/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Biggest U.S. ports union suspends labor talks, with East Coast, Gulf Coast strike risk rising
The ILA said in a release that it canceled the talks with ports management to discuss a new labor deal after discovering that automated technology was being used by APM Terminals and Maersk, the world’s second-largest shipping company and APM Terminals’ parent company, to process trucks at port terminals without union labor. The union says an “auto gate” system was initially identified at the Port of Mobile, Alabama, but the union indicated that it believes the technology is in use at other ports.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/10/talks-to-avoid-east-coast-gulf-coast-ports-labor-strike-break-down.html

The Harvard graduating students denied their degrees over Palestine protest
Besides Safi, who is originally from Lahore, Pakistan, another 12 students find themselves in the same situation: they are all graduating students at one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world but will not be awarded their degrees for at least one year.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/9/the-harvard-graduating-students-denied-their-degrees-over-palestine-protest
https://archive.is/rcJRj

US patients charged for ‘hospital facility fees’ – even if they don’t set foot in one
Hospitals are gobbling up doctor’s offices – and they’re bringing higher prices to patients when they do, even if a patient never sets foot on a hospital campus. Enter the “hospital facility fee”: a charge hospitals can add to bills from doctors’ offices, outpatient surgical clinics and diagnostics centers that they own, rebranding them as “outpatient hospital departments”, even if the facility is miles from a hospital campus.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/09/patients-charged-hospital-facility-fees

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“Banking-as-a-Service” Firms Can Evaporate Your Life Savings
When Chris Buckler opened an account with Juno — a savings app that advertises itself as a “complete bank replacement” — he thought he was being financially responsible. The app offered high returns on savings accounts, offered direct deposit for paychecks, doled out retailer gift cards as bonuses, and implied that user funds were federally insured, just like any legitimate bank account. “I wanted to make sure I was getting the best interest for my money,” Buckler, a forty-three-year-old high school computer science teacher in Abingdon, Maryland, told the Lever. “I think I knew that [Juno] wasn’t necessarily a bank, but I saw that they were working with Evolve Bank & Trust and I did some research, and [Evolve is] a bank that’s been in business for a long time.” Nearly eighteen months after he opened the Juno account, Buckler has lost all access to the $38,000 he has stored there — years of savings — thanks to the collapse of a different company called Synapse Financial Technologies, which provided digital transaction ledgers for financial technology (fintech) companies like Juno and their traditional bank partners. Synapse filed for bankruptcy in April and in May went completely offline, while allegedly failing to provide adequate transaction ledgers to its banking partners — leaving tens of thousands of users like Buckler unable to access their funds.
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/alternative-banking-savings-regulations-fintech

The Long Retreat by Boris Kagarlitsky review: How can the left rise to the urgent challenge of global crises?
Although he languishes in a Russian jail for opposing Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Boris Kagarlitsky refuses to be silenced. Amid the flood of analyses he has been able to produce from prison, The Long Retreat stands out as a more strategic intervention. It’s one of several recent books by left intellectuals that seek to take the measure of the frightening situation that has developed with Covid and the Ukraine war. As Kagarlitsky rightly says, “Covid and the war were simply manifestations of one and the same global crisis.” Others are my own The New Age of Catastrophe, Ben Ware’s On Extinction and—in a larger arena—Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger. Kagarlitsky’s assPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>1882146
I hope this is sarcasm.

>>1882185
LOL mods deleted my post.

It's true though, Bad News Anon almost exclusively posts bad news.

>>1884159
socialism in one penis.

>>1852034
From best to worst:
Labor unions
Political parties
Worker co-operatives/worker councils
Mutual aid groups
Tenant unions
Worker militias

Ideally the last three wouldn't even exist, since they could be replaced by the welfare state, public co-operative housing, and nothing respectively. Worker co-operatives are cool but not particularly game-changing. Political parties and labor unions are absolutely critical for achieving any positive change for the working class. No exception.

