#cadre-based party

[iyemarathichiyenagari1971]

वाजपेयी ते मोदी…

देशात अनेक राजकीय पक्ष आहेत की, त्यांच्यात वारंवार फाटाफूट झाली किंवा विभाजन झाले. भाजपा हा एकच पक्ष आहे की, तो सर्वत्र विस्तारत असतानाही अभंग आहे. राष्ट्रीय स्वयंसेवक संघाच्या संस्कारातून तयार झालेले कार्यकर्ते हा भाजपाचा मुख्य आधार आहे. तो कधी विचलीत होत नाही, निष्ठा बदलत नाही. त्याला सत्तेचा मोह नाही. त्याची बांधिलकी विचारांशी आहे. डॉ. सुकृत खांडेकर जगातील सर्वात मोठा राजकीय पक्ष म्हणून…

[oceannacaldin]

On ne le dira jamais assez, mais dans le chapitre "la culture du chef à la française", le mécanisme de "X équipe est en souffrance parce que Y, mais personne ne le dit aux chefs parce qu'ils devraient bien s'en rendre compte / ils sont forcément au courant", c'est juste... magique.

J'ai bientôt six ans derrière moi en tant qu'encadrante, et j'en suis à la quatrième fois où, malgré toute ma bonne volonté, je loupe tout les signaux annonciateurs d'une crise qui peut s'aggraver et j'ai des gens en face qui réagissent en mode "mais... tu ne le savais pas ?"

Ben... non.

Et à part une fois où il y a eu tout un tas de mécanisme de déni que j'ai du déconstruire, les trois autres fois, non, vraiment, j'avais pas capté.

[max1461]

I wasn't alive in 1992. But I sometimes think about what someone from 1992 might think about the state of the world in 2025.

90s media is always about how the hippies and radicals and counter-culturalists might have a little bit of a point, but only in a vague spiritual or philosophical way, and back down in the real world then-hegemonic norms were the best we could hope for. I look back at what the hippies and radicals and counter-culturalists were saying in the 90s and think they mostly didn't have a point at all, precisely because their ideas were only fit for the spiritual or philosophical, but that the same could be said for much of hegemonic society. Look at the way opposition to homosexuality was, in retrospect, wholly (forgive me for using this term in the vulgar-Marxist fashion) "idealist", it was a product of ideology with no practical material function at all, and now we have gay marriage and plenty of places where acceptance of homosexuality is the local hegemonic norm and all the other parts of society trudge on totally unaffected. The CEO of Apple is openly gay and it turns out this is not the most socially interesting thing about Apple by a very wide margin.

The end of history is over and communism is making a comeback on the world stage! Except this is a new communism, less utopian vision and more hard-nosed and pragmatic. The party cadre sitting side-by-side with the board of directors at every company on the Shanghai stock exchange. The IMF: technocratic triumph of a rules-based international order, or sledgehammer of imperialism? Doesn't matter, China can offer you a better deal.

And, this is my favorite part. In the 80s and 90s people were obsessed with the idea of voyeurism. I guess MTV was the new hot thing, and internet pornography was just being invented, and there was this fear that society would collapse as people were pulled deeper and deeper into the hedonic thrall of ever more extreme sexual and violent media (cf. Videodrome). And, it turns out, in much of the world people have been pulled en masse into the thrall of voyeuristic media. But it's not sex and violence, it's politics. The 24 hour news cycle? That's a new development in the 90s. I bet they didn't realize it was gonna do... all this. Fox News, QAnon, doomscrolling. It turns out if you bombard people with unlimited stimulation from every direction, what wins out in the attention marketplace isn't sex and violence, it's "everyone is out to get you". Kind of a vindication of the view of man as a social animal first and foremost, to be honest.

Oh, but Terminator looks like it might have been on the right track.

[balioc]

A Simple Model

Both of the major US political parties are really very bad, right now.

(Blogger Has Amazing Novel Insights!)

The electorally-significant Dems, having finally lived up to their destiny as the new Party of the Elite, are a pack of careerist apparatchiks incapable of any vision beyond "keep the engine of the world chugging along for another day." (Turns out, that's the kind of person you have to be in order to rise to the top of the Party of the Elite.) They are aligned with enough of the major institutional power-players of American society that they're pretty much at the mercy of those power-players. They can be counted on to provide the kind of ass-covering deceit that big bureaucratic institutions generally provide (cf. Covid guidance). The last wave of "big change ideas" that were cutting-edge in the early-to-mid 2000s - marijuana legalization, public healthcare, stimulus spending, No Really We Could Just Have Open Borders, etc. - has been thoroughly assimilated, dealt-with or not-dealt-with to varying degrees, and they're not really having any new ones.

Mostly separately from that, by a weird quirk of intellectual history, the otherwise-extremely-stodgy modern Dems managed to attach themselves to a very unpopular version of identitarian group-liberation ideology. There are arguments to be had about how much this matters in the long run, how long-lasting the effects are going to be, how likely the problem is to solve itself (and under what circumstances), etc.; but one way or another, (a) it's a political albatross, and (b) it's created a bunch of actual-factual problems on the small-to-medium scale.

The Republicans, meanwhile, have become so totally unmoored and directionless that their political program consists entirely of lashing out at things they don't like. The coalition has no center, and no integrity, save for its opposition to the elite sociocultural establishment. It is capable of embracing insane/inane "ideas" like tariff-based tax systems, border-wall-building, The Plague That's Killing A Ton of People Just Isn't Happening, etc.; it can be easily baited into gleefully embracing things as evil as police brutality and war crimes, just by presenting it with a smarmy opposition on those issues. It can toss random bones to constituent ideologies like right-libertarianism or religious social conservatism, but not advance their agendas in any overarching way. It is actively opposed to institutional competence, because competent institutional actors are assumed to be Of the Enemy, which is more important than anything else. It doesn't even try to keep most of its (insane) promises. It is increasingly dominated by naked grift, mostly directed at its own base. It is, in short, the kind of party that could nominate and then elect Donald J. Trump twice.

...either of these parties could easily, by this point, have become Totally Nonviable. This hasn't happened, mostly because both of them are coasting on their legacies, and through spinal reflex doing just enough to keep those legacies on life support. The Republicans are the traditional party of the rich and respectable, and even though they're increasingly unappealing to the country's newer middle-class cadres, they're still the party of Big Tax Cuts etc., which...stanches some of the blood flow. Meanwhile, the Democrats are the traditional party of minorities, and - although they're less and less able to depend on those minorities, as we just saw in the 2024 election - there are enough credible signals that they're Less Racist Than the Other Guys to keep the minorities more-or-less voting for the apparatchiks.

At this point, both parties are mostly selling "at least we're not the other guys." This is a very easy and low-energy thing for them. It requires no vision and relatively little competence; it plays on partisan hate and fear, which are more reliable and easier-to-stoke than hope or inspiration, in an environment suitable to them.

