Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Kaplya [none/use name] @ Kaplya @hexbear.net Posts 2Comments 828Joined 2 yr. ago
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
The Ghost of Buenos Aires cometh
In communist China, pandas are fake and people are being grabbed off the streets and forced into a panda suit to act like they’re the animals representing the national symbol of China.
With all the details leaked (or rather, reported) by very credible sources about the peace negotiations that was deliberately sabotaged by London and Washington, it has become very difficult to attribute the large part of criminal responsibility to any parties other than these two.
My conspiracy theory is that the Moscow concert hall terrorist attack was a “preview” to what will happen to the Paris Olympics if France doesn’t yield to the demands of Ukraine (or rather, their handlers).
Macron is being blackmailed. Remember one of the first things Biden did in his presidency was AUKUS to screw France out of the submarine deal with Australia. Biden is never going to let Macron get away. France is fucked either way.
Both Biden and Harris were candidates set to receive the Dark God of Capital as His vessels.
It fried both of their brains. But Biden turned out slightly more functional than Harris.
That clip was extremely funny. Tucker couldn’t stand Putin spending 5 minutes straight praising China, so he interjected asking “so if Trump wins can the US normalize its relations with Russia?” and Putin just went “shut up I’m not done with praising China yet”.
This is from an interview on WSWS from March:
WSWS: How many workers were affected by the layoffs in your building?
Evan: My understanding is the whole building laid off about 78 people. It was the whole midnight shift—40 [part-time] workers—but also Twilight and Pre-load got hit with layoffs as well, so 78 total. A lot of people are mad about it.
The first wave started right after the new year. That was a big surprise. A supervisor told us, ‘Listen, they're gonna start laying off people.’ The reason given was that volume is getting short. A second wave of layoffs occurred shortly after and I heard there’s another one coming up.
Some workers without seniority were laid off completely. Anyone who had less years, they [UPS] didn't really take them.
They’re also bringing 40 full-timers from different [UPS] buildings to over here this week and dividing them up between the shifts. I’m very worried.
WSWS: You mentioned earlier that many part-time Midnight workers who were laid off also had jobs during the day. What happened to them?
Evan: Yes, most people had two jobs so they couldn't continue with the different shifts. So I could say out of the 78, there was like 13 people that actually were able to make it and be called in for a floor spot.
They can’t fire us, but they told us that if you don’t like it, quit. If you quit, they love that because that’s basically what they want you to do. They want to force you to quit. And you can’t collect unemployment because technically you’re not fired.
One co-worker, who worked at UPS for one and a half years, got laid off for three months. They moved him to Pre-load and told him to come back in three months and that he’s on call for one or two or three days a week. They just want him to quit.
WSWS: What has been the response of the union, including Teamsters local 804, to these layoffs?
Evan: So far, no one has spoken to me about it. They [the Teamsters] just say at least you got a job. The problem is they just stay quiet.
One union guy called me to ask if I got switched to Pre-load and I asked him, “Do you know what the hell is going on with the layoffs?” And he’s like, “What UPS is doing right now is wrong,” but that’s all that the union guy told me.
WSWS: So the Teamsters are just accepting it and not putting up a fight.
Evan: Yeah, of course. And that’s what a lot of people are saying and I believe it. The union guys never came up to us telling us that we were going to get laid off.
They’re not even helping us. They’re not fighting, they’re doing nothing.
I don’t know if this is psyop or anything but it does seem like it’s affecting a lot of the part-timers. And as I recall, the new contract explicitly restricted the number of conversion to full timers (which I don’t know if they’re being laid off or not).
From Lenin’s Lecture on “The Proletariat and the War” (1914)
For a Marxist clarifying the nature of the war is a necessary preliminary for deciding the question of his attitude to it. But for such a clarification it is essential, first and foremost, to establish the objective conditions and concrete circumstances of the war in question. It is necessary to consider the war in the historical environment in which it is taking place, only then can one determine one’s attitude to it. Otherwise, the resulting interpretation will be not materialist but eclectic.
Depending on the historical circumstances, the relationship of classes, etc., the attitude to war must be different at different times. It is absurd once and for all to renounce participation in war in principle. On the other hand, it is also absurd to divide wars into defensive and aggressive. In 1848, Marx hated Russia, because at that time democracy in Germany could not win out and develop, or unite the country into a single national whole, so long as the reactionary hand of backward Russia hung heavy over her.
In order to clarify one’s attitude to the present war, one must understand how it differs from previous wars, and what its peculiar features are.
The war in Ukraine is not WWI.
UPS has also just been awarded to be the primary air carrier for USPS, displacing a 20-year partnership with FedEx. Clearly a very difficult year for them.
Important to note: this article is old.
UPS is now laying off 12000 workers just after 5 months of the so-called “historic” deal (CBS)
From Yahoo Finance (Jan 31, 2024):
UPS (UPS) employees are in the news once again — but this time, it’s not gone their way.
The shipping giant, which forecast weak demand for parcel delivery in 2024, has said it plans to lay off 12,000 employees to save $1 billion in costs. It’s also mulling a sale of its Coyote brokerage unit.
