我吃红烧牛肉的时候，我觉得我再在中国。你们最爱吃什么吃饭？你会说普通话吗？我只说一点点，虽然我觉得中文的语法很难但是我爱学习中文。

Thirty-six-year-old Chen Wang, from southeastern China, said he decided to come to the U.S. in late 2021 after he posted comments critical of the ruling party on Twitter. He was admonished by local police and feared that he could be imprisoned.

More than two years later, he is still unemployed and lives in a tent in the woods that he has made into a home. Chen described his fellow Chinese on the journey as simply people “chasing a better life.”

Big oof there buddy. Came to the wrong place.

I stopped using Amazon a while back, but it was where I got all my books for a long time. I do thriftbooks mostly now, and try to buy directly from publishers when it’s a newer book, but I’m always interested in finding new spots to cop some sweet books.

Is just such a shock from being in China. Just got harassed and essentially threatened for being a socialist. They searched my bags and commented on my China flag and my little red books and my copy of Blackshirts and Reds. Fucking police state. The security in China is strict, but they don’t give a fuck about your thoughts, whereas this guy was very aggressive about “consequences” for being a socialist.

God damn I fucking love China. It is so nice here. Little things, like sidewalks being wider, make such a huge difference. Tomorrow I’m going to the tomb of the second Khan of the Jing Dynasty and first emperor of the Qing dynasty. It’s literally just chilling in a public park, and you pay like ¥5 to go inside and check it out. So much history just bursting at the seams, and yet it still feels so much more modern than my home state in many ways.

They’ve also been sandbagging negotiations for the last 9 months, the union today is on a march, no strike action yet.

It’s so frustrating trying to talk to Americans about foreign policy. Most recently, we have all these stories about China stopping western warplanes from entering Chinese territory being spun as Chinese aggression. As if flying armed jets less than 100 miles off the coast of a country you threaten on a near-daily basis isn’t threatening them. No one even questions why these jets are flying so near Chinese airspace. What business does a Canadian jet have off the coast of China, other than to threaten and intimidate? I mean, the most recent one was literally on a mission to intimidate North Korea. Fucking frustrating.

I just found this band and I am in love with every song they do. It’s so elegant, and the composition is really on point.

Was going through my notes and came across this quote I saved from somewhere, might have been here honestly. Funny how we’re still dealing with this same conversation one and three quarters centuries later.

Excerpt of Condition of the Working Class in England, by Engels, 1845

from the section titled "The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie Towards the Proletariat"

Let no one believe, however, that the "cultivated" Englishman openly brags with his egotism. On the contrary, he conceals it under the vilest hypocrisy. What? The wealthy English fail to remember the poor? They who have founded philanthropic institutions, such as no other country can boast of! Philanthropic institutions forsooth! As though you rendered the proletarians a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then practising your self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to press, in the shape of an alms, the brand of degradation upon his brow. But let us hear the English bourgeoisie's own words. It is not yet a year since I read in the Manchester Guardian the following letter to the editor, which was published without comment as a perfectly natural, reasonable thing:

"MR. EDITOR,– For some time past our main streets are haunted by swarms of beggars, who try to awaken the pity of the passers-by in a most shameless and annoying manner, by exposing their tattered clothing, sickly aspect, and disgusting wounds and deformities. I should think that when one not only pays the poor-rate, but also contributes largely to the charitable institutions, one had done enough to earn a right to be spared such disagreeable and impertinent molestations. And why else do we pay such high rates for the maintenance of the municipal police, if they do not even protect us so far as to make it possible to go to or out of town in peace? I hope the publication of these lines in your widely- circulated paper may induce the authorities to remove this nuisance; and I remain,– Your obedient servant, "A Lady."

There you have it! The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!" It is infamous, this charity of a Christian bourgeois! And so writes "A Lady"; she does well to sign herself such, well that she has lost the courage to call herself a woman! But if the "Ladies" are such as this, what must the "Gentlemen" be? It will be said that this is a single case; but no, the foregoing letter expresses the temper of the great majority of the English bourgeoisie, or the editor would not have accepted it, and some reply would have been made to it, which I watched for in vain in the succeeding numbers. And as to the efficiency of this philanthropy, Canon Parkinson himself says that the poor are relieved much more by the poor than by the bourgeoisie; and such relief given by an honest proletarian who knows himself what it is to be hungry, for whom sharing his scanty meal is really a sacrifice, but a sacrifice borne with pleasure, such help has a wholly different ring to it from the carelessly-tossed alms of the luxurious bourgeois.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch13.htm

I’m learning Chinese, and would love to have some people to chat with. I’m not good, for sure, but I really enjoy it a lot!

你好叫我BartsBigBugBag！我是美国人，我是社会主义者。我明年希望去中国陆游。我是学生的汉语。你说汉语吗？你怎么样？你现在做什么？你明白我的汉语吗？谢谢你！

…I think that reveals something about the hidden class dimensions of our public policy; our grocery bills are determined, the policies, determined by people, who themselves never go to supermarkets.

Our health policy is written out y people who never have to sit for 2 hours in a clinic or an hour in a doctors office.

Our transportation policy is made by people who never have to wait for a bus or look for a parking space, they’ve got helicopters and linos to hurry them away.

Our education policy is made by people who never have to send their children to public school, they send them to private schools(cough polis cough).

Our daycare system, or lack of, determined by people who use private governesses and Nannies, and then go off to Smith College as Barbara Bush did, and lectured to the students there about not being so concerned about accomplishing in your careers and understand that the real joy and satisfaction is in the working and nurturing of children…

… occupational safety laws are made by people who never have to work in a factory or mine. The Supreme Court has ruled that wildcat strikes are illegal, a “violation of contract.” In coal mines , wildcat strikes are the workers only defense against occupational hazards that can be disastrous in a day. You’re going down a mine and you see a foreman detach an alarm wire, that rings the alarm if there’s too much smoke buildup, because he’s got a quota to meet that day and he doesn’t want to stop for smoke buildup, so you stop and go on wildcat strike.

Well, the Supreme Court, none of whom have been NEAR a factory in their lives, or NEAR a mine, and wouldn’t know one end of a mine from another, legislate and say, “as long as there’s a grievance procedure (grievances take a week, two weeks, a month….)That wildcat actions are a “violation of contract and the union must be fined.”

You see? The policy is being made by people who don’t experience the thing.

-Michael Parenti, transcribed by hand from a random speech