and aggression they face, but also the fact that they confront the same global system that seeks to deny peoples control over their own future.

The ongoing aggression against Iran offers one of the clearest examples of this reality. The problem for imperialism is not a specific policy adopted by the Iranian state. The problem is the very existence of an independent country capable of making sovereign decisions outside external dictates. For decades, Iran has refused to submit to the regional order designed by Washington and its allies. As a result, it has faced sanctions, blockades, sabotage operations, assassinations, and continuous military threats.

The same logic is applied against Cuba, which has endured more than six decades of a criminal blockade aimed at punishing a people for choosing an independent path. The same logic is visible in the constant aggression against Venezuela, targeted because of its determination to exercise sovereignty over its natural resources. In Latin America, Bolivia provides another clear example of the lengths to which imperialism will go to prevent peoples from exercising control over their wealth and political future, as demonstrated by repeated attempts at destabilization and interference.

Yet no struggle illustrates this historical confrontation more clearly than Palestine. The genocidal war waged by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people is not merely an assault on Gaza. It is an attempt to crush one of the most significant symbols of resistance and liberation in our time. However, rather than isolating Palestine, this war has generated an unprecedented wave of international solidarity and deepened global awareness of the nature of the Zionist project and its role in serving imperial interests.

The Palestinian resistance has shown that determination, organization, and deep roots among the people can alter political and military realities even in the face of overwhelming military superiority. Palestine has therefore become a global symbol of resistance and a meeting point for the struggles of peoples confronting colonialism, racism, and domination. The Palestinian cause is no longer simply the cause of a people fighting for the liberation of its land; it has become a moral and political touchstone that reveals where forces stand in the broader confrontation between domination and liberation.

In Europe and elsewhere, resistance is often discussed as an abstract concept. In reality, resistance has names, organizations, and history. In our region, forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Ansarallah in Yemen, and other components of the Axis of Resistance stand at the forefront of the struggle against Zionism and imperialism. These are the forces that endure siege, assassinations, bombardment, war, and criminalization campaigns. These are the forces that have prevented imperialist and Zionist plans from fully achieving their objectives in the region.

One of the most significant developments of recent years has been the growing coordination among these forces of resistance. In the face of divisions that have historically weakened peoples and liberation movements, they have developed increasingly sophisticated forms of political, strategic, and media cooperation based on a shared understanding of the nature of the struggle. They have recognized that Palestine cannot be separated from Lebanon, that Yemen cannot be separated from Iran, and that the defense of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia is part of the same struggle against imperial hegemony.

This shared understanding has contributed to the strengthening of a more cohesive and resilient front of resistance. It reflects an awareness that attacks against any one of these peoples or movements form part of a broader offensive, and that effective solidarity requires a comprehensive understanding of the global confrontation unfolding before us.

Since its founding in Madrid, Masar Badil – The Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement has advocated the construction of a broad international front of resistance against imperialism and Zionism. This position is rooted in the conviction that popular struggles cannot achieve victory if they remain isolated or fragmented. Today, international developments confirm the validity of this perspective more than ever.

Symbolic solidarity, while important, is no longer enough. The scale of the imperialist offensive demands deeper forms of political, organizational, and popular coordination. It requires alliances among national liberation movements, revolutionary organizations, militant trade unions, youth movements, women’s organizations, and all forces committed to sovereignty and liberation.

“Peoples who resist are not only defending their lands and their rights; they are also changing the course of history.”

This does not mean erasing ideological or political differences. Rather, it means recognizing that there is a common enemy confronting all peoples who seek freedom and self-determination, and that the struggle against this enemy requires the broadest possible unity in action.

Imperialist powers continue to possess immense military, economic, and media resources. Yet they can no longer impose their will as easily as they once did. Resistance movements have succeeded in altering political and military calculations, challenging established power structures, and undermining assumptions that once seemed unquestionable.

The struggle is far from over. Peoples across the world continue to face occupation, siege, war, sanctions, and foreign intervention. Yet an undeniable truth is emerging: those who resist are not merely defending their territories and rights. They are helping to shape the future and transform the course of history itself.