This shocking announcement made on Tuesday comes just six months after unionized UPS workers landed a “lucrative” new labor deal, which will see delivery drivers earning an average of $170,000 in annual pay and benefits by the end of the five years.
“2023 was a unique, and quite candidly, difficult and disappointing year,” said UPS CEO Carol Tomé during the company’s earnings call. “We experienced declines in volume, revenue and operating profits and all three of our business segments.”
Yeah, most of them aren’t gonna see that promised 170k by the end of that five year contract.
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
Shen Zhihua is a super interesting guy. Many people don’t know, but he was actually one of the top gold traders in China during Deng’s liberalization era and made a huge ton of money from gold trading (if you’re in the gold business in 1980s China, he’s your guy), and then proceeded to fly to Moscow and spent all of his earnings to buy up (and through bribery) Soviet era documents in 1990s Russia.
These documents are now archived in East China Normal University in Shanghai (there is also another set of copy in Beijing University). If anyone here wants to do a PhD on Soviet history, then ECNU is probably another good place to access Soviet era archive apart from Moscow since some of the documents have since been destroyed or re-classified by the Russian government.
It takes more than indifference for Global South countries to stand up to Western imperialism, especially against the US which controls the global access to dollar and to trade.
This is why Ukraine is the litmus test. Even libs could see the genocide taking place in Gaza.
But to understand the Ukraine war, you really need to understand how imperialism works, not the lib definition of “conquering a foreign territory”.
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
The DPRK took in some Russian nuclear scientists after the collapse of the USSR and there really isn’t anything China can do about it.
Economically, the DPRK doesn’t have anything to offer China but it serves its purpose as a strategic bulwark and buffer zone against American bases in South Korea.
China has every incentive to make sure an influx of refugees into Liaodong doesn’t happen in the event of an actual war, so the DPRK is kept on a leash but not too tightly to piss off its leadership.
After all, the entire Juche ideology is about being self-reliant, so you really do not want to piss off the DPRK by taking away their autonomy for the above reasons.
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
The Entire History of Russo-Chinese relations ft Carl Zha with RWA (Youtube)
I will preface by saying I don’t like RWA and never listened to a single episode of their podcast, but since Carl Zha is on it, it somehow showed up on my feed. This episode actually turned out to be a great cultural exchange and history lesson where Carl Zha was talking 90% of the time.
You get a very entertaining walkthrough of Sino-Russia, Sino-Soviet relations through the years and there was even a segment about Tiananmen Square incident near the end. I learned quite a few things I never knew before so this is a highly recommended podcast episode, if you have ~2 hours to spare.
Ukraine is the true litmus test for leftists when it comes to international geopolitics.
You will really find out which of those who call themselves leftists will be the ones doing the bidding for imperialists when revolutions finally arrive at the imperial core.
One of the most interesting observations that this whole Ukraine war revealed is just how stark the difference in position is between leftists in the imperial core versus leftists in the Global South. The vast majority of the latter immediately recognized why Russia is on the correct side of the history, while the former spent months arguing and failing to understand how imperialism works.
It’s almost like victims of abusers can immediately recognize abusive behavior in others, while abusers themselves keep failing to understand, “how is this an abuse? she hit me first!”. That doesn’t mean victims can’t be shitty themselves, but it certainly doesn’t make them less of a victim of abuse.
Even most countries that do not have a left wing government, let alone AES, stood with Russia and refused to participate while the Western imperialists asked them to sanction Russia. It is truly one of those times when the Global South finally stood up against their imperialist oppressors and refused to do their bidding.
OP, you are from the imperial core, I suppose?
Melania and Barron lived separately in Rockville, MD while Trump was in the White House.
Bulletins and News Discussion from April 8th to April 14th, 2024 - First Iran-Israel War Megathread
So we’re supposed to see a cabinet reshuffle next month but I’m getting rumors from Duma deputies that according to advanced notice, there will be no significant personnel change.
If so then it really is disappointing. Even with such popular support, Putin still fails to take on the challenge. The neoliberals will remain in control, the nationalists’ “coup” attempt had failed, and Russia will continue to get stuck in what some call a hybrid state: a state that is fighting its imperialist oppressor on the one hand but also undermining its own advantages to the benefit of its neoliberal imperialist oppressor on the other.
Still, all will be revealed by early May.
To clarify, this post is not a bit, and I didn’t even realize I have a reputation for that lol (and yes I admit that I did have a bit of fun with that sometimes).
The only thing that I’d say I’m being slightly disingenuous here is that I still believe Biden will win in November (though his chances are slipping for sure), but that will only bring about the worst kind of liberal rub-in-your-face reaction and leading to the Democrats finally abandoning any pretense of pandering to the left and the progressives, having realized that they do not need the support from the left at all.
In other words, I am very concerned about the fate of leftist movement in the US. If Trump wins, the left is screwed. If Biden wins but without leftist support, then the left is screwed also. Screwed as in they will let the fascist thugs commit violence against the left and not holding them back. There is no easy way out from my view.
The general election is this year? Does Corbyn have a chance at all?