Some formatting and additions to crash course.

crash_course_socialism.md

@@ -138,9 +138,9 @@ This video by [Paul Cockshott - Going beyond Money](https://www.youtube.com/watc
 ## Risk
 A common argument is that *Capitalists should be rewarded for their [financial risk](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/av92oi/someone_said_the_following_in_a_debate_and_i/)*. The only *risk* owners take is that of being [forced to become a worker like everyone else](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/a7fo1y/does_marx_ever_go_over_risk_in_his_works/) if the business fails. Risk also isn't proportional to reward; Big Capitalists risk much less, and gain much more than smaller ones, just as wage workers risk starvation and homelessness if forces outside their control lead to their firing. The nearer the bottom you are, the **greater your risks.**
 
-Slavemasters took financial *risk* in buying slaves, but that risk doesn't negate the harm done to their slaves, any more than it does the harm done to wage workers.
+Slavemasters took financial *risk* in buying slaves, but that risk doesn't negate the harm done to their slaves, or entitle them to their slaves' labor output. Capitalist risk likewise doesn't entitle them to a portion of their workers' output.
 
-The socialist argument is not that individual passive investors should still bear all the risk and hand off the means of production to the workers; it's that they never should have been in a position to bear that risk to begin with, and only got there by exploiting workers. **Society and workers should bear the risk**, make the decisions, and own the means of production that their labor made possible. 
+The socialist argument is not that individual passive investors should still bear all the risk, it's that they never should have been in a position to bear that risk to begin with, and only got there by exploiting workers. **Society and workers should bear the risk**, make the decisions, and own the means of production that their labor made possible. 
 
 ## Conformity
 [Socialism has nothing to do with conformity](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/mar/11.htm), restriction of artistic expression, or equality in abilities. It instead proposes *economic and political equality* through the abolition of classes, placing all citizens on an equal footing *with regard to the means of production*. It is Capitalism, with its inherent authoritarian hierarchies, that imposes conformity on society through [vapid consumerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism), and through the authoritarian nature of capitalist firms themselves. A [chain of command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_hierarchy) ensures that orders from capitalists drop like a rock, to dominate the actions of every worker.
@@ -167,20 +167,23 @@ Communists propose building alternatives alongside of bourgeois democracy, with
 - Public officials are paid workmen’s wages.
 
 ## Late Stage Capitalism
-During Capitalism's growth period (early Capitalism), when there are new markets and labor forces to expand to, capitalism can appear stable for the richer consumers whose products *are actually being produced* by exploited, poorer workforces. Likewise, in a labor shortage, as existed in the newly industrializing US, capitalists *have no choice* but to keep wages high (and the rate of exploitation low) in order to bring in workers from other countries, and keep them from becoming subsistence farmers. In the southern US, **African slavery was used to solve the labor shortage**, and keep exploitation high (since no wages were paid), and consumer products such as tobacco and cotton cheap. In order to take advantage of cheap labor, capitalists usually build production far away from where those products are actually bought and consumed, meaning that most consumer goods are shipped by ocean-freight, wasting energy and **polluting the environment**.
+During Capitalism's growth period (early Capitalism), when there are new markets and labor forces to expand to, capitalism can appear stable for the richer consumers whose products *are actually being produced* by exploited, poorer workforces. Likewise, in a labor shortage, as existed in the newly industrializing US, capitalists *have no choice* but to keep wages high (and the rate of exploitation low) in order to bring in workers from other countries, and keep them from becoming subsistence farmers. 
+
+In the southern US, **African slavery was used to solve the labor shortage**, and keep exploitation high (since no wages were paid), and consumer products such as tobacco and cotton cheap. In order to take advantage of cheap labor, capitalists usually build production far away from where those products are actually bought and consumed, meaning that most consumer goods are shipped by ocean-freight, wasting energy and **polluting the environment**.
 
