Lumpen intellectual, autodidact, internationalist... drawing on the Black Radical Tradition to abolish whiteness. Twelve years of treasonous unlearning. ☭
The Shawnee forest
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I know who I am and I'm NOT white:
My skin is pale. I was taught to call it "white,"
but I have since learned whom that word serves.
I know my enemy...not the Black man,
not the Native, not the one crushed by genocide...
but the system that wears property like a crown
and calls the theft itself a right.
I am settler-born: Irish, whose hunger was law;
Welsh, whose chapel was a prison;
German, whose forest became the mill...
landless, dispossessed, transported,
victim of famine, factory, enclosure.
I was thrust down on stolen ground
and told it was ours. No greater lie.
I am worker, proletarian; these hands have raised
the whip, have ridden with the raid, have held her down,
strung wire...its cold still cinched in my fists...
built walls and towers, borders and laws.
I build what will never repay the land it took,
what will never belong to those it stole.
My enemy is racialized capital,
the owning class, the ledger-bloodied rule
that buys my pale skin cheap and sells it dear.
So let the record stand:
if loyalty means siding with the crown of property,
then let the loyal falter...
I will break with them,
or be broken with the rest...
"Treason to Whiteness Is Loyalty to Humanity."
~ Noel Ignatiev
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Civil rights and the New Deal were consequences of global communist pressure. The erosion of civil rights and New Deal socialism tracks with the Soviet Union’s fall. The proletariat’s postwar peak came not from Euro-American liberal enlightenment but from Marxist-Leninist and decolonial struggles.
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can't say much—read here. Donate if you can, or please share. 😮💨
chuffed.org/project/172116
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A lot of people know the Nazis ran a eugenics program. Fewer know the legal blueprint came from an American, or that U.S. philanthropic funding helped build the German research institutes that made it possible.
In 1922, American eugenicist Harry Laughlin drafted a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law.
Eleven years later, the Nazis used it as the template for their own Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.
And the Rockefeller Foundation? It had already poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into German eugenics institutes throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.
The blueprint was American. The money was American. The history of eugenics is transnational, and the U.S. played a central role.
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fifth-generation Gullah Geechee sweetgrass basket weaver Corey Alston standing next to one of his large, contemporary sculptural basket creations.
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Her framing is perfect. More about Sun Wukong (孫悟空) here: mythopedia.com/topics/sun-wu…
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These people support slavery, cannibalism and sorcery as some kind of benevolent peaceful spirituality…idiots and fools.
🚨 HAPPENING NOW: Hundreds of Tibetans protesting Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington D.C. were prevented from reaching their permitted protest location outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. this morning, Sept. 24. The protesters are now marching toward the U.S. Capitol.
#RaiseTibet #WhereIsPanchenLama
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Tod🔻 retweeted
China has now released its official press release of today's Xi-Trump meeting at the White House. At the moment, the US side's press release is not out yet.
I read the Chinese version as soon as it came out. It is not particularly long, but it is surprisingly dense. And one thing stood out to me:
Beijing is not simply talking about "cooperation." It is laying out a framework for how China and the United States can compete and win together.
And the structure of Xi's remarks is revealing:
Trade: cooperate.
AI: compete, but cooperate.
Taiwan: red lines.
Read together with the written statement Xi issued upon arriving in Washington yesterday, today's readout may offer the clearest explanation yet of what Beijing means by a "constructive relationship of strategic stability."
Here is how I read it.
As in my previous posts, the italicized text comes from the Chinese official release, the bolded text highlights key points, and everything else is my analysis.
-- Xi pointed out that the exchange of visits between the heads of state of China and the United States in less than half a year is unprecedented in the history of China-US relations. President Trump and I have maintained communication through various channels and have jointly been steering the great ship of China-US relationship. In May this year, President Trump and I jointly agreed to work toward building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability. The new vision reflects the realities of China-US ties, embodies our aspirations for the future, and represents an important step toward finding the right way for the two countries to get along with each other.
