Chana

There are now 2-3 "worldnews" spinoffs in response to the main sub being botted and heavily modded in favor of "Israel". They've been hitting the front page the last few days with "free palestine" vibes in the comments.

I think the settler mindset imposes narcissistic tendencies on its hosts.

Oooo ess ess liberty

Isn't Haifa one of two functional oil-receiving ports for the entity?

The UK can have little a SocDem as a treat.

The common true answer to these kinds of thoughts is always, "it depends". Wanting simple and fast rules helps to frame questions, discussions, and solutions, but you would be incorrect to just say yes or no.

If a cop is harassing you, do you just call yourself a communist because you reject "hiding your power level"? Won't that just pointlessly make them go after you harder? Will any observers understand or care what it means for the cop to arbitrarily detain and arrest you after sharing this fact?

If you are tabling and are cagey about your associations, won't they, correctly, distrust you? Aren't you missing out on opportunities to spread consciousness and recruit?

This is actually a propaganda question, and for propaganda just about your very first thought should be about identifying your intended audience(s), what you want them to think or do after your interaction with them, and what threats might exist and how you will mitigate them. That should determine how open you are about communism. For example, if you are in the US at a party and calk yourself a communist to a stranger, they will probably not even understand what you mean by that. You will fail to communicate if you rely on this alone. You'd need to explain it shortly in a way that speaks to things familiar to them, like working a job and imperialism. If you lead with "communist" they may end up leaving before your explanation. Better to explain first and label later. On the other hand if you're giving a speech for a communist party.

Overall I think it is best to explain yourself as best you can to be understood when it comes to non-enemies. Sometimes that looks like hiding your power level and sometimes it doesn't.

Why Socialism? The author? Albert Einstein.

But really, it actually is good and easily approachable. Liberals can read it and understand it without having to agonize over its meaning ir challenges.

It has made it worse but the mechanisms are different. Science and engineering under capitalism has had a few major thrusts over the last century:

1. Capital itself doing the research to create products that require less labor and therefore temporarily increase their own mass of profit. Industrial capitalism's marriage to applied research.

2. Universities and independent consortia providing a link to academia that does similar work, often funded by industry, but doing basic research. The premise being that some tech doesn't come from myopic applied researcg, it comes from 1 in 50 basic research ideas and they want in on the ground floor. This also creates a researcher worker subclass that can transition to industry, preferably the company that funded them.

3. The state became more involved as part of an anticommunist push. It pumped much greater amounts of capital into centralized, coordinated work than industrial capitalists could ever muster.

4. Imperialism depemds on technological advantage, so there is coordination between capital and the state there.

Philosophy was not a driving force for any of this. Capital is front and center. Capital has no interest in anticapitalist thought, including some aspects of philosophy, aside from sometimes producing propaganda against it when it looks a little threatening. Without piles of cash, the study of philosophy is left in the margins. The cash drives who gets attention, including by faculty and administrators.

Even the small number of lefty academics was too scary for the feds so they did several red scares and purged them. In that vacuum you get a liberal shift.

Finally, the CIA used cutouts to fund and promote anticommunist thought of various kinds through academics and journalists. They don't need to convince the academics to be anticommunist, they just need to ensure anticommunist academics have an easy time becoming influential.

During all of this, liberalism became increasingly hegemonic in these circles and even outside of them. Most academics participate in this project without even knowing it. It just seems natural to them to study their field and follow the money that lets them do things in it. Rarely do they actually have sufficiently independent thought that they receive ire from funders, but they are always aware of what gets them money and what doesn't.

Finally, much of social sciences was sanitized during the red scare. Many fields have Marxist concepts, they just don't get recognized as such, they are robbed of their revolutionary character. So academics will study a topic and succeed in it but have wrong ideas about how it works, as you do not need to actually understand the philosophy of your field to engage in the heuristics of research methodology and oiblish results.