I don't really understand workers' councils. They haven't existed anywhere in the world for decades. At a glance they seem just like co-operatives.

>>1884279
gun ownership should still exist, workers socialist militas are not a burden to the socialist movement. Better to have a little form of military training and specialization than no training at all. Better than
>Nothing

>>1884279
>I don't really understand workers' councils. They haven't existed anywhere in the world for decades. At a glance they seem just like co-operatives.
I don't think it necessarily means "only pre-revolutionary" forms of proletarian organisation. Workers councils are a means of democratic decision making on public matters, as opposed to co-ops giving power to its own workers to decide the direction of a privately owned company (the workers might own the company, but it is still privately owned). But like, if we got to that point that means capitalism is either already abolished or on the cusp of being abolished.

>>1884279
I can never tell if rose posters are satirical or if some people on /leftypol/ really still think like this

>>1884192
Industrial automation going brrrrrr
10 more years, we will have unironially fully automated gay space communism

Abandoning Christianity is actually why the world went to shit. So much emphasis on materialism and production forgot the needs on the unhanded masses.

>Childhood is to think Christianity destroyed the World. Adulthood is to realize the dominant classses will always use religion as a tool regardless of their context, and that Christianity was actually progressive in his early context, since It was a "religion of women and slaves." I still dislike the homophobia and the exclusiveness of God but now i realized how silly i was when i thought Christianity was the reason of the World (and particularly my country and Latin America generally) to suck

I think it's important to understand that Religion itself (Christianity included) isn't independent of the dialectical process. The story of Christianity, ultimately, is its transition from a distinctly Jewish sect into a global religion. This process was made possible thanks to the work of Saint Paul, and what emerged after his ministry to the pagan masses of Rome was a Roman Empire that was Christianized, and a Christianity that was Romanized. Suppose you could call it Christocaesarism or something along those lines. Importantly, it was a synthesis of the two with one not wholly able to suppress aspects of the other. They'd both become something new.

This dialectical process is ongoing today, and it's dealt with numerous transformations since then, from the rise of protestantism to liberalism. I think in America we see maybe the latest incarnation in the evangelical movement, with theology emphasizing the "personal relationship with Jesus" only being made possible thanks to the rise of liberal individualism. I think Socialism, too, will invoke another transformation in Christian (and all global religions) theology.

There might be the burbling of a new religious faith just below the surface, one we don't see. People need a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives but the flaws of current religious sects are self-evident to them. You see a lot of "spiritual but not religious" types these days, I know there's a few people with a passing interest in gnosticism, and there's also the neopagan movement, too. I'm curious to see where it all goes.

Also does anyone have any material on "God-Building" in the early USSR? I'm curious about it.

>>1883939
>
>Abandoning Christianity is actually why the world went to shit. So much emphasis on materialism and production forgot the needs on the unhanded masses.
You have to be 18 years old to post here.

>>1883939
Jesus was the only true christian, the rest have all been heretics which is why we are all bound to hell except by the grace of God

>>1883919
what does "religious" mean to you? i'm deeply, deeply skeptical of self-reported religiosity because of the phenomenon of meaningless "cultural" Christianity, where people claim to be religious because their parents were, because they grew up in the church, because they were married in a church, etc… all of which really mark an immanent cliff-edge, a brittle ruin of something that came before rather than a hegemonic force that can change the modern world. look abroad for a moment, for fun: in 2001 65% of Scots were "christian", in 2011 it was 53%, now it is 38 and falling… most of that fall was in the inoffensive national church, the church of Scotland. in other words: all that happened is that "normal people" - who even in 2001 had already given up the church for all but marriage and death - have stopped kidding themselves. (The numbers for "no religion", are are 27%, 36%, and 51%) if you made optimistic predictions for Scottish faith in 2001 based on a high level of reported faith, you would've been sorely disappointed.
America is now 63% self-reported Christian (lower than Scotland in 2001), and while US churches are in a stronger position than the Scottish ones were, I still don't see the line going anywhere but down on a 20 year timescale.