We need to work toward a relationship featuring cooperation as the mainstay, competition with bounds, manageable differences, and promises of peace, so as to find the right way for two major countries to coexist.
China and the United States should, and fully can, achieve mutual benefit and win-win results through practical cooperation, help each other succeed through healthy competition, properly manage differences by seeking common ground while respecting differences, and build peace by fostering mutual trust, so that a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability can better benefit the two peoples and people around the world.
There is a lot packed into these three paragraphs.
First, the reference to the "unprecedented" frequency of leader-level exchanges is notable. Xi's framing moves from his personal communication with Trump, to sustained communication between the two presidents, and then to something much larger: a mechanism for stabilizing the bilateral relationship itself.
Then comes the metaphor of the "great ship."
This is not new. Xi has used the ship metaphor in previous meetings or phone calls with Trump.
A ship this large does not turn quickly. And if it veers badly off course, the consequences can be enormous.
I think the stage on which this "ship" is sailing is the broader Pacific. The ship may encounter storms and rough seas, but the two countries' top leaders are presenting themselves as jointly responsible for keeping it on course.
And then there is a phrase that appears twice:
"finding the right way."
I don't think that repetition is accidental. Beijing is trying to define what coexistence between two competing major powers should actually look like.
And the next sentence gives us the formula:
"cooperation as the mainstay, competition with bounds, manageable differences, and promises of peace" was already included in Xi's statement after arriving in the United States the day before. It provides a concrete framework for managing the competition and building this new type of relationship.
In many ways, this is an attempt to answer a question that has long complicated China-US relations: Do China and the United States have to choose between cooperation and confrontation?
Beijing's answer is no. And more importantly, it is beginning to spell out what that alternative might look like.
-- Xi stressed that the economic and trade teams of the two countries held a new round of consultations and reached a new joint arrangement, which is good news for industries and people of both countries, as well as the global economy. Cooperation is a two-way street. The stability of US-China economic and trade relations requires both sides to expand the list of cooperation, while shortening the list of problems. As long as the two sides uphold the spirit of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit, a way out of problems can be found.
Xi expressed his hope that the two sides will work in the same direction, stay committed to the principle of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, and promote the sustained, stable and sound development of China-US economic and trade relations.
And this is where the broader idea of "strategic stability" starts becoming concrete.
How do you prevent competition from turning into confrontation?
Beijing's answer begins with two lists:
The cooperation list.
The problem list.
In my view, expanding the cooperation means continually broadening the areas in which both sides can achieve tangible results. Reducing the problem list, meanwhile, means preventing new disputes from continuously piling onto the bilateral relationship.
This is very pragmatic to manage the relationship. The goal is not to build a relationship completely free of friction-that is clearly unrealistic.
The real goal is this:
To keep increasing the number of areas where the two sides can cooperate, while preventing disputes from expanding to the point where they overwhelm the entire bilateral relationship.
And that helps explain why Xi repeatedly emphasizes equality, mutual respect, and mutual benefit.
In addition, the phrase "cooperation is a two-way street" carries a significant message: Beijing is signaling that it is willing to cooperate, but it does not believe strategic stability can be built by China alone.
One side cannot keep extending the cooperation list if the other side keeps extending the problem list.
Meaningful progress requires both sides to engage, compromise, and reciprocate.
-- Xi said that while China and the United States, as both major powers in AI, compete in AI, they have even more reasons to cooperate. The two sides should leverage respective strengths in AI rather than guarding against each other. We can continue to engage in dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and work together to prevent the misuse and abuse of AI. The two sides should maintain human control over AI technologies, uphold a people-centered approach and the principle of using AI for good, and ensure that AI serves human progress.
What happens when an issue belongs on both lists at the same time? That is where AI becomes particularly interesting.
The AI competition between the two countries are obvious. But the risks of AI do not respect national borders.