They will both continue selling that thing, rather than anything else, until forced to change. Which is to say, until one of them actually becomes Totally Nonviable and has to spend some time in the wilderness becoming a genuinely different kind of party. (Or, hypothetically, until one of them actually gets replaced by an outside institution. Good luck.)

Which is to say, we are going to be in this nightmarish stalemate until one of the parties breaks the other one over its knee, in the world's most depressing geriatric cage fight. This is actually even more important than it sounds, because the political situation is yoked to the sociocultural situation. We're going to be stuck in some version of this dumbass culture war until there is an ideological power capable of uniting the warring tribes, a power that is stronger than their toxoplasmic hostility to one another; that power could imaginably be a sui generis religious movement or something, but it's much more likely to be some kind of all-encompassing We're Actually Good political thing, a new Reaganism or War Rooseveltism or whatever.

I would strongly prefer for the Democrats to win that fight. I would strongly prefer to be ruled by the bleak sclerotic establishment, during the period when the opposition is getting its shit together and coming back to force a New Better Binary, rather than by a gang of nihilistic hucksters likely to dismantle random parts of the system and to make essentially-random diplomatic gestures to volatile dangerous foreign powers.

Until recently, I would have said that the Democrats were going to win that fight, in the sense that the contemporary Republicans literally couldn't. I thought that nihilistic hucksterism would always provoke enough horror, when given the power to do anything, that the bleak sclerotic establishment would have room to push its way back. Maybe that's still the case. But, like so many people, I've become more pessimistic.

[thetimesofindia]

Maoist era is ending but Bastar’s Adivasis need a new dawn

There is a video in which the soldiers of the Chhattisgarh Police’s District Reserve Guard (DRG) are seen celebrating after they killed the top Maoist leader, Basavaraj. The DRG has worked hard in the last few years, and their celebration is well deserved. But once they go back to the barracks, one must think about the irony of a group of Adivasis working for the state killing another set of Adivasis working against the state. It won’t even be surprising if some of the hunters and the hunted came from the same village. The hunted are now in body bags and will be buried away from the gaze of our iPhones.That is the real tragedy of Bastar, which we must keep in view even as we look forward to a time when the sun will set over a movement that a former prime minister called India’s biggest internal security threat. It’s not to blame one govt or the other; it’s about how the Indian state since Independence neglected a vast chunk of its people, leaving a void. Forty-five years before the police killed Basavaraj, his contemporaries entered Bastar for the first time. Their mission was clear: the man who had sent them — Kondapalli Seetharamaiah — wanted them to create a rear base in these parts. This was to ensure that when the state came after them, they would have a place to hide. Bastar and the other contiguous Adivasi areas around it provided just the right sanctuary. But in the process, they also exposed the utter neglect and apathy of the state. No development had reached here. The area, abundant in natural resources, was only a way of making money for the town businessmen and the big industrial houses. The state’s petty representatives like forest guards and revenue officers would harass and exploit the poor and the marginalised. The Maoists came in, promising an ideal state.This should have brought the state’s benevolence. But instead, it brought more brute force. Soon, the Maoists also turned against the very people they had sought to protect and fight for. The Adivasis got caught in a vicious war between the guerrillas and the state. No matter which side one was on, it became very difficult for any reasoned individual to justify the violence. In the name of killing Maoists, the state committed many atrocities. In the name of fighting the state, the Maoists began brutal killings of the same people on suspicion of them being police informers. It is this recklessness that has finally brought us to the point where Adivasis, used to living in peace since the dawn of time, have been set against each other.In the last few years, things began to change rapidly in left-wing extremism areas. The change was brought about by the laying of roads and cellphone networks. In the urban areas, if anyone from middle-class India had any sympathy for Maoists, it dissipated as their overground sympathisers began to hobnob with radical Islamists and began lending their support to sub-nationalism utopias, from Kashmir to the Northeast. The horrific killings of paramilitary forces whose body bags went to all corners of the country also created repugnance for them.Basavaraj’s killing is a signal that the Maoist movement is in its last throes. Victory in the fight against the Maoists may as well be declared much before home minister Amit Shah’s March 2026 deadline. In the absence of old, committed cadres like Basavaraj, it will be impossible for the Maoist party to regroup or reassert themselves. Most of their experienced leadership is gone. Men and women like those who entered Bastar in 1980 are rare to find. They were radicalised in the ’70s and the ’80s and spent most of their adult life in the jungle or furthering the Maoist cause in urban areas, living clandestinely among the poor in slums and colonies. They had hoped, as the former top Maoist leader, Ganapathi, told me once, that the “revolution” would reach Gurugram from Giridih. But instead, the Maoists have been driven out of their last bastion.

Once they are gone, there is no excuse left for the state to not function at least at its basic level. The Adivasis have gone through hell in the vicious war, especially in the last two decades. It has been heartbreaking for some of us to see an Adivasi woman lying by the corpse of her husband or son, her hands behind her head, in silent mourning, but one whose sound is more piercing than the collective sorrow of the whole universe. The state must bring succour to Bastar. Development should not only mean roads and mobile towers. It should also not mean reckless mining and land grab of Bastar’s natural resources.

[usafphantom2]

PARIS AIRSHOW 1989~ Russian pilots in American pilots get together for a drink.

SR pilot Capt. Steve “Griz” Grzebiniak, tells his story in Richard H. Graham’s book SR-71 Revealed The Inside Story.

@Jim Greenwood @ Steve Grzebiniak

‘Jim [ Maj. Jim Greenwood, his RSO] and I were TDY to Det in June 4 in June of 1989. The Det was tasked to send an SR-71 to the Paris Air Show. Lieutenant Colonel Tom Henichek was the Det 4 Commander at the time and became the Air Show deployment commander.

‘We flew a brief arrival show, landing in showery weather at Le Bourget airport for four days of static display. The big attraction at the `89 Paris Show was to be the unveiling of the Soviet SU-27 Flanker, for the first time on western soil. The SU-27 was an impressive example of the cutting edge of Eastern Bloc air superiority. It was a large fighter, with massive engines and silenced the crowds daily with its aerial demonstration.

Victor Pugachev, the head test pilot for Sukhoi aircraft in the Soviet Union, and the inventor of the unbelievable “Cobra Maneuver” in which the fighter would make a slow speed, high angle pass at low altitude, then snatch its nose back beyond the vertical, an recover with AB’s blazing, was there, along with an elite cadre of other Soviet pilots.

However, the American SR-71 was attracting more attention than the Soviets airplane .

The SR 71 pilots decided to have a cordial drink with their enemies the Soviet Union pilots. But only under the condition that it remained secret.

Jim and I decided we had to meet these pilots in a less formal manner. After all, they were flying some of the same aircraft, and indeed could have been the same pilots who regularly attempted high altitude intercepts against us in the Barents Sea! The day prior to our departure, after the final aerial demonstration of the afternoon, a note was passed to one of the Russian pilots reading, “Meet us at the base of the tower for a drink—the US pilots.”

