[2026-05-06] @UlyssesFinn

It's important to understand the difference between fact and narrative, especially for those of us who have grown up in the western sphere of "monotone presented as neutrality".

Here is a fairly simple example: We have two people, we'll call them Bob and Tom. The facts are that Bob punched Tom and that Tom punched Bob.

Notice that with these facts out of context, we already have a narrative forming. The order in which I wrote the facts suggests one punch happened after the other. It further suggests, due to the nature of how I'm saying it, that I am capable of being a neutral outside party who is evaluating the conflict between Bob and Tom without any personal bias toward outcome.

Now let's add more: Suppose a further fact is that Bob punched Tom because Tom first punched Bob. Now we are starting to get into order of events and motivation, and it's suggesting a narrative of self defense.

But what if that's not all there is to it? Suppose we add another layer. Though it is true that in this specific exchange of blows, Tom punched first, in previous unmentioned conflicts Bob has always been the initiator.

It can go on and on like this for a while and the more detail you add, the clearer a picture you get of what is going on. Outside of context, it is easier to presume being capable of neutral and accurate judgment, but the further you dig into the details, the more your judgment becomes an expression of what you believe in and what your interests are. The more you know about what happened and weigh in on it in detail, the harder it is to sound like an unbiased party.

Being conscious of, and accepting this, is not a bad thing. We all have biases. This does not mean it's good to lie and deceive carelessly and for selfish ends, but it does mean that no one is escaping motive. It means that when we weigh in on something, we are expressing someone's motive toward an outcome, whether it is our own or someone else's that we may not even realize we are carrying.

So when your boss sucks, make the working class motive conscious and figure out how to wield it, in context, toward a better world for yourself and the rest of the working class. When your people are imperialized, make the liberation motive conscious and figure out how to wield it toward ending imperialism. And so on.

Look

We're riding with Biden again, okay?!

Now get in the car...

cocks gun

I said get in the car right fucking now!

(also, Biden's driving the car this time as well)

A stunning investigative report by Hebrew-language outlet Ynet has laid bare the embarrassing cataclysm not only of the US-Israeli war on Iran, but the Zionist entity’s effort throughout to end the Islamic Republic via covert and overt military and intelligence operations. Violent Mossad-orchestrated protests, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s murder, and a Kurdish invasion were intended to produce regime change and “total victory” over Tehran. Yet, as Ynet concludes: “what started as a far-reaching Israeli move, rich in imagination, final in its solution, ends in heartache.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11532321

Conitnuing on from here:

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11502106

Kinda related to this set of questions from my last post:

Not sure what else to say except:

---

• What trans organizations and gender-affirming services can I access in Spain?

• Any organizations or services for Autistic folk like me?

• How should I go about starting veganism?

• What are good ways to build muscle now fast?

• Any BIPOC orgs in Spain?

• Communist or leftist orgs in Spain?

---

Anyway, I'm looking into the first one in particular.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11519656

TRANSLATION:

"In Honduras we need force, logistics and blood. If you want to have people under leash you need to oppress them. SQUEEZE THEM. Counter violence generating violence. It is what President Trump says, and you better believe he will be there for an eternity. I don't know how but you have to take my word for it. Don't be a softy, don't hesitate, you won't be able to do your job, that's what Pablo Escobar said." - JOH

"President, pleasure talking with you, we already had a private meeting with investment groups and they're eager to see the expansion of ZEDE (a financial paradise for investors) in Roatan and Comayagua for Palmerola, we are moving another Palmerola specifically to Roatan where there is Prospera, a base we already negotiated. Also about the interoceanic, we are handing it to General Electric and the idea is to buy all goods like metals specifically from Argentina and the US, avoiding Canada and China, these were the warnings we received. The chinese were trying to make a deal but we are not interested, we put a stop to that. There is also the plan for jail CECOT hondureno. (bukele style camp)"

was going to type this up as a post at first, decided to make it into an essay with fixed link for easier share.