Misuse, loss of human control, safety risks, and broader questions of governance cannot necessarily be contained within China or the United States alone. Two countries can compete fiercely over who develops the most advanced AI systems while still sharing an interest in preventing those systems from creating risks neither side can control.
This is why Xi said the two countries have even more reasons to cooperate. And the remark also echoes President Trump's statement on social media that he would discuss "super intelligence" today.
Trade is about expanding the cooperation list. AI sits on both lists. But Taiwan is different. Let's move on.
-- Xi stressed that the Chinese side's position on safeguarding national reunification and territorial integrity is clear-cut.
It is hoped that the US side will adhere to the correct position of opposing "Taiwan independence," and handle the Taiwan question with caution, so as to lay a solid foundation for China-US strategic cooperation and the development of bilateral relations.
The Taiwan question finally came into focus. It's different from the previous topics.
There had previously been speculation in the United States that Xi's asking Trump to stop arms sales to Taiwan based on the 1982 US-China Communique. I do not know whether that report was accurate. But the language of the communique is quite explicit:
"Having in mind the foregoing statements of both sides, the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution. "
Clearly, 44 years is long enough to qualify as a long term. Yet US policy has failed to follow through on the promise made in that document.
Looking at the structure of Xi's remarks, Taiwan has surely been placed within the boundaries of strategic stability.
After outlining substantial areas for cooperation, the Chinese side is also sending Washington a clear message:
Strategic stability does not mean stability without red lines.
-- Trump said that the state visit of Xi to the United States is a great visit. China and the United States are both major countries, and he and Xi are good friends who maintain in-depth and close communication. The US-China relations will surely be handled well under the leadership of the two heads of state.
The latest round of economic and trade consultations between teams of both countries achieved new outcomes, and both sides should continue dialogue to reach a better agreement. Artificial intelligence concerns the future of humanity, and China and the United States should maintain dialogue and strengthen cooperation on this issue.
Trump's response, as presented in the Chinese readout, is notable for what it reinforces.
He described the visit as "great." This effectively signaled to the outside world that the meeting did not need to be portrayed as a tense, difficult, or deeply divided encounter.
Judging from the narrative presented in the Chinese readout, the two sides have established fairly clear areas of common ground on several fronts:
- High-level communication should continue.
- Economic and trade negotiations should continue.
- Dialogue on AI should continue.
- The overall stability of bilateral relations needs to be maintained.
At the same time, it is equally important to note that Trump's remarks were relatively broad and general, while Xi's remarks played a more substantial role in defining the broader framework of the relationship.
-- Both heads of state also exchanged views on major international and regional issues including the Middle East situation, Ukraine crisis and Korean Peninsula.
The two leaders also confirmed that the two countries will support each other in hosting the 2026 APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting and the G20 Leaders' Summit.
I would not pass over this final section too quickly.
The Middle East. Ukraine. The Korean Peninsula.
None of these issues is simply about China-US bilateral relations.
Their inclusion reminds us that the relationship between Washington and Beijing does not exist in isolation. China and the United States are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, two of the world's largest economies, and leading technological powers. Whether they can maintain channels of communication therefore has implications far beyond trade, technology, or Taiwan. Both are deeply embedded in a broader multilateral system.
The immediate references to the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in China's Shenzhen and the G20 Leaders' Summit in America's Miami reinforce that point. They place the bilateral relationship in a wider context: even as China and the United States compete with each other, they must also continue engaging within institutions and forums where their decisions affect countries far beyond their own.
How will Beijing and Washington manage the competition in a healthy way? When the cooperation list and the problem list are both on the table, which one will Washington choose to make longer?
There is no answer to that question tonight.
What comes next will.
President Xi Jinping left Beijing on the afternoon of September 23.
After crossing the Pacific, he landed outside Washington, also on the afternoon of September 23.
By the clock, it almost seemed as though no time had passed. There is something strangely appropriate about that image. China and the United States today often appear extraordinarily far apart. Yet neither country is ever truly distant from the other.