They were acting very proper and cordial as Victor announced that they were ready to receive the “press” now. I told him there was, “no press, no cameras, no recorders, nobody knows we’re here Vic!” At that announcement, the room erupted with revelry! Victor was no longer the “mouth piece” for the group. Everyone was eager to learn more about their “comrades” from across the ocean. Victor said to me,

‘Steve, the next time you are spying on us in the Barents Sea, please come up on my radio frequency so we can say hello.” I jokingly said,

“Vic, I’ll be glad to do that, but if my voice sounds clear, it’s not because we are very near your border in the Barents Sea, I’m really far away on a training mission, but our radios are very powerful.”

We all had a good laugh, realizing that in a week, we would indeed be over the Barents, and we would see those tell-tale contrails of Soviet interceptors, hopelessly fluttering out of airspeed and ideas, far below us.

‘The spontaneous party lasted about an hour. We signed our bottle of Tequila, and our guests signed an unopened bottle of vodka, and we exchanged them as gifts. The following day, Jim and I departed Le Bouget with a series of afterburner passes. Our departure was to be the last aerial demonstration that day, immediately following the Soviets regular daily flying demo.

All Soviet flying demos were mysteriously canceled that day. Could it have been the Tequila, or did they all want to be in place to see the HABU thunder past the crowd and disappear out of sight?

After returning to the Det, we placed the signed bottle of Russian vodka in a small glass case with a simple plaque reading, `GLASTNOST, Paris, ’89.’

This was the last time the SR 71 would appear that the Paris airshow as the Air Force canceled the program .

Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[mesetacadre]

what is a cadre? I have seen it a couple times relating to communism but dont know what it means

In a democratic-centralist party, which essentially means a party that applies an organizational model based on the same principles as the bolsheviks had, it's very common to recognize the figure of a cadre among the entirety of the party's membership. A cadre is a member who is more experienced in some aspect of the party's activity, internal or external, more educated and usually reliable to deliver sound analyses. This figure is important, for example, to have when you barely have any established presence in a territory. If the new people the party organizes have a cadre among them, participating in establishing their presence, the transmission of positions, common practices and the know-how is much more easily transmitted than through the communication with the competent organ above the base. The loss of cadres after the fascist invasion of the USSR was very significant in the future change in course, for example, and initiatives to train cadres have been a commonality among all sorts of communist parties throughout time.

Some parties have the cadre be a formally recognized role someone is bestowed, but IMO that's excessively mechanical because a cadre is recognized by their fellow comrades as well as the superior organs, it's not something that's simple to decree. And, like I said before, someone can be a cadre in, say, the student movement, and be out of their depth in a tenant's assembly.

[gatheringbones]

[“While Marxism-Leninism accorded to a surprising degree with traditional Vietnamese notions of government and society, there were elements within Vietnamese Marxism that appeared completely unfamiliar to Westerners. As scholars such as Pike and Zasloff of the RAND Corporation pointed out, the northern as well as the southern Party cadres seemed to know very little about Marxist doctrine. Few of them could explain the class struggle of the international proletariat against world capitalism or describe what their future society would look like. Even middle-level cadres tended to describe the programs of the Party in such vague terms as “land to the tillers” and “the abolition of classes.” Furthermore, there was a strangely moralistic tone to all of their pronouncements. Eager to show that Communism was essentially un-Vietnamese, Pike, for one, concluded that the People’s Revolutionary Party was not Marxist-Leninist in any philosophical sense at all.

To draw such a conclusion is, however, to misunderstand the place of ideology in a society. Like religion, ideology must rest upon a base of cultural, social, and economic conditions. Many Americans tend to identify Communism as the practice of the Soviet leadership. To do so is to ignore not only important ideological questions but the difference between theory and practice, life and literature. What is “pure Communism”? Which among the Jesuits, the Copts, and the Holy Rollers represents “true Christianity”?

In their awe of the French, some of the early Marxists clung to the debates and conventions of the European parties and ended by communicating as much to the Vietnamese as actors speaking in Shakespearian accents would to a twentieth-century audience. As Lenin and Ho Chi Minh understood, Marxism was not a dead language or a precise set of instructions; it was a theory that required translation into life. The work of Ho Chi Minh was to make that translation for the Vietnamese.

The introduction of Marxism into Vietnam and the development of a Marxist movement were attended by a series of far-reaching debates on revolutionary strategy. At various points in the 1920’s and 1930’s there were three Leninist parties and four Trotskyite factions in Vietnam, all of which took slightly different positions on the issues of the class struggle, of nationalism versus internationalism, and on the problems of alliance with the Soviet Comintern, the Chinese Kuomintang, and the French Communist Party. The Trotskyites in general took a “purist” line, opposing the Comintern and its allies in the Kuomintang, opposing an alliance of the Vietnamese proletariat with the peasants and the national bourgeoisie. For them the proletariat constituted the one true revolutionary class. The industrial workers alone were to participate in the Communist organization.

The curiosity of this line was that the Trotskyite parties were based primarily in Saigon, where there was no urban proletariat to speak of. The Trotskyites disliked French colonialism as much as anyone, but their very exclusiveness drove them to legal activities and finally to dependence on the undependable French left wing. By contrast, Ho Chi Minh’s organization — finally, a coalition of three regional groups called the Indochinese Communist Party — stood for the Leninist program of a two-stage revolution: the first stage a national rebellion uniting the peasants and the bourgeoisie under the leadership of the proletariat, and the second the proletarian, socialist revolution.

Allied with the Comintern and in certain periods, the Chinese Kuomintang, the ICP took what advantages the French Stalinist party could offer it during the period of the Popular Front. At the same time it continued to build, where it could, a popular base among all classes of Vietnamese. When the moment of opportunity came in 1945, Ho Chi Minh resolved this last tactical ambiguity. (And without cost to himself, since the French Communist Party did not contest the government over the issue of decolonization.) Abandoning the “Indochinese Communist Party,” the Dong Duong Cong San Dang, the name that spoke of French colonialism and a political unreality, he formed the Viet Minh (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi), the Vietnam Independence League. At one stroke he rid himself of French influence and class bias. His movement would be nationalist, but it would be nonetheless orthodox from a Marxist-Leninist point of view. The Viet Minh would carry out the first stage of the revolution — a stage that had no fixed duration, but that depended on the development of the various social classes within it.

