isn’t this the same group that went to Cuba and snubbed Diaz-Canal, met with “dissidents” and then wrote a lengthy article about how Cuba was bad and won’t listen to other voices on “the left?”

I keep seeing articles saying that Russia has told the US it will retaliate against the US. So like, are we all going to get irradiated or worse because Biden’s worm-filled brain is stuck inside the end-of-history? Is Russia in a position to end the war in Ukraine? I remember reading a lot in the news mega about the lines finally moving appreciably… but did that stop happening or is Russia advancing still? I feel like that might be the only way to actually stop the escalation. Other nations are starting to call the US’s bluff, but it seems like the US regime just pretends they weren’t bluffing and it keeps doing the dumbest shit imaginable and choosing mass death over a wounded ego. I just don’t want everyone to die because an Alzheimers patient wound up in the US presidency in a sick combination of elder abuse, class warfare, and neoliberal hubris.

why would AOC need critical support? she isn’t on our side and her vision of “democracy” “economic rights” and “civil liberties” are as meaningless as when Biden or Blinken talk about “human rights” or “democracy.” she called a white supremacist a white supremacist and that’s cool and all, but she upholds the system that enables people like him

The US has showed absolutely no signs of lessening the sanctions against Cuba. If anything deepening their relationship with Russia could ease a lot of their economic problems, as Russia has created parallel trade systems that avoid sanctions and the dollar. Russia actually began to cut Cuba off and abandon them before the overthrow of the soviet union, as an attempt at appeasing and winning the approval of the empire. Now that Russia has cast off any illusion of US support or cooperation, building a relationship to Cuba is desirable again. Cuba loses nothing, but stands to gain a lot

idk how anyone could allow something like that to be tabled in good conscience

lmao, i take back anything i have ever said about them that had any nuance. imperialist running-dogs.

I remember when Biden won in 2020 a bunch of his sycophant politicos were essentially saying out loud that the lesson they had learned from 2016-2020 was that they can simply invent reality. They almost used those words. They looked at polling data about peoples perceptions of the economy before and after the 2016 elections, where people gave partisan answers (like republican affiliated people saying the economy was terrible and then the weeks after trumps inauguration they said that it was doing great-- but nothing had really changed) they saw that, and the capitulation of any Democratic Party left-wing (in both 2016 and 2020) and got completely absorbed in a sort of Hegelian idealism where they are able to dictate reality to whoever identifies with the democrats (or not with the republicans).

In a way, they were not wrong about how things had operated during the “end of history”, more or less, except for the fact that there are moments where 1) material conditions can deteriorate and the moment the US electorate is subject to worsening conditions their narrative can fail 2) alternative media, like what can proliferate on social media, can expose the complete disconnect between words and actions and move consciousness.

You can see the hubris, when turbo-libs talk about how the real problem is people “not understanding” or “not knowing” all of Biden’s “many accomplishments” or that these simple rubes don’t know that the economy is actually doing “great.” They have an incredibly powerful ability to control the way reality is presented for a ton of people, and that success was even on full display during the beginning of the SMO/Russia entering the Donbas & Ukraine. For a few weeks everyone had fucking Ukrainian flags out and everyone on tv was talking about Ukraine as a bastion of freedom and democracy, without knowing a fucking thing about Ukraine. I think back to 1999 to 2012 and I think a lot of the political class believed what they were saying about this policy or that policy. Because the window of debate was so narrow nearly at all times and nothing had a sense of urgency. Now they simply rage when the public adopts a belief that falls outside of what they are trying to construct. It was partly what they were seething about with the Facebook/russia-gate/fake news conspiracies that forced the tech bourgeoisie to adopt a more hard line on “acceptable” content and deployed state-sanctioned “debunkers” … this is also was what paved the way to banning TikTok-- it wouldn’t have been possible if the ruling class hadn’t identified this as their primary challenge.

Sad!

Yeah, the reputation of CPUSA being full of feds is also a reflection of the extent to which the US state has repressed the organization. There are things I disagree with about the CPUSA’s politics and strategy, but state repression isn’t something that CPUSA members chose and it is unfair to most of its members. Sadly, I do think that it has still had a very real negative effect on the party and the way it has developed and who has remained. It is sad because it is a reflection of the tremendous impact the party once had.

It is and it isn’t. When you are in the work place, or for some other strategic/tactical/safety reasons, some members may not disclose their membership in some situations. But in general, when PSL organizers are organizing in the community or with other groups/community members we don’t typically hide our membership. In general, there is a feeling that the time is right to openly show who we are and what we stand for, to present ourselves in a forthright way to the people, and to encourage the masses of people to be unafraid of organizing and participating in politics, particularly revolutionary politics and anything that would expand their understanding of democratic participation beyond bourgeois politics/voting.

I hand’t really thought of this, but it is really true.
I am willing to bet that more people are scared of evangelical christian cults more than satanic cults

As long as the window doesn’t face north, I would just give it a shot and let it be. Unless you live in a very year-round-cold, or very dry place and your outdoor space is covered, you only have to worry about bringing it inside. If it is humid outside daily watering might not always be necessary. Sometimes being gone for a week or two your plants will hurt, but still survive…depending on the plant … you can also add material to hold water into the soil or something to wick water into the pot… . you can also try getting an automatic irrigation system if you are super worried… then you might only have to change the water in a bucket every so often… in general though I would just worry less and let it die or thrive on whatever you can do best without anxiety. Some plants are much hardier than the instructions will say. It might last a few years and you find that you will care for it.

