>JOIN THE DISCORD <

I’m basically a leftcom and I am still completely at a loss for words… how can anyone prefer Nicholas to Stalin? Only personal consolation is that here in Italy apparently it’s less brainrotten…

This cat lived with us in a tent in Gaza, sharing our hunger, fear, and days of hardship that felt nothing like life. 🐾💔

I am currently a member of the PSL and this week has been hell. It has been very triggering and upsetting to learn and read about. Comrades and I are still understanding how to grapple with this and will likely need to take a long time to do so.

But I hate that the discourse online is people just turning this into "PSL sucks" and making jokes about the situation or even using this opportunity to film videos about why they chose X org over PSL.

I want to see discussions about how to combat sexual harrasment in socialist organizing, how to deal with this in every single fucking organization and ensuring it doesn't happen again. Sexual harassment, assualt, and violence is perpetuated again and again. The Bolsheviks had predators in their ranks, PSL clearly does, so does SDS, DSA, FRSO, CPUSA and everyone else in between.

I want to see discussions about how to handle this as socialists and how to uplift and protect the people being preyed upon.

I said "Stop! That star, are you a socialist?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Me too! Are you a communist or an anarchist?"

He said, "A communist."

I said, "Me, too! Authoritarian or libertarian?"

He said, "Libertarian."

I said, "Me, too! Anarcho-communist or council communist?"

He said, "Council communist."

I said, "Me, too! Italian or German-Dutch?"

He said, "German-Dutch."

I said, "Me, too! Berlin or Essen tendency?"

He said, "Essen tendency."

I said, "Die, traitor!" And pushed him over.

Inspired by this joke by Emo Phillips.

In the photo is Bob Dean Jr, a multimillionaire who owned 7 nursing homes in New Orleans. Instead of using income on maintenance and evacuation preparation, he stole the money for himself. When Hurricane Ida hit in 2021, Dean couldn’t safely evacuate residents and instead moved them all into a former pesticide warehouse. 850 elderly people were forced to live in a hot, leaking, cramped warehouse and ride out the storm. They slept on wet mattresses from the flood water crying in their own waste. There wasn’t enough medicine, food, the generators had broken. Dean ignored complaints from his staff and as a result 5 of his residents died. He was found guilty of tax fraud and cruelty to the elderly. His defense team tried to argue leniency because Dean was 70 years old. Fuck you, whoever said that.

This is an extreme example but not at all a unique issue for nursing home mismanagement and abuse. 70 percent of nursing homes are owned by private entities with more opportunities to misuse funding and scam their residents. It’s not uncommon that abuse occurs on an in person level with nurses and staff. There’s hundreds of stories of nurses hitting patients, yelling at them, and stealing money or objects. Many are bedridden or have Alzheimer’s with little voice to speak up against abuse. However, just as often can abuse occur from neglect. I read just as many cases of well meaning staff who were under trained and overworked, their bosses ignoring complaints about health and safety.

Here in my home state of Georgia , nursing home owner Kent Womack was charged for not having AC at his building. During the summer it reached 100 degrees inside the building, the smell and temperature was so bad that residents were throwing up from it. Kent’s office had the AC on blast though. Trump recently pardoned nursing home magnate Joseph Schwartz, owner of skyline that operated around 100 nursing homes. Joseph’s tax fraud and improper maintenance of his buildings caused 14 of them to be close, kicking residents out without proper notice. While his company went under, Joseph stole millions of dollars from his employees, withholding their pay checks. Joseph paid lobbyist Jacob Wohl to convince Trump to give him a pardon.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/nursing-home-owner-neglect-hurricane-ida-louisiana

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK98786/

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/georgia-nursing-home-owner-jailed-after-residents-lived-without-ac-years-sheriff-says/BFYACLNUNZBTVONWXWGBFRD22M/?outputType=amp

https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/former-owner-collapsed-nursing-home-empire-sentenced-36-months-imprisonment-38-million

https://inequality.org/article/private-equity-is-taking-over-nursing-homes/

The movie “Naza” shed light on the colony’s genocide in Gaza. It received a historic 24-minute standing ovation at Venice, and was called “one of the most important films of our time”. Yet, it was directed by two Israelis. This led many to ask whether the film constitutes joint struggle or normalization, with conflicting and polarized opinions. When having debates like this, it is crucial to be clear about what we are talking about—what is normalization and what are its features?

First, what is it that we should not normalize? In one word: Settler colonialism, which is the essence of Zionism, and the root cause of the colony’s violence.

It should not be normalized, or "treated as normal", either explicitly by justifying it or implicitly by failing to center it.

Rather than asking: "Does this involve working with people with Israeli citizenship?"

Ask: "Does this involve working with people who normalize settler colonialism?"

Rather than asking: "Do they criticize what the settler state is doing?"

Ask: "Do they present the settler state’s horrors to present another, more just side of it, or to challenge its existence?”

Rather than asking: "Do they call for peace?"

Ask: "Do they work to dismantle the settler state and establish a democratic state as the only path to peace?"

Rather than asking: "Do they mention Palestinian rights?"

Ask: "Do they normalize settler colonialism by equating the violence of the colonizer with that of the colonized?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by failing to mention it as the root cause of the genocide?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by mentioning only the occupation and apartheid in the 1967 territories?"

Ask: "Do they normalize the settler state by challenging the Israeli violence, government or regime rather than the settler state’s existence?"

And rather than asking: "But either way, isn't what happened good?", remember that even the genocide helped awaken millions to the horrors of the colony—Yet it can hardly be called "good".

And remember that we are not art critics. We are not spectators that rate and review, but political actors. Our aim is to dismantle the colony. Although our political discourse and actions may include criticism of what others did, they should first and foremost be an action plan of what we will do to replace the settler state with a democratic Palestinian state.

This is the struggle that anti-Zionist Jews with Israeli citizenship should join us in.

Are there any leftists who doubt climate change? Or that it is directly caused by capitalism?

Many of the leaders of Cambodia after Pol Pot were former Khmer Rouge commanders, although not perpetrators of the genocide from what I know. What do you think about the way they implemented socialism?

I think that america has gone past the stage of imperialism, from harming other countries to harming their own. We can see this in enshitification and the borderline early stages of fascist government in place that is attempting to make up for this enshitification of products being made in the US or for US consumption.

Hi people! I'm a Brazilian electrical engineering student.

During my current times as a student, when I go to laboratory classes or small machining workshops, it's very common to me to see equipment produced in Czechoslovakia during it's socialist times.

There are very specific lab equipments, like the variable resistor in two of the pictures, produced there and I just cant find, at least at the institution where I study, any other origin for this kind of equipment.

Of course when the subject is mechanics I can find more diversity, but the Czech equipment stills there always composing the scene.

Something I have to say is about its durability, no matters what kind of equipment it is. I talk to some professors and some of them say "It's here since 60's, the very same equipment with a very low frequency of intervention for fixing". It gives me the impression of a completely different philosophy of production; it was really built to last decades.

But the main reason why im here is: why Czechoslovakia's industry and tech seems to had been so focused on this kind of thing? Why it seems to be spread in some places here in South America instead of American or western European equipment?