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8401383

نُشر تبادليًا من: https://hexbear.net/post/8380592

I am a mother trying to protect my children in a place where even the simplest things — food, medicine, and safety — have become a daily struggle. The war may fade from the headlines, but for families like mine, the hardship has never stopped.

If you can help, even a small act of kindness can make a real difference for my family. Your support can help us hold on through days that feel impossible.

Please stand with us. [https://gofund.me/1d3ea05b6]

#Gaza #HelpGaza #Palestine #MutualAid #EmergencySupport

Everyone seems outraged by Trump, his geopolitical interpretations, his political measures, and his wars. However, both politicians and mainstream media then agree with him that the situation in Cuba is desperate and on the verge of collapse.

The scenario they promote is that of a failed state, so that a military intervention can be interpreted not as aggression, but as salvation, or at the very least, something that cannot worsen the situation. The objective, as Belén Gopegui says, is to instill the idea that "there is nothing left to do," only wait for the arrival of imperialism.

We have been to Cuba, we have seen, observed, asked questions, and taken notes. We have discovered a people battered and suffering from the energy blockade, but with a government that is managing the situation and citizens who are moving forward.

The first point to consider is that Cuba has been subjected to an energy blockade, which has prevented the island from receiving a single drop of oil for four months. This oil was previously supplied by Mexico and Venezuela. As a consequence, the island's thermoelectric plants have been left without the raw materials needed to operate. It's surprising how the world reacted to the blockade of food aid that Israel imposed on Gaza, but blocking access to energy is just as suffocating for an economy and just as criminal for a country. Can you imagine what would happen if Spain were prevented from receiving a single drop of oil or gas? Or an island like the Dominican Republic, next to Cuba? Imagine blocking the Dominican Republic's access to the 50 or 60 million barrels it receives annually, or the 2.8 million barrels per day that Japan imports. And when these countries are unable to develop due to the lack of this energy, then people will say that capitalism doesn't work.

The first paradox is that the Trump administration says Cuba is a failed state, but precisely because there is a state presence in the organization of society, the energy deficit is being managed. The Cuban state has classified areas according to energy priorities, which they call circuits with levels of importance, giving the highest priority to areas with hospitals or healthcare facilities, schools, fire stations, food industries, and so on. In these protected zones, the electricity almost never goes out.

Similarly, the Cuban government is prioritizing healthcare, educational, and social service centers for the installation of solar panels. In a race against time, and with assistance from China, solar systems supplying energy to healthcare facilities and hospitals are being inaugurated daily.

Regarding gasoline distribution, the criteria are also social; public services have a guaranteed supply, as do agricultural production and strategic companies, while private use has less fuel available at a very high price.

Similarly, the State plans territorial connections and disconnections in its thermoelectric power plants to ensure the distribution of supply and prevent the system from collapsing due to demand exceeding available electricity.

It is the State's planning that has allowed the 730,000 barrels of crude oil ("a third of what we need in a month," in the words of President Díaz-Canel) that arrived on the Russian ship Anatoly Kolodkin on March 31 to be stretched and optimized to the maximum to generate 800 or 1,000 MW, a third of everything that is needed at peak times.

Unlike in our countries, where an energy price increase instantly translates into inflation and price hikes, in Cuba there is no increase in the prices of basic necessities. This is because the state maintains a fixed price for energy production, and there are no distributors who can speculate or hoard. Furthermore, imported products have no reason to increase in price because they are not affected by any energy blockade.

The U.S. government is proposing to allow fuel imports, but only for the private sector—that is, for wealthy individuals and private companies, regardless of their size. In other words, it wants to eliminate the social and strategic criteria of the Cuban state. Without a state to prioritize needs and coordinate supply connections and disconnections, individual demands would cause the system to constantly collapse.

He says it's a failed state, but what he really wants is to deactivate it because he knows it's not a failed state at all.

