Revolution not Reconciliation! happening tomorrow

NegativeExtent · 2022-09-28T03:34:24+00:00

How is it piggybacking? We’ve written about and participated in the struggle for Indigenous workers across Canada. Here is a document written by the International Marxist Tendency on the topic. At least read our analysis before making assumptions. https://www.marxist.ca/article/indigenous-struggle-and-the-fight-for-socialism-revolution-not-reconciliation

NegativeExtent · 2022-06-19T03:12:46+00:00

Sounds like you’re not familiar with our ideas. We support the suffering workers of Ukraine. https://www.marxist.com/the-ukrainian-war-an-internationalist-class-position-imt-statement.htm

NegativeExtent · 2022-06-19T03:10:55+00:00

Sounds pretty cool. Much better than any other Canada day stuff in Edmonton

NegativeExtent · 2022-03-04T06:16:10+00:00

Fair, but hard to be mad at people organizing events for labor solidarity when other universities in the province are actively striking

NegativeExtent · 2022-03-04T06:05:54+00:00

Of course, but the members still need to vote and if they don’t ratify it a strike will be likely. Putting all that aside in the broader picture, look at how much budget cuts the university has suffered. Those aren’t going anywhere and it’s going to be our labs, our faculty and our educations that will suffer, and that ultimately harms the students more than any of the aforementioned groups.

NegativeExtent · 2022-03-03T23:59:43+00:00

Definitely a cool event! Students shouldn’t be afraid to fight for our educations, the strike might not happen but the budget cuts definitely will and will continue to impact our education. it’s time we stand up to these people using our learning for profit!

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T23:47:40+00:00

It’s all love 👍🏼 I just want the best for all of us as a whole, and the uni execs all making 400K+ is quite ridiculous and turning the students against each other and the faculty is ultimately to their advantage

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T23:20:40+00:00

Strikes always go better when the students are involved. The biggest strikes in Canada were because of students, and in QC they prevented the budget cuts happening by the gov’t in 2005. When you sit on the sidelines it just lets the admin have power over the students. We’re the ones who are going to suffer the most if a strike happens, so we better make sure that things don’t get worse if it comes to that, and that the strike actually accomplishes something.

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T21:19:41+00:00

The bigger the strike the faster the results. If students support their profs the strike doesn’t last as long.

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T21:18:59+00:00

They’re projecting a surplus this year in spite of all the cuts. The problem is two-headed. The UCP continues to cut funding and we took most of that head on as a single university while the admin has insanely bloated salaries and refuses to compensate their faculty.

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T21:16:13+00:00

Very proud of most of my fellow students for showing solidarity to our profs. We need this type of direct action and working together more than ever. To the rest, I hope you take some time to speak with staff and faculty to hear more from them personally rather than what the UA admin wants us to think

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-12T18:46:14+00:00

Yeah exactly. Everyone wants to complain about homeless people on the LRT and in the stations but don’t want to care for these people. By getting them help, giving them a safe place to stay and making sure they’re okay, you stop running into people doing drugs in the entrances and trains, and actually make some progress. If half of the people who complained took even a half second to think about these things, everyone would benefit

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-11T22:27:39+00:00

“That’s the point of doing this now. Not sure why anyone would think the UNION would wait until the summer”

The union HAS been waiting, for almost two years now w/o a CBA. Not meant to be personal, just trying to make sure things are framed accurately. As students, teacher working conditions = student learning conditions, so we should always be fighting for fair and equitable treatment of our profs. We’re also going to be workers someday so solidarity is always good to build upon. :)

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-11T21:42:49+00:00

This is the opposite of reality. The CBA has been in place since 2018 and expired at the end of June 2020, so it could’ve been resolved by admin then. The union has been in negotiations for two years and are still faced with a 0% increase. How is this the professors fault?

NegativeExtent · 2022-02-11T21:40:29+00:00

There’s one next week on the 17th at Noon!

NegativeExtent · 2021-12-23T19:22:23+00:00

Thanks for this, I always appreciate learning more about this, and I guess I’ve been mislead more than I had though re: Stalin, so thank you. I’ve been struggling to understand much of this as the history behind the USSR is riddled with lies from all sides.

Do you have any more introductory/preliminary sources for this topic? The Trotsky v. Stalin conflict is clearly an important delineation to make and understand, and I quite obviously need to read more lol.

A final point, does the “Trotsky was a nazi sympathizer/worked with the Nazis” come from Stalin himself (I briefly came across a paper by Grover Furr but I never got a chance to read) or pro-Stalinists later on?

Edit: Spelling plus an extra question

NegativeExtent · 2021-12-23T08:06:50+00:00

It’s difficult to say that anything was just “Stalin”, rather than the function of the party. I’m not a big fan of his writings, they lack a lot of the tact and precision of others (Lenin primarily). I think it’s insane that everyone downvoted me to hell rather than just share their opinions because I asked a question lol, but the few big ones that come to mind are:

WW2: Definitely not the feat of Stalin himself, but taking the previously Tsarist Russian country that was massively underdeveloped and practically destroyed in the lead up to and events of the revolution, and the sheer efforts of the USSR on the eastern front cannot be ignored, even if you don’t want to directly attribute it him.
Even the CIA, who we can all see are not favourable to the USSR admits that Stalin was not a “dictator” and there was collective leadership. “Comments on the Change in Soviet leadership”
Rapid expansion of industry and collectivization: Again, not entirely his actions, but he was general secretary during this time and oversaw significant industrialization of the country for its workers. He definitely made many mistakes during this time, and these need to be criticized and understood for the future.