anyway in the first article
>Those who indicated religion was important — even if they attended services less than once a month — were classified as “moderately religious,”
makes me skeptical of this measure - obviously church attendance isn't the only measure of praxis, but "oh yeah, it's really important" is cheap talk -
beyond that the actual study contains three interesting data points:
1. about 20% are "highly religious" (but that's 15% for white people and 30% for black people…), which i'd accept as implying a level of faith worth taking seriously.
2. the numbers are largely propped up by ethnic minorities, as you note when it comes to black americans. (but it's also true of basically everyone but whites and asians)
3. 38.3% are parents.

ask yourself: if you ran a church in a white neighbourhood, would current trends fill you with confidence? would you think the lord was winning hearts and minds, or would you be desperately looking to the third world for good news about the good nPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>1876417
the EU already is de facto the fourth reich anon

>>1876385
pan-europeanism already exists. "the west" effectively functions as a coalition of european and euro-settler nations, through NATO, the world bank, US empire in general, etc etc. as with all national liberation movements, pan-africanism is the acknowledgement of the reality of some common african experience that is produced by a "pan-europeanism" that denies the dynamic exists at all.

of course youre probably asking in bad faith, assuming that pan-africanism is necessarily an affirmation of racialism, instead of a response to the reality of colonialism and imperialism imposing racialization on the world. you probably think youre being clever saying "why cant whitey have it too?" when the fact is that a neocolonial order in which the exploitation of billions of poor segmented into races and client-states is justified with enlightenment values about equality and universality, that is actually existing pan-europeanism

>>1876440
>pan-europeanism already exists. "the west" effectively functions as a coalition of european and euro-settler nations, through NATO, the world bank, US empire in general, etc etc. as with all national liberation movements
yeah but thats not explicitly based on race?

>>1883069
it has its foundation in a few centuries of colonialism and imperialism that explicitly justified themselves through racialism, first on a religious basis and then refined into the 'scientific' racialism that persists in the way a few major phenotypical differences still function aa markers for what quadrant of humanity you belong to. because we live in "actually existing" pan-europeanism, the racialist ideology has had to compromise with reality in that people who dont "look european" arent actually a different or lesser type of human, and will fight back when treated as such. so the european and euro-colonial empires are put in a position where the same racialism that formerly justified their global dominance is now a liability, and they have in the last century been trying to lean on 'universal values', liberalism, etc to justify the west's continued position at the '"commanding heights" of the global economy. its an honest hubris, because the euro/colonial empires genuinely thought they were racially superior, and now they think theyre morally and culturally superior, and all the while theyve been thinking capital is a tool of their superiority when in reality capital is entirely ambivalent to the particular cultural or ideological justifications for its reproduction. the european colonial empires carried out enclosure of the commons on a global scale, and told themselves that this was the rightful inheritance of their race, civilization, ideas, etc., a global pax-europa. that ideology shaped and still shapes much of the historical particulars of how global enclosure into capital happened, but capital obviously cant "care" one way or the other, its a material process that selects only for its own reproduction. the western empires dont understand this, which is why theyre confused that they cant just rebrand their supremacy as cultural and moral instead of racial – they cant shake the idea that modernist industry and commerce (i.e. capitalism) is a product of their own basic superiority, rather than a complex sequence of historical contingencies that made the western fringe of eurasia the petri dish for a new mode of production.

>>1844717
I mean genetically a brit and frenchmen are probably closer related than a brit and a mongolian. Whats arbitary is creating a category called white that that artificially lumps them together.

All the buisness and international press is pushing for an ANC-DCA governemnt.
How do you feel about seeing the ANC publichly shoot itself in the head anions?

>>1831758
It looks like Senegal is joining the other Sahel states.
Does anyone else think it more and more looks like important change and future is on the cards for Africa in general, or am i to optimistic?