The initiative of ordinary Cubans is also noteworthy. Havana's streets are filled with Chinese electric motorcycles, and even tricycles that can carry up to six people, which have already replaced most gasoline-powered cars and, above all, taxis. These motorcycles, which are solving Havana's transportation problem, cost around $600 or $700, a significant amount for a Cuban, but it's worth remembering that they have spent their entire lives paying a minimal amount for electricity, less than a dollar a month. Now, recharging their motorcycles' batteries at home is practically free.

On the other hand, many homes already have solar panels to ensure their energy self-sufficiency. It's curious that we Spaniards are being forced into this energy transition to cope with the sanctions we ourselves imposed on Russia and the resulting increase in gas prices. Cuba is doing the same, but due to the US embargo.

The disruption to transportation means many workers are staying with friends and family to avoid the daily commute, or they're taking food and laundry to the refrigerator or washing machine of a relative with electricity. In other words, the country isn't grinding to a halt or collapsing. In fact, although we've seen fewer gasoline-powered vehicles on Havana's streets and a sharp drop in tourism, getting around the city isn't difficult; people are going to work, and on weekends, the entertainment venues can't complain about a lack of Cuban customers. Nothing like the Special Period of the 1990s.

The Cuban government's transparency regarding the energy situation is absolute. Cubans follow a WhatsApp channel run by the Cuban Electric Union, where a daily graphic of the "National Energy System Update" is shared. There, they can see that the typical peak-hour availability is around 2,000 MW (twenty days ago it was less than 1,500 MW) and a demand of 3,000 MW. The 1,000 MW deficit must be distributed according to priorities and staggered to prevent the system from collapsing.

The current situation is that China has already built 75 of the 92 solar parks it committed to deploying by 2028 in just twelve months, increasing its total energy generation from 5.8% to 20%. Each solar park costs approximately $16 million, and the 75 already built represent an investment of over $1.2 billion in energy infrastructure installed at record speed. Each megawatt of installed solar capacity represents nearly 18,000 tons of fuel that the island no longer needs to import.

Today, solar energy in Cuba already produces 1,000 MW, 20 to 25% of the country's energy needs. It's important to note that while current solar energy helps cover daytime peak demand, it doesn't solve nighttime blackouts without massive energy storage systems. We mustn't forget that Cubans use a lot of electricity at night for their air conditioners.

The speed of deployment is surprising even by Chinese standards: some parks were operational in just 35 days after the equipment arrived. In addition to the massive contribution to the electrical grid, the agreement with China includes the donation of 70 tons of generator parts and plans to install 10,000 photovoltaic systems in homes, maternity wards, and clinics.

It is clear that the objective of the energy blockade is to provoke a popular uprising against the government, something that seems increasingly unlikely and absurd. It is difficult to know precisely what percentage of support or opposition there is to the Cuban government, but it is undeniable that support is higher than the 36% Trump enjoys. I would even say it is higher than it was a few years ago. Trump's arrogance and clumsiness in stating that he wanted to "take over Cuba" has sparked rejection even among Cubans who, naively, might have thought that the US administration was ever interested in democracy or human rights for Cuba.

In conclusion, a socialist state that plans and prioritizes, Chinese solidarity, and Cuban inventiveness are ensuring that, once again, Cuba moves forward and the United States' plans to overthrow it continue to fail, as they have for the last sixty years.

• More on the reporter Pascual Serrano:

Journalist from Spain. He was the founding director of the alternative website Rebelión. He regularly publishes columns in the Spanish newspaper Público. He has written several books on journalism, communication, and politics.

It's not just "fake news" or just crude propaganda. It's something more subtle and more dangerous:

It is the art of making the exploited end up defending the exploiters.

It is to numb our class consciousness so that, instead of uniting against the exploitative system, we fight amongst ourselves for a few crumbs.

The bourgeoisie no longer needs to censor exclusively with bayonets. It suffices for them to shape what we feel, what we see, what we believe is possible. And for that, they use science, data, and above all: the platforms we use every day.

Networks are not neutral: they are factories of meaning.

If the owner of any factory decides what is produced, how, and for whom... why would it be any different with digital platforms?

