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Majlis-e-Librandu - November 20, 2024
This is a place where you can discuss or share anything you want. What was the latest movie you watched? Did you read any books recently? Got any interesting news to share? Apolitical discussions, book/podcast/movie recommendations, memes and Q&A are also permitted.
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https://redd.it/1gvioze
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In Sambhal, UP petition was filed on Tuesday claiming the Sambhal Jama Masjid is a Devi Mandir converted into mosque by Babur, The court immediately heard the petition, accepted the petition and ordered survey and by evening the survey team reached the mosque, completed the survey.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bareilly/court-orders-controversial-survey-of-sambhal-jama-masjid-amid-temple-claims/articleshow/115460473.cms
https://redd.it/1gv3me0
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Just got called a commie. How do I begin?
I just got called a commie by some Sanghi. Idk much abt it. Where do I sign up? When will my commie card be delivered? Do I have to wear red chaddis for the rest of my life? Please guide.
https://redd.it/1guymr2
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BJP’s advertisement from the Jharkhand elections.
https://redd.it/1gut3v8
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Is Crop Burning the main culprit of smog in India?
https://redd.it/1gumach
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The RSS legal front’s increasing hold over the judicial system
https://caravanmagazine.in/law/adhivakta-parishad-rss-hold-judicial-system
https://redd.it/1gun69i
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Manipur's Shocking Reality, My Crazy Experience inside the Conflict
https://youtu.be/EaWQmaFCm2c?si=qByl4VgPSYSQI7W6
https://redd.it/1gu2he8
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Normalise pissing on bjp supporters who are worried about minorities in pak and Bangladesh
BJP supporters worried about minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, is equivalent to Hitler advocating for human rights like that is just load of bs
https://redd.it/1gu3cug
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Why Do Gulf States Stay Silent on Gaza?
https://frontline.thehindu.com/world-affairs/arab-countries-gaza-conflict-hamas-israel-war-middle-east-saudi-arabia-palestinian-cause-abraham-accords-gulf-states/article68782463.ece
https://redd.it/1gu1fn7
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Socialism is Compatible with Religion. In fact, if you're religious, you SHOULD be a Socialist.
https://redd.it/1gtx8om
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the wilderness to live in isolation.
To be honest, this movie was a banger. No doubts. Incredible. Chef's kiss. This made my childhood awesome. But it would be unfair of me to exempt this movie of its sin- reestablishment Status Quo.
MewTwo, radicalized by their time with Dr. Fuji and Giovani, decided to take matters in their own tiny little three fingered hands, but then convinced to drop the act of revolution. Let me elaborate on why I think this propagates the status quo, but also why MewTwo ways for revolution were flawed by design.
MewTwo way of defiance was to make clones of the Pokémon of the trainers who were able to brave the storm and reach his gym, and then make the clones fight the originals. This goes against all the doctrines MewTwo (supposedly) stood up for. MewTwo didn't seem to fight for freeing Pokémon but rather replacing the ownership. To him. Their methods were wrong. It was unfair, ridiculous and ethically disingenuous of them to utilize the tactics of the oppressor in order to bring about meaningful change. MewTwo was in the wrong for doing so and it's unconscionable. This fails the test of optics. Hence, it became easy to paint MewTwo as the antagonist whose worldview was skewed and ways of reform being disagreeable. Narratively, this is really well written. But in isolation, it doesn't hold up.
But notwithstanding my disagreements with the narrative choice of characterizing MewTwo as an out-of-touch powerhouse, I still think there was a certain level of sympathy associated with MewTwo character that wasn't utilized. This wave of sympathy the audience resonated with was cheaply cut out of the climax, where there was no call to understand the position of Pokémon and the need for reforms in society.
The anecdote of Ash's loving relationship with Pikachu is leveraged in the story to prove that humans deserve to enslave Pokémon, and how trainers who harass and abuse their Pokémon are an exception. This negates whatever understanding we have of the systems and institutes of the canon world of Pokémon. A system where Pokémon are forced into gladiator style matches while the human master puppets their every move. Without the abolition of such tournaments, I refuse to call the canon Pokémon world civil by any means.
# Conclusion
MewTwo's ambitions were justified, methods were poorly thought of. But the sudden pivot towards pacificism due to some divine introspection was representative of conservative rhetoric. We have seen of the lib-con mainstream has pushed progressive and revolutionary left to the fringes and often called it "irrational". The character arch of MewTwo echoes this sentiment. Not only has the Pokémon franchise embedded itself with fascist subtexts, but when it had a chance for redeeming and rethinking their aforementioned subtexts, they fumbled the bag with it. I am disappointed.
Edit- Now that I think about it, MewTwo is sort of a class traitor on multiple fronts. Cool.
