Won’t it let you zoom in?

Unsure of timezone (emphasis added):

05:22

The US has already begun delivering critically needed munitions and military equipment to Israel, the White House said Monday, as the Pentagon reviews its inventories to see what else can be sent quickly to boost its ally in the three-day-old war with Hamas.

i.e. the US is scrambling like a headless chicken and will help Israel but can only help so much.

From: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/israel-hamas-war-live-israeli-death-toll-passes-1000-hamas-warns-residents-of-ashkelon-to-leave-city/ar-AA1hXbho – rather Western sources but it otherwise seems thorough.

The US has warned Iran not to participate, which is ominous.

Can’t find much.

17:02 A large salvo of rockets has been launched from Gaza toward the occupied city of Askalan.

https://english.almayadeen.net/shortnews

That’s the one lol. Definitely don’t sort by all before bed or when you’ve got to get some work done.

Bear with me: stop trying!

Trying to become disciplined takes a lot of energy. There’s an easier way. Create an environment in which reading theory is the easier option. Set things up so that reading theory is the easiest thing to do.

Do you prefer physical or digital or a mixture? Keep reading materials close to the place where you’re going to be able to pick them up and get stuck in with the time available and in that setting.

So you might have a physical copy of Capital in a quiet place with a chair but no TV and poor WiFi connection. Reading the book becomes the easier, preferable option to trying to browse the internet. If you can’t do this, create it. Set your phone, if possible, to go on Aeroplane mode at a certain time of day. Or do it manually – you won’t miss anything; it’ll all be there when you log back on. Or leave your phone somewhere else, where you’d have to move to get it.

If you use a computer, save pdfs on your desktop. Save links to websites on your desktop. You could arrange them in columns, with short pieces on the left and long pieces on the right. Then if you have ten mins, open a source on the left. If you have more time, open one on the right.

Bookmark websites. Add them to your shortcut bar. ‘Add to home screen’ on your phone and move some of these around in your screen so it’s as easy to click a work of theory on Prolewiki as it is to open your messages.

If you browse e.g. Marxists.org, you’ll find loads of texts of different lengths. It’s okay just to browse. Keep a note of shorter works and bookmark/save them as suggested above. You might read a short letter on the bus or the toilet or while waiting for the kettle to boil. You won’t get through e.g. Capital in that time and you’re likely to get frustrated if you try. Short works that are easy to read in chunks include letters, interviews, FAQ format.

Discipline is useful but it’s overrated and we tend to see it upside down. Self-discipline comes from being disciplined practice. It’s a lot harder to discipline ourselves in order to become disciplined. It also becomes a lot easier to be disciplined as you become more familiar with the subject. Familiar topics, even if technical, can be read as easily as fiction; it doesn’t need discipline if you can find a way to make it so easy that you become increasingly familiar without letting yourself realise that you’re 👻reading theory🎃.

Also, a leaf out of self-determination theory: you will grasp conceptual ideas a lot quicker and be far more motivated if you choose the material. There are reading lists. But if this feels like someone else is deciding what you’re supposed to read, you probably won’t do it if you struggle with paying attention as described, and it will be harder than it needs to be. So find out what you’re interested in and read Marxist authors talking about that topic. Q: what are you interested in?

If something doesn’t grab your attention, move on and come back to it later. The more familiar a topic is, the more motivated you’ll be to engage with it. It’s okay to read a little here and a little there. It’s also okay to start anywhere in the book that looks interesting. One day you should finish the important texts. It doesn’t have to be today or next week.

One trick is trying to read one word a day. It’s a very low target. But you’ll find that if you go to the effort of reading that one word, you’ll read another and another. You might only read a paragraph in the end. But enough days like that and you’ve read what you set out to read. (This also works with writing, btw.)

I rarely: read cover-to-cover; start at the beginning; or finish one book before I start another. I start wherever looks most interesting or is most related to something that I know well. I have multiple texts on the go at once. If I get bored, I pick up something else. I often have a theme I’m mind and read the relevant parts in multiple texts about that theme and ignore the rest.

I can be ‘disciplined’ when I need to be, but if I don’t need to be, I don’t force it. The advantage is that because I read in the way that I do, I’ve often already dipped into a text before I sit down to finish it. This means I’m familiar with most of the major texts even if I haven’t read them in full before. This makes things a lot easier when I need to finish a particular text.

