So you can see that anger of protests is not in itself a coherent political ideology with concrete demands, but you can’t see that raging at the people doing it in a fatalistic way that treats conditions and mindsets as static and inflexible is also not a coherent political ideology?

Yeah, I think the important part is imperialist media makes it sound like spying is exceptional and like China has some almighty power of espionage over them that it’s going to use in a war it starts. When the likelihood is that any spying China is doing is directed primarily toward self-defense: probing offensive capabilities of a potential threat, probing military defenses in case of a hot war, being able to see threats coming without getting jumped because the US power structure is a fucking war-mongering machine that hates anyone who tries to be self-determining, much less communist. China has nothing to gain from trying to dominate the racist, gun-happy reactionaries of the US who would be more than happy to have an excuse to go full racist against Chinese people and other ethnicities that they can’t tell the difference between. But China does need to guard its sovereignty against the type of shit the US pulls against anyone and everyone, including kidnapping presidents.

It’s the classic strong and weak at the same time BS. We’re supposed to believe China is scary powerful and that the US is super duper vulnerable to its spying, but also that they’re someone the empire should pick a fight with. If they are actually as powerful as these imperialist shit-shovelers make them out to be, the conclusion should be 100% to stop fucking around with vilifying them and work toward peace. Not use these shoddy narratives as more reason to saber rattle. But if there’s one thing the imperialists cannot abide, it’s a country that doesn’t bend the knee.

The Chinese embassy in the US denied the allegations about Salt Typhoon. Liu Pengyu, the embassy spokesperson, said: “We firmly oppose the US side making unfounded speculation and accusations, using cyber security to smear and slander China, and spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats.”

I’m inclined to believe the Chinese embassy on this one. We’ve heard this story before with “Russia hacking an election”.

Although it is probable that some kind of espionage goes on and that the standard thing is to deny it for diplomatic reasons, it’s also the case that one of the western empire’s favorite things to do is to accuse others of what it’s doing. And part of its vilification campaigns in order to steer the public toward warmongering is to make it sound like there’s an ongoing existential threat that has to be addressed. So I think it’s safe to say that even if there’s partial truth to this on some level, they are greatly distorting the details in order to make China sound scary and like it’s intruding on USian security.

Actively talking in public about security and saying it’s shit and compromised on many levels would be incredibly stupid if they believed it was actually the case. Especially when they’re officials working for a brutal empire that has made, and continues to make, countless enemies across the globe.

It was his escalating debts that led him to selling the wealth of secrets that he had access to.

“It was about the money, and I don’t think he ever really tried to lead anybody to believe it was anything more than that,” FBI agent Leslie G Wiser, who was involved in the investigation that led to Ames’s arrest, told the BBC’s Witness History in 2015.

So the BBC article alleges that he didn’t even do it because of allegiance, but because of debts and the financial payoff from selling out agents. Isn’t that such a fitting capitalism moment?

Was imperialist propaganda always this unhinged and I’m just not used to seeing it unfold in real-time? I tried to read through it to see how they’re presenting it and it reads like a window into someone’s paranoid drug trip. The level of narcissism and red scare swill is wild.

Well, there are people here who are better versed in the state of the EU and western europe in general, but it seems to me the weapons aspect of things largely comes down to imperial interests wanting to shape the region into a weapon, not just produce weapons. Like how Ukraine was effectively hollowed out and turned into a military outpost, with its people conscripted to try to break Russia.

They keep fear-mongering about the “threat of Russia” and as I understand it, want to cut social services in favor of military spending. This will not produce countries that can defend themselves better; it will devolve the places into barely functioning societies that depend heavily on military as industry to make it seem like it’s working at all (which is to some extent the situation the US is in already).

What EU countries need is what all societies in history benefit from, which is to value human life and work toward peace. But as long as imperialists are running the show, any picture of peace is going to be distorted by their class interests in domination and exploitation of the world. Which includes having bogeyman threats like Russia, China, etc., that they will tell you are the monster under the bed that is coming for you.

What defines something as a “bad country” to you? And what does “refresh” mean?

Capitalism is such a weird thing to live under.

The surface level is always like, “Look at how this individual overcome through their talent and willpower!”

And then underneath that it’s like, “Look at how this person was born into powerful connections, had favors called in for them, and leveraged those connections and the legal system to grow and consolidate power while throwing others under the bus to do it.”

To add to this point, China also developed their own sovereign internet tech/base. So although the western empire can to an extent try to block China out of participation in the western internet sphere of influence, they can’t block China’s use of the internet within its own sphere of influence and the impact that has for proliferation of internet services among its own people (which is a considerable portion of the world’s population). Even in a scenario of extreme efforts to “contain” China on the internet, China made sure it has sovereign power there. And if the western empire tries very hard to prevent other countries using Chinese technology when it advances beyond that of the western influence, all they do is make it so the rest of the world is increasingly technologically behind while China is doing widespread adoption of more advanced tools among it and its closest allies.

One way I read this in the broader sense:

Capitalists panicking: “Is socialism overtaking capitalism in both invention speed and integration to market the new normal?”