Upon bringing the name “Vietnam” into the name of his party, Ho Chi Minh took the concomitant step of changing the phrase indicating “socialism” and his future social policy. For cong san, a phrase of Chinese roots suggesting a secular aggregate of individuals, he substituted xa hoi, a Vietnamese phrase linking the future distribution of wealth with the sacred communal traditions of the old village.(Xa Hoi Dang was the name of the socialist party within the Viet Minh.) The second alteration might also seem to be opportunist — was not Marx an atheist? But for Marx revolution meant not a complete break with the past, but rather the fulfillment of what was already taking place within a society. Ho Chi Minh’s new formulation merely reflected the fact that in Vietnam the proletariat remained a small minority. The first stage of the Vietnamese revolution would take place not within a secularly organized industrial society, but within an agrarian community that visualized itself in sacred terms.”]

frances fitzgerald, from fire in the lake: the vietnamese and the americans in vietnam, 1972

[schraubd]

Does the NYT Know What a "Progressive" Is?

The NYT reports on the integration of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. into the Trump campaign. This is news, though its essentially news that "conservative cranks support the supreme conservative crank." But instead, the NYT frames it this way: Donald J. Trump plans to name his former rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat, as honorary co-chairs of a presidential transition team that will help him select the policies and personnel of any second Trump administration, according to a campaign senior adviser. Mr. Kennedy ended his independent campaign for president and endorsed Mr. Trump on Friday. Both he and Ms. Gabbard spent most of their public life as progressive Democrats, and Mr. Kennedy had started his presidential run as a Democrat, before renouncing his party and running as an independent instead. Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party after her 2020 presidential run and has rebranded herself as a celebrity among Trump’s base of support. Excuse me? Until recently, RFK Jr. was known for two things (aside from his name). First, water-related environmental causes; second, being an anti-vaxx nut. The former I'll agree is a progressive issue. The latter ... well, I guess there was a time when anti-vaxxers were partially associated with the crunchy granola left (you know, before it stopped being funny and started being a Serious Issue of Principle We All Must Respect). But this isn't exactly the profile of a progressive champion. Yet Gabbard is even worse -- she's been widely recognized as a conservative for years! Anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, a friend of dictators and authoritarians the world over ... what, exactly, is supposed to be her "progressive" rep? The answer is that there continues to be a small number of "progressives" (and, I guess, NYT writers) who are absurdly easy to dupe by anyone who makes some vague "anti-establishment" (especially "anti-war") rumblings. But aside from that, nobody actually ever thought that Tulsi Gabbard was any kind of progressive -- she has always been in a class of her own. And the thing is -- Democratic voters have made this conclusion very obvious, by emphatically rejecting both Gabbard and RFK Jr. every time they tried to hop onto the national stage. Their defeats were not situations where the "progressive" faction of the party happened to get outvoted by more moderate or establishment cadres (compare, say, Bernie Sanders). RFK and Gabbard both failed to get any discernable support from any substantial wing of the Democratic electorate -- left, right, or center. Progressive Democrats didn't see either as progressive choices, they saw them for what they were -- conspiratorial right-wing cranks. And now they've found their natural home alongside Trump. No news there. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/kvQKYlA

[kiffa-australis]

Se noyer dans le contexte

C’est bien beau d’avoir un règlement fonctionnel , tout beau, tout bien mis en page mais sans son sacro-saint contexte, un forum rpg n’est rien.

Les contextes, il y en a pour tous les goûts : longs ou court, fourni ou soft, inspiré ou non, ... En attendant, cela reste un des arguments de vente de votre forum et il vaut mieux qu’il te se tienne.

Certains vous diront qu’il est le seul qui compte , que finalement le design, ça ne sert à rien . Cela va même parfois avec une petite remarque sur ces gens qui ne choisissent leur forum que sur le design alors qu’elle, Hectoriette, ne choisit ses forums que sur le contexte. Spoiler, Hectoriette ne s’inscrivant jamais sur un forum à fond vert pomme, police en Mistral blanc 10pt et une bannière pixelisée aux photos déformées, pour elle aussi, le design, ça compte. Je vois d’ailleurs dans cette réaction un espèce de mépris de classe, servant à discréditer des débutants ou des gens moins habiles de leur plume, surtout si on prend compte que pour diverses raisons qu’on abordera ultérieurement, les designs tendent à se standardiser.

Suivez moi donc dans cette petite review non exhaustive, probablement pleine de lapalissades

Ces derniers temps, je classe les forums en deux catégories :

Les forums avec contexte «light» (attention, je n’ai pas dis simple) pour deux raisons principales :

C’est le but , jouer sans prise de tête avec un contexte facile en prise ne main. Quand vous vous inscrivez sur un forum city, c’est rarement pour vous prendre le chou avec quinze annexes. De toute façon, si vous êtes chercheur de petite bêtes comme moi, vous irez glaner les infos au fur et à mesure avec votre moteur de recherche. (Oui, j’ai déjà cherché le prix d’une pomme en automne 1895 à Paris pour les besoins d’un rp) (et oui, j’ai trouvé).

Dans ce cas, le contexte donne plus un vague cadre (par exemple Stockholm, janvier 2025), un prétexte pour faire vivre des personnages avec un background parfois digne un personnage de soap opéra et faire subir sa schadenfreunde sur des gens imaginaires (martyriser ses persos, c’est le bien, toi même tu sais.). Ce genre de forum a l’immense avantage de pouvoir recaser au prix de quelques adaptations des personnages parti trop tôt dans la fermeture d’un forum précédent ou un fin d’aventure pour d’autres raisons dans un autre. Pour ma part, c’est ce que je recherche dans ce style de forum : un cadre simple pour y jouer mes personnages madeleines, souvent en traînant un.e copain.ine .

C’est un forum à contexte évolutif. On part d’une situation de base qui va évoluer au fur et à mesures des actions des joueurs . Ce sont soit des forums à mystère (enquête digne d’un Hercule Poirot, ambiance proche de ce que proposait la série Anthracite, etc) soit des forums à huis clos , qui ont certes une part d’enquête mais en plus un contexte légèrement plus fournis, notamment augmenté d’annexe pour accompagner le joueur dans la prise en main. Soit vous êtes là depuis le début de manière plus ou moins assidue , soit vous arrivez en cours de route et, dans l’idéal, de courts résumés des événements vous sont fournis en plus du contexte.

Les forums avec contexte très fournis . Là aussi, on distingue plusieurs cas de figures :

Les forums «fanfiction» , dont une partie du contexte est là pour exposer à un potentiel novice ce qu’il doit savoir de l’univers et pour les autres, ce qui diverge (parce que vous allez rarement jouer exactement les mêmes aventures)

Les forums historiquement poussés . Là, le contexte permet surtout de clarifier les différentes périodes, le parti pris et de centraliser les ressources.

Les forums fantasy/ fantastique qui peuvent amener des dizaines et des dizaines de spécificité (on vous voit , la secte des adorateurs de Tolkien)

Les forums «politiques / guerre de pouvoir» où la majorité de l’annexe sert à comprendre qui est avec qui, qui est contre et qui et quels intérêts le futur personnage devra défendre

Je me trompe peut être, mais il n’existe plus vraiment dans le paysage rpgique actuel de contexte «entre deux» (mais je ne me targue pas de tout connaître, bien au contraire), des forums fantasy avec des contexte peut être plus light par exemple, ou des forums fantastiques dont le trust se résume dans trois petits sujets d’annexes. J’imagine que c’est une question d’offre et de demande , qui fait que le «milieu» est souvent voué à disparaître .

