Chapter 10 is one of my favorites.

It’s a single data point but radlib brother the other day said that the people in the Batista regime that Fidel and Che executed, absolutely got what they deserved. And “thugs like them”.

The world is turning towards militarization as the global economic instability is amplified further under Trump’s erratic policies.

I suppose I will beat a dead horse with the point I feel I repeat too often… when I read Torkil Laussen state that the principal contradiction today is between neoliberalism and sovereignty, I was skeptical. I thought the global north/south divide was more critical. But I stand corrected, I think Laussen is correct. Neoliberalism may be the dominant side of that contradiction right now, but it seems that this contradiction is also resolving itself far quicker than I had expected. Neoliberalism is dead, it’s only a matter of time before it is replaced. At the moment, as you said, it seems like we’re going back to the 1930s and that style of inwardness. But the world is dialectical, and what emerges out of this contradiction will no doubt be something entirely different.

And it’s interesting to me with Trump’s tariffs, while it certainly appears to be the act of a singular person, I feel this actually is yet another example of “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please”. I don’t think 20 or even 10 years ago, Trump would have been able to get away with it. But he can now, not necessarily because congress is weak, but because material conditions have eroded the neoliberal grip on the world. Throwing up tariffs is a natural result of neoliberalism weakening. If not Trump, some other president would be instituting some form of increased tariffs or other inward-facing measures.

Many such cases.

I got my think pad from a state university surplus shop. Those are great for finding good stuff.

They actually had a falling out a few years ago, Yogi and Sean don’t speak anymore and it seemed kinda hostile. I know Sean is somewhat controversial but I’ve never actually looked at the criticism since I sorta dropped out of listening to that pod quite a while ago. Was one of the very early parts of my pipeline.

The Grubstakers pod used to offer a $250,000 Patreon tier for billionaires, promising they would never do an episode on you if you joined that tier.

I mean, if we’re being real here at day 1 Zionism had the support of many non-opportunist communists too, Stalin being the one who comes to mind. Not his best moment.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I try to avoid cheap plastic toys and yet my house is filled with them. I have parents and in-laws that will still buy them too much stuff, there’s birthday party goodie bags, etc. Throwing it away doesn’t help the environment and charity stores don’t want most of it (can’t blame them). It’s both a quantity and quality issue for me. It reminds me of when Marx talks about how distant societies cannot avoid capitalism - it’s a global system that must expand everywhere. It feels like amassing all these plastic toys feels on some level like an extension of that; constantly expanding commodity production that has to go somewhere, environmental degradation be damned.

@SoyViking@hexbear.net I meant to reply to you in last week’s chat but never got the chance. You mentioned that your daughter was excited to join the military via mandatory service, but otherwise her politics were good. My kids are much younger than yours, but I obsess (a bit too much) about how they will turn out. If she’s got generally good politics, do you have any advice, maybe some things you did that helped point her in the right direction?

I do think he said something, but admittedly I was also working while listening so I may have missed it. The thing is, it sounds like what the Zionist entity and Jolani are planning is a war of conquest - actually taking territory away from Lebanon. If they were to specifically target Hezbollah then maybe the army could try and look the other way; but if Syria and the entity are annexing Lebanese territory I don’t see how the army could possibly stand on the sidelines and retain any credibility. I am admittedly not a Lebanon expert by any stretch.

Watching Justin Podur’s sit rep from July 5 with Laith Marouf. Laith is clearly a guy who “knows things” and talks to people on the ground in Lebanon and Syria.

According to Laith, it seems like much of the “quiet” we have seen from Hezbollah in recent months is due to them preparing for an invasion both from Syria and Israel. This would seem to track at least to me in why they didn’t get involved when Iran was attacking Israel. Hezbollah is fundamentally a defensive force, and their primary objective is to keep the Israelis (or others) out of Lebanon. It’s not just their mission, it’s how their capabilities were designed.

For what it’s worth, Laith is also very bullish on how Hezbollah would handle an invasion.

one army

Not subtle but I assume this means they are looking to completely eliminate Hezbollah.

I am wearing green, black, and orange today (those are the “opposite” colors i.e. on the other side of the color wheel of red, white and blue). I have my Cuba baseball cap I could wear but 99.9% of the people who would see it would think I’m being patriotic instead.

Swim lessons 4 days a week. It’s great in that it’s through the city so it’s very cheap… but getting kids to swim lessons every day after work means we get home, eat something, then go right to bed. Not really how I was hoping to spend the summer, but at least the kids really love getting in the pool. And a couple times we went for frozen yogurt after, and those have been some really nice times with them.

While it may be a bit more stressful doing it solo, I also suspect it will lead to some really great memories (like the one you shared)

Mine are too young. Right now I’m trying to make it just about the fireworks, kinda treating it like “firework day” because firework shows are genuinely fun. Honestly I feel like if neither you or your wife are patriotic the other 364 days, kids won’t really care about celebrating America. My parents are very conservative but weirdly not patriotic at all, so for us the 4th never felt like a big deal.

Maybe the most annoying trait among Americans is the absolute confidence they have in their knowledge of history without actually knowing a damn thing about history.

on a campaign that promises to maybe overturn the last 5-10% of whatever trump is up to in office.

Not even that much. The the big tax cuts were probably the worst thing Trump did legislatively in his first term. It was incredibly unpopular - even a majority of Republican voters at the time didn’t want it. As soon as Biden got sworn in, you never heard a peep from him or other Dems about repealing it ever.

It’s crazy that back in the first Trump admin, the whole thing about passing something through reconciliation was that it couldn’t add to the deficit. This bill just blows up the deficit (not that it really matters) and it’s just… ok?