woodenghost [comrade/them]

The Germans teach about the genocide they committed, because they get a sick sense of moral superiority out of pretending to have denazified.

All the while it does nothing to prevent their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for taking the time!

And just to come full circle:

Baalbek, named after Baal, is an ancient city in the Beqaa plane in Lebanon. It was known as the bread basket of the Roman empire. The Romans build the largest temples outside of Rome there and allowed worship of Baal to continue in the large entrance building in front of the Jupiter temple. The temples stood in good condition for centuries and are now under threat by IDF bombing, which has already come as close as 500 meters, while every building in the city has been declared a target and it’s people ordered to evacuate.

Good effort comment, thanks! Are you sure about merit based evaluation for MJ? Wouldn’t people just strategically exaggerate their grades?

MJ encourages honest evaluation because exaggerating grades can backfire if too many others don’t follow suit.

I guess I don’t quite understand this point. Why wouldn’t everyone exaggerate grades?

Dolphin liberals would just tell all the dolphins to give dolphin Harris an excellent grade, insisting she was excellent in comparison to dolphin Trump. (Sorry to break out of the thought experiment.) So this:

This can help identify when all candidates are weak

wouldn’t happen when all the dolphins try to game the system. Did I misunderstand?

White liberals will absolutely pick up guns and kill their enemies. It’s us. They kill socialists all over the world. They don’t see Nazis as their enemies, because they are not. Fascism is a natural extension of the bourgeoise state in times of crisis. There is no fundamental material contradiction between fascism and liberalism, only ideological differences.

In addition to the advice about a group, like if you don’t have a group try to join one and talk to them and so on: In the meantime think about your limits and needs for yourself. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and you don’t have to be able to deal with the stress in a certain way. You can still contribute meaningfully, if you know your triggers and are mindful of them. Decide beforehand, what to do if a situation is too much, like getting out or getting some distance or trying calming exercises.

Edit: You might even decide not to go to a protest, if police presence is too high and that’s okay too. You can still connect to people and help organize or render support.

Also talk to them beforehand about what you will do in specific situations, like if the police attack or threaten arrest or if it just feels like to much for you. Decide where to meet if you’re split up. You could have three meeting places for the start, middle and end of the route of the protest.

And within your group, you could have pairs or triplets of people who agree to stay together no matter what. Within these, the member least willing to engage further in an action or protest should determine when to leave with no shame or questions asked.

And talk to people afterwards too to debrief. This whole concept is called an affinity group.

The reason is that all those other things create actual value, thus cutting into profits of capitalists if publicly funded. If you’re a capitalist state that wants to steal massive amounts of wealth from the people and redistribute them to the rich by funding an Industry, then war really is the industry you want because it only destroys value.

For example, if you cancelled the Pentagons budget and funded centrally planned healthcare instead, no private healthcare provider could compete. It would completely close down a huge market. Same with education, infrastructure, etc. War doesn’t have this problem of closing down a market, but has the advantage of opening up new markets (resources, cheap labour, more consumers, even rebuilding after the war, etc.) via imperialism.

Edit: In short, imperialism is in part a reaction to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and offers an opportunity to renew primitive accumulation.