And before Xi had even begun his meetings in Washington, something unusual happened.
President Trump, who just returned from NYC on the mid-night, did not wait for Xi at the White House. He went to Joint Base Andrews himself.
For a sitting US president, personally greeting a visiting foreign leader at the airfield is a rare gesture rather than a routine matter of protocol. In the context of visits by Chinese leaders to the United States, it was unprecedented in history. And it marked only the second instance since JFK went to this airport in 1962 to receive British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
The symbolism was difficult to miss. Before the formal talks had even begun, Washington was already signaling that it attached considerable political importance to the visit and wanted to establish a positive atmosphere for the discussions ahead.
I also noticed a warm moment at the arrival ceremony: Peng raised her hand to indicate someone's height while speaking with Melania, and the two were smiling. I could not help wondering whether they might have been talking about Barron.
Xi, making his 11th visit to the United States in 41 years, issued a written statement upon arrival. To the best of my recollection, this was also the first time he had formally released such a statement in the United States. I have not yet found a full official English translation, so I translated the remarks myself and offer some analysis here.
Xi's remarks are italicized; key points are highlighted in bold; all other text reflects my own analysis.
--I am very pleased to pay a state visit to the United States of America at the invitation of President Trump. On behalf of the Chinese people, I would like to extend sincere greetings and best wishes to the American people.
China and the United States are both great countries, and the two peoples are both great peoples. The two peoples have maintained friendly exchanges for a long time and their interests are deeply intertwined. China and the United States should be partners, not rivals. The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand. The two countries are not mutually exclusive, can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world.
The history of direct China-US engagement can be traced back to 1784. At the time, with American trade still constrained by Britain, US merchants decided to sail directly to China. Their ship, the Empress of China, eventually arrived in Guangzhou and was warmly received. Chinese and American accounts from the period contain strikingly positive descriptions of the other side. For more details, see the earlier post I shared in the comments.
Chinese thought, especially the teachings of Confucius, was valued by many of America's founding generation, including Franklin, Jefferson and Adams. Confucius is even depicted on the pediment of the US Supreme Court, a reminder of the intellectual curiosity with which some early Americans viewed Chinese civilization.
Chinese laborers played a crucial role in building the transcontinental railroad across the United States, a project that would have been extraordinarily difficult without them.
Since the nineteenth century, American universities have helped educate generations of Chinese students. Tsinghua University, sometimes described as "China's MIT," was established with important American involvement through the Boxer Indemnity scholarship program, while Yenching University, one of the institutions that later contributed to the development of Peking University, dubbed "China's Harvard," was founded with substantial American support.
During World War II, China and the United States fought on the same side against fascism. In the later decades of the Cold War, the two countries again found significant strategic common ground.
Since China's reform and opening in 1978, China has supplied American consumers with vast quantities of affordable, high-quality goods, while many US companies have achieved remarkable commercial success in China, some on a scale they had never reached in their home market. China, in turn, benefited from access to American technology, capital, management practices, etc.
The point is not that the relationship has ever been free of conflict. It has not. The point is that competition and cooperation have coexisted in it almost from the beginning.
The phrase "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and MAGA can go hand in hand" is striking because it deliberately adopts Trump's own political language.
Beijing is straightforward: China's rise does not have to come at the expense of America's decline, and no need for the United States to contain China.
It also carries an implicit message: China is not asking the United States to abandon its own national ambitions; by the same token, Washington should not automatically treat China's pursuit of a better life as a threat.
The formulation also leaves room for future deals:
If both sides can accept the premise that both countries can succeed, then issues such as trade, investment, technology, energy, and agriculture can, at least in principle, can be treated as matters of bargaining, exchange, and negotiated interests rather than as existential conflicts.