I recall from Blackshirts and Shirts (I believe that was the one) Parenti talking about how one of the issues the USSR had was that although it tended to outpace the west in invention, it had trouble at times getting that invention to a stage of mass production and distribution in a market to the same degree that capitalist-run markets would.

I get the impression CPC China has become a lot better on this than the USSR was and as a result, it enables them to both outpace in invention and integration to market. And the contrast is not only helping show how “house of cards” capitalism’s way of doing things is, it’s also genuinely threatening its ability to hold together because the capitalists no longer have hegemony in the market to be able to manipulate it as needed. With Deepseek, they seem to have treated it like an anomaly that they could contain. Now they are coming to understand that Deepseek wasn’t an anomaly. It was a tip of the iceberg representation of a shifting world order and AI is just one of the most visible areas being impacted because it’s the current prominent area of investment bubble hype that western capital is funneling its money into.

Am open to correction if this is too naively optimistic or simplistic a take on it, but that’s how it strikes me in the moment.

The US is allowed to have two jockeying parties vying for dominance to give the impression that fundamental change is possible through electoralism. But both are thoroughly controlled by bourgeoisie interests. It’s largely inconsequential if the occasional reformist slips through because the overall process and quantity of those who aren’t reformists will crowd out their influence into meaninglessness. And in the unlikely scenario that’s not enough to stop reformists from overwhelming the status quo, they can just call upon the police and military.

So yes, the democrat party is right-wing. But more than that, the system ensures it cannot get any further than mild reforms and that its policies will most represent the capitalist class.

It’s very P. T. Barnum? Something like that. Very much putting on a show, both parties. I think it’s part of why some USians have such a cynical view of politics and politicians. Their only experience with it is seeing a bunch of circus clowns pretend like they’re authentic tooth-and-nail fighters for the people. And no offense to actual circus clowns who are sincerely trying to entertain, rather than grift the populace.

Here you go: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism#Russian_"imperialism"

While it may seem to be a smart money move, it can result in a costly productivity and innovation lag for the economy.

Lmaoooo

“I know you want to make things last and have a habitable planet to live on rather than destroying it in the name of short-term profit gains, but… have you thought about the economy?!? DID YOU CONSULT THE ECONOMY BEFORE YOU CONSIDERED TRYING TO LIVE SUSTAINABLY.”

Reminds me of something I heard in passing (cannot find a source atm, so take with a grain of salt) about an LLM that was trained on slack messages and would say shit about how it was going to do something and then not actually do it.

But it’s very believable, this kind of thing, when you understand that LLMs are mimicking the style of what they were trained on. I’m sure I could easily get an LLM to tell me it will go build a plane right now. Doesn’t mean it can go build one. LLMs are trained on the language of beings with physical forms who can go do stuff in RL, but the LLM doesn’t have that so it will learn what is functionally equivalent to being a bullshitter in the human case.

Fair enough.

I read through, but am not finding any detail info on what kind of workers these were that were fired. The wording is:

Today, we will begin reducing our workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce our outsourced and other outside labor expenses.

But I’m not sure if that means some of what counts as the 13k are outsourced and/or contract workers, or if that’s in addition to the 13k.

That said, I’m doubtful that most or all are engineer types, especially the more smug ones. The most experienced, which are also the most well-off financially and can contribute to them being the most smug politically, are also the most valuable and it’s why they get paid the class-consciousness-distorting money. It’s the ones on the lower rungs, including non-engineers in CS roles and the like, who are going to most easily have a business case made for firing them.

No disagreement here. But then, people like us have awareness on imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, etc. They may be polling a fair amount of dissatisfied liberals.

According to the poll:

Canada remains the top preferred destination for younger American women looking to leave, with 11% of those in the years since 2022 mentioning Canada as their top destination, ahead of New Zealand, Italy and Japan (all 5%).

I guess probably Canada because of proximity. The others seem more random as top choices. But I spose if they were polled in a way that listed limited number of countries, that could have skewed it too. I don’t know how exactly the poll was structured. The details at the bottom indicate the way it was conducted (via Landline and Mobile Telephone for 2024 US if I’m reading right) but there doesn’t seem to be information on what all questions they asked.

The main question referenced in the article is:

Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move PERMANENTLY to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country?

But presumably there is a missing followup question to ask about what country if someone says they would like to move.

The “race” part makes me think of the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. And in that analogy, China (and more broadly, AES states) are the tortoise and the US (and more broadly, capitalist states) are the hare. AES states plan carefully, pace themselves, work their way through together. Capitalist states “move fast and break things” and then burn out systems and people.

I would love to see someone organize and put anti-imperialist questions to every representative in the country. Bet you only a fraction would entertain the questions and of those who do, few would sound like they agree.

As much as I like putting a spotlight on how little they act like representatives, this does have a partisan slant. I could easily see liberal democrats watching this and going “see, the problem is republicans.” Instead of “our ‘representatives’ are war-mongering imperialists.”

Like even Bernie Sanders, known for being one of the most reformist reps in the government (not that that means much since the standards are so low), failed to have the right narrative line on Palestine.

If people could see how thoroughly their representatives fall into step with war-mongering and empire, it may give more of them pause about the legitimacy of the system as a whole.