Shaggy0291

I remember a time when Lemmy had like 10 people and we'd be lucky to get 5 upvotes to a single post. Now we actually have a functional feed that will more or less have new content every day.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/482042

PLASTIC DEFENCE is a documentary about illegal 3D printed firearms in Europe and the decentralised network behind them. These guns are robust, they don't blow up in your hands, and they're untraceable. What's more, they're being made in people's bedrooms.

I have absolutely zero background or knowledge on coding/programming/IT/software/computing etc, but I've recently taken an interest in it. How much time, effort and resources would I need to sink into it in order to become at least borderline competent?

Your typical martial arts/self defence clubs can be prohibitively expensive for the poorest sections of the working class and they foster a culture that is hostile to people of our background and politics.

Everything from the imposed necessity of gis, which significantly break from the real life conditions in which one might necessarily need to use self defence skills, to engagement with the belt system, which necessitates the purchase of more and more belts as one advances in their chosen art; all of it erects barriers that deter ordinary people from establishing their own independent community through which to cultivate self defence skills. On balance, most traditional martial arts gyms foster a reactionary political perspective amongst their members, and are dominated by figures with such an outlook.

If we're to break with this tendency we will need to establish our own socialist infrastructure. This might sound daunting, but it's already been done; In my own city, there already exists a red gym that is highly accessible to people of a left wing persuasion. It protects and welcomes queer people into their classes and equips them with the skills they need to defend themselves at an extremely low entry cost. Belts and gis aren't a part of their progression, and to my knowledge all members dues have gone towards keeping up with the rent at their venue and acquiring more and more equipment. To my knowledge, nothing is skimmed off the top. The organisers of this gym cut their teeth in Anti-Fascist Action, an organisation that confronted and fought the neo-Nazi thugs of the national front and the BNP throughout Britain in the 80s and 90s. Now they turn their attention to passing their skills on to a new generation. If it can be done here, it can be done in your neighbourhood too.

I appeal to any and all socialist martial artists on here to organise your own clubs in your communities. Reach out to each other, network, pool your equipment and be on the lookout for appropriate venues to hold classes. We don't need to be beholden to reactionaries for self-defence training, we can build our own alternatives instead.

Apologies in advance for the huge wall of text:-

I organise with a communist party in the UK and am in regular contact with other organisers/activists across multiple different organisations throughout my country.

Its become increasingly obvious that the UK is lurching into ever deepening crises with no end in sight, a situation which has provided fertile soil upon which to carry out genuine communist work in the labour movement here. There isn't a week that goes by that myself and my comrades aren't called upon to agitate for this or that strike; unions that have been complacent for the longest time are once again in need of experienced agitators to mobilise the workers, more and more of whom are coming over to our side and achieving class consciousness. Our own upstart union groups are finding their legs and being given a seat at the table with some of the biggest pre-established trade unions in the country in order to help them set up their own movement with the Enough is Enough campaign. This in itself illustrates how far advanced the situation has become in the cradle of the capitalist world. It shows no sign of letting up.

With all this said, I'm increasingly convinced that the first great socialist breakthrough in the imperial core will happen here in Britain. Everything from the international isolation caused by Brexit to the moribund state of Britain's economy and its overstretched security apparatus is heralding total collapse if the country's current trajectory isn't radically shifted in the next few years. To top this all off, the British state hasn't demonstrated the means to achieve such a correction even if it tried. Taking all of this into account, I'm increasingly concerned about interference from foreign powers in the event that the British government is eventually toppled and a socialist one is established in its place. A lot of US soldiers and materiel are present in air bases all over England. It's extremely hard to imagine that they'll stand idly by if the US' chief imperialist lapdogs are swept from power, to say nothing of the French and the Germans looking on from across the channel.

It was stated by the CIA themselves that Maurice Bishop's New Jewel movement in Grenada represented a uniquely dangerous challenge to the US during the cold war, not because of its economic or military power, but simply because for the first time ever there was a socialist government whose people spoke in the English language; people who could speak directly to the US public. This is part of the rationale used by the US' security services to justify regime change in that country. If Grenada was pounced on so ferociously, then what exactly would Britain --a country widely considered a fraternal nation to the United States-- have in store? What could Britain's workers possibly do to keep out an American "peace keeping" operation on its own? The US imperialists would sooner reduce Britain to a dead zone than allow it to limp on under socialist governance.

With all of this in mind, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that especially close ties need to be sewn between socialist movements throughout the Anglosphere, particularly between the British and American proletariat. There may well come a day when internationalism from our American comrades will be needed more than any other group; to spearhead a hands-off Britain campaign that can pull back on the leash of US imperialism and pressure their government to beat a retreat. Trusted points of contact that can smuggle communications past the inevitable media blackouts and place our plight directly in front of the English speaking world will be necessary, and they will have to be established well before a situation like this actually develops. US militants ready and willing to sabotage US munitions and infrastructure will almost certainly be an extremely important element of a hypothetical struggle of this kind.

So what do you all think? Do you think the following scenario is at all likely or is it all in my head? Should British communist movements place a special focus on cultivating connections amongst organisations based in fraternal English speaking nations in the core, so as to disrupt attempts to strangle a potential British revolution in its crib, or should it follow a different strategy?

America and Canada are extremely close economically, culturally and politically. The US and Canada are far and away each other's largest trade partners, accounting for almost 7 times the total trade of Canada's next largest partner, the EU. 51.9% of foreign owned companies based in Canada are American owned. On top of this, Canada is demographically dwarfed by its southern neighbour, whose population share a common linguistic and cultural base. This demographic gap has prompted the Canadian government to pursue a natalist policy goal of achieving a population of 100 million people by the end of the century, likely a project pursued by Canada's national bourgeoisie in an effort to prevent themselves from being subsumed by the juggernaut to the south.

Two previous Canadian prime ministers have in the past considered pursuing political union with the US, who would stand to benefit enormously from Canada's substantial natural resources and strategic position in the North. Annexation of Canada would likewise benefit the American state by eliminating the largest land border in the world, administration of which currently costs the Canadian state 1.5% of its GDP. Moreover, this would finally connect America's strategically important territory of Alaska to the US' territorial mainland and thus render continental north America a single contiguous political territory, more easily administered and defended.

With all this in mind, do you think that America is likely to integrate Canada into its territory in the future? If so, long do you suspect it will take for this to occur? What implications would such an enormous development have for the international communist movement?

This polemic against Trotskyism, particularly the movement that took hold in the UK, serves also as a comprehensive history of the Trotskyist tendency in Britain from its earliest days, and warns against its factionalism and disorganising effects, not to mention its ideological bankruptcy.

https://archive.org/details/QuiteRightMrTrotsky/mode/2up

I'm a membership organiser with a community union and spend an inordinate amount of my time prepping excel spreadsheets with membership data. Is there anything out there I could use to split the entire data set into sheets with tables of, say, 20 members each, their contact details, plus boxes for whether or not they can attend this or that event?