The algorithm is not an impartial device: it is a social relationship crystallized in code. Its job is to keep us hooked, not well-informed.

Your attention is their raw material: every like, every scroll, every minute on screen generates value for them. We all work for free so they can gain money and power.

Polarization is at the heart of the business: if we are divided, angry, and confused, we cannot organize. And if we cannot organize, the system will remain unchanged.

Class consciousness does not "appear" on its own.

Lenin stated it clearly: revolutionary consciousness does not arise spontaneously from discontent. It requires study, organization, and political leadership.

Today, the digital environment makes that transition more difficult:

• It shows you a thousand injustices, but it takes away the tools to understand their common root: capital.
• It invites you to "activate" with a click, but it distances you from collective, radical, strategic construction. It offers you fragmented identities ("I am from this side", "I hate that group") so that you forget the fundamental belonging: we are the working class.

And what about the "zone of proximal development"? Is it useful to us?

Vygotsky spoke of how we learn with the help of more expert individuals. In revolutionary terms, this translates as follows: The gap between what we understand today and what we need to understand to transform reality is not crossed alone. It is crossed through organization, with theory, with practice, with colleagues who lend us a hand.

The problem is that today, on social media, the "expert" who guides you is not a trained professional who challenges the system, but an algorithm designed to sell you something or mislead you.

But be aware: the tool doesn't have the final say. What matters is who controls it and for what purpose.

• Under bourgeois leadership: platforms fragment us, tire us, adapt us.
• Under popular direction: they can serve to connect struggles, share analysis, organize actions.

Technology is not the enemy. Capitalism is.

So what do we do?

Simply "disconnecting" isn't enough. The battle is for awareness, and that's where we need to be. Some key points:

1. Study to avoid being manipulated: read, discuss, train cadres. Theory is not a luxury: it is a weapon.
2. Organize, don't just voice opinions: indignation without strategy is fleeting. Let's defend our real structures: unions, assemblies, the party.
3. Contest the means of "mental production": let's not allow platforms to be just enemy territory. Let's create counter-information, popular networks, and revolutionary digital pedagogy.
4. Uniting struggles without erasing differences: the cognitive war wants us to be pitted against each other (worker vs. migrant, woman vs. man, urban vs. rural, white vs. black). Our real strength lies in anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist articulation.

Source -> https://t.me/LaManiguaRevolucionPaRato/4993

Verse 1

I got a message from Donroe Don

He said we must invade Iran

Like he said, those many years ago

Said it wouldn’t take too long

Said we just had to look strong

Just a job we had to see through

Chorus

Donroe Donald told the nation

“Have no fear of escalation

We will make peace with a victory

Just to quickly win this war

We’re sending bombers more and more

To help me free Iran from Iranis"

Verse 2

We pulled back from our own base

When Iran struck back in its haste

I stayed low till the sejjils just died down

Never mind how much it’s costing

Think of all the sites we’re hitting

Just don’t buy some gas inside of town

Chorus repeat

Verse 3

Every week a trading partner

Pays Iran to cross its waters

They pay dearly for the Yank regime

Despite the initial trauma

They replace their Ayatollah

And start blocking trade routes in his name.

Chorus repeat

Verse 4

We’d go around with bunker busters

Hitting bridges, missile centers

Only for new ones to come replace

Command says we wiped them out

Says they’re close to giving out

But they keep on fighting just the same

Chorus repeat

Verse 5

Well here I sit in my hotel room

Hearing all that fear and gloom

They say it’s the cost of victory

Still I think back to before

When he swore there’d be no war

And none of this would ever come to be

Chorus repeat

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11468794

Humane Foreign Policy - Kat for Illinois

As with regard to Taiwan, the United States must continue to support Taiwan in the face of increasing Chinese aggression and attempts to undermine Taiwan’s internationally recognized status as a state of its own.

