Image is of a crowd protesting in Athens.
Last week, on Friday, hundreds of thousands of Greeks poured into the streets to strike and protest on the second anniversary of the deadliest train crash in Greek history, in which 57 people died when a passenger train collided with a freight train. On this February 28th, public transportation was virtually halted, with train drivers, air traffic controllers, and seafarers taking part in a 24 hour strike - alongside other professions like lawyers, teachers, and doctors.
The train crash is emblematic of the decay of state institutions brought about from austerity being forced on Greece in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession, in which the IMF and the EU (particularly Germany) plundered the country and forced privatization. While Greece has somewhat recovered from the dire straits it was in during the early 2010s, the consequences of neoliberalism are very clearly ongoing. Mitsotakis' right-wing government has still not even successfully implemented the necessary safety procedures two years on, and so far, nobody has been convicted nor punished for their role in the accident. The austerity measures were deeply unpopular inside Greece and yet the government did not respond to, or ignored, democratic outcry.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
A number of schools in Hunan, Anhui and Zhejiang provinces in China have recently started implementing a new policy of 2-day off week for high schoolers, and have sparked quite a debate among parents and netizens in China.
China can be a magical place sometimes. The level of extreme competition has intensified in recent years to such an extent that it is taking a toll on everyone’s daily lives, and I don’t blame the people who want to emigrate to Western countries at all. I know many Chinese immigrants overseas who don’t want to put their kids through this.
A society doing this to their children is profoundly sick. (As are western societies, to be clear).
This is sadly common in East Asian culture.
South Korea is just as tough if not even worse. The CSAT started in 2006, and while gaokao exams took place over 2-3 days, for CSAT, students have to finish the exams for all 6 subjects in just over 8 hours.
There was a South Korean documentary made in 2016 (공부의배신 Betrayal of Study) that examined the lives of high school students. One girl slept only 4 hours every night, took 5-6 doses of coffee to stay awake, spent more than 10 hours practicing writing on exam papers that her fingers formed blisters and started to bleed. She ended up tying the pen to her finger with a knot and kept going.
I watched the documentary with Chinese subtitle but unfortunately couldn’t find any source with English subtitle, otherwise I’d link it because it’s quite revealing.
Parents spend tons of money to get their kids to private tuition classes. According to a survey, there are now 3 times more private tuition centers in South Korea than there are convenience stores.
For the students, this is their one shot to get a white collar job after graduation.
This was actually one of the themes explored in the film Parasite and there are layers that can be easily missed by the audience if you’re not familiar with the societal competitive pressure exerted upon the students.
I think this is the key problem underlying all of this. Asian parents and students are not irrational, they are reacting rationally to a brutal system. You can not blame them for doing what it takes to achieve what is considered a good and materially safe life.
A society in which you only get one shot at "the good life" is inevitably going to promote this sort of behaviours.
A less severe variant of the same mechanisms can be seen in the west where increased social stratification has made the educational system more competitive and led to alarming levels of anxiety and other mental health issues among young people.
You can treat symptoms to some extent by banning private tuition or by making ad campaigns telling young people how awesome it is to get a trade job instead of pursuing academic training but it is always going to be a bandaid.
The radical response, the one that goes to the root of the problem, is to construct the economy in such a way that social recognition and material comfort is not a privilege for the meritorious few but a fact of life for the masses. An advanced economy needs engineers, doctors and accountants but it also needs carpenters, binmen and truck drivers. The idea of your kids growing up to have an average position in society should be comforting, not terrifying.
That is so depressing to read, everything about it is sad.
It seems this plan doesn’t address the root of the problem, so I can see how parents might get upset. It sounds like there needs to be some fundamental restructuring of the university system or something like that.
How much is the university entrance stuff "real" vs cultural high demand on kids/students? Like can people generally get into a college and get a good education but it just isn't the super "prestigious" schools?
I've seen the study hours for the gaokao. It gets very, very intense.
this is child abuse. rare china L
To what extent is this caused by lack of access to higher education? Or, rather, would this problem be alleviated by more openings or are things so competitive that nobody cares to be the 2nd best student in the 2nd best med school in the country?
I know that historically china had a large bureaucratic state where people from all strands of society could "in theory" become state officials if they manage to pass the exams. Unlike in europe where you basically doomed to your lot in life, except maybe through the church, but even then it was bascially just noble kids that got high in the ranks.