>>1883685
probably too optimistic but i hope so too anon. time to learn french

>>1883688
I think there is hope for south and central africa too, anon. the EFF is an explicitly communist party and polls almost 2M votes after competing only 3 national elections and advocate for a south and central Africa but eventually a pan-african union.
So yea, good news, you don't have to learn french. :)

>>1883685
Too optimistic. Nothing ever happens

>>1883163
I won't be able to retire under capitalism

if communism isnt a necessity to you then you must not be an immiserated dispossessed proletarian lul

>>1883510
necessity doesn't matter if it never happens in time

>>1883163
> Why not just be apolitical and party?

Muhfucker I work fucking 40+ hours a week, can't afford my fucking teeth and have to support my fucking kids.

You think i don't wanna just be apolitical and have a good time?
you think i wanna die for the revolution?

fucking delusional liberal nonsense.

none of these parties are the end goal, only a means to an end. just join and start organizing, meeting with local activists, and realize that the future, if we want to win, is not PSL or DSA or CPUSA, but one unified Communist Party which represents the people first and foremost.

>>1878593
and that one unified communist party won't just appear one day, so as the last comrade said.

For the love of god, just start organizing, even if it's with a bunch of liberals. The actual skills of learning how to have effective meetings, how to organise effective local protests that can put pressure on class enemies, instead of the pointless social justice parades that people get taught is organising in college. Just do it, start organising and build something where you are that can start to evolve.

>>1879040
I got trained in Roberts Rules of Order in Freemasonry. Carries over to a lot of areas in life

>>1872267
>>1872528
>PSL also has some sex scandals though not as bad as other orgs
You made this up. I know for a fact that PSL ejects people who engage in harassing behavior because I know someone who was a candidate member in PSL and was ejected because he was being extremely creepy to people

>>1878593
hey retard, history shows that this isn't how it fucking works. the cuban revolution didn't happen because there was a single, unified communist party. the communist party of cuba came into being AFTER the revolution. Fidel and his brother Raul were in different parties.

>Another retarded westoid thinking that bs cia put into his brain is actual history.
It all so tiresome.

>>1883378
The whole idea that Stalin was unprepared for the invasion is historical revisionism. To begin with, Soviet military doctrine WAS trading territory for enemy corpses since fucking Frunze. Then Soviets have voiced their objections to Germans "preparing invasion into Britain" close to Soviet borders. Soviets had placed troops deep in their territory, just like you are supposed to do in a mobile type of warfare. Retarded one line of defence ala Maginot is what capitulated both France and Finland in face of modern mobile warfare doctrine (and Soviets have capitulated Finland faster than Germans France, revisionists just like to pretend that Strange War didn't happen)

Next. People who genuinely believe that Stalin was supposed to listen to random ass deserters and diplomats and whatever just have no fucking idea how much similar nonsense happens every fucking day. Soviets had NKVD and foreign intelligence, Stalin listened to them, and took necessary steps to before 22 June. There was a silent mobilization underway, troops have received move and training orders weeks before the war happened. There's also the case of Yugoslavia postponing the invasion of USSR by a month or two

>b-but Germans have advanced deep!

They've lost 4 million troops in 1941 alone, or third of infantry and half of their tanks, almost no pre-1941 German pilots have survived to 1942, millions of horses died, which were the backbone of their logistics. Germans have looted and repurposed Europe's worth of weaponry to throw at USSR, and USSR still destroyed Germans, single-handedly grinding their armies to dust.

Germans had a plan to advance to Archangelsk-Astrakhan line before September, you know? They've planned to take Leningrad, Moscow AND Stalingrad in 2 months. Their plan hinged on USSR being retarded like France and putting all Soviets troops on the border, and then Germans breaking through and encircling everyone and avoiding the attrition warfare (that have murdered Nazis). Nazi propaganda that Soviets have lost 3 millions to encirclements wasn't proven by anything, it was just Goebbels repeating pre-war plans until Autumn came, until German HQ actually bothered to send trusted people to look at frontline situation of their troops. It turned out that modern Ukraine-like propaganda of enemy losses doesn't actuPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>1883442
>another retarded eastoid thinking that the bs he got straight from the soviet ministry of truth is actual history
It's all so tiresome.