Et si on réfléchissait sur la construction d’un contexte ?

Un contexte réunit les connaissances communes aux joueurs (et à leur personnages). Il doit donc être lu et compris par tout à chacun. En tant qu’administrateur, vous êtes garant de sa cohérence, même si le contexte peut être participatifs à une certaine échelle.

Une chose est à prendre en compte et c’est pas toujours facile :

Ce qui est absolument évident pour vous ne l’est pas forcément pour votre (futur.e) joueur.se .

Vous, en tant que Maitre de Jeu, vous êtes omniscient et vous allez devoir passer de l’information et réfléchir à ce qui va dans le contexte et ce qui va dans les annexes. Les différent éléments de contexte que vous allez devoir transmettre vont se classer en quatre catégories (comment ça , encore ?!)

Ce qui doit absolument être su : Sans ces informations, la personne ne pigera rien au contexte et passera à côté. Ces informations doivent absolument apparaître dans le contexte et être pimpée au maximum.

Ce que le.a joueur.se doit savoir : Une petite (j’insiste) liste des informations indispensables, notamment pour la création du personnage et de son histoire. Ces connaissances peuvent aussi différer, selon les choix, d’un.e joueur.se à l’autre. Si vous jouez un barbare dans un univers fantasy, sans présumé des capacités intellectuelles de votre barbare, il y a de très fortes chances qu’il n’y comprenne rien à la magie arcanique.

Ce que le personnage doit savoir : C’est différent de la catégorie précédente. Il y a forcément des informations que le personnage sait mais tant que ça n’intervient pas dans un rp, que le.a joueur.se le sache ne change rien . Exemple concret : Votre personnage est allé à l’école dans son histoire , il en connaît donc plus ou moins le fonctionnement (quoi que, si ça fait vingt ans, y’a prescription). Mais en tant que joueur.se, à moins de convoquer des souvenirs scolaires ou d’avoir des connaissances du personnage qui y vont, vous n’avez pas besoin connaître ledit système sur le bout des doigts.

Le reste : A convoquer dans des situations très spécifiques ou à moins d’avoir un personnage intello, ça ne servira pas .

Lors de sa rédaction, vous allez classer (et je vous conseille les listes) toutes les informations que vous souhaitez voir apparaître dans ces catégories pour ainsi anticiper vos futurs rédactions.

Ces listes ne sont pas immuables et les éléments peuvent naviguer d’une catégorie , pendant l’écriture mais aussi au fil de l’avancée de l’intrigue. Par exemple, l’existence des dragons dans votre univers peuvent tenir de la légende urbaine et n’être disponible que pour quelques initiés , jusqu’à ce qu’une des bestioles atterrisse en plein Jardin du Luxembourg sous le regard des caméras.

Pour faire simple, ce que vous allez classer dans 1 et un peu 2 ira dans le contexte . Le reste, zou, dans les annexes.

Et c’est là que mes annexes ressemblent à une encyclopédie en quinze volumes.

Attention . Une annexe n’est pas destinée à être lue dans son intégralité. Au contraire, on doit pouvoir y chercher facilement une information . Abusez et sur abusez des sommaires et liens . Vous parlez d’un groupe d’intérêt ou de la monnaie dans votre texte ? Pouf, lien vers l’annexe qui détaille la question. L’idée, c’est de faire se balader votre lecteur dans vos annexes à la manière d’un wiki.

Contrairement au contexte qui demande un minimum de rédaction (parce que ça fait parti de la vitrine) , une annexe se doit être fonctionnelle. Oubliez Marcel Proust et faite simple.

Dernière chose, faites appel à plusieurs bêtas lecteurs extérieurs . Si vous n’avez pas de victime consentante sous la main, nombre de discords et de forums d’entraide vous propose ce service ou un échange de bon procédé.

Votre alliée : la présentation

Pour vérifier si votre futur.e joueur.se a compris le principal , aidez vous de la présentation (oui, elle ne sert aussi à ça).

Un système bien pratique que je vois de plus en plus échange la partie «histoire» de la fiche contre un questionnaire à remplir pour avoir le ressenti du personnage sur différents points du contexte.

Cela permettra de bloquer simplement les malotrus (oui ça existe) qui ont décidé qu’ils s’inscriraient sans lire le contexte et sans jamais consulter les annexes

_____

Merci d'être arrivé.e jusqu'au bout de ce second post issu du bazar qui me sert de cerveau.

Les commentaires d'accord ou pas sont acceptés mais je me réserve le droit de squeezer toute personne qui ne ferait pas ça dans les règles de l'art, notamment si vous n'avez visiblement pas lu jusqu’au bout. Ce message est vraiment là au cas où, j'y crois pas trop mais bon.

Ave atque vale ! 🦉

[dailyanarchistposts]

What is post-left anarchism?

alc

Post-left anarchy has developed thought in 6 main areas:

The Left

critiquing the Left as nebulous, anachronistic, distracting, a failure, and at key points a counterproductive force historically (“the left-wing of capital”)

critiquing Leftist activists for political careerism,

celebrity culture, self-righteousness, privileged vanguardism, and martyrdom

critiquing the tendency of Leftists to insulate themselves in academia, scenes, and cliques while also attempting to opportunistically manage struggles

Ideology

a Stirner-esque critique of dogma and ideological thinking as a distinct phenomenon in favor of “critical self-theory” at individual and communal levels

Morality

a moral nihilist critique of morality/reified values/moralism

Organizationalism

critiquing permanent, formal, mass, mediated, rigid, growth-focused modes of organization in favor of temporary, informal, direct, spontaneous, intimate forms of relation

critiquing Leftist organizational patterns’ tendencies toward managerialism, reductionism, professionalism, substitutionism, and ideology

critiquing the tendencies of unions and Leftist organizations to mimic political parties, acting as racketeers/mediators, with cadre-based hierarchies of theoretician & militant or intellectual & grunt, defailting toward institutionalization, and ritualizing a meeting-voting-recruiting-marching pattern

Identity Politics

critiquing identity politics insofar as it preserves victimization-enabled identities and social roles (i.e. affirming rather than negating gender, class, etc.) and inflicts guilt-induced paralysis, amongst others

critiquing single-issue campaigns or orientations

Values

moving beyond anarchISM as a static historical praxis into anarchY as a living praxis

focussing on daily life and the intersectionality thereof rather than dialectics / totalizing narratives (except anarcho-primitivists tend toward epistemology)

emphasizing personal autonomy and a rejection of work (as forced labor, alienated labor, workplace-centricity)

critiquing Enlightenment notions of Cartesian dualities, rationalism, humanism, democracy, utopia, etc.

critiquing industrial notions of mass society, production, productivity, efficiency, “Progress”, technophilia, civilization (esp. in anti-civilization tendencies)

[naxalbari1967]

Siraj Sikder Saw Through Your Flag Before You Finished Sewing It

Siraj Sikder was not a terrorist, not a fringe ideologue, not a failed dreamer. He was the first revolutionary in East Bengal who dared to name the real enemy, pick up arms against it, and organize the people for total national liberation. He did not beg for parliamentary crumbs or hide behind rhetoric. He built a fighting force, trained cadres, and called for class war when every so-called progressive was negotiating with feudal landlords, military generals, or comprador traitors. He exposed the Awami League for what it was: a bourgeois nationalist front, not a party of revolution. He exposed the so-called socialists who folded into state institutions. And he rejected both Pakistani fascism and Indian expansionism. That made him a threat to every class enemy in the region. That is why they killed him.