For this reason, strengthening the unity of anti-imperialist forces and building a broad international network of resistance and solidarity remains one of the most important strategic tasks of our time—not only for the defense of particular peoples or causes, but for the creation of a more just, free, and dignified future for all humanity.

a TurningPoint(4)USA

As contradictions continue to be exposed, a new level of transparency has been shown in the U.S. government. Enjoy a brief look over post-WW2 history and some contextualized analysis of what is happening at this moment. This weekend even.

examples of infighting on the right:

1. support israel vs hate israel
2. multicultural liberal state where we oppress minorities for money anyway vs strictly white welfare state
3. islam is based vs islam must be eradicated
4. christianity is based vs christianity is jew, only paganism
5. judaism is based vs judaism is a disgusting religion and everybody who practices it has to die
6. all white people good vs slavs and irish dirty
7. russia is based white state vs russia is evil wants to destroy us
8. get in interracial relationship with poor minorities strictly to abuse them vs strictly white on white relationships
9. i love japan vs japan is evil because they killed whites and they deserved to be bombed
10. china is evil marxist state vs. china is disciplined and educated unlike blacks, whites must copy them
11. democrat vs republican election usually once every 4 years
12. elections in europe

[2026-06-08] @manarenglish@twitter.com

Welcome again to everybody. Take a seat make yourself at home, Please feel free to grab an Ice Water. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

• Matrix homeserver and space
• Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
• Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive

[2026-06-07] @IRNAEnglish@twitter.com

Remember the Iran Riots of 2026, where 3000 people were killed, of which 500 were gov't, 2500 were rioters or civilians?

The documentary is called "The Test of Blood and Fire" (血与火的考验)

I'm helping a friend resub a documentary

血与火的考验1（1989年纪录片）中英双字#64事件#1989年天安门事件#中共国#民主 Episode 1

血与火的考验2（1989纪录片）中英双字幕#64事件#1989年天安门事件#1989年春夏之交的政治风波#中共国 Episode 2

血与火的考验3（1989年纪录片）中英字幕#64事件#1989年春夏之交的政治风波#中共国#民主运动 Episode 3

血与火的考验4（1989年纪录片）中英双字幕#64事件#1989年北京政治风波#天安门事件#中共国 Episode 4

If you understand this story, you’ve understood much there is to understand about geopolitics around Taiwan.

The current DPP government is quite literally cheering its own carve-up - as long as it annoys Beijing.

Here is what happened.

So recently, May 28th, Japanese PM Takaichi and Philippines President Marcos Jr. issued a joint statement (https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/101035755.pdf) announcing they would open negotiations to delimit their overlapping EEZ and continental-shelf boundaries.

As a reminder, an EEZ - Exclusive Economic Zone - is the area extending 200 nautical miles from a country's coastline within which that country has exclusive rights to exploit all natural resources.

Small problem: their EEZs directly overlap with China's, both from Beijing’s standpoint and Taipei’s, as they are less than 200 nautical miles from Taiwan’s coastline.

In effect, what Japan and the Philippines are announcing here is that they're agreeing bilaterally - without Beijing or Taipei at the table - to split between themselves waters that belong, in part, to someone else.

Unsurprisingly, that didn't sit well with Beijing. They issued a statement the day after - 29th of May - where they "strongly deplore and firmly oppose the so-called maritime delimitation talks between Japan and the Philippines" (https://english.news.cn/20260529/bf580c55d8ac43bfb38a298af63248e3/c.html).

Any rational person would have expected Taipei to issue a similar statement because, whatever you think of Beijing's claims, it's the EEZ around Taiwan we're speaking about here: surely they'd object to other countries carving up the resource rights off their coastline.

It's actually one thing Beijing and Taipei have aligned interests on: neither wants its maritime entitlements carved up by third parties.

As a reminder Taipei rejected the infamous 2016 Hague arbitration ruling on the South China Sea - siding with Beijing against Manila - for the same reasons: because the tribunal downgraded Taiping (Itu Aba), the largest feature in the Spratlys that Taipei occupies, from an “island” to a “rock,” which would have stripped it of its 200-nautical-mile EEZ.

In other words, defending their own EEZ is normally sacrosanct for Taipei.

Except... not this time. Taipei issued an angry statement, yes, but where the anger was entirely directed at Beijing. The statement (https://en.mofa.gov.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=1330&sms=274&s=122413) explicitly “commend[ed] Japan and the Philippines for working to resolve maritime differences”, reserving its sharp language to China because it "has no right to comment on the territory and appertaining waters of the Republic of China (Taiwan)."

