I would say that some part of the Russian experience comes from the Soviet campaign in the aid of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. You captured the major Afghan ring road and more or less all the major cities, but then what? The reactionary mujahideen simply retreated to the countryside in the same way the Taliban did following the later American invasion. Funded by American weapons in the same way that NATO now funds Ukraine, the entire strategic paradigm shifts towards an endless defensive slog against counter-insurgency. You can't abandon your own established holdings, the major cities and its peoples, to consolidate properly for both PR/morale and humanitarian reasons and so the conflict is a long bleed. Once an equilibrium is established, you cannot strike out against the mujahideen-occupied countryside without drawing resources used to defend your established urban holdings. The Soviet and US Afghan Wars are examples of how precisely a long war should not be conducted.

The only long war in contemporary history which brutal attrition was the intention is a war that most ML don't study because it's a miserable inter-fraternal conflict between socialist states, the Sino-Vietnamese War.

The primary literature I'll reference is from a Chinese gusano professor, Xiaoming Zhang, who worked for the US Air War College (and ironically was later recently targetted by the FBI China Initiative and subsequently lost his job): "Zhang, X. 2015. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979-1991. University of North Carolina Press." As it was sponsored by the literal US DoD (the first book I've ever read where there's a disclaimer that says: "The views expressed in this book are mine and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Department of the Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government."), it is obviously ideologically reactionary but because it is meant to provide for the US military an account of PLA strategic planning and thus largely focuses on military analysis, that part is therefore worth reading.

The Sino-Vietnamese War is actually the war in all with the most parallels to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Deng's intentions for the war with Vietnam was principally "attitude adjustment." Vietnam had sided with the USSR in the Sino-Soviet Split and this was seen as a betrayal of China's support in the Vietnam War. It started with an initial invasion that was then, by Vietnamese argumentation, repelled. This is what NATOpedia classifies as the "official" Sino-Vietnamese War and in the Vietnamese narrative, it repelled an invader that was planning to sweep their their way through Hanoi all the way down to the Mekong Delta. But then the conflict kept going on.

As the author writes:

The Vietnamese leadership never seemed to comprehend the PRC’s strategy and war objectives, persistently maintaining that the 1979 invasion simply constituted a prelude to Beijing’s long-term scheme of infringing on Vietnamese sovereignty and independence. After China announced its withdrawal on 5 March, Hanoi called for a nationwide general mobilization for the war and began constructing defensive positions in and around Hanoi. By the end of May, the PLA had reverted to its normal alert status. Vietnam, however, remained on guard, stationing a large number of PAVN troops (allegedly 300,000) along border with China at a time when the economy was “in a worse state than at any time since 1975.”

As a result, Hanoi’s attempts to fight simultaneously in Cambodia and on its northern border took a growing national economic and social toll, subsuming Hanoi’s effort to modernize its economy and, more important, undermining its geopolitical ambitions. According to Fred Charles Iklé, “Governments tend to lose sight of the ending of wars and the nation’s interests that lie beyond it,” and many are “blind in failing to perceive that it is the outcome of the war, not the outcome of the campaigns within it” that determines how well their policies serve the nation’s interests. The Vietnamese leadership clearly failed to grasp the gravity of the situation and continued depending on the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. If the Vietnamese should draw any lessons from the 1979 war with China, one is, as one Vietnamese general later remarked, “We must learn how to live with our big neighbor.

By the conclusion of the border war in 1991-93, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, liberated from the US occupation and unified for over 20 years had still been unable to properly focus on its Doi Moi economic reforms, announced in 1986, due to the ongoing conflict:

In the end, only in 1990, after Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia, did the PLA pull its forces back from the occupied Vietnamese hills. Vietnam’s national pride and domestic politics made Hanoi’s leadership unable to tolerate Chinese occupation of any Vietnamese territory, even hills in the remote border region, and it therefore responded to Chinese military pressure with a tit-for-tat strategy. After 1984, Vietnam vigorously resisted Chinese military encroachments, initiating attacks and counterattacks with huge forces even when its economy was weak. Although the fighting took place far from Vietnam’s political and industrial heartland, the conflict encumbered the country’s economy for a long period of time. For China, battlefield costs were fractional at a time of economic prosperity. In this way, China strategically outmaneuvered Vietnam. Since the Hanoi leadership played into Beijing’s hands, China’s military pressure appears to have worked.