In the ashes of Pakistan’s genocidal war, while others were busy building careers in the new regime, Sikder built a guerrilla front. The Proletarian Party of East Bengal (PPEB) did not emerge from academia or NGOs. It emerged from fields, slums, factories, and forests. Sikder was not interested in slogans detached from the masses. He spoke in the language of struggle. He called for agrarian revolution, for the annihilation of feudal landlords, for the dismantling of the puppet state that came out of 1971. He saw through the farce early. While Mujib’s government was parading in global media as the face of independence, it was sending police and soldiers to crush the landless poor. Sikder stood with those poor and said clearly: without the destruction of the state apparatus, there is no freedom.

Sikder defined East Bengal as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society under Indian expansionist domination. This was not a slogan. This was material analysis. Indian capital moved in after 1971 and began dictating economic and political terms. Border violence continued. The Bangladesh state, staffed by bureaucrats trained under Pakistan and loyal to foreign investors, became a comprador tool for regional imperialism. Sikder refused to legitimize this. He called for national liberation not as a flag-waving performance, but as a concrete revolutionary program. That made him completely different from the fake leftists who were joining Mujib’s parliament or tailing after Soviet revisionism.

Sikder was a Maoist, but not in name only. He applied the theory to the soil of Bengal. He believed in people’s war, protracted struggle, rural base areas, and revolutionary discipline. He built secret cells across districts. He trained Red fighters. He organized peasants to seize land, hold revolutionary courts, and destroy the authority of landlords and corrupt officials. PPEB was not a party of debates. It was a war machine, and Sikder was its engine. He understood that without armed struggle, no oppressed nation ever broke its chains. He looked at Vietnam, China, and Algeria and asked: why not here? Why should East Bengal remain a plaything for Delhi and Dhaka elite?

Every Bangladeshi government has feared his name since. Not because he failed. But because he told the truth. Sikder said Mujib was no liberator. He was the leader of a comprador regime. Sikder said the military was not a neutral force. It was the armed wing of landlord-capitalist rule. Sikder said the constitution was not a social contract. It was a tool to maintain class domination. He proved that national independence without class revolution is a shell. He said all power must come from the barrel of a gun held by the people. Not a metaphor. A program. And he began to carry it out.

That is why they tortured him. That is why they executed him in custody. Not in a shootout. Not in a raid. In cold blood. Because they could not break him. Because even under arrest, he was a symbol of the one thing the ruling class could not tolerate: total defiance. Sikder became a martyr not because of defeat but because of clarity. He was not killed for violence. He was killed for revolutionary threat. He proved that it was possible to reject both East and West, both local traitors and foreign masters, both army and parliament, and still build a path forward based on the masses.

He left behind a blueprint. He said: do not compromise with reaction. Do not enter the fake democracy. Do not collaborate with revisionists. Build the party. Train the people. Launch the war. Never submit. That spirit lives on even if the organization splintered. His writings are banned, his memory erased from textbooks, and his name slandered by the state. But every time a landless farmer picks up a stick, every time a worker marches in defiance, every time a student tears down a picture of a false hero, Sikder lives. His line remains the only one in Bangladesh that pointed clearly toward socialism, independence, and people’s power.

He did not live for popularity. He lived for revolution. His vision was not development under capitalism. It was the destruction of capitalism in every form. Not foreign aid. Not NGO handouts. Not IMF loans. Revolutionary seizure of land, factories, power. His enemies speak of peace. He spoke of justice. His enemies called for unity with class enemies. He called for their destruction. That is why he belongs in the same breath as Mao, Lenin, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh. Not because of scale. But because of truth.

[max1461]

"...Transitioning solely state-owned enterprises to mixed ownership was announced in 2013..."

"...mergers include an effort to create larger and more competitive national champions with a bigger global market share by reducing price competition abroad and increasing vertical integration..."

"...state ownership, Party cadre management, Party participation in corporate decision-making, and intra-Party supervision...."

"...required SOE articles of association to require that major decisions must be discussed by the SOE's party committee before they are considered by management or by the board of directors...."

"...In 2024, the Chinese government announced SOE management would be assessed based on stock market performance..."

tfw the board of directors has to run their decisions by the Party cadre to make sure they're maximizing shareholder profits

[milfstalin]

i wrote an off-the-cuff essay (1.4k words) inspired by speaking with a comrade about organizing in the u.s., would appreciate feedback or comments or anything:

The failure to organize is both a tactical and a moral one:

The failure of the American labor unions to call a general strike on behalf of Palestine or to meaningfully impede the U.S.-Israeli arms dependency speaks to the disorganization of the “left” (that is to say, a vague alliance of communists/anarchists/trade unionists/progressive factions) in general, with the most militant actions carried out by the anarchists being essentially acts of vandalism and occasional logistical disruptions but no real impact to the overall functioning of the military-industrial complex. As of one year since the start of Al-Aqsa Flood, which was a tactical, catastrophically successful strike to revive the movement for Palestinian statehood and to curb Israeli expansion into Palestinian lands, and to take advantage of U.S. distraction in the Ukraine, the Harris-Walz campaign is running on a platform in many ways that is identical to the GOP’s platform, while promising the very same flow of U.S. arms and intelligence to the settler-colony. With regards to imperialism, the two parties are exactly the same; they wish to reproduce it.

U.S. war goals for Israel and West Asia:

The U.S. government never intended for a ceasefire in Gaza because they saw the genocide as a golden opportunity to eliminate Hamas, the main militant resistance group against continuous Israeli oppression. “Ceasefire now” has become the “Defund the police” of 2023, a slogan overused and co-opted and defanged entirely. That the U.S. has also quietly encouraged Israel to invade Lebanon and extend the Palestinian genocide to them, in order to dismantle Hezbollah as both a political party and as a military force is unsurprising.