I won't deny that there is some added nuance to the Pokémon story with the addition of the Team Rocket trio, who in my opinion represent queer anarchism, but this tangent is for another day. For the sake of brevity, I have tried to avoid needless tangents.
But do I still love Pokémon and hold it dearly and tenderly to my nostalgic heart? FUCK YES!
Thanks for bearing with me. Ciao!
https://redd.it/1gtp9x6
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MewTwo- Revolutionary Leader or Brainwashed Hack? (Yappology 101)
https://preview.redd.it/fwd81g55fj1e1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=c059b3dba1377572065fc41e964069ba6dfc5f04
# Disclaimer
This is a shitpost of sorts. Might delete later. Also, my analysis of Pokémon is incredibly reductive where I don't consider the protagonists of the series (Ash Ketchum and his team) into the equation and largely focus on the subtext of the series and the implied polity of the canon world.
# What devil has possessed me to write this?
Most of my left-wing radicalization eventuated because of video essays and dissections of popular media by left-leaning content creators. Many might underestimate persuasive merit of videos like The Marxist Analysis of Shrek which can catalyze the process of class consciousness. I would like to contribute by the same token and ruin some of my (and possibly yours) favorite childhood cartoons, shows and movies in the process. But I must inform you that I am not an expert in Leftist theory and have quite a shallow understanding of these academically dense and intricate tenets. So please feel free to school me if need come be.
# Today's Subject......Slavery Sips Tea☕
I shall henceforth move ahead with the presumption that the reader has an understanding of what Pokémon is, so allow me to cut to the chase. Pokémon has complicitly propagated the idea of slavery and animal cruelty. The whole show is foundationally about anthropocentricity, the celebration of human achievement, how humans are superior in contrast to their furry friends. Pokémon are trapped in tiny balls (Ash's Pikachu being an exception) and brought out for blood sports. They're drilled to fight, they're trained into combat each other for the whims and jocularity of the human, and can canonically die while doing so. Much like the Coliseum, Pokémon are objectified as gladiators. Wild Pokémon try to ignore humans and mind their own business to no fruition.
The treatment most Pokémon are subjected to in the series parallels slavery through the Middle Ages till modern era slavery. The implications are disturbing.
>Pokémon is a universe where celebrated slavers wander the world trapping wild and magical creatures so they can drill them to fight in painful blood sports. These Pokémon, quite contented with their natural habitat, want nothing to do with “trainers,” and so they have to be lured by treats or threats. True, most trainers love and care for their Pokémon slaves, but their pets (?) still exist for the sole purpose of battling other creatures. Most wild Pokémon will avoid conflict and will only attack a human trainer out of fear........In many religions, the word “stewardship” is used. This is the idea that whatever superior human talents we have make us best placed to protect and nurture the natural world, not to exploit it. In Christianity, Genesis declares that “God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” In Islam, the word “khalifah” (from which we get caliphate or caliph) means both “ruler” and “leader,” but also “steward.” To be in charge is to also care for those you’re charged with. In Buddhism’s Second Precept, “do not steal” extends to the environment and all species — they do not belong to us and they are not ours to take. Pokémon trainers and animal fighters see the world as an exploitable resource, rather than something that needs nurturing.
(Source)
....in the vast majority of cases, slavery in the Roman world is a pretty rotten deal, and not what any sane person would describe as consensual. Most slaves were probably better off than the African slaves on American plantations, but that’s not exactly saying much (and the worst-case scenario for a slave in the Roman world – working in the mines of Syracuse – is basically a death sentence)......Depending on their situation, they [Greek slaves\] might receive pocket money or (if they lived in a city) be allowed to run small businesses,
people enough for them to afford basic necessities like food is also social murder, although the government is trying to mitigate that by handouts, otherwise the deaths would be too great to hide. Global Hunger Index says that hunger in India is serious and ranks it 105^(th) out of 127 countries.
Yet due to the indirect nature of the crime, social murder and social harm are overshadowed by Identity Politics in India. Instead of nurturing class solidarity politicians divide the working class by religion, caste and creed. All kinds of identarian polemic thrown from both sides of the political spectrum leaves the material concerns of the working class like proper housing, safe working conditions, respectable pay, clean air and water etc. unrepresented and social murder unaccounted for.
https://redd.it/1gthw0p
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What is the lore reason behind hanumankind selling himself off to BJP.
https://redd.it/1fp8o65
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This woman was transported from Delhi to USA to do this drama for Modi. He now needs to go to the US & ship a welcome committee from India to do “Modi! Modi!”
https://x.com/pbhushan1/status/1838223982211772902
https://redd.it/1foyhfl
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Paid a visit to Savarkar's cell. I am sorry.