In June 1990, during his meeting with the Chinese ambassador in Hanoi, (General Secretary of the CPV) Nguyen Van Linh claimed to have been a student of Mao’s revolutionary theory and stated his great appreciation for China’s aid during Vietnam’s struggles against the French and Americans. He then admitted that Vietnam had wronged China and was willing to correct its mistakes. With respect to Cambodia, the Vietnamese leader expressed confidence that the situation would be resolved peacefully but urged both Vietnam and China to work together to prevent the West and the UN from meddling in Cambodia in the future. The exclusion of the Khmer Rouge from a future Cambodian government, Nguyen Van Linh admitted, was impractical.

The author also makes an allegation of an "agreement" between the two Communist Parties, which is rather interesting in light of the much hyped public Vietnamese antagonism towards China by the West:

A secret deal may have been made regarding how to address the unpleasant thirteen years so that the interlude would not imperil future Sino-Vietnamese relations. The two sides allegedly reached a tacit agreement that prohibited the media from publishing stories and scholars from conducting studies about the border conflict in hopes that the recent hostility would then fade from memory on both sides of the border. Both countries could then concentrate on rejuvenating their relationship. Once again, Vietnam looked to China for direction and guidance, and the relationship was described officially as “good neighbors, good friends, good comrades, good partners” (haolinju, haopengyou, haotongzhi, haohuoban).

The opening ceremony was mediocre though obviously not for the reasons the chuds gnash their teeth. I've binged all the ceremonies back during the pandemic. London 2012 was more of a spectacle even with its typical amnesia of the role of colonialism during its industrial revolution performance, Rio 2016 had much more soul and character, Beijing 2008 is still the unbeatable standard; all of them had a more organized structure than Paris' "tourism ad skit" of Haussmann's old buildings along the Seine. The Parade of Nations is typically meant to give full attention to the athletes and so the constant interruptions to splice in perfomances were obnoxious. I will say that the hot air balloon flame cauldron, reminiscent of those balloons in the old Paris World Fair posters, is a rather unique idea that was also executed fairly well, unlike the boat parade.

The LGBT representation was just one part of Macron's overall rebranding campaign of France's image as an "progressive nation boldly confronting its past" as a theme that permeated the entire ceremony. Seeing that Louise Michel statue description on how she was "exiled to New Caledonia and fought against French colonialism" was quite a satirical display of how superficial Macron's "Brand France" is given the current French colonial occupation and the military troops stationed to squash the still ongoing New Caledonian indigenous protests taking place since May.

I'd recommend looking at the comparative case of Zimbabwe, where the former settler colony of Rhodesia was liquidated more thoroughly than that of the case of South Africa in dismantling apartheid. This included a process of land reform that, while nowhere as successful and comprehensive as that in socialist states, still managed to touch on, what I'd call, the fundamental bottom line of Western imperialism in a way that was largely unprecedented in the whole African decolonial experience with just a few exceptions like Gaddafi's Libya and Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal.

In South Africa, the end of that obscenely vile system was a victory, but the issue I've come to realize over the years is that Western imperialism is an onion where there's layers and layers of "fluff" as defence before you peel back a layer that really touches the ultimate bottom line. It's like the Ukraine War where the West makes a stand right in the former heartland of the Soviet Union and plays it up as "existential" to them to obfuscate that there are so many layers of their defence that one could peel away before anyone reaches a fundamental bottom line for the Western existence, like the decolonization of Turtle Island. This is the real substance that 500 years of Western imperialism have accomplished.

To put it plainly, South African apartheid was a "nice to have" in terms of sustaining the interests of Afrikaaner settler colonialism but not a genuine "must have." That latter is the multi-generational socioeconomic entitlements they've carved out for themselves during the period of overt settler colonialism that the ANC largely have left untouched but which retains a significant amount of the Afrikaaner asymmetric power in South Africa. The portrayal in the West of the South African experience as an achievement that the Global South should be "satisfied with" to use as a role model serves to obfuscates that there needs to be socioeconomic redistribution and land reform to actually cross a genuine Afrikaaner red line.

In a sense it's like conceding that I can longer beat the shit out of you, but you still have to live out on the street while I occupy your former house. And even if I eventually let you in your former house, you can't go upstairs. And even if I eventually let you go upstairs, I still have the sole name on the property deed. And even if I eventually let you have your name on the property deed, I still control the finances. On and on, etc, until you reach the bottom line of finally being able to kick out the occupier from your house entirely.

Through this, the South African model is that you get to make out giving up some perversely lopsided entitlement like "I can't beat the shit out of you" as some great equalizer when there's still so much more to go before you genuinely are affected. The intent is to pile endless layers of extraneous concessions (and act like each one is existential) so that the real concession is impenetrable to reach. Even if reaching it is impossible, however, it should be still conceptualized in decolonial efforts what is truly the bottom line.