 Since the 1960s, there has been a [labor surplus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Productivity_and_Real_Median_Family_Income_Growth_in_the_United_States.png), due to a decreased demand for workers due to computers and automation, and an increased supply of workers (women, and low-paid manufacturing and agriculture in less-developed countries). The extra, unemployed workers make up a [reserve army of labor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour), keeping wages low, and desperation high. Increased worker productivity (due to computers and automation) mean that the surplus (the difference between worker productivity and wage paid), is historically higher than ever. This trend will only continue, and workers will naturally become more class conscious, as they see their exploitation increase, and their livelihood decrease.
 
 Since workers have less money to survive, let alone buy what their employers are selling, there is a [tendency for the rate of profit to fall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to_fall), and capitalists fight and wage wars over the decreasing surplus. [Late stage capitalism](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/top/) refers to the extreme polarization of the two classes, the increasingly absurd and cruel ways our society copes and justifies such stark inequality, and the horrible things capitalism forces people to do to survive.
 
-As the supply of labor outstrips the demand, and it becomes cheaper to employ workers rather than to sink startup costs into innovative technology, **the technological growth rate grinds to a halt** ([as of 2018 technological growth in Europe has slowed to ~1-2% per year](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTl4b0w6mpk)), much like in ancient Rome, inexpensive slave labor resulted in stagnant technological progress. 
+As the supply of labor outstrips the demand, it becomes cheaper to employ workers rather than to sink startup costs into innovative technology. Soon,  **the technological growth rate grinds to a halt** ([as of 2018 technological growth in Europe has slowed to ~1-2% per year](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTl4b0w6mpk)), just as in ancient Rome, inexpensive slave labor lead to stagnant technological progress. 
 
-In actuality, **capitalism is highly unstable**, made up of a series of crises, economic bubbles, booms, and eventual busts, termed [business cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle), that occur every few years, with varying intensity, but with most of the resulting burden shifted to the working class. The capitalist state often intervenes to prop up failing businesses, and bail out members of its own class.
+In actuality, **capitalism is highly unstable**, made up of a series of crises, economic bubbles, booms, and eventual busts, termed [business cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle), that occur every few years with varying intensity, but with most of the resulting burden shifted to workers. The capitalist state often intervenes to prop up failing businesses, and bail out members of its own class.
 
 Both feudalism and slavery were thought to be highly stable systems, and even they lasted hundreds of years until their eventual overthrow.
 
 ## Defending the Status Quo
 The reason why most people are reticent to read anti-capitalist literature, and discouraged from participating in the class struggle through unionism and political movements, is due to **capitalist indoctrination**, capitalist media concentration, and police repression. In Marxist philosophy, [cultural hegemony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony) is the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society (the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores) so that their imposed, ruling-class world view becomes the accepted cultural norm; the universally valid dominant ideology, which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
+
 The police in Western bourgeois democracies are the **domestic enforcement arm of the capitalists**, much like the military is the external imperialist enforcement arm. They are the hired goons of the elite interests of their given city, protecting their factories and workplaces from unionization and worker control, oppressing the poor and homeless, and keeping them separated from other workers by intentional impoverishment via legal means. Cops have [a long history of killing workers and crushing unions](us_atrocities.md#workers-and-the-poor).
 
 ## The State, and Revolution
@@ -194,6 +197,7 @@ Socialism as an economic system is distinct from [neoliberalism](https://en.wiki
 