In short, the U.S.’s goal in West Asia is to have Israel win the war and utterly exterminate its enemies- from the organized parties who launch rockets at the colonial outposts to the Palestinian and Lebanese families who are crushed under buildings. That is because the alternative to Israel winning is Israel losing, and losing absolutely up to a complete collapse. Losing Israel means losing the most sophisticated U.S. military base on earth and a projection of imperial power, as well as a cudgel to use against the people of the region, and a way to ensure the smooth flow of oil with Israel used as a brandished weapon and thinly veiled threat against U.S.-client states.

Iran, after waiting precious months to buy time for a ceasefire deal, has now decided to up the ante and respond to constant Israeli provocations and to enter the field in support Hezbollah, who despite Israeli decapitation of its top leadership in apocalyptic bombings and terrorist attacks like the pager blasts remains coherent as a party and continues to fight. Al-Qassam fighters continue to emerge from rubble to attack platoons in Gaza, the West Bank remains vibrant with resistance, and the Yemeni Armed Forces have refused to give on up on Palestine even despite U.S. attempts at bribery. The popular cradle of armed resistance, just as it was in Vietnam and Algeria, consists of civilians who are forced to take up arms and fight against the imperialist invaders who wish to control and exterminate them. Each person killed results in ten more people picking up the gun to avenge the fallen. The only solution to end the violence is to end the colonial-imperial oppression.

Criticism of electoralism and the CPUSA:

The CPUSA, for all its cadres have done in their communities, has thrown its weight behind the Democrats in fear of the boogeyman of Project 2025, which the Dems have made no promises to counteract it. The CPUSA occupies an ineffective place between militant communist party and electoral worker’s party, rendering it ineffective at both and stranding it in no man’s land.  Line struggle within existing communist parties and dealing with their historical baggage may be an alternative option to organizing our own, but with a leadership as ossified as the CPUSA’s it seems pointless. Bringing back the revolutionary line might as well take as long as starting anew.

All this while Palestine and now Lebanon are subjected to genocide, while the media smears and defames the factions who try to stop the genocides. The PSL went for the moonshot in their own presidential campaign, but they were subjected to the same marginalization that has afflicted third-parties like the Greens. In short, 2024 is an election between two colors of genocide without any third option. And even if the PSL or Greens could win the presidency, they would find themselves immediately devoured by Capitol politics and either eliminated or absorbed into the bourgeois class that sponsors the mainstream parties.

If there is to be engagement with liberal electoralism, it must proceed in an organized, clear-minded manner, with attainable goals in mind, with concessions given over from the bourgeois parties before electing them to power. And these actions must be understood as only achieving a narrow window of political possibilities without changes to the underlying system of capitalism-imperialism.

Imperialism and organizing in the imperial core:

So, if we divest from engaging with the electoral process and the liberal parties, what do we do instead? The U.S.’s wealth and power come from the dollar and from imperialism; the exploitation of overseas labor means that the bourgeois do not have to listen to the demands of U.S. labor; in fact, the current labor unions bargain for scraps of the super-profits reaped by American corporations by their leveraging of “comparative advantage” i.e. socioeconomic underdevelopment due to historical colonialism and imperialism.

Why do we have access to cheap bananas year-round? Who grows and picks the coffee that ends up in Starbucks $6 lattes? How come we don’t have to worry about currency exchange rates or whether our savings will be devalued for reasons out of our control? These interrogations of our supply chain are essential to understanding how imperialism works. And yet, despite the massive benefits reaped by companies and the small luxuries given over to the working class American people, there is still homelessness, underemployment, healthcare debt, and all of the other ills that emerge from a society organized around maximizing profit and not fulfilling the needs of people. All this occurs on a background of settler-colonial genocide and continued indigenous extermination, and continued white supremacy and racial hierarchy.

Because imperialism makes it that domestic labor can be bribed or ignored, we must focus our attention to breaking the chains of imperialism itself. The American political economy is an ideological battleground unto itself, with anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist movements and states smeared as irrationally evil and anti-human, with the consent manufactured for war that is natural for a bourgeois government that wishes to perpetuate the current world-system of massive inequity and exploitation. The western imperialist proclaims cultural progressiveness and ideological supremacy, that it values women and LGBTQ+ people by bombing the places where they live and raping and looting the resources of their country, as if that was a valid excuse for genocide in the first place. Furthermore, one only needs to look around at home to see how much the U.S. actually values those groups.

Because even with imperial benefits the masses of American workers are still subject to capitalist exploitation, and that this exploitation plays out unevenly, based on racial and gender lines, we must organize to care for each other and to build dual power, that is to say, build a people’s power that cannot be taken away after a bad election cycle and eventually, a proletarian party to surpass and do what the existing ones cannot. The working class is not a homogenous one, and the differences in the masses can and has been exploited by bourgeois forces to great effect, but every worker shares the very same conditions for survival and therefore has a stake in the abolition of capitalism. When capitalism is overturned, only then can true attempts at reparations and societal justice be made at both the domestic and the international level.

Furthermore we must counter-propagandize against the bourgeois media who beat the drums of war, not with anti-war platitudes and liberal arguments, but from a materialist, anti-imperialist framework and with the goal of turning the war of the imperialists into a class war. Iran, China, and Russia are not threats to the American proletariat. We know our enemies and they are not across the ocean; the enemy is the bourgeois right at home who defiles stolen lands and permits genocide everywhere and reaps profits from the labor of the worldwide working class. To destroy the American bourgeois is to free the world entire. That is the historical mission of the American working class.

[warsofasoiaf]

re: China Taiwan

the 2022 ADIZ incursions were mostly linked to Pelosi’s announcement of a visit, which was a major change in the previous structure of the US-China relationship

Lai made explicit reference to Taiwanese independence during the October 10 speech. Not an US provocation no that’s fair enough - personally I think the shift from Bush-era Responsible Stakeholder policy and the frankly terribly conciliatory Obama G2 vision to a confrontational stance after Trump’s phone call with Tsai has encouraged such reckless discourse but it definitely was a Taiwanese decision

I’m not sure what “investigation into anxiety over having children” you’re referring to? But given that they had policy changes to address anxiety over homework (double reduction in 2020) I don’t think that’s necessarily the strongest piece of evidence. Qiushi isn’t just some public statement either, it’s where the Party elevates critical and endorsed political stances. Add to that that it was specifically a Xi speech and it seems like the Party cadre are not expected to treat this as more serious than any welfare policy. If you want to deem rhetoric as lies, doesn’t it make more sense to discard the press conference statements and elevate internal documents?

The firing of Dong, Qin, Miao, and others is probably one of those things you can read either way based on your perspective but it doesn’t ring true to me that they’re preparing for aggressive action in the next four years. If China was preparing for war why would they also be encouraging tourism from Taiwan to the mainland (I.e. a vector for espionage and sabotage).