Land Reform in Zimbabwe

"Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myth and Realities" by Ian Scoones et al. (a neoliberal work which, while hilariously playing up the World Bank's support for land reform as "good-intentioned" and not disengenuous, is still overall useful) illustrates how the much maligned Zimbabwe government through its land reform process "highlighted one potential path for countries unable or unwilling to deal with the unequal inheritance of apartheid or colonialism." At first, there was the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement drafted with Britain, lasting for 10 years, which was played up as a "crucial capitulation" even though "no major agrarian reforms was on the cards; this was all going to be 'carefully planned,' designed to increase 'farming efficiency.'"

This was the song and dance of the endlessly layered "onion" of "concessions" put into practice, where there was a "all (i.e. 'including' Britain) acknowledged that land reform had to be a central plank of post-Independence policy, but options were severely constrained" 'c'est la vie-style' shrugging of shoulders skit by Britain. During this period, "the new government played by the rules, keen to gain international confidence and encourage 'reconciliation' with the white farming community" and "white farmers were seen as a 'protected species' for much of the early 1980s." At the end of the 80s when the Lancaster Agreement was set to expire, it was already clear "by the mid-1980s that the great plans for mass resettlement were not going to happen" and that there was "every sign that the British government is striving behind the scenes to perpetuate Lancaster House beyond April 1990 and so prevent significant land reform from taking place."

By 1998, the Mugabe government signed off the acquisition of 2m ha which, despite following 'fair market values' for compensation, "sent shockwaves through the diplomatic and aid communities," who "saw this as an aggressive act" and the typical "IMF threatened to withhold a tranche of new payments due in 1999" gimmick routine. This kicked off the "Jambanja" period of generally spontaneous and largely decentralized "land invasions" in a 2 year period of radical land reform by locals and war veterans, which the West is still unable to pin as either a "peasant-led movement" or "orchestrated by the top."

Even here, however, as of their report in 2010, the process in the large commercial agriculture sector went from, in 1980, "6000 farmers, nearly all of them white" to "2300 white-owned commercial farmers still operating." So, even Zimbabwe's land reform, which has been commonly portrayed as apocalyptic chaos in Western media and scholarship to dissuade other Global South countries from emulating it, still retained a significant legacy of settler colonial control after its most volatile phase. As such, the framing of such a narrative in the West for a country which, after 20 years of the British "we support your struggle, but it's complicated" pantomime act, decided to largely cut through to near the core of the concessional "onion" is therefore deliberate.

As such, the cause of Palestinian liberation is one that will need to contend with the same trap which South Africa was ensnared by and which the Zimbabwe example shows the agonizingly long process of both misdirection and slander involved in combatting it.

Scones, I. et al. 2010. "Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myth and Realities."

Just looked and apparently, there's some really based content uploaded on Google Maps for Karl Marx House.

Chinese tourist sings the Internationale

Abandon Ayn Rand, Embrace Chadism-Leninism

That's the rather common argument amongst many leftists that not only are the Biden regime ghoulish genocide-abetting war criminals but that they also know what they're doing as well.

I would disagree with that assessment because I disagree with the presentivist conceit that the current crop of leadership in the West is anything more than the equivalent of benchwarmer political nobodies like the Coolidge administration exactly one century ago. Neither does making psychotic policy decisions mean ipso facto those decisions are competently made ones for the sake of US empire. The fact that we of the present are stuck confronting the fallout of their actions on a day-to-day basis should not induce people in putting them on a pedestal. Not every generation has an exceptionally competent ghoul like Roosevelt who subsumed the world financial system under the Bretton Woods arrangement or a crook like Nixon who could exploit the Sino-Soviet split through the presence of competent underlings like Kissinger.

That the present ghouls leading the Washington blob are psychologically insecure about the institutional resilience of their subordination of Europe does not mean their decision to ameliorate this anxiety by giving Europe a tighter shackle is the rational call for American empire. The material conditions of modern Europe's entire structure and way of life are derived from the extraction and exploitation of the Global South, in the same sense that the US is. This and the fundamental character of European chauvinism and white supremacist solidarity underlying the European relationship with the US means that we in Europe would never have struck it out from under the American shadow. Until there is ever a moment where such material conditions of the European character and way of life can be made to undergo comprehensive revision and there is a reckoning for the legacy of our historical relationship with the Global South, the idea of a Europe that does not salivate at alignment with imperial aims is a pipe dream.

These are factors that would have always bound Europe to the American imperial project. That the Biden regime doesn't want to admit the basis of the US-Europe relationship is imperialist mutual interest and white supremacy, and thus would always be on the American side when it really matters, by going out of their way to institgate the Ukraine conflict to make Europe explicitly fall in line does not mean the opportunity cost of that decision is worth the cost for US empire.