Americans, certainly white Americans, are what Israelis would be if permitted all of their genocidal aims and then told myths for several more generations. Kids are the product of their social circumstances, it is the societies constructed around them that are at fault. But those kids grow up and then become the enforcers of that society or fight against it - and settlers tend to reinforce it.

"Should know better" is basically a question of agency and we always have to think about how we balance thinking of people as products of circumstance vs. moral agents, as the former can lead to sympathy for the oppressor that is counterrevolutionary. But we also do need to understand that it is not just people choosing to be demons, they are deeply propagandized and conditioned to accept and normalize a settler-specific as well as capitalist hosts of violences.

Being disgusted by ubiquitous war criminals is reasonable and on a personal level a righteous position. But if we live in a state with many, we have to formulate our (cynical) approach towards them and construct a political program that accounts for this. Not tailist, but not overlooking the situation nor becoming complacent by writing off every person, which can also happen if you start thinking about how many degrees removed any American is from the imperial war machine. We have to build something oppositional and practical, even if it means small orgs doing outsized direct action or building on and towards generational change, to make joining the war machine shameful and recruit the like-minded. If we hate current society we have to build towards what it could be and have sympathy for who people could have been without this society.

So I agree as well but just wanted to add an addendum that is sometimes missing.

US education is usually poorly funded and supplemented by local levies so that poor areas get worse resources and the teachers that can make poor pay work while rich areas have fancy schools and can hire anyone. The poor areas generally need more resources, not fewer, to reach parity, because there is more need for things like free food (US schools usually hold back food from poor kids), transportation, and after school programs.

On top of this, the US is socially bankrupt. Community is regularly disrupted and so even is the capitalist nuclear family. Kids are raised in abusive conditions and have high stress households with reactionary parents that often do not care for their kids when they step outsids their preferred views. Students are often tired, hungry, and stressed. So even when they have "access" and "opportunity" on paper, they can't make use of it, logistically or emotionally. They're told to have drive while also lacking the energy and support to make themselves a sandwich.

So most US citizens can't read at a "high school level".

Helmet and ballistic glasses are the minimum when cops are present. Chemical-resistant respirator if you have asthma or need to be functional in the presence of OC or CS gas.

If you planned it out you could have it done in 10-15 minutes. The process is the same for basically every cable so I'll just describe one:

1. If the brake has a barrel adjuster, loosen it (rotate it back into itself).

2. Snip off cable end where it's crimped, like on the derailleur or brake.

3. Loosen where it's attached to the derailleur or brake.

4. Locate where the cable is secured in the brake lever or shifter. This usually should not require disassembly, just moving stuff around a little. Hold the lever or shifter "open" and push or pull the cable out - with the crimped end cut it will just go through the housing.

5. Remove the old housing(s) you need to replace.

6. Eyeball the new housing length. Give yourself enough length to steer. It's best to install the new handlebars and overlay the housing stock while the handlebars are turned to the most extreme direction opposite the origin of the housing from the frame. You want the housings to enter the shifter/derailleur and frame straight-on for all normal handlebar positions, so have a nice curve in all positions (not stretched). If too short, your bike will shift or brake when you turn the handlebars. Mark the cut location on the housing.

7. Cut the housing with good cutters.

8. Install ferrules on the housing.

9. Install the housing.

10. Run new cable through the housing and secure in the lever or shifter.

11. Secure cable on the derailleur or brake under light tension. Use a torque wrench to spec, especially for the brakes.

12. Snip the cable with around 4 cm left over.

13. Crimp a new cable end.

14. (Can be done later if necessary) adjust the barrel adjuster until up/down shifting is even or braking is to your preference.

I listed 14 steps but they go fast. The only places to take time are on sizing the new housing and attaching ferrules properly. Note that you likely don't need to lubricate the cables or housing, they are likely already coated with something.

You may also want to use this opportunity to ensure your derailleur limits are set properly and your brake pads are in good shape and positioned very close to (but not touching) the braking surface.