Kat Abughazaleh, Democratic candidate for Illinois 9th Congressional District - Chicago Sun-Times

I want to codify passive support to sell Taiwan weapons, and prevent the president from overruling it unilaterally. If China invades Taiwan, we need to step in militarily to defend Taiwan. We have to use all our assets in the region, to defend the island from illegal aggression. I envision a two-part credible deterrence plan that turns Taiwan into a “porcupine” too costly for the PRC to invade, by providing them with weapons to defend themselves and committing to actually defending the island if they do invade.

Drop Site (@DropSiteNews): "⭕️ LEAKED Email | XCancel

“interventionist,” foreign policy adviser says Kat Abughazaleh, a socialist Democratic candidate in Illinois’ 9th District and one of the only Palestinian-Americans seeking office in 2026, was described by her national security adviser as “firmly an interventionist” who “won’t stop until Russia is made to pay for its crimes,” in written responses detailing her foreign policy vision, obtained by Drop Site.

Ben Mermel wrote in an email to a Washington-based progressive foreign policy activist that Abughazaleh believes “the world is better off when America takes a leading role” and that the U.S. has “an obligation to support pro-democracy movements around the world, from Iran to Venezuela.” He added that “Kat wholly supports the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as its affiliated organizations (NDI, IRI, and the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center),” and said Congress should expand tools “from sanctions to NGO support” to advance those efforts without always resorting to “kinetic force.”

The DC-based activist had written to Mermel saying he had noticed unusually hawkish language on the campaign website related to Ukraine and Taiwan and was looking for clarification.

In his response, Mermel said that on Taiwan she would amend the Taiwan Relations Act by “dropping our strategic ambiguity” and make clear the U.S. would counter Chinese aggression “with force,” arguing the region now requires “a firmer hand.”

On Ukraine, Mermel wrote she would “hold the line,” support “funding the Ukrainian war effort to the hilt,” back long-range strikes on Russian strategic targets, deploy additional U.S. “air, naval, and ground assets” to NATO’s front line, and that “She supports the seizure and redistribution of Russian assets in Europe and the United States, for the purpose of financing the war effort.”

Abughazaleh did not respond to a request for comment, but a source close to the campaign told Drop Site that the adviser’s email did not accurately represent her views, saying, “Kat is committed to taking on authoritarianism but is vehemently against the military industrial complex and the continuation of failed US intervention approaches.” Abughazaleh has consistently argued against U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and, at a recent forum, said she opposes U.S. strikes on Iran.

Mermel in 2024 attended a pro-Israel protest held to counter the encampment at George Washington University. He has been Abughazaleh’s National Security Adviser since July 2025, according to Legistorm.

Just for the record, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a CIA organization:

National Endowment for Democracy - Wikipedia

In a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, NED founder Allen Weinstein said: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."[24]

The People’s Forum is WHOLLY funded, staffed, and controlled by PSL, whose office is in the same building upstairs. (more below and in linked tweet)

https://x.com/jccfergie/status/2049364501875572917

The years is 19...80? Somewhere in there. A 19 something year that is after WWII. John White Guy is in his garage, working on computers. The white picket fence keeps the riffraff out and the blood of imperialist conquest keeps the Capri Sun flowing in. It's a mystery how he got to the point he did (his parents are well off) and it's a wonder how he produced the tech he did (he got most of it from others and gave no credit). It's from here he starts one of the worlds greatest (most profitable and exploitative) companies. Computer Inc.

Western tech runs on stories like this. The scrappy well off colonizer who came from nothing but the blood of some indigenous people. The western tech world is propped up by giants like this. Impossibly large figures whose tech becomes vital, who speak the language of the computers like it was birthed to them. Sometimes the figure doesn't get the credit they did deserve, sometimes they get credit they don't, but it's all very mysterious.

Well, the people who have pushed for open source have only had so much success, due to the nature of capitalism, so it really is mysterious sometimes. NDAs lock away source code like magic incantations in a vault, making sure the competition doesn't outplay them. Profit is the lifeblood, not common good.

When the boom and bust cycles occur, when the mass layoffs happen, when veteran "wizards" retire or are pushed out, when companies get bought out or go under, the vault can shrink instead of ever opening. Knowledge lost. But how many of these incantations are even a good solution? How many are the best known solution?