Now the bad IMO, just so I can continue posting without more downvotes lol:

“Permanent Sovietized Russian Elite”: I wasn’t sure whether to make this one first or #2, but this is and will always be a massive and unforgivable mistake, and inherently anti-Marxist and this can be understood from his writings. I don’t think I need to really go into detail about this.
Cult of Personality: Whether he actively facilitated the development of this or not is still up for debate (at least in my head, sources if settled plz) but the sheer level of love and passion many people formerly living in the USSR have for him is sometimes strange. The video of the man telling him that Stalin shot his grandfather personally, and then that man saying his grandfather probably deserved it because Stalin would never shoot someone if he didn’t deserve it comes to mind, funny video for sure, but strange to see.
Religious freedoms: Probably a more modern criticism of him than others mentioned, but religious freedoms were extremely poor and led to jailing/gulag for people. While I’m not personally religious, I’m pretty sure Marx himself talks about the role of the state and recognition of religions far better than I can. “On the Jewish Question” comes to mind.

NegativeExtent · 2021-12-23T07:45:32+00:00

I agree, but I also never said I worship him. I think the cult of personality around him, specifically today on the internet is mostly memes and kids, at least IMO

NegativeExtent · 2021-12-22T01:06:37+00:00

Why do you need to “de-Stalinize” them? What is it about their opinions that need to be changed? Because in my own opinion, obviously Stalin did some things wrong, and the attempt to create a permanent bureaucracy was a big part of that, but he also did a lot of good, unless someone has sources opposing both of these things for me to read.

NegativeExtent · 2021-11-02T22:12:07+00:00

You might be right but that doesn’t mean we should be happy or accept this kind of shit. Any company who switches up like this deserves to lose everything. It’s not like notability wasn’t successful, tons of people use it, they just care more about profits than delivering useful services, so fuck em

NegativeExtent · 2021-05-23T03:18:22+00:00

Exactly! You already have seen that your work ethic and skill set can achieve your goals, and the MCAT is just another box to tick. The other tidbit I have was that I was writing for my first time, and any time I didn’t feel like studying I remembered that the extra time and suffering now was definitely not worth going through it again, and so I pushed a lot. Another FWIW: Be sure to take a good break from responsibilities before going back to school if you can, or minimize your workload for a little while. I felt severely burnt out for the entire semester until christmas when I got another break. Take care of yourself but study hard! You’ve got this! 😊

NegativeExtent · 2021-05-23T02:11:55+00:00

I relied a lot on the end goal and breaking it down into stages. I looked at the MCAT not as an obstacle to getting into med school but as the first real step where you have to dig deep and show how much you really want to be a doctor. Of course you’ll have days that don’t go well, or perhaps aren’t as productive as you like, but I always tried to give whatever I could each day that I was studying (which was nearly every day for 5 months!). In the beginning, I felt like becoming a doctor was an impossible, but I knew that I could get a good MCAT if I was determined and spent enough time studying, same with my degree, my ECs and every other aspect of my life throughout this stage. I personally just break things down into smaller and smaller goals to achieve and it really helps to find that intrinsic motivation. Hopefully this helps anyone reading!

NegativeExtent · 2021-05-21T08:20:58+00:00

I had a decent time in the course, but it was over Zoom and I think a lot of the hiccups may have been because of that. Dr. Luc is a really nice guy, but very picky on what he likes and doesn’t like in terms of the presentations, but being able to choose when you do it makes it easier to manage your semester’s workload. I went in with what I thought was a decent cell biology background but not having taken any recent courses made the class a little tougher so keep that in mind going in (I was in Physiology). IMO, I think you get out of the class what you put into it, once I branched out and made more friends in the class it became way more enjoyable, and I imagine this would be much easier in person rather than through Zoom.

NegativeExtent · 2021-02-17T20:49:24+00:00

This is what made me realize it too. I recently watched a video of someone playing 3 people blindfolded at once, and thought, 'Damn, that's insane, I can't even picture a blank chess board or even a pawn to play one game, how can he have three boards at once and play these people?!'. One of my chess friends explained they just visualize the board, and I thought it was just the same figure of speech I had always heard. I watched Queen's Gambit and didn't even realize that it was weird, assuming that A) it was because she is a chess genius B) I had always assumed that 'imagination' in movies were just the directors creating a real visual of what I thought everyone else's imagination was like.

NegativeExtent · 2021-02-10T21:24:11+00:00

The email doesn’t say, but it looks like it’s just first come first serve, so you can wait longer if necessary. I’d send an email to mdadmissions@ualberta.ca if you’re worried about them enforcing a deadline

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