This is a fun and cool podcast put on by Hakim and friends. This is a cool episode where they talk about some of the worst parts of former Socialist projects including the repercussions of religious persecution.
By Reading Level
China’s Great Green Wall 🇨🇳
China is leading the world in green technology and afforestation efforts. Here is a very informative video about their monumental investment in environmentalism and how it’s been saving lives and helping their people!
Do you think the Capitalist US is capable of investment like this? We watch horrible wildfires and deforestation every year but don’t seem to have a longterm plan for combatting any of it.
As we can see, China is leading the world in reforestation, with some good efforts being made in certain European countries. However, it is important to note that much of the deforestation in big exporters like Brazil and other South American countries is done for the profits of Western powers. In a way, we are exporting our deforestation.
I will leave you with a quote from president Xi Jinping. It’s important to understand our bias against China and that we expect politicians to be power-hungry liars because ours are, but that doesn’t always have to be the case, and we should recognize China’s noble efforts when they are backing it up with real humanitarian action.
We must realize that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets and act on this understanding, implement our fundamental national policy of conserving resources and protecting the environment, and cherish the environment as we cherish our own lives.
- Xi Jinping
Guatemala – An American Genocide (1999)
While the stories told in this documentary are especially harrowing and grim, I was personally very inspired by the diligent work and international cooperation of the forensic anthropologists. Their scientific pursuit of truth is inspiring revolutionary work.
This documentary also illustrated the evilness of the CIA—the amount of collateral murder they are willing to accept in order to punish revolutionary societies is totally incriminating.
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (2008)
Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Haslett on his prescient novel he finished the week Lehman Brothers collapsed in the 2008 crash:
It’s a book not about the actual crash but the culture that lead to it. I spent 5 years wondering if anybody would think it mattered what banks did, but unfortunately history solved that problem.
The novel started out turning international financial scandals into entertaining satirical fiction then hit me with some of the darkest, most emotionally invasive gay sex scenes out of nowhere 😂
After reading a few of his novels, I really appreciate this trope he uses of a doomed revolutionary minded character who is chronically misunderstood.
Here are excerpts of each of the three main characters read with video elements:
Introduction to Dialectical Materialism by Luna Oi
Luna does a fantastic job of making these ideas as accessible as possible while giving some real world examples to consider.
Luna Oi interviews her Tankie dad, a Vietnamese Communist
Luna’s dad describes his training aid received by the USSR and how the Vietnamese paid the aid forward by helping their neighbors.
Former Socialism’s Faults – Hakim (2020)
This is a fantastic video that will give you not only an introduction to past socialist states but also good-faith criticisms of them. These examples will give you plenty of substantive topics to think about and talk about when you discuss Socialism with skeptics.
Recycling is not the solution to plastic pollution – Brute (2021)
Plastics industries like fossil fuel companies and Coke + Pepsi need to be held accountable. Our individual decisions on reducing plastic use are good but will never be enough to address the problem to scale.
”If your tub was overflowing, you wouldn’t go get a bucket and mop. You’d turn off the tap.”