#4401
Post rating: ~
I've been really anxious lately, so sick of political work being sabotaged by interpersonal melodrama. Usually I manage to laugh it off but this week the forecast for future bullshit looks grim
#4402
Post rating: +

#4403
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
Stay strong, Shrek.
#4404
[account deactivated]
#4405
Poronto
Post rating: ~
my wife had a big fight on facebook and then yelled at me for not backing her up
#4406
Online
Post rating: ~
why didnt you back her up. thats whats known around here as "solidarity"
#4407
Post rating: ~

shriekingviolet posted:

I've been really anxious lately, so sick of political work being sabotaged by interpersonal melodrama. Usually I manage to laugh it off but this week the forecast for future bullshit looks grim


i often get the impression that most activists exist in social circles of mostly just other activists which makes it seem like this is sort of bound to happen a Lot

#4408
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
i'd kill a billion people to save one elephant
#4409
[account deactivated]
#4410
[account deactivated]
#4411
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
think about one billion people selected at random of the 7 billion. then think of one elephant selected from the 10,000. who is more precious? who deserves to live more? every worthwhile human being alive today is a rounding error
#4412
[account deactivated]
#4413
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
id save one elephant seal per elephant so they can have babies
#4414
[account deactivated]
#4415
Post rating: +
goatman your misanthropy and antinatalism seem at odds with your quiverfull lifestyle. What's up with all the childhaving?
#4416
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
think about one billion people selected at random of the 7 billion. then think of one goat-human hybrid selected from the 10,000
#4417
[account deactivated]
#4418
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

i often get the impression that most activists exist in social circles of mostly just other activists which makes it seem like this is sort of bound to happen a Lot


I don't think it's entirely unique in that, but yeah. It's compounded by a cultural problem of people ignoring serious conflicts of interest (professionalism is so bourgeois) and being eternally surprised when it causes huge problems later. Every damn time.

#4419
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: +
im really sad to be leaving the group im with now because they were the first group i had worked with in years where someone would be like, "hey how about we work out a couple fallback plans if what we think is gonna happen doesnt happen," or "maybe we shouldn't prognosticate on this one thing because we don't really know," and literally no one ever tried to argue that represented a failure of nerve or bad science or something
#4420
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
like my anecdotal experience is that western leftists love to work out plans A, B and C for a street demo but they think theyre gonna somehow lose the battle of the schoolyard if they do the same for local, national or international politics
#4421
Post rating: +
Think about a thousand weddings selected from the millions of weddings each year. Now think about the only half steampunk wedding ever.
#4422
Post rating: +
My fortune cookie (saved it for the morning because they go nice with tea) reads "Today, be civil, but don't go out of your way to be over friendly."

That's a good fortune cookie.
#4423
Post rating: +
dont get fortune cocky
#4424
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
In real life I am doing a little project on Venezuelan finance and politics, so if you have any reports or journal articles or books or whatever (in English) you think I should read, let me know. I'm currently reading about the more radical grassroots stuff but eventually I'll have to focus more on the oil and the money.
#4425
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

In real life I am doing a little project on Venezuelan finance and politics, so if you have any reports or journal articles or books or whatever (in English) you think I should read, let me know. I'm currently reading about the more radical grassroots stuff but eventually I'll have to focus more on the oil and the money.



Have you read that one about the communes? This one:

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/12769

I feel like there's some unchecked Trotskyism coming from the author but maybe the book is actually good.

#4426
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
It is a good book. The author is sort of a post-Maoist I think, or at least respects ML/MLM stuff. I'm reading his earlier book about the revolutionary collectives, the book you linked is more a timely summary of recent events around communes. He is very good at locating the explosions in popular power as a result of the massive social movements against neoliberalism and not just in Chavez's election victory. Well that's his whole point in the books. And he shows that they are in more or less open battle against the old state, trying to tear away at it, but not in a direct war because they have found ways to create accountability with the government in some senses. (Obviously this may be disappearing more recently).

I have to talk more about the financial flows, but I am going to argue that you can't isolate them from class struggle, since it is not really a matter of a nice new government deciding to spend on things but rather a real process of fighting (like the coup) that radicalized things.
#4427
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +++++
I don't know how much things have changed recently but the surprising thing to me is how there is a patchwork of many different Venezuelas more or less coexisting in a state of heightened conflict, and the presidency may be leading a process but it is only one component of it, and not coherent in itself anyway. Like there are a number of free areas under control of armed collectives that don't allow police to enter their zone. There are laws that allow communes a process to seize land or derelict factories from private owners and start using them for their own purposes. There are large richer neighborhoods where people are openly hostile to Chavistas and direct security to try to exclude the poor and activists. The social programs have been a way of channeling power to the poorer neighborhoods in many ways and not simply a traditional reformist move.
#4428
Poronto
Post rating: +
i would really love to see an effortthread on this because to my knowledge there isnt much on Venezuela that actually challenges the MSM narrative of the country being a complete basketcase; pure apologia against US imperialism is a little unsatisfying. anyway, also change getfiscal's name to Failson Gong

Edited by littlegreenpills ()

#4429
mt.real
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

I don't know how much things have changed recently but the surprising thing to me is how there is a patchwork of many different Venezuelas more or less coexisting in a state of heightened conflict, and the presidency may be leading a process but it is only one component of it, and not coherent in itself anyway.

idk if this is formalized anywhere but I find it a pretty useful way to think of a lot of places, people can be simultaneously in multiple overlapping contexts of power and control and sovereignty, and it's just convention that we only overtly refer to the Big One

I have an effort post percolating in my head since a year ago about the withering away of the state but because of self-governing "market" systems and the quiet abdication of the 20th cen state systems, and how Marxism and 21st C neocon theories of Philip Bobbitt dovetail about it all

#4430
Post rating: ~
Its christmas time with the family time, and that aparently means hours of talking about pensions: agressive pensions, moderatly agressive pensions, regressive pensions, imperialist pensions, superprofit pensions
#4431
[account deactivated]
#4432
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: ~
getfiscal will marry a rhizzone poster to get citizenship like sandra bullock in that movie where she falls down waterskiing with ryan reynolds
#4433
[account deactivated]
#4434
Post rating: +

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

getfiscal will marry a rhizzone poster to get citizenship like sandra bullock in that movie where she falls down waterskiing with ryan reynolds

the only word in this sentence that isnt revolting to me is 'get fiscal'

#4435
[account deactivated]
#4436
[account deactivated]
#4437
Post rating: +
sounds like a good time
#4438
Post rating: +
salt is bad
#4439
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and yet it tastes so good, what does this mean?
#4440
Post rating: ~
Salts Tastiness: A Challenge for the Left