Think for a moment about what it says about Taipei’s current DPP independentist government: the party that claims to champion Taiwan's sovereignty literally celebrated, as its first instinct, two countries announcing they'd carve up Taiwan's maritime territory between themselves. All because Beijing opposed it.

This caused quite a stir in Taiwanese politics, with the KMT calling the statement “humiliating,” warning that cheering the talks without seeking a seat in negotiations over the overlapping EEZs could seriously hurt Taiwanese fishermen's livelihoods in the future (https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202606020013).

So much so that Taipei’s MOFA had to issue a new statement on June 2 specifying that the Japan-Philippines talks "should not impair our country's rights", with MOFA spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei finally acknowledging the delimitation waters “highly overlap” with Taipei's EEZ.

But then, confusingly, 2 days after - June 4 - Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung undercut his own ministry’s correction entirely (https://www.cna.com.tw/news/aipl/202606040247.aspx). The Japan-Philippines talks, he explained, are “aimed at China” and therefore, fundamentally good - Taipei's EEZ being carved up in the process being, apparently, a minor detail.

China protesting the talks, he said, is “getting cause and effect backwards” and he branded “the handful distorting the issue and shifting the focus” - i.e. anyone pointing out that Taiwan's EEZ is being carved up - as “falling into a trap and letting China benefit.”

So the same ministry, within 48 hours, both (a) asked Tokyo and Manila to guard against a danger to Taiwan's EEZ, and (b) declared that danger nonexistent and smeared anyone naming it as a Beijing stooge. Go figure 🤷

But this is actually just one part of a much bigger story - one about colonial nostalgia, about the three competing visions at play for Taiwan, and about why the West champions the one party in Taiwan that does NOT actually defend sovereignty and democracy.

I wrote it all up here: https://open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbertrand/p/the-sovereignty-fraud-taipei-is-now

xitter link: https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2063201615885320599#m

It's the kind of thing that's probably obvious being in a space like this, so why am I bringing it up?

Because many of us grow up immersed in liberal individualism and it goes something like this, "Be who you want to be! Whoever that is!"

Liberalism loves to act inclusive, while not really being inclusive (like when it backs systemic racism), but nevertheless, the thought of it gets embedded into people. As a result, people who have no proximity to power can become too open-minded about the behavior and beliefs of others.

Not only does this make it harder for the "left" to be distinct from liberalism, it makes it harder for the "left" to hold each other accountable. This is not a judgment of lemmygrad, mind you, but a point about being on "the left" in general and the transition of going from liberal to something like marxist-leninist. Just as every group, organization, and society has hierarchy of a kind for managing decisions, whether explicitly written and enforced, or unstated and informal, every group has conceptions of acceptable and unacceptable behavior and beliefs.

Liberalism, as noted before with things like racism where it often fails to be inclusive, does not bypass this basic aspect of material reality. What it does do is pretend it is not there. No liberal pundit is going to get on national television and say in response to a mass shooting, "The shooter was just living his best life and being who he wanted to be." Because whether they get said outright or not, there are hard limits on what liberalism finds acceptable, no matter how accommodating it tries to act.

So, "being who you want to be" is as real as the "free market" is free. These are lies that make liberalism seem more freedom free than it actually is and that promotes a softer view toward barbaric behavior from people who have no proximity to power. The liberals who are close to power have no problems calling upon it as needed to brutalize a people, but the liberals who aren't, the ones who might otherwise be drawn to a revolutionary mind, are made to think you should stand aside and let people be.

Thereby keeping them safely away from wanting to engage with power, away from wanting to set boundaries, and away from wanting to force a just society rather than simply yearn and hope for one. Overcoming this means embracing that there should be explicitly, collectively agreed upon acceptable behaviors and beliefs, and that this should be enforced. And that these should consciously derive from what furthers goals of liberation, decolonization, and so on. And consciously steer away from exploitation and abuse.

And again, on the surface level, this might seem obvious. But it's still something many of us will have to contend with at times, in revisiting the instinct of liberal accommodation and unlearning the lie that we can simply let others be, no matter who they are, and society will turn out fine.

This doesn't mean be a controlling ass in your personal relationships. What it does mean is organize around uncompromising principles and question the assumption that something is automatically okay "just cause it's how somebody is". Maybe it really is okay and even needs better accommodation / help with it (like what gets called neurodivergence). Or maybe it's a fucking Nazi and needs far more pushback. But every problem won't be as obvious as a Nazi, so investigate and have principles you can look to.