I often find that since theory is too complicated or theoretical. It’s hard to keep going when texts are difficult. If a text is particularly difficult: (1) skip that section until you come to an easier one – you can go back to the more difficult parts later, when you know more about what’s being said; or (2) let your subconscious do the hard work for you – stop reading, leave it for an hour or a day or a week, etc, then read it again and you’ll see that your mind had started to make sense of the text.

You could also focus on finishing chapters/sections rather than whole books, as a more realistic target to start with.

Essentially, the more you engage, the easier it all becomes. So the trick is to do anything that helps you to engage and keeps you engaged. If you need it, I’m giving you permission: make it easy, it doesn’t have to be a chore.

This is what I do. You can read “all” in the morning if you’re struggling to get out of bed.

Just a brief comment to observe how Western laws make it so difficult to find out what’s happening. We saw/see this in relation to Ukraine. But in relation to Palestine it’s worse.

Once one person has made a negative claim about a Palestinian group, it’s practically impossible to challenge. Each claim forcibly and legally pushes the overton window towards favouring Israel. Anyone who tries publicly to move it the other way is in danger of being branded a terrorist supporter. Not just an accusation, but actual criminal repercusions if it’s construed as support for a proscribed organisation.

That makes things significantly harder to speak about things objectively, in an environment that we know discourages truth even without the threat of criminality (as in Ukraine, although that’s slowly changing).

Stay safe, comrades, and be careful how you frame your support for Palestine in ‘public’.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the US uses all this to block Chinese ships coming up the Red Sea, trying to weaken and provoke China before the BRI is quite ready to properly supplement the sea trade with overland trade. Then pincer Chinese sea trade via it’s SEA vassals, hoping to deter Egypt and SA from following through with joining BRICS. Subtly and slyly, of course. The US already has a presence in the Med. I don’t want to get carried away but this could be the spark for a rather large fire. Especially if there neighbours get involved.

Remember to be saving your receipts (screenshots, pdfs). There’s going to be a lot of ‘editing’ as this goes on. Like we saw with Ukraine.

Not sure about that. The reference to Never Use Alone is part of an argument that’s it’s not as good as providing these safe consumption zones; it’s a criticism of NUA.

Mayor Jim Kenney said he supports Safehouse and vetoed the bill, but the City Council overrode his veto 13-to-1. The passage of this bill banning safe consumption sites means many more people will die needlessly.

Safehouse — or any organization seeking to open a safe consumption site — can seek special permissions to open a site in their neighborhood after this bill is passed, but community organizations must approve it. Then the zoning board would take their vote into consideration. In typical political fashion, some of the people behind the bill claim it isn’t a ban but instead a “conversation starter” that would include the community.

Cheeky fucks. It’s not usually a ‘conversation starter’ when these dickheads make rules; it’s ‘representative democracy’ and if you don’t like it ‘vote harder next time’. Maybe we should start talking as if all anti-worker law, rules, and regs are merely ‘conversation starters’.

The next person arrested with a few kilos of coke should try it: ‘Sorry officer I thought the ban was a conversation starter and it turns out the Wall Street community would like to end the conversation with a witty one-liner. Snorted, not the funny kind.’

That critique is addressed in the article. This is a new idea to me so I’m not talking with any authority. But it seems that safe consumption sites provide a pipeline to recovery. At the very least, the stats show they save lives. Addicted users are going to use drugs whatever happens. A strict ‘no enabling’ policy doesn’t seem to make much difference. If we can make the process a lot safer, I’ll support it.

Can see that back firing a little. If a soldier does have somewhere else to go (foreign passport) and the fighting on the front is bleak, will they flee or stay and risk being killed by their own side? It’s got to be an incentive to leave for some. Some will be in it for the fight, but many settlers will be in it for an easier life. As soon as it’s not the easier option, I would bet that many will leave.

One day!

13* salty libs and counting upset that Palestinians will get the Mate 60 before them.

Edit: *

I’m sorry, I’m still getting the hang of things.

It was a megathread, until you started posting smh.

Remember that to some western ‘radicals’, the only good revolutionary is an unsuccessful one.

Marxists are almost universally unpopular everywhere except in a handful of countries (which few countries, incidentally, are almost universally hated by a big chunk of all the other countries).

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