Club Jacobin

citoyenrebelle:

fat-birds:

กะเต็นน้อยหลังดำ Black-backed Kingfisher (Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher) by somchai@2008 on Flickr.

so colorfullll

citoyenrebelle finds all the best birds.

(via atrocementheatral)

atrocementheatral asked: I don't get that graphic you just reblogged. Why is Trotsky the tree root of the neocons?

It is a bizarre but true fact that the founders and leading thinkers of neoconservatism in the US came out of the Trotskyist movement. For example Irving Kristol was brought up politically by Max Shachtman, who had been one of Trotsky’s main lieutenants in the country. Politically the key pivot seems to have been the elevation of the dispute with Stalin to a defining position in its own right, eventually leading to a position that saw the Soviet Union the main enemy and dictated a willingness to ally with US imperialism in order to defeat the USSR. This article gets into the topic in some more depth.

First draft of a translation of this article by Domenico Losurdo. A good introduction to the topic although of course a short piece like this can only scratch the surface. Comments on the translation welcome. Thanks again to citoyenrebelle for pointing out Losurdo’s writings on Tibet.

The Dalai Lama in Tibet, 1950

Who is the Dalai Lama? And why does so much of the Italian left tend to accept his “sanctification” and not see his reactionary essence?

Celebrated and transfigured by Hollywood filmmaking, the Dalai Lama undoubtedly continues to enjoy a wide popularity: his last trip to Italy concluded with a solemn group photo with leaders of the parties of the center-left, who wanted to display their esteem or their reverence for the champion of the struggle for “liberation of the Tibetan people.”

Domenico Losurdo sul Dalai Lama e sul Tibet lamaista (in Italian, obvz)

(Thanks citoyenrebelle for mentioning Losurdo as an author worth checking out on Tibet. Lots of great stuff out there that doesn’t seem to have been translated into or widely circulated in English.)

atrocementheatral asked: Lenin and his posing with cats! Was it his cat and if so do we ~know~ about him/her or did Lenin just like to pose with random cats? :P

That is an excellent question and I wish I knew the answer! I’m replying publicly here in the hope that someone else will know more. We do have testimony from Lunacharsky which makes me think that Lenin would be the type to just pick up any nearby cat to pose with:

In his private life, too, Lenin loves the sort of fun which is unassuming, direct, simple and rumbustious. His favourites are children and cats; sometimes he can play with them for hours on end.

But he and Nadezhda may have had cats of their own, I dunno.

This article has a bunch of very informative comments about revolutionaries and pets, including the views of pets during the French Revolution. (Just ignore the theory about Maoists and dogs, which is totally backwards from what I’ve observed.)

Someone needs to do for pets and revolutionaries what we-are-revolting just did for politicians and ice cream…

citoyenrebelle replied to your post: citoyenrebelle replied to your post: I wish there…

This is the true reason why Saint-Just had so many pairs of worn boots.

History is coming alive, right here on tumblr dot com.

citoyenrebelle replied to your post: I wish there was a video of Saint-Just petting a cat. (I might cosplay that someday. I have a cat.)

I need new riding pants. I can’t fit in my American Apparel (yeah, I know, I know) ones anymore. :’( And Carnot still has my boots. (He stole them! For real.)

Haha fair enough! I’m sure this the original Saint-Just faced travails just like these.

citoyenrebelle replied to your link: cwgusa | Smile! You’re at the best WordPress.com site ever

the creepy Lenin sidebar that follows you is the best IMO rotfl sooooooo creepy

Remember kids, the Party is always watching over you. Always.