https://redd.it/1gvhngs
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Social Ostracism: Professor Faces Boycott Over Son's Marriage
https://odishatv.in/news/odisha/retired-odisha-professor-faces-social-ostracism-son-s-inter-caste-marriage-249162/amp
https://redd.it/1guzf0l
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The groom should not sit on a mare... After receiving threats, the Dalit groom completed the wedding rituals with police security
https://zeenews.india.com/hindi/off-beat/dalit-groom-rides-on-mare-in-bundelkhand-against-feudal-tradition-wedding-ceremony/2520874
https://redd.it/1guvx4e
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The Manifesto Of Dalit Panthers, it was a radical ambedkarite marxist organization. They were against elections and the state.
https://redd.it/1guqnk6
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Redirecting investments to Gujarat: Modi govt’s playbook | LME EP 48
https://youtu.be/GzREBbDinvw?si=ZkVifH2mprUvy0TL
https://redd.it/1guloz1
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A Summary of Xi Jinping's Governance of China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llTZ-drTvSY
https://redd.it/1gul9nd
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PoK is part of India now mitroo
https://preview.redd.it/sho22jnnpn1e1.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=01e25860e02621dc2734d83f969a521feeeb954f
https://redd.it/1gu3ynm
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marxism is incompatible with religion
Especially with any vague moralistic underpinning that tries to make it compatible with Marxism, like “Jesus said the rich are immoral, and we all are equal so that makes it socialist.” For Marxism to be taken seriously at all as a descriptive science, it has to discard any moralization—and that’s precisely what Marx and Engels do. The Marxist interpretation of history and society is amoralistic (though by no means non-normative, but more on that later). It examines the way social forms of organization come and go, building towards a more refined structural understanding of freedom as the entire being of humanity. Just as science studies how an apple falls from a tree without moral judgment—whether it kills a man or lands in front of him to sate his hunger—Marxism approaches history, society, and humanity the same way: understanding them without making moral judgments.
> It was slavery that first made possible the division of labour between agriculture and industry on a larger scale, and thereby also Hellenism, the flowering of the ancient world. Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire. But without the basis laid by Hellenism and the Roman Empire, also no modern Europe.
>We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity, no modern socialism exists.
– Engels
Marxists are especially against any sort of egalitarianism. For Marx, egalitarianism was a meaningless concept born out of the French Revolution. These kinds of ideas are so vague they can mean anything—from equality for all people to own property (as egalitarianism) to everyone being equally slaughtered in an imperialist war. For concepts to have real meaning, Marx—drawing on Hegel—argues they must form categorically, starting from the simplest and building to the most complex, thereby proving their validity. The entire essence of existence (the simplest concept) for both Marx and Hegel develops towards the most "absolute," which is freedom. This freedom evolves throughout history, becoming more refined and intelligible—from Greek slavery to the future communist society. The former is necessary for the latter, just as a person cannot mature without first being a teenager.
The claim that humanity is freedom, and that it cannot be anything but freedom, answers the fundamental question of philosophy: What is the being of being? This necessarily negates any transcendental personal God, as the essence of existence is found within existence itself. It also negates the Upanishadic Brahma and the Buddhist śūnyatā, as both are assimilated into lower forms of understanding of being within Hegel’s system, and necessarily for Marx as well.
you might get someone into marxism or even start a social movement by using religion as a populist idea by inferring and referencing scriptures but on an intellectual level, both are absolutely incompatible.
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Tribal Village’s Nightmare: No Roads, No Ambulance, and a Tragic Death
https://youtu.be/7RNWAA6qsNs?si=x9hxSaJHweg7xlkm
https://redd.it/1gu1a76
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modi praises "sabarmati report" a movie based on the godhra train tragedy that led to the 2002 riots
https://redd.it/1gtxhn0
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but they were still entirely under the thumbs of their masters (that in itself needs some context, though, since Roman society placed an unusual emphasis on the authority of the patriarch as head of the household – a father basically had the same rights over his children as a master over his slaves, and was even allowed to kill them if he chose, though this right was rarely exercised in the historical period). In short, Rome is emphatically not an example of a society where slavery is normally a consensual arrangement… but it does provide two prominent exceptions.
(Source)
The second quote is for people who might bring up the talking point that, The Pokémon don't seem to have a problem with the current arrangement, it's not that deep bro!" To which I would say, the "consent" of Pokémon is irrelevant in this context. My judgement on the subject was that, technically, it doesn’t make a difference – legally owning another intelligent being is still slavery even if the slave is totally okay with it.
It seems so that the Pokémon society of the canon lives in a dystopic reality where slavery is normalized.
This proprietary of intelligent life forms is ethically reprehensible (some might argue that proprietary of ALL life forms is) but is rarely touched upon in the entirety of the show, and the one time they do brush up on this intensely sensitive topic, they fuck it up (we'll get to it later). The games, however, have some more nuance to them. Team Plasma form Pokémon Black and White, even though are portrayed as extremist fringe eco-terrorists, have been given a sympathetic. The PocketPair developed and published game Palworld is also a refreshing take on the Pokémon predicament (they are currently being sued by Nintendo for this absolute banger, fuck Nintendo). But I digress.