The most important sentence in Xi's statement, comes in the second paragraph: "China and the United States should be partners, not rivals." Xi has made this point to the US many times before. What is different this time is that he appears to have offered a more concrete framework for what that partnership could mean. Now look at the third paragraph:
--This year is a critical one for the development of both China and the United States. During President Trump's visit to China in May, we agreed to build a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability, providing strategic guidance for the future development of bilateral ties. China and the United States should work in the same direction, promote a stable relationship in which cooperation remains the mainstay, competition stays within bounds, differences remain manageable, and peace remains within reach. China and the United States, as two major countries, should find a right way to get along in the new era. I am confident that we can achieve this.
Notice what Xi is not saying.
The statement is not pretending that China-US competition can disappear. It is not asking Washington to abandon competition.
The real emphasis is on placing limits around that competition.
Competition may continue, but it should have boundaries.
Differences may persist, but they should remain controllable.
Neither side has to give up its ambitions, but neither should define the other's success as its own defeat.
That is the framework Beijing appears to be putting on the table, and clearly, the framework agreed upon at the Beijing meeting in May should now move from principle to further implementation.
--The world is developing and times are changing, but the historical logic of peaceful coexistence between China and the United States has not changed, the goodwill of friendly exchanges between the two peoples has not changed, and the general expectations of the international community for China and the United States have not changed.
I look forward to having in-depth exchanges with Trump on major issues concerning bilateral relations and the world situation, constantly enriching the connotation of the constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability, and expanding the space for exchanges and cooperation in various fields between the two countries.
I also looks forward to engaging extensively with people from all walks of life in the United States to deepen friendship.
With joint efforts, I believe the visit is sure to be fruitful, and will enhance the well-being of the two peoples and add hope for world peace.
The three things that have not changed underscore a broader point: whatever changes may occur in the international environment, China and the United States should not decouple to the point of outright hostility. Xi's reference to maintaining broad contacts with people from all walks of life in the United States and deepening friendship suggests a willingness to engage not only with federal officials, but also with the business community, academia, and the general public.
This is also consistent with how Xi has approached the United States in the past. When he visited as vice president, he made a point of returning to the small town in Iowa he had first visited as a young official and meeting old friends there. In 2015, he presented a medal to an American veteran who bravely flew missions over the Hump during WWII, and over the years he has repeatedly met with members of the American business and academic communities. More recently, he just wrote back to a group of young Americans.
If I had to reduce the entire speech to a single sentence, I would put it this way:
Beijing is trying to move the China-US relationship away from a framework of strategic confrontation and unlimited competition, and toward one in which competition remains possible but bounded, differences remain real but manageable, the overall relationship remains stable, and cooperation continues to occupy a meaningful place.
That, in my view, may be the most important test of this visit: whether competition can remain bounded without coming to define the entire relationship.
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This is my core concern with the vast “neurodiversity” trend. We’re probably taking trauma responses to being a young truth-seer/teller and repackaging it as a static, lifelong neuro-developmental difference, much of the time.
I wonder how many people there are out there who were sensitive, intuitive kids, saw through people’s unfinished business, were scapegoated for it, got traumatized and then the get identitied as “autistic”.
Probably a lot.
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The Foreign Ministry spokesperson of Iran had a message to Trump while Trump was giving his speech.
This is not Persian, it is in a language that Trump may actually understand. 👇
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The premise is bullshit: this was not a study of people who only smoked cannabis. It was a study of a largely tobacco-coexposed, potentially polydrug-using group, with far too few heavy tobacco-free cannabis users to isolate cannabis’s effect. Calling its result proof that cannabis alone wrecks lung function is a gross misrepresentation of what the researchers were actually able to show.
1 joint a day for 20 years was linked to a similar decline in lung function as a pack of cigarettes a day.
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OH Glorious Day!
Collapse of Gulf Regimes Will Lead to Liberation of Mecca & Unification of Arabic Peoples
Laith Marouf speaks on @DDPerspective
Streamed On: 18/09/2026
Watch Full Stream: piped.video/watch?v=Q1rBQ284…
Donate/Watch/Share/Shop: FreePalestine.Video
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