“Here, you probably need these, comrade” XD

:D :D :D

I vomited a little…

Knock 'em out!

Don’t want to name names, but it was someone on the Kruschev thread.

And what better way to make a clean break with the past than by pinning all the failures on Zelensky and pushing him out?

Thanks, comrade. And yes, the cat was very well taken care of, and went peacefully in his sleep.

This is just perfect…his expression there is priceless.

My 20 year old cat died, I got Covid, and I had to block someone for the first time on Lemmygrad. I hope that means this week can only get better from here…

Gotta love to see the US failing to learn from its failed policies.

The United States has seen an epic factory boom, from early 2021 through 2022, which tripled construction spending for manufacturing facilities. Most of these factories are devoted to the electrification of our transportation networks, and to semiconductors. Further, the objective is to build these technologies domestically and thereby wrest control of these supply and production chains from China.

But all that manufacturing will require huge production of batteries, which in turn require graphite. China has monopolies on most of the refined and synthetic graphite that is used for such batteries, and in late 2023 announced strict export curbs on the metal. Graphite exports immediately collapsed over 90%, leaving North America and Europe scrambling for new sources.

The earliest domestic (US) production of new graphite will be in 2027, and in a best-case scenario will be about a fourth of anticipated US demand.

These realities leave China in a most advantageous position: they can either continue the graphite bans and produce all the batteries for the global market themselves, or use their monopolistic position in graphite to negotiate sharp reductions in tariff rates for other Chinese exports.

Damn, so many ad hominems there comrade. Please fuck off.

So I’m supposed to “research” your views…by reading through this thread…which is what I did.

Yeah, we had tried for years to get when it was just us. But with a kid it’s that much harder.

Sniff sniff sniff…hey, uh, got any weed?

And I would add that there’s especially little value in studying the far right if our goal is to understand what they want.

Sartre put it best:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

So I should join the MIC if I want to be able to retire? Got it. /s

I’ve read most of your comments, and I get a really strange feeling from them. Almost like “I’m not going to bother reading Kruschev myself, but you all are WRONG because you’ve never read him”.

As an ML community, we’re committed to historical materialism (you can see an excellent overview of it from Marx here: https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/h/i.htm#historical-materialism). What I take from that is we have can have a deeper understanding of history than “mere” historians, who still typically lack any understanding of class or political economy.

And we especially don’t need to read all the “Great Men” who “made things happen”. We know that history is a process of class struggle, and understand its outcomes as such

I would guess most USians already don’t have pensions. The majority have 401ks, which are tied to the stock and bond markets. Some don’t even have those, and have to scrape by on Social Security, which was only ever intended to be a supplement to pensions.

I hope your week is significantly better than mine is starting out to be. Got Covid after avoiding it all this time. :(

This is my understanding as well. However revolutionary these governments once were, many if not all have been undermined by neoliberalism. Granted, of course it’s plausible that the US would try to exploit any discontent in its favor. But whether or not that’s the case here is still unclear.