So the high focus on education seem to be longer prevalent than in european cultures.
The interesting part about the Imperial Exam in ancient China is that it was literally created for the Emperors to reassert their control over the feudal aristocrat classes.
China is a large country and throughout the dynasties and even periods within a dynasty, aristocratic factions (usually formed based on geographical boundaries) vie for control over the country and the entrenched class holds a lot of sway over the imperial policies, with the most prominent one being the Guanlong group that has massively entrenched over the late Northern/Southern Dynasty and the ensuing Sui and Tang dynasties.
Often times, when a new Emperor ascends to the throne, those with ambitions would want to establish their own power base, and the imperial examination was one such mechanism to recruit talents from the lower classes (寒门) to fill the ranks. Note that these officials who are born in the lower class are still treated as a different class in the Imperial Court even though they work directly for the Emperor. Such is the social structure of feudal societies.
I’m not too familiar with European history, but I would guess that the European nation states were too small to allow for such fierce internal division of aristocratic factions. The Emperor of China ruled over a huge territory and when one dynasty overthrows the other, the new government cannot simply replace the local provincial courts with its own people as that would quickly lead to rebellions. So substantive change has to take place slowly and insidiously, while at the same time, such arrangement naturally opened up the spaces for influential vested interests to form over time.
In European history, aristocratic factions also very much existed based on regional power - eg anyone with the surname Dudley or Warwick had immense sway over who was on the throne of England for several hundred years, because they held military power in the form of private armies (retainers) and could choose whether to back up the king with that power or not.
They were tiny by comparison. The Kingdom of France was considered big by (Western) European standards and it was smaller than Nanzhao. The small size of European polities also meant they didn't need a giant feudal bureaucracy.
Around the year 2000, many Chinese universities began to massively expand their enrollment number. So, the competition occurred because there is now a chance for everyone to get into university. For the students, this is their one shot to get a white collar job after graduation.
As you know, education is very important in East Asian society, and being able to get a white collar job not only means higher pay but also reflects a certain status. This is exacerbated by the fact that many Chinese parents only have one child, so they’d do anything to make sure that their kids can have a shot to enter universities.
You can even see this kind of mentality persisted in Asian parents who have immigrated to Western countries which has become the Asian parent stereotype.
My impression is that competition for its own sake has become culturally endemic in the region and I was hoping to challenge that notion. Maybe, I reasoned, there are enough openings in East Asian universities to give everyone a chance, but crucially not enough to make that chance a reasonable one. Therefore if enrollment numbers increased even further, you'd still have competition for the top university spots but the competition wouldn't be so fierce.
However, I suppose it doesn't matter if everyone who wants to become engineers and doctors actually can when the competition is downstream from those guaranteed high status, high paying jobs.
In my experience it’s not about raw numbers or an endemic culture of competition so much as generational trauma and perfectionism. China is still only 2 generations out from the Cultural Revolution. My parents were in the first wave to go to university after it ended and for them, a difference of .5 marks meant falling 50 places in the rankings and losing their only shot. Even though I grew up in the west, that anxiety passed down in the way they raised me.
The other thing about Chinese culture is that we are obsessed with optimising. Everything should be done in the most efficient way possible. And so for a lot of kids the pressure isn’t so much about competition but about achieving an ideal of perfection. It’s taken years of work to unlearn that for me.
How are these "weekend packages" skirting the ban on private tutoring that's been in place since 2021? I assume it's not that hard given the parents will do anything to get them and they're not online so you can structure it as a club or something, but curious what the reaction of regulatory officials has been.
Short answer is the parents simply don’t care.
This is nothing new. South Korea has tried banning private tuition years ago. In fact, the South Korean government went so far as to canceling middle school and high school admission tests, and introduced a system that randomly allocates students to high schools to eliminate “elite schools” and to prevent parents from gaming the system.
This merely drove the parents to send their kids to private tuition, which the South Korean government also tried banning. None of this is going to work. In a system where securing a white collar job at Samsung is literally going to change your life, parents will do everything - no matter how illegal it is - to make sure their kids have a shot at this.
All the punitive tax through law enforcement on private tuition is only going to drive up the costs of education, with parents willing to dish out more and more of their monthly income to ensure that their kids can gain even a slight advantage over their peers. It also drives up administrative cost because good luck taking down all the illegal tuition centers (and many businesses have dozens of inventive ways to skirt the rules like turning them into “training courses for parents that happen to involve students”).