The fact is that the one cardinal rule of classical geopolitics in the Western world since the time of imperialist thinkers like Mackinder, more profound than NATO Ismay's "Keep the Germans Down and the Russians Out" little quote that Washington seems to have living rent free in their decisions - to never allow the "heartland" of the "world island" to unite together -has been completely broken by the Biden regime's actions.

Not only has he brought Russia and China together again, after the disastrous Sino-Soviet split destroyed the partnership before any benefit of heartland solidarity could be realized, but he has also completely convinced both Putin's faction and Chinese "Peaceful Coexistence" Khruschevites in the Party (rightfully) that Europe in its current state could never be an independent actor. Before Ukraine, Chinese liberals and Putin were mentally masturbating to the idea of a strong EU standing up to the US alongside them. Now, they realize that the only real partners that can uphold a sincere interest in breaking down the US hegemonic structure are in the Global South, not here in Europe. This regime will go down not just for its genocidal psychopathy, but its utter incompetence as a failson of the US imperial project.

Your issue made me realize how land acknowledgments are basically the equivalent of those little provenance placards in every Western museum: "This masterful example of 17th West African jewellery is from Mali." The way people puff up their chests from making those little land acknowledgment declarations compared to that.

Okay, cool story, so how did it get here then, to where it is now? Crickets, of course, from the curators. And sure, if you consider it better than the alternative of them straight up claiming it materialized out of thin air and rendered corporeal form inside the glass case or them lying that the West African jewellery was actually made in Birmingham, thus making it their national property, it is "better" than those things.

But there's no acknowledgment of the process; the nature of now things ended up as they are now; whether maybe, just maybe, there should be more sharing with the descendants of its original owners rather than hoarded by the failsons of Western imperialism, let alone reparation and repatriation.

Through this, it also reveals the fundamental conceit of land acknowledgments. They'll never get away with declaring some random Anglo-Europeans autochthonously sprung out of the dirt, making them indigenous to their stolen lands. They're too proud of the claim to heritage to old Europe and their perception of the settler-colonial story, in any case. As such, these land acknowledgments are no concessions at all for them to make. There's no threat of cognitive dissonance to their settler narrative when they spout such acknowledgments. All the thorns of the real flower have been trimmed away, leaving just the plastic rose petals representing their modern narrative of "reconciliation" glued on top.

Yes it represents the leftist fetish for unilateralist martyrdom.

(I believe it's a conch shell)

The only lesson that people in the West would learn is this:

Except we already have the conclusive natural ontological symbol for "family" right here: ☭

The top brass crème of compradors have had that happen to them once they got to the land of milk and honey. The former finance minister of Afghanistan now does Uber driving in DC.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/18/afghanistans-last-finance-minister-now-dc-uber-driver-ponders-what-went-wrong/

It's nearly impossible to get a factual grounding of the status of LGBT peoples in China through English media, since rainbow imperialism has been fully weaponized against designated enemy regimes. Western media describes China's official policy as "no approval; no disapproval; no promotion." I can't find any literature that actually attests to this as written policy, but even if true, this position has given relatively meager ammunition for atrocity propaganda so far compared to other fronts of propaganda assault against the country. China is the chief designated enemy regime today and the only major thing I've seen thrown is primarily the "muh censorship" shtick. There is an undeniable fact that organized LGBT groups can and have been appropriated by Western interests in terms of NGO collaboration with Western funding and support, however. The chief obstacle to securing LGBT rights in China will never be the allowance of these dubiously affiliated groups, but overall societal reception. With the latter, wholly independent and organic means of collective organization will naturally form.

Through my personal trawling, the current situation as I understand it is that the more conservative elements of Chinese society see it as a foreign intrusion, similarly to how reactionaries in Russia view LGBT there. Uniquely, however, the main hurdles are mainly cognitive however and can be overcome by LGBT allied advocacy:

• LGBT toleration is not against Chinese historical tradition. There are countries where historical tradition is legitimately in opposition with the fight to secure LGBT rights. China is not one of them. The core of heteronormativity doctrine that prevails today across the world is derived from Western Christian dogmatism. However, China has had a long history of homosexual toleration and practice before heteronormativity was imposed at gunpoint by the proliferation of Western Christian missionaries, whose allowance to propagandize the population was a stipulated condition enforced onto China after the First Opium War by the Treaty of Nanjing. Paradoxically, conservative groups intent on defending Chinese tradition are in reality preventing the restoration of China's historical tradition of toleration in favor of the 19th and 20th century Western imposed heteronormative dogmatism.
• The latest concern is that for those who see China's aging population as a national security threat, they consequently therefore see LGBT peoples as abetting this demographic trend. This interpretation of conjoining LGBT liberation with declining demographics is entirely unfounded. Not only is a truly LGBT tolerant society no obstacle to stable demography, this is putting the cart before the horse.
  • The principal impediment worldwide to declining fertility rates is the absurd cost of living for the global Gen Z and Millennial generations, particularly housing costs, and China is not an exception here. As usual with Western coverage of China, if they screech something is going to collapse the country, it's more likely a good policy decision. The recent popping of the real estate bubble is the government's campaign against the skyrocketing housing prices. The fixation on enforcing heteronormativity to "resolve" demographic trends is therefore completely misinterpreting the issue.
  • LGBT peoples are not categorically anti-natalists, the clarification of this point must be fully advocated. In the current medical context, LGBT peoples will only be a contributing drag on demographic conditions if they inhabit a social and legal jurisdiction which inhibits their ability to participate in child rearing. A society that establishes an institutional adoption progress by LGBT parent aspirants would find that they are no more proportionally inclined to anti-natalism than heteronormative peoples.
    • Additionally, the developing medical context in terms of reproductive technological advancements see the real possibility of neutralizing the biological hurdles to LGBT contribution towards birth. The promotion of achieving this technological condition would be entirely synergistic with China's national objective of ensuring the vanguard of a socialist state at the leading edge of human biosciences advancement.
• I've seen it suggested from a geopolitical basis that the calculus of securing the liberation of LGBT peoples would alienate China from its Global South colleagues whose societies face similar objections to advancing LGBT rights as neocolonial assaults on traditionist lines, along with the weird social conservative bedfellows that are currently chummy with China, like reactionary Russia and (wtf) the German AfD. The logic of this cynical argument must be connected to the reality that China, by its nature as a socialist state, alienates the capitalist elites (and therefore the media culture) of Global South and capitalism restoration countries like Russia far more than LGBT rights ever will. If the goal was to make Global South social conservatives happy, the logic of that sort of accomodation followed to its conclusion would lead to the overthrow of socialism in China. Rather, China must remain at the vanguard and set an independent standard for how the Global South can liberate LGBT peoples without resorting to the commercial and imperialist appropriation and two-faced perpetual legal and political semi-toleration of LGBT in the West.

I had a migraine session on reddit back when hogwarts legacy was released from arguing how blatant the racial coding of the goblins was. The game actually encapsulates how mindless it has become for this "head empty, genocide ready" mentality for designated "evil" races in modern fantasy to be readily used by writers and accepted wholesale by apparently most of the audience.

Beyond the already odious Jewish caricature borrowed from the original Harry Potter representation as greedy moneylenders, classic subconscious British liberal chauvinism by JKR, the game went further by making the goblins an antagonistic faction which uses militant means to secure their species rights. This is viewed by the protagonists through the same light that liberals view real world armed resistance groups of marginalized peoples like the Black Panthers and, of course, Palestinians.

The goblins canonically live in an apartheid state where they're relegated as financial serfs for the humans, with restrictions on magic use and unable to access the same educational institutions that humans do. Yet, because Ranrok (their leader) chose violence (along with doing plot nonsense bad things to justify their elimination), the usual liberal exclamation of "they've gone too far and ruined the purity of their victimhood" comes up. There is literally a comprador goblin by the name of Arn who opposes Ranrok's movement and bemoans (in a chud dialogue scene) that "While I would like to see goblinkind treated by wizards as equals, bloodshed is not the answer."

This typical liberal sentiment, the same one even MLK denounced in his Birmingham Jail letter, is wildly hilarious when applied to the Harry Potter universe. Ranrok is defeated, so certainly his violent ways must be disproven by a vindication of the liberal "peaceful gradualism" theory right? Except the game is set a full century before the books, and so we know that canonically absolutely nothing has changed in human-goblin race relations nor would goblin rights improve even a single inch. Dumbass comprador Arn's fantasy of a "diplomatic end to the discord with wizardkind" still has predictably made zero progress in a hundred years, and ever onwards considering J.K. "Elves love slavery" Rowling never cared about addressing the racial apartheid of the setting.

Also, the protagonist is a full blown psychotic terrorist who literally shouts "Your blood is on Ranrok's hands" as they murder goblinfolk- all while being an underage Hogwarts student. This last bit tore apart the cognitive dissonance far enough that even the reddit crowd started memeing about it (and of course, there were the customary apologists in there explainbroing how this was all still OK and kosher).