 ## The Communist Legacy
 Some Marxists call the regimes typically called socialist, as more correctly defined as [State Capitalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism), since production was controlled by state bureaucracies who also distributed the surplus, rather than through the democratic input of workers. Other Marxists call them *siege socialist*, contrasting it with *pure socialism*, stating that siege socialism is a natural reaction to the external pressures of capitalist encirclement, and that *pure socialism* is an ideal which is [ahistorical and nonfalsifiable.](http://www.greanvillepost.com/2015/05/23/left-anticommunism-the-unkindest-cut/) The US for example, has been involved in [militarily crushing nearly every socialist attempt](us_atrocities.md) for the last 80 years, and installing right-wing fascist dictatorships (friendly to US interests) in their place. Needless to say, **capitalist encirclement has a profoundly distorting affect** on the building of socialism; very few attempts have survived US interventionism. [This talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7WmYEoNtPY&feature=youtu.be) by Micheal Parenti is a good reflection and criticism on the soviet experiment. 
+
 The early stages of the [1917 Russian Revolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution) were far more progressive than is typically portrayed; Divorce was legalized, **Homosexuality was decriminalized**, land was distributed to the peasantry, banks were nationalized, control of factories was given to worker's councils, **the workday was shortened**, wages were fixed at a higher rate, all elected officials could now be immediately recalled; it created mass literacy drives, free nurseries, communal kitchens, and laundries. 14 Western nations (including the US) [sent troops to Russia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War) to fight against the gains of the revolution.
 
 Contrary to the popular phrase, [Communism did work](capitalism_doesnt_work.md): within a few short years, the **Soviet Union doubled its life expectancy**, became a world super-power, and the second fastest growing economy of the 1900s. Other achievements include: near-zero unemployment, continuous economic growth for 70+ years (*excluding WW2*), near-zero homelessness, higher caloric intake than the US, 99% literacy, free education, free health-care (most doctors per capita in the world), free childcare, low poverty, and low levels of sex and racial inequality, not to mention the soviet space program's achievements. <sup>[1](https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/86tqdd/but_socialism_doesnt_work_s/dw7qco0/)</sup> 

socialism_faq.md

@@ -350,6 +350,9 @@
 - [E-Library on the DPRK](http://www.korea-dpr.com/e_library.html)
 ## On Venezuela
 - [What's going on with venezuela? Rebuttal to John Oliver's venezuela show, and overview of the situation in Venezeula](https://www.bitchute.com/video/HmgCqjDblLP0/). [Censored youtube link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fV-C1Ag5sI).
+- [An ocean of lies about VZ.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii5MlQgGXyk)
+  - What about the US trying to send aid to VZ?
+  - The US has blocked the shipment of Insulin, and Dialysis treatments.
 - [Who's crashing Venezuelas economy?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqHzDLSl8U4)
 - [Capitalist sabotage in Venezuela](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk1qlKu_RJo).
 - [What about the black markets?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYWrPiUeWY&feature=youtu.be)

us_hate_crimes.md

@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
 ## Racially motivated
 
 - According to hate crimes researcher Brian Levin, hate crimes in nine US metropolitan areas [have risen by 20%](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hate-crimes-20-percent-2016-fueled-election-campaign-n733306) in the years following Trump's election. <sup>[1](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hate-crimes-20-percent-2016-fueled-election-campaign-n733306) [2](https://theintercept.com/2018/10/27/here-is-a-list-of-far-right-attackers-trump-inspired-cesar-sayoc-wasnt-the-first-and-wont-be-the-last/) [3](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41975573) [4](http://saalt.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Communities-on-Fire.pdf)</sup>
-
+- US citizens are [7 times more likely to be killed by a far-right extremist than a Muslim attacker.](https://thinkprogress.org/you-are-more-than-7-times-as-likely-to-be-killed-by-a-right-wing-extremist-than-by-muslim-terrorists-417f3c3461db/)
 ---
 
