So, I haven't done much travelling in my life because been poor, but am now in a position to maybe plan a trip for myself and my partner. To China is where we would love to go.

I love train travel and dislike flying, did not enjoy the one trip over the Atlantic I have been on, so I was thinking about taking the trans-Siberia train to Peking, but it looks like I can't actually get to it now from Finland. I also don't really want to fly for climate reasons. There used to be a train straight to Moscow from Helsinki, but the warmongering started and now there is nothing. Also I keep getting 404s when searching for flights to Russia, the flight to Moscow to get to the train wouldn't be so bad.

Is it really not possible to go do this train trip from Europe atm? Anybody know? Been searching the internet and there is very little info on this or other train access to China from Europe. I found freight trains.

I am one of those who is both adventurous and seeks planned things at the same time, so would have to have a good premade plan and bookings for the trip. I was thinking we could do the highspeed rail in China to sort of travel across the country from Peking to Shanghai. Would be a month long thing at least, after I finish my masters and current work contract.

But looks like it isn't easily doable.

It's all like this. I don't even understand where the stuff in this page is coming from, but "coercion and violence of communist rule" is once again just thrown in there.

Also this book seems to really be looking down on the working class from my reading, although I suppose it tries to highlight some issues. Not to mention all the discourse about social capital or other types of capital, but never actual capital.

This also reads like a weird sort of celebration of neoliberalism as inevitable, but then again I am just so tired of reading stuff like this that I am probably not giving it much credit.

Book is called "masculinity, labor and neoliberalism".

So what are your plans for May Day 2024?

I am thinking we will go visit a Red memorial and watch the ceremony there, then maybe some marching and singing with comrades.

Maybe it isn't about good/bad, maybe consider anti-imperialism?

(An anarchist account from Masto that has quite the following so posting here, but without links.)

Edit. Added a link to the thread because it keeps getting boosted to my timeline by Western "leftists" and I think it deserves to be dunked on.

The fuck this Timo guy saying? This reads like peak Jordan Peterson thought aka thoughts from a pseudointellectual bullshit generator.

Been thinking about the weird embracement of all the circular economy solutions by the capitalist class.

This framing has enabled them to sell the same commodity many times over and then recycle it into even more commodities while maintaining an image of "being Green". Due to this the second hand market for things has become a lot less accessible and expensive. Also donations and giving out stuff you no longer need seems to be disappearing as a practise. This might also be because nothing we buy lasts more than a year anymore.

This post is inspired by me trying to find a few rocks or pavement stones for our backyard that a few decades ago you could just go source from the dumb or some construction site. Now those places are reselling the trash and have barbed wired fences around them.

Also feels like these systems have removed the slack aka maximized and optimized profit on food items, making the food given out to the poor and homeless disappear or become way too scarce.

Currently have covid, so does my partner, vaccinated and boosted as we can be in the country we are in. My partner is not doing so well. We got covid from my ultralib vaccinated relatives who bullheadedly want to do normal, whatever the cost. They announced the coughs they were sporting at the Christmas table were just "lingering symptoms from past colds".

This as the background to a post I saw on social media today stating that someone had avoided their anti-vaxx relatives for five years and this year went to see them and got covid. Like that is the sole reason they got it. The comment section was full of libs lolling at the stupid anti-vaxxers and wishing well to this vaccinated hero that was sick.

Not one mention of masks, of barriers to vaccination. Of the fact that to visit someone people sit in crowded planes unmasked without a care in the world, risking everyone who is immunocompromized for example. But yes, the anti-vaxxers are the only problem... (not saying it isn't a problem)

All this made me think on how "vaccinated for covid" has turned into a kind of VOTE! Once that bit is done, the liberal mind can turn its attention back to all the important consuming and status maintenance it needs to sustain its relevance. And the blame of everything is handily placed on a new outgroup, one that gets stereotyped and Othered much the same way all forms of perceived deviance have. I mean has anyone been able to aid with the obvious trust issues that people have in institutions by ridiculing them?

I don't know, the anti-vaxxer discourses have started to wear thin on me, just like the endless laughing at Trump supporters did. They seem to repeat a pattern that is just hard to overlook.

Just wow.

Also dudes talking about the market, which isn't the same as capitalism afaik.

Don't really have a take. These ghouls are discovering the Fediverse it looks like.

I can't even...

Trust the Ghouls to bring fat phobia even to war. This is peak neoliberalism.

Not to mention equating weight with health.

Then again this has come up as a justification of starving Cubans too, more than once.

Are you ready for your stressed out heroin chic body? It's good for you, trust me.

Discussion with a lib today and this came up, again. This experiment where people will just kill each other on command and how this in their worldview partly explains why the world is shit.

I was able to explain a bit about the way our surroundings shape us from the moment we come into the world and how this experiment would likely give different result if done in a society less driven like our Western hellscapes, but am not sure if I am talking bs on that. However I think psychology is in general very sus and the way human behavious has been explained by it is also sus, so I just don't buy this.

It becomes a problem when these Late Stage Capitalism Libs use things like this to hate other people and turn this "it is known because science" into misantrophy and nihilism. And it helps them not see any alternatives to the way things are, because if humans are shit then they must be shit in all circumstances. We know this isn't true, just by looking at the societies indigenous peoples had.

So isn't this just another way to use "human nature" as an argument for riding humanity of the cliff and be complicit in it? Is there any critiques of these experiments you know about. Thoughts on the whole Milgram experiment thing? It's very popular lore in the West after all.

I am taking part in a uni course about the Feminist revolution in Iran. The lecturer has been going over the Iranian revolution in 1979 in a very, shall we say, interesting way.

I do not want to discredit their pov on this as I am obviously a Westoid, but the way this is being framed is that before the revolution things were better for women. The lecturer said the revolution happened because people disliked the Shah having more than others, but she did not elaborate this in any way. One would think the complaints of people were pretty big for them to start a revolution? But I know very little about this.

After the revolution women were to have equal rights, but over the next years the dictatorship which is named as Islamic removed them and things like the hijab became mandatory. She stated that people were given false promises and betrayed and this is why the people sided with the revolution. Where does this framing come from? Was it the same people going for revolution that ended up in places of power?

Now my understanding is that the social democratic movement there was destroyed by the West in the 50s and the following twenty+ years under the Shah led to a sort of pseudorevolution that wasn't entirely progressive in nature. Is this correct or wrong?

Also how did the revolutionary force become so deeply conservative? The lecturer told us that before this there was no national religion as such and things like wearing a scarf were personal choices. This was then turned into a mandatory thing starting from workplace dresscode to eventually all public life, however at home people to this day do not follow these norms.

The Women Life Freedom movement is then a result of the way these last decades have eroded all womens rights.

I will include the following questions as well:

If this reactionary tendency in societies is always high, how do we make sure our revolution does not lead to something like this? Or was this all external influence?

If we accept that there always tends to be external influence, what can we do to make sure the reactionary force does not get on top and be in a position to dictate things like womens rights? (I am spesifically thinking of Hamas in Palestine now being the force that is driving change, if they stay in power, won't that easily result in a second Iran when it comes to Islamic nationalism/minority rights?)

How then can we engage in critical support of operators who have a high chance of creating systems of oppression?

Any history on Iran, feminism and ML and other thought very welcome.