Who knows how much duct tape there is holding it together. As long as the interface looks good, it surely can't be that bad on the inside, right? The special white western wizards made it! In a garage of all places. It must be good.

Pay no attention to the languages that people hardly use anymore behind the curtain yet are still relevant in aging tech. You just gotta trust. They would never hurt anyone, right? Code is special! When code is used to make an automated weapons system, that's just the wizards working with their spells again, silly wizards, sometimes they get adventurous. It's not like they're the ones pulling the trigger.

Ah well, it'll hold up. The wizards made a wizard machine to cast spells for them that they call an LLM. The prophecy says that something something more white guys will make AGI and then the end of history I guess. It's all good. Capitalism is innocent, I tell you! Imperialism? Nah, that's an enum of type Politics. Just abstract it away. Who can say they have blood on their hands if they never have to be present with the world they've coded the latest prison walls for?

Author's Note / Disclaimer: This is not a dig at programming or coding as a whole, as I hope is clear enough in the writing. It's pointed at the way in which the tech field behaves in the western imperial context. It's truly amazing what code can produce and I like working with it myself. I'm far from anti-tech. But the way the west acts with it has a whole lot of horseshit going on.

A great conversation about US military doctrine, its failures, shortcomings and analysis about media warfare in the war against Iran.

I think at some point, most of us have been liberals. From a young age, most in the west (or at least the US) have grown up with a liberal view of the world instilled into them: people have power by voting; therefore, society is good because good people will vote for good people, and good people will do good things to make society better. A relatively well-off liberal will spend the first decade or so in ignorant bliss, not aware of the world around them. It is not until the liberal begins to realize that the world is not so perfect after all that they come to doubt things.

If voting will lead to good people in power and lead to a world where politicians do good things... why isn't the world good?

The liberal stands at a crossroads.

There is a single, very simple option--that things actually are good. Liberals who believe this are often the ones that turn into ghoulish social darwinist hacks, arguing that inequality, oppression and such don't really matter, and it's all a matter of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, that some are just naturally lazy, etc.... it's a very naive way of looking at things, and the people who subscribe to this tendency tend to be quite naive and privileged as well.

However, especially in today's world, such ignorant bliss is becoming increasingly less viable. So, which way, liberal?

There is of course the option to reject liberalism's framework entirely. It's an ideology of weakness, of women in videogames... that path doesn't lead to more liberalism and it's been discussed thoroughly, so I won't go into it.

The liberals who no longer buy into the success of their ideology must come to a new conclusion: that liberalism has been betrayed, stabbed in the back, even. The most important part of a liberal's political development comes from who exactly they believe betrayed liberalism.

A quite simple, establishment friendly answer is: foreign actors. Russians, Chinese, the communists, whatever... they're influencing our elections, they're buying out our politicians. The advantage of this approach is a form of clean-wehrmacht maneuver, where they can acknowledge the failure of liberalism while at the same time absolving themselves of all moral responsibility: it's the dirty racist/homophobic/authoritarian foreigners responsible for everything wrong, if it weren't for them we'd be living in a democratic utopia! This kind of western exceptionalism, as you might imagine, often backslides into eurolib-style liberal fascism when things really hit the fan.

Other liberals, who examine the world a bit more closely, may conclude that capitalism is the problem. With all the problems in the world today, it's hard not to. They see how much influence the rich have over political processes, and conclude that they are causing bad things. However, while this form of liberalism seems more aligned with leftism, it does contain one crucial flaw: it does not recognize that liberal democracy upholds capitalism by nature, but rather views western political structures as inherently apolitical and natural. This may be why they cling to reformism, as they naively believe that capitalist institutions can be peacefully reformed away from destructive capitalism, just as a gambler believes with skillful maneuvering they may be able to strike it rich gambling.

That's the end of my writeup about liberals, I was gonna write more but I got bored and didn't know what to write thanks for reading everyone

Posting this here for no particular reason. No reason at all.

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
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