 - On Oct 27, 2018, a white supremacist [shot and killed 11 people and wounded 7 more in a Synagogue in Pittsburgh PA, while morning shabbat services were being held.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting). The shooter posted on the right-wing social network Gab, shortly before the attack that "HIAS (Hebrew immigrant aid society) likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in." He shouted "All Jews must die" as he carried out the attack. The shooting was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States in history. The intervening years between 2016 and 2018 saw rising indicators of antisemitism in American public life, including a 57% rise in antisemitic incidents in 2017 in context of rising hate crimes against other groups including Muslims and African Americans as reported by the FBI, a wave of vandalizations of hundreds of Jewish gravestones in Pennsylvania and Missouri, and a multiplication by 2 of antisemitic incidents on university campuses. [2](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46002549)
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@
 - On May 28th, 2017, White supremacist [Jeremy Joseph Christian stabbed and killed two men](http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/us/portland-train-teenager-stabbing-arraignment/) who defended a 16-year-old and her Muslim friend on a train in Portland OR. As he was brought into court, Christian yelled, "Get out if you don't like free speech," and, "You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism. You hear me? Die." 16 year old Destinee Mangum told reporters, "He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia and he told us we shouldn't be here, to get out of his country," Mangum told KPTV. "He was just telling us that we basically weren't anything and that we should just kill ourselves." Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, of Portland, and Ricky John Best, 53, of Happy Valley, died defending them the two high-schoolers.<sup>[1](http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/us/portland-train-teenager-stabbing-arraignment/)</sup>
 - On May 21st, 2017, Sean Christopher Urbanski, a University of Maryland student and member of online alt-right facebook groups, [randomly stabbed to death Richard Collins III](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-umd-stabbing-arrest-20170521-story.html) in College Park, MD, while he was waiting for an uber. <sup>[1](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-umd-stabbing-arrest-20170521-story.html)</sup>
 - In May, 2017, 18 year old Devon Arthurs, a member of Atom-Waffen, a white supremacist hate group, [murdered two of his roommates, also members, to prevent them from carrying out violent attacks.](https://www.propublica.org/article/an-atomwaffen-member-sketched-a-map-to-take-the-neo-nazis-down-what-path-officials-took-is-a-mystery) Pipe bombs, explosive materials, timers, and firearms were found in the apartment. A detective asked if Atomwaffen had drawn up a list of specific targets. “Power lines, nuclear reactors, synagogues, things like that,” Arthurs replied.
+- On April 30th, 2017, A white man shot 7 black and latino people at a pool party in San Diego, CA, killing Monique Clark, a mother of three. San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman said just one day after the shooting that there was "zero information" that race contributed to the attack. (Navy Lt. j.g. Lauren Chapman, one of the attendees of the party, said she felt "heartbreak" at the police's dismissal of this motive, which witnesses say was a major factor.) The shooting received such little immediate coverage that people took to social media to blast major networks and politicians for their lack of reporting, and terror context.
 - On March 20, 2017, Timothy Caughman, a black 66-year-old man, was collecting cans for recycling in Manhattan, New York City when James Harris Jackson, a white 28-year-old, allegedly approached him and stabbed him [multiple times with a sword, killing him](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Timothy_Caughman). Jackson subsequently turned himself in to police custody  and confirmed that he traveled from Maryland to New York with the intention of killing black men in order to prevent white women from having interracial relationships with them.<sup>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Timothy_Caughman)</sup>
 - On Feb 22, 2017, white US navy veteran Adam Purington, [shot and killed 1 Indian man and wounded another](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Olathe,_Kansas_shooting), whom he had mistaken for Iranians, at a restaurant in Olathe, Kansas. He yelled, "get out of my country" and "[terrorist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist)" before firing. A third man, Ian Grillot, was wounded after he came to the two men's aid. <sup>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Olathe,_Kansas_shooting)</sup>
 - On Jan 29th, 2017, White supremacist Alexandre Bissonette [shot and killed 6 people and wounded 19 others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting) at a Mosque in Quebec city, Canada. He was charged with 6 counts of first-degree murder, and not domestic terrorism. People who knew him said he had expressed support for [Marine Le Pen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen) and [Donald Trump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump),[[31\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting#cite_note-troll-31)[[30\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting#cite_note-lui-m.C3.AAme-30)[[34\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting#cite_note-34) and had [far-right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics), [white nationalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_nationalism), and anti-Muslim views. The manager of a refugee-support Facebook page said Bissonnette frequently denigrated refugees and feminists online.<sup>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting)</sup>