You didn’t really address this but again - when has Xi done anything to indicate he’s elevated Taiwan to a top priority or tied his legacy to it? Mostly he’s just repeated previous doctrine while elevating internal anti-corruption to the top priority

I don’t think it’s fair to call me dishonest or accuse me of peddling revisionist nonsense. I like your work or I wouldn’t be engaging with it. I just don’t think the facts on the ground match your perspective. An imminent war is unlikely

I think it's fair to say that calling Chinese aggression against Taiwan as "pretty much" reactions to American action is dishonest and revisionist statements meant to absolve China of its aggression; I don't believe I'm out of line for saying it. Joint Sword 2024A was launched due to Lal's inauguration speech, just as Joint Sword 2024B was against the National Day speech. These drills were enacted as a show of force against Taiwan, not due to American action, so to claim as such is, I believe, actively dishonest rather than a difference in interpretation. There's no real way to square the idea that Chinese drills were done in response to the United States when so many actions don't have a clear parallel.

I also object to the characterization of Taiwanese dialogue as "reckless," while downplaying Chinese rhetoric as routine, especially when compounded with aggressive action. Somehow, only Taiwanese positions are considered aggressive. Consistent talk about reunifying the island, stating the use of force as possible, along with increasing military escalation and economic sanctions leads me to say that China does consider Taiwan a priority as part of Xi's overall shift toward more aggressive foreign policy - against Hong Kong, against the Philippines, against Southeast Asia by poaching water resources, etc. Hence why I said dishonest - there were too many actions that seemed to focus on distorting the facts to present China as the wrongly aggrieved party, pushed around by a dangerous United States. It's the same rhetoric Russia has been using in Ukraine, and I don't buy it there either.

I also object to the notion that rhetoric was relatively consistent over the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras - there were wild swings in Cross-Strait relations up and down, from the Third Taiwan Straits Crisis (frequently blamed on Lee Teng-hui's visit to the US but I'm skeptical - the timing suggests it was an intimidation move against the 1996 ROC elections) with periods of contact and no contact depending on the party in charge.

The ADIZ incursions, no, sorry, I'm not buying it. This was a sustained campaign that lasted well past Pelosi's visit for years. Moreover, they had been going on since 2020, well before Pelosi's visit. Again, this is simply not factual.

I'm referring to the efforts taken to reverse demographic decline - it's relatively well-known. There is significant concern about population decline and aging in China and China has attempted to address it with pro-natalism policies which did not work, leading to the study I mentioned earlier. It's not unique to China certainly (other nations are facing similar concerns), but unlike other nations, China's restrictive immigration policy means one big policy tool to address it doesn't work quite well.

I don't think the fostering of tourism or trade ties means a disqualification of military force. In the Second World War, Japan increased trade and tourism to the United States before attacking Pearl Harbor.

I'd actually strongly disagree that anti-corruption is Xi's primary focus. His anti-corruption force is largely a tool meant to purge political opposition and assert supremacy within the party. I'd argue his chief focus was primarily establishing himself as a personalist dictator in the vein of Mao, evidenced by said purges and the removal of term limits.

I maintain that the threat of a military conflict over Taiwan is a very real possibility. The aggressive posture that has increasingly characterized Chinese foreign policy leads me to believe it.

-SLAL

[contentment-of-cats]

The Noob Session

There is a great deal to be learned in observing the strategic games of his weapons officer. Pyrondi is an occasional player, but is most often present in the role of Dungeon Master - directing the chaos. It is chaos, in the sense that one's plans may or may not survive the first engagement with the enemy. To have the best possible chance ahead of said engagement, Thrawn studies Pirates & Privateers and is interested in how the narration of the Sith Wars differs here from the teachings of the Ascendancy. He chooses to be a Privateer - a ostensibly civilian ship's captain flying under 'letters of marque and reprisal' - official sanction for a private vessel to capture enemy ships of commerce or war.

Faro, Marinith, and Hammerly have elected to join the game as well. There will certainly be worthy foes, so he studies the classes more likely to oppose him. System Forces, Republic forces, Sith Empire forces, other Privateers, and the criminal classes - pirates, smugglers, and criminal organizations that pull their strings. Within those forces are different character classes making up crews, non-playing characters, vehicles, and armaments. Thrawn studies as he hasn't studied since Taharim and pulls Eli along with him.

They are quite well prepared, he thinks.

Then he pumps Eli and Captain Faro for insight into Pyrondi. His weapons officer can be brash and mouthy, never backs down from a fight, and is one of the few weapons officers he's met in his career who routinely runs firing solutions in her head. Her familial name in Cheunh means 'dragonet' or little dragon, while her personal name is close to the word for blizzard. She is of small stature, just over the Piett Standard.

The sign-ups were plentiful and the venue needed to handle an expanded number of players. The senior officers' dining room - for commanders and above - will host six cadres of players. The parties will each form the captain, officers, and crewmen of a vessel or a platoon headed by a lieutenant and staff sergeant as basic units of play. The tables are pushed together, and additional holotops linked to Pyrondi's have been found for each party. Pyrondi asked the more experienced players to help the 'noobs' to roll dice for their character attributes or 'stats.'

Thrawn finds the element of pure chance to be intriguing. One must possibly presume a level of intelligence to pass one's training. However, he has met some phenomenally stupid people in his career who one might think would have been eliminated from the gene pool via their own actions. They also rolled for wealth, and from that stat were able to buy ships, equipment, weapons, food, medical supplies, and other supply chain items. His Ranger-class light cruiser was at the top of his budget, both for speed and armor class. Those from his cadre chipped in their own wealth to buy supplies while his letters of marque are also letters of credit that allow him substantial buying power.

The players filter in, all of them in civilian clothing, then start taking their seats and talking to their cadre. The feel in the room is one of battle preparations, and perhaps it is so. Pyrondi has been working all week on her plans, and is the last one to come in. She sets up the graceful triptych screen, places the crystal ball, and then sets up her materials.

"Good evening, I brought dice sets and pads for the new players." Thrawn is rolling with one of Eli's sets, while he heard others commissioned new sets from the hobby crafters aboard. "All right, everyone get comfy, breaks will be each hour for ten minutes. Commodore Thrawn will banish us to bed so that we don't zombie on duty. Now, the campaign I've put together is based on the Battle of the Lemmil Cluster. It's a lesser known battle, but one for very high stakes since it was a rich source of raw materials including doonium, accelerite. and clouzon. The Lemmil Alliance played both ends and got richer than a Tagge doing it."

Everyone took out a personal data pad as Pyrondi distributed the scenario. Since nobody opted to play either Republic or Sith, those two were playing out their historical roles.

"Finally, Major Carvia will be co-modding with me for the ground campaigns. Now. we'll start this in a bar on Corellia. The White Star was a known hangout for privateers flying under Corellian letters of marque for the Prince-Admiral and Princess-General. It was also a hangout for the scum and villainy-"

"Hey!" Indignantly from an engineering lieutenant.

"You wanted to be a pirate, Ashbough. As I was saying, for the scum and villains of the Core are attempting to bend ears for a likely target-"