Morning Comrades!
I hope that everyone is well and that especially my friends here in Europe got through this first heat wave halfway unscorched. With all the more in depth topics that I enjoy covering here lots and lots of interesting, often concerning but occasionally hopeful material gets left in my drafts here and today I am going to share most of them with you.
Sharing all this readily available information still brings so much joy to me, and despite the dystopian surveillance nightmare large parts of the internet have become there are still these beacons of information, knowledge and opinions from hugely interesting people around, that fascinates me. Also, as this dispatch arrives in your inbox by Friday morning I like using that time to drop all this interesting info on you for you to take into your weekends, those brief moments of potential peace.
With that, and since the people at substack ( who, unlike everyone else in social media, actually listen to what the writers want ) have now offered us a new tool, I am going to use this to find out how you feel about these Friday Dumps.
To start, let’s start with some tunes, this weeks jams to be sure. Here is the link:
It Is Dark, but I Sing Because the Morning Will Come
This is a brilliant read and an even more fascinating story that I knew very little about from the Tricontinental. Essentially it covers the story of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil. “Formed in 1984 during the military dictatorship (1964–85), the MST grew out of agricultural workers’ and peasants’ occupations of latifúndios, gigantic estates held by wealthy individuals and corporations. Over the past four decades, these farmers have taken control of millions of hectares of land across Brazil, forming the largest social movement in Latin America.”
Even more fascinating is their deeply rooted political and philosophical understanding and application of Gramscian Theory. If this is interesting to you, please read this here - it should be, this is truly a fascinating actionable political theory that whenever used, works. The revolutions against the ecocidal western capitalism are happening across the Global South, and we are all here for it. Get in on this.
Internet For The People By The People
Hugely exciting news out of India, where Kerala KFON secured an ISP licence and thus is able to provide internet to millions of people outside of the usual corporate fuckery. I know this sounds wildly irrelevant to most of us here in the “west” but read this story and figure out how this, can be potentially a way forward for everyone, to escape the insanity and monopoly of our realities.
The CIA and FACEBOOK/META
Speaking of the continuing fuckery aka narrative control by the dying death star emperors here in the “west”, by all means, read this story but be warned, it’ll piss you off. In what feels a decade long weekly cycle of “holy shit” revelations, here is another one for you - after it was released that twitter has pretty much the same HR policy, hire ex cops, coup organizer and killers -
“It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see.
Aaron is being interviewed in a bright warehouse-turned-studio. He is wearing a purple sweater and blue jeans. He comes across as a very likable, smiley person. It is not an easy job, of course, but someone has to make those calls. “Transparency is incredibly important in the work that I do,” he says.
Aaron is CIA.”
Silicon Valley Against All Workers, Everywhere
This story sure disappeared quickly out of the mainstream narrative but it’s important to bookmark, read, understand and take with you. I enjoy Paris Marx’s writings even I don’t agree with it all, it’s precise, concise and easy to understand. As far as these tech companies go, hell, I don’t trust any of them and before any will even stutter a word I automatically consider them class enemies of the highest order until proven ( usually by their demise ) differently. Uber has always been a scam but holy shit balls of corruption, get into this story to see just how deep capital goes in regards to politics and your life.
Money vs. Empathy
I thoroughly enjoyed this dispatch from Andrew Keen ( just click on the above text ) and I think you will too. It’s a little dystopian but nails many realities on the head.
“The answer, of course, to the question of why we are trying to outsource empathy, is money. The holy grail of artificial intelligence is mimicking humans by creating algorithms that can understand and share the feelings of others. There’s serious money, trillions and trillions of dollars, in mimicry. But like other technological holy grails—from social networks to cryptocurrency—this quest to invent non-human empathy probably isn’t going to end well.”
The Atlantic Archive
Think of the Atlantic what you will, but even just as a historical resource this is magnificent - 165 years of journalism all scanned, indexed and available for free, online. This is what the damn internet was made for and I figured you would be too.
A/V Infotainment
That is it for this week comrades. Thank you for coming by, sticking around, your time, attention, support and interest. For the entirety of the working classes, always and forever and a better tomorrow.
Yours, without compromise,
V.