Taken from today's Working Class History Instagram Post

On this day, 12 August 2017, 32-year-old anti-racist Heather Heyer was killed and dozens injured in a white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heather was one of thousands of people protesting against a Unite the Right rally of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan activists and other white nationalists and antisemites, when she was hit by a car driven at speed deliberately into the crowd by a 20-year-old Nazi, who was pictured previously on the Unite the Right protest holding a shield emblazoned with the logo of Vanguard America, a far right group. Elsewhere in the city, another group of fascists attacked and viciously beat DeAndre Harris, a young Black education worker, leaving him with spinal and other injuries. President Donald Trump said some of the neo-Nazis were "very fine people".

I'm sure for many of us, it felt like the death of Comrade Heyer was a pivotal moment in our understanding of the fight against fascism. We knew who'd be on the streets to fight, who would be out there against us, and most importantly, who would not be there at all. There's still that danger for standing opposed to fascism, but we fight, because we have to, because the violence will be there regardless, because not everyone can, or not everyone will. It's the only check against the coming tide of fascism.

And thanks to @marxisthayaca for suggesting this, I'll include their whole post here.

Could you link to her funeral service: https://youtu.be/CAoqhV48Avg. The stories memorializing our comrade, need to live on.

Thank you for writing this. :comrades:

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So only one winner for last round and it's comrade @OgdenTO so :rat-salute: nice work comrade.

Previous answer

Yes: (3,5), (4,7), (6,10), (8,13) (9, 15), (11,18), (12,20)… [This series of numbers pairs is closely related to Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio. The first pair differ by 1, the second pair by 2, and the nth by n. Every positive integer appears once and only once in the series of pairs.

A quick addition

These six-digit numbers:

328,645

491,221

816,304

117,586

671,355

508,779

183,696

882,414

can be grouped mentally and added in 8 seconds. How?

Like usual have fun :soviet-heart: and remember to dm the M:soviet-bottom: less @Wmill the answer.

I was going to go with a different topic today, but this seemed more relevant, and it was about another passing. But I'll save it for a later date. I'm also announcing a special Mega coming up!

  • LeninsRage [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated so catastrophically so quickly it has not only exceeded my most pessimistic predictions, it has put South Vietnam in a better light.

    • WeedReference420 [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The BBC pulled up a map of Afghanistan showing who controlled what and it was all either Taliban controlled or a rapidly collapsing frontline, it blew my mind a little bit. It's been what, days since the pullout?

      They also had some Obama era ghoul huffing pure copeium talking about how a UK/US alliance may return to Afghanistan soon to finish off the Taliban or some shit. Verhoevenesque vibes all around.

      • inshallah2 [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        a UK/US alliance may return to Afghanistan

        The Coalition of the Deluded?

        Seriously - what would they they call victory? Or even a partial victory. At least the US might use an F-35 that has some kind of hardware or software or mechanical error that makes it freezes up in the sky, doesn't let the pilot eject, and it crashes to earth killing the hapless pilot at a cost of $50,000,000 or whatever the fucking cost per plane is.

        And then - of course - the military would get caught lying by blaming pilot error.

          • LeninsRage [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah, Herat and reportedly Kandahar both fell today, so the Taliban have proven they can in fact take the major urban centers, which I didn't expect this early.

            I was chatting with someone who apparently has a more intimate understanding of the situation right now and they were saying a big reason these incredible gains by the Taliban is the endemic corruption in the Afghan army, which is par for the course for wherever the US empire "nation-builds". Officers have been embezzling money that should have been paid to the rank-and-file enlisted men, so in many cases the Taliban are just going up and making promises to lower local taxes or w/e and people just go home.

              • LeninsRage [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Iraq had/has this problem too, this comment was one of my first ever saved comments using Reddit from way back in 2014/2015. Actually relevant section:

                So take all that in and imagine you're a typical Iraqi young man that shows up for training. You look around and everyone you see doesn't give a fuck about whats going on as long as they get a paycheck and a rifle. You notice people don't show up the next day. Your Iraqi officers aren't picked by meritocracy like the U.S. Army but by who is a Shia or who is rich. Everyone talks about how ISIS takes no prisoners and how Iraqi bases surrender en masse. You look at each others cellphones and see Iraqi soldiers get executed in droves.

                That's what I saw when I tried to train them. 1 out of 50 loved their country and tried hard. Some of them would show up very excited to get trained by the U.S. Army but by the end of the week most just kept their rifles and never returned. Half the ones that did stay would take our training and go home just to protect their neighborhoods against the opposing Sunni/Shia in their religious wars that were fought between mosques. None of them really saw the training as a tool to protect their country because they had little sense of nationalism.

                I imagine things are very similar still. They probably have corrupt officers that are only chosen because of their connections to the ruling Shia elite. Those officers get X amount of money and weaponry to train X amount of soldiers that don't show up. They probably take the money and guns and distribute them based on their own micro loyalties to neighborhood and family.

                  • LeninsRage [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    No the project of "nation-building" in Iraq and Afghanistan was quite sincere. The neocons were enthusiastic and explicit imperialists who believed in this new century they could indeed use America's military might to burn down and rebuild the world in America's image, one enemy at a time.

                    The problem is that liberal capitalism -especially in this hyper-consumerist, hyper-individualist, postmodernist neoliberal form - completely lacks any sort of sanctified moral heart to its society whatsoever. Religious fundamentalism has devotion to God; communism a vision of transforming society and moving the wheel of history; ethnic nationalism a sense of nationhood and racial destiny. Neoliberal capitalism dissolves every sacred value and community institution...and replaces it with vapid commodity consumption. It seeks to replace every sacred value and form of identity a citizen previously held dear with a slavish devotion to the Free Market.

                    So inevitably, a "nation-building" project following neoliberal principles, foreign invaders imposing such a regime, can only produce an entirely hollow and rickety national apparatus that is built on untold mountains of corruption, looting, and graft. Nothing is sacred anymore except getting your share of the loot and making a quick buck. And this will produce an inevitable backlash, especially in regions sharply divided by ethnic or religious sectarianism, especially when the "democracy" you establish is a stagnant, frozen system of reshuffling offices between the same set of local magnates with elaborately corrupt patron-client networks.

      • LeninsRage [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The comprador regime will be lucky to last another month, so