A lot of people keep bonsai because it emphasizes mindfulness, practice, and being present with nature. Maybe you were telling your dad one thing and what he heard was another, that you were disconnected and anxious and this is something that could help root you. either way, I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth or take it personally. It’s a nice gift even if it didn’t have the intended effect. Unless your dad does passive aggressive stuff regularly it was a pretty sweet gesture at the least

Bonsai trees don’t need a lot of intricate daily care. just watering (not always daily) and occasional trimming (which is just up to your own preference tbh)… I wouldn’t assume bad intentions, it could actually be that he started to empathize with you and thought this would be something that help you grow/cope. It is a pretty low-stakes gift imo, and if it dies it isn’t a huge deal. Seems just as likely he was trying to be thoughtful, but insulted you instead. Maybe just try to keep it alive as long as you can and let your dad know that you felt slighted by the gift but want to know whether that was his intention

Given the timing of this, I wonder if the US’s “red line” on Rafah was actually something Egypt told the US was a red line for them. The fact that “israel” rejected the (i think) US-Egyptian-Quatari ceasefire proposal that the resistance had accepted, and then entered Rafah the same day. … maybe the US was really only worried about having two client states at odds with each other and trying to have it both ways

In their mind, there is no reason to test for anything if they aren’t going to do anything with the results. They won’t do anything because the CDC has already lost so much credibility any guidance they give will cause half of the population to do the opposite thing. If pundits and officials were honest with the public, they would just explain that the CDC has become a defunct entity, and that it has failed at its only purpose: public health. They can’t do anyt meaningful public health work without public trust or the will to wield any kind of authority (which they don’t have). They won’t say any of that, so instead any charitable reading by liberals seems inexplicable instead of malicious and irresponsible.

Don’t let this get to you, keep working to build a movement. I am sorry a lot of your friends are so unprincipled and have decided to act antagonistically toward you. it actually should be against their interests, but they live in an idealist bubble that is only maintained through policing the morality of other organizers through informal power structures and exclusion. These anarchist/chauvinists are in fact only a small minority even if they are very prevalent in inward-facing organizing circles, it is only a symptom of the defunct history & nature of the US left and the discontinuity in the US communist movement. However “very serious” these “organizers” are, they are not representative of the masses of people which is what we are looking to organize. Don’t worry about them. I think their influence in the movement for Palestinian liberation is being very exaggerated in this thread, a lot of it seems to focus on the PNW. Most parts of the country don’t have such a large anti-communist-left scene, and the student movement is a real mass movement that has incorporated so many different communities, most of this stuff becomes completely irrelevant day-to-day

idk, that’s one example, and even if I disagree I can see why someone might say that. that is something anarchists say about every organization because anarchists don’t “recruit” really. but I have more than a few direct counterexamples I have personally witnessed, so I would not say that encampments are primarily organized by anarchist groups. that is probably just something that varies from city to city

I guess this is the thread where hexbear learns that the student occupations are overwhelmingly organized by anarchist groups who don’t like the PSL

not what I have seen at all. it isn’t just being “overly sectarian” it is anticommunism-- literally fed shit. they risk a whole lot to pull this off and then use their statement to shit on communists

Yeah, this just seems divorced from reality and idealist in itself. A communist party is shaped by its membership, for sure, some of its original members had been a part of a party led by Sam Marcy, and had found their way to Marxism-Leninism that way, but the party has grown dramatically and that historical footnote has become more and more of just that, a footnote. People are joining the party identifying as Marxist Leninist… Sam Marcy’s contribution is sort of a footnote outside of those who left SWP, as the Global Class War Thesis was basically a class analysis of the Cold War during the Korean War identifying Imperialism as the primary contradiction(not exactly mind blowing these days). What is more, the PSL deviates significantly from your definition of Marcyism because they look to AES as socialist in character, and support them, with their own contradictions that leftists in the imperial core aren’t in a position to judge.

It is sort of idealist to always constantly view struggle through the lens of abstract tendencies and thoughts without giving consideration to the actual concrete reality at work and the people doing social practice. You are labeling a party because 70 years ago some guy led a different party? It is sort of meaningless. They identify themselves as an independent communist party, Marxist-Leninist and antifactionalist. Nobody is joining because of Sam Marcy. Education materials don’t typically mention him all that frequently, if they do at all. If anything all of this minutia about what constitutes a tendency is super alienating to working class people and often irrelevant today, because what other communists were struggling over internally in a different historical context, although important to study and learn from, isn’t really going to provide perfect answers to the material reality of organizing today, here, in a different context. We are so far from achieving what we need to do to build a revolutionary party, constantly splitting hairs without grounding it in practice isn’t really productive

not my experience. most branches had a connection/organizing relationship to sjp and other Palestinian organizations from well before October of 23. When we mobilized in October in most parts of the country worked in concert with them, with the guidance to take Palestinian organizer’s lead. Many, but not all, of the student organizers likely have already been working with psl before the encampments. When the students started to form them, in my experience a lot of student organizers reach out to whoever has worked with them in the past for support. it is a mass movement, but one that psl has been incorporated into, in part because we have had longstanding relationships with Palestinian organizers… psl runs pretty openly these days too, and outside of answer and people’s forum, there isn’t really much of a proxy or trojan horse situation going on these days in most parts of the country, because the prevailing thought is that the country is more open to socialism than had been historically the case