>>1883662
>equating communist and capitalist sources
Westoids still can't accept the fact that they are the ones living under the watchful eye of all and every Orwell's ministries

>>1883763
The neoliberal think-tank cunts are exaggerating the threat as much to encourage the West to move faster on it as to throw shade. I mean, it's their job.

Which is entirely orthogonal to the question of whether the states whose fandom you consume are building anything materially different, or whether they have only more completely built the same techno-Fordist superstructure as the Western Puritans have dreamed of for centuries.

UAW president investigated over alleged retaliation against union leaders
Neil Barofsky, the union’s monitor, opened an investigation in February to review allegations, including one from the UAW secretary-treasurer, Margaret Mock, saying she had faced retaliation for her refusal or reluctance to authorize certain expenditures for Fain’s office, according to the filing. Barofsky also opened a probe into Mock’s actions.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/11/uaw-president-shawn-fain-investigation

CPS, CTU to Hold First-Ever Contract Negotiation Session Open to the Public Friday
Chicago Public Schools parents, students and community stakeholders will be able to participate in the first ever round of public bargaining between the district and Chicago Teachers Union later this week. The CTU announced the sides have agreed to schedule an open contract bargaining session Friday from 5-7 p.m. at Marquette Elementary School, 6550 S. Richmond St., in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood.
https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/10/cps-ctu-hold-first-ever-contract-negotiation-session-open-public-friday

Indigenous Tribes Lead DC Rally to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe organized Tuesday's rally, calling on President Joe Biden and the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) to revoke all permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and end operations for a project that transports 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day nearly 1,200 miles, running just a mile upstream from the Standing Rock reservation.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/no-dapl

Water, chemical industries challenge Biden’s rule to restrict ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water
Lobby groups representing water utilities, as well as the chemical and manufacturing industries, have filed court challenges to a Biden administration rule that seeks to limit the presence of toxic chemicals in drinking water.
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“A Dying Empire Led by Bad People”
For a certain niche of America’s pundit class, Joe Biden’s lack of popularity remains something of a mystery. Is it the economy? Inflation? Gaza? Biden’s catastrophic approval ratings make the question difficult to ignore, but few seem able to settle on an answer. As Ross Douthat fairly observed in March, “There isn’t a chattering-class consensus or common shorthand for why his presidency is such a political flop.” I have no special insight into the causes of Biden’s unpopularity as such. Being a socialist, I thought (and argued vociferously) that he would make a bad president and that predictions of an “FDR-sized” administration were more a case of liberal wish fulfillment than a serious possibility. Suffice it to say, it was probably not a good idea for a man born closer to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln than his own to seek reelection when 70 percent of voters didn’t want him to. Whatever the official story might be about the state of the US economy or the wonders of Bidenomics, there also remains plenty of financial pain and general hardship throughout the country even if the pace of inflation has slowed. When it comes to the segment of the electorate in which Biden is the least popular, however, the debate’s tendency toward mystification is a lot more puzzling. Having won the under-thirty vote by a comfortable margin of twenty-three points in 2020, Biden is now trailing Donald Trump with that cohort in several battleground states and is essentially drawing even with him nationally. Being election season, analyses of Biden’s cratering youth support have tended to emphasize immediate factors like the economy and cost of living, and the terrain of discussion has often been about whether these or the president’s support for Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza are the reason such a reliably Democrat-leaning demographic seems to be jumping ship.
https://jacobin.com/2024/06/biden-polling-cynicism-young-voters

Like Sri Lanka once did, Israel has turned ‘safe zones’ into killing fields
The parallels between Sri Lanka 2009 and Gaza 2024 are uncanny. In both cases, the military displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, instructing them to gather in “safe zones” where they would not be harmed. In both cases, the militaries proceeded to Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

Thanks News Anon