In a society where education is given the utmost priority, the end result is that your average household is going to spend even less on other stuff, and drags down the economy as a whole.
Without a true reform on the education system and the economic structure at large, you’re merely treating the symptoms.
theyre not, the police get kickbacks and look the other way so long as people upstairs arent pressured to 'do something'
there are routine inspections but heads up will be given so people can clear out ahead of time
as demographics shift, the problem of education (elite overproduction) will fix itself to some degree (50% hs admittance cutoff already relaxing, blue collar work is more and more well compensated as labor pool shrinks), but it wont go away without massive reforms, which will likely not happen as there are too many people who benefit from the way it is currently set up, same as hukou
this case of education and its motivating factors is a great example of superstructure shaping base, how pecuniary emulation remains a relevant, perhaps even marxist, concept even today, and is a primary driver of why the asian diaspora, particularly in america, is so dependent on white supremacy for its continued existence
What does pecuniary emulation mean?
A different term for "social climber" basically. People putting themselves into situations where they devote their labor to climbing the ladder and emulating the lifestyles of those above them thereby reinforcing the current state of things.
The most extreme version of it would probably be the Wealth Gospel trend in America, where the actions of millions of proletarians are shifted into a form of emulation of the wealthy thereby algning their interests with the wealthy in practice. They will work against their own interests for the possibility of becoming their oppressor.
This reminds me of your post comparing the work conditions of car factories, with workers organizing to demand more hours from their bosses.
It seems like changing the gaokao and university entrance process is the only way to alleviate the concerns of giving kids more time off, which should be encouraged. I had heard school was competitive, but high schoolers at school for over 100 hours a week really puts it into perspective. How long is a school day before high school?
I went to elementary school in China for two years, in grade 2 + 3 (age 6-8). I arrived at school at 7:45am for pre-class prep, and left at 5:30 usually. I think classes were until 4:30 or 5. This was back in the mid 90s and I’m fairly sure it got worse after I left
Thanks for sharing your experience. Was there a lot of play and art and such things that could be considered fun by kids or did it already start feeling like preparing for academia at that age?
There was no play other than at break times, it was a full schedule of classes. In the summer we got an extra hour for lunch though so we could have a nap. It was funny because you had to have a nap in that time - at home room after lunch everyone who didn’t have a nap had to admit to it and explain why they didn’t 🤭
We had art classes - it was mostly learning to draw as I recall. The school didn’t have a lot of money for stuff like art supplies back then. The classes I remember were: Chinese (learning characters, making words, reading texts, memorising poems, writing short essays); maths (we had to memorise the times table up to 9 and each recite it individually for the headmaster who graded us on it - most terrifying moment of my life at the time! Also I remember doing basic algebra); civics (actually my favourite, it was mostly about learning to contribute to society and not being selfish); art; and PE. I’m sure there must have been science, history, and geography but I can’t remember them at all.
We had little red neck scarves made of silk which were a sign of your pride in the country / communism. I remember being so chuffed the day I got mine as I’d heard a rumour that you wouldn’t get one if you weren’t a good student and I didn’t know if I’d make the grade since I had moved home from abroad and was behind in everything. We also learned how to use an abacus to do arithmetic and calligraphy. We had flag raising every week and outdoor stretches every morning. There were ~50 kids in my class I think!
Our teacher was strict but super caring and kind. I remember every time when we got homework back from the teacher, she would ask everyone who got 100% to stand up and everyone else would admire them. One time in Chinese class she did that and I was the only one who stood up! Proudest moment ever. She then remarked to the rest of the class “this kid only started learning to write this year, y’all have no excuse” lolll suckers
Middle school (Grades 7-9) isn’t as intense, but in Grade 9 most students will take the admission tests for ordinary high schools (普高).
Only half of the middle schoolers will succeed in entering an ordinary high school, which will then set them off the path towards taking the gaokao, while the rest who failed will go to vocational or technical schools.
The pressure is still there, and some say it’s even harder than gaokao to get into a good ordinary high school (schools with resources that give greater likelihood for their students to succeed).
Thanks for this insight.
One more question I have, if you don't mind humoring me: if parents in China didn't care about pushing their kid to be successful via these metrics, can a child go through this education system without having to be put through such intense pressures? Does the school itself enforce as much as the parents are, or is it more an issue of parental pressure than baked into the education track ?
Damn that's sad. Definitely the Government should clamp down on cultural bads.