# The MewTwo Movement
The brainchild of the brilliant Dr. Fuji, clone of the First Universal Common Ancestor of the Pokémon world Mew (yet leagues more powerful), the burdened of humanity's greed, the strongest puppet Giovani ever fiddled with, a revolutionary who is repulsed by the goals of humanity, a fore bringer of change, the shining hope or so we thought.
MewTwo.
MewTwo with Giovani in Team Rocket's Lab
MewTwo was, from inception, fiercely independent and mindful. Their curiosity knew no bounds, and when Dr. Fuji declared their life to hold no purpose outside of being an experiment of humans, he was enraged, going on to kill every single person in the facility. MewTwo's time with Giovani was perhaps the most influential time of their life, in relative proximity to human civilization, MewTwo began to see the flaws in the Human-dominated society. This was the genesis of class consciousness for MewTwo. After rebelling against Giovani to find his own way, MewTwo took some extreme measures to end the divide between Pokémon and their human masters (but justified in my opinion).
# MewTwo Strikes Back
MewTwo Strikes Back is a 1998 animated movie directed by Yuyama Kunihiko was the first Pokémon movie to be ever made, whose central plot revolved around MewTwo distaste for exploitation and how he intends to
Poster of Pokémon: The First Movie from 1999 in English
reform the predicament of their kind to better suite their interests by creating clones. Ash and team alongside Team Rocket were able to intervene MewTwo very first steps (with the added support of Mew) by convincing MewTwo of the goodwill of the humankind with great sacrifice from Ash's end (which is climatically reverted).
MewTwo understands the "flaws" in his thinking and retreats back to
Jhansi hospital fire: Yakoob Mansuri saves infants from hospital fire but loses his own twin daughters
https://redd.it/1gtut9y
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Social Murder in India
In 1845 Engels accused the English society of committing the crime of Social Murder against its workers. He did not invent this term as the working people of England were already using it to refer to their condition of social deprivation leading often to death. Engels in “The condition of working class in England” describes social murder as ‘murder’ because society is well aware of the fatal effects of polluting the environment with toxic materials, keeping the workers deprived of basic necessities which contribute to worker’s ailments and shortening of their lifespans. The condition the workers were made to live in and work at amounted to ‘social’ murder opposed to direct murder because as Engels explains “…which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offense is more one of omission than of commission…”
Social murder has an obvious class character to it as it affects the poorest while the relatively well-off sections of society (not just the bourgeoisie) contribute to it.
Studies have shown that there in an excess of around 2 million deaths annually in India due to air pollution related diseases.
One has to bear in mind that most of these 2 million people are those of have to stay out doors from prolonged period of time like gig workers, daily wage laborers etc. The relatively well-off sections often have the privilege of working in offices with air conditioning and contribute more to ecological pollution. Yet the burden of that pollution falls most heavily on those who contribute to it the least.
This is the same case with water. Water that has been used for drinking and bathing for hundreds of years is becoming toxic with industrial waste, sewage and untreated garbage. 70% of waste flows untreated in rivers, lakes and ground water.
A lancet study reported that more than 500,000 excess deaths annually in India due to Water Pollution. Although other studies make higher estimates.
This also disproportionately effects more the marginalized people especially in rural areas where pipelines for drinking water are rare. When their traditional sources of water get polluted, they become carriers of Diarrhea, Hepatitis A, Fluoride contamination and other water borne diseases.
Marx had commented on the polluting effects of capitalist industrialization in his "Economic and Philosophical Manuscript".
“Even the need for fresh air ceases to be a need for the worker. Man reverts once more to living in a cave, but the cave is now polluted by the mephitic and pestilential breath of civilization. Moreover, the worker has no more than a precarious right to live in it, for it is for him an alien power that can be daily withdrawn and from which, should he fail to pay, he can be evicted at any time. He actually has to pay for this mortuary. A dwelling in the light, which Prometheus describes in Aeschylus as one of the great gifts through which he transformed savages into men, ceases to exist for the worker. Light, air, etc.— the simples animal cleanliness—ceases to be a need for man. Dirt—this pollution and putrefaction of man, the sewage of civilization—becomes an element of life for him. Universal unnatural neglect, putrefied nature, becomes an element of life for him.”
Yet pollution is one way capitalist society engages in social murder. Making workers work in hazardous conditions without proper equipment leading to death like sanitation workers is also social murder.
Over working loco pilots leading to train crashes leading to death is also social murder.
Not paying
Bombs hurled at private engineering college in Bhubaneswar, several students injured
https://odishatv.in/news/odisha/bombs-hurled-at-private-engineering-college-in-bhubaneswar-several-students-injured-244795
https://redd.it/1foz8py
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