Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don’t have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn’t to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he’s gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like “fuel” and “energy” so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what’s going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn’t do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may “only” last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
What’s the deal with the “multipolarity bros”? I’m talking about the loosely aligned coalition of analysts, professors, and “ex”-spies/troops who go on each other’s podcasts (Glenn Diesen, Alexander Mercurious, Jeffrey sachs, John Mearsheimer, Theodore Postol, Daniel Davis, that Napolitano guy, Max Blumenthal, among many others). Is it Russian money, the market, a combination, or something else entirely?
Edit: upon reflection I’d put the professors in a different category to the hosts
They’re serving a big audience who want to see the world change but aren’t aware of, open to, or have a good grasp of anti-imperialist marxism. I’m sure there’s money flowing into it, but the main appeal of these people is that they obviously have a better grasp of the world than mainstream libs and some sense of how global conditions are changing. They’re generally knowledgeable and useful to follow as long as you place them in their appropriate context, though some are outright cranks or hype men.
Agreed, a lot of them host that Jiang guy, but will also platform Marandi, Michael Hudson, or Richard Wolff. Land of contrasts
I think a lot of these types are useful as a bridge between liberalism and Marxism, and even useful to Marxists because they have direct access to more of the mainstream. Most of their analysis are correct, even if they don’t use anti-imperialist verbage.
I personally regard them as people who “accidentally” got on the generally correct side of geopolitics. As we all know, by far the majority of… let’s be kind and call them “Western political thinkers”, are firmly on the leash of empire and appear in newsrooms to glaze the American military and Trump and so on - so the Diesens and Sachs of the world are a vocal minority who are almost entirely based online due to their seclusion from the “”“”“serious analysis”“”“” found on major news networks. I would be surprised (but not shocked) if any of them were explicitly funded by Russia or China. The key link between them is that they’re generally people who have some combination of 1) were born and live in the imperial core, 2) have some degree of conservative politics and so don’t rock the boat too much, and 3) aren’t outright calling for like, the overthrow of America, and if anything might say that they want the US to eventually win, but starting wars abroad isn’t the way to do it. This gives them a fairly natural audience (perhaps with some light astroturfing here and there) among a significant minority of conservative-leaning politically-engaged Westerners, who then support them monetarily with donations and by buying their books.
So I would say that, as you suggest, it’s the market. Major markets have all sorts of niches, and this is one of them.
It’s very significant that when you drill into their viewpoints, this cohort has a rather incoherent and incorrect analysis of how the imperial core operates. I’ve seen takes like “Back in the day, the US used to do things via respect and diplomacy, and now we don’t do that anymore” (when? during the Iraq War? Vietnam War? Korean War?), as well as “The US doesn’t need to be in the Middle East because we have the oil we need at home and the whole region is a total ungovernable mess anyway, so a retreat is good, though this war is the worst possible way to do that retreat” (and so they basically bought the “we invaded the region for oil and no other reason, no sirree” thing and don’t understand how the petrodollar functions nor how the Gulf states have been instrumental in keeping the US economy afloat nor why it’s advantageous for the US to be there to counter Russian and Chinese interests, let alone Iran’s, etc).
This group is therefore a different beast from the communist anti-imperialist cohort which includes, among many people, our boy Michael Hudson and some of the people he’s friends with like Norton and Desai etc. Some of the people in this group are, as AlHouthi4President has very correctly pointed out, even repressed and jailed in the imperial core for going too out of line, which is in contrast to people like Mercouris and Mearsheimer who, due to their greater ideological alignment with Western conservatism, get to walk around relatively freely. That being said, I think “our guys” have concluded that it could be advantageous to link up with some of these conservatives, with Hudson being particularly known for going on some extremely questionable shows. Perhaps they believe that some of the audience can be pulled away into a more Marxist geopolitical understanding (and some in the audience might, to be fair!). I’m a little more cynical, but I guess it couldn’t hurt - I don’t think Hudson is at any risk of becoming a chud by engaging with far-rightists, he seems pretty set in his ways at this point.
Hudson is kind of an odd character due to his brushes with Trotskyism and Georgism. There have been multiple episodes where Desai seems pretty fed up with his tangents and they wrap up the show before it gets too uncomfortable. But the odd thing is that it doesn’t really stop him from having the correct general idea. More than anything he brings empiricism to modern Marxism, which is sorely needed in the age of the podcast.
I think she has spun it off to her own show. I was wondering if she was tired of him. He is long-winded and kind of hard to listen to at length sometimes. I was wondering if I was imagining things at times, but I felt that she has been annoyed by him on several shows.
Truth be told, it always was her show; co-hosted with Michael, but she always had the drivers seat. She and Michael seem to be doing fine, given that he joined the show, now hosted on her personal channel, only two weeks ago. I guess she wanted more control over publishing; it makes sense that she doesn’t pollute Ben Norton’s channel too much now that her show has grown.
There is another channel, India and Global Left, that just hosted Ben today and Vijay Prashad a couple days ago. There is a lot of mutual channel-boosting in this crowd.
heh
And he chooses to publish on full Nazi website unz review and writes about Jesus being murdered by the Jews because he owed them money
doesnt Desai also frequently cite Trotsky?
Not that I’ve noticed? Do you have any examples?
she does it in the context of his History of the Russian Revolution and theory of uneven development
for instance in this talk with Hudson
or her book on Geopolitical economy:
Uneven and combined development
The classical theories of imperialism were embedded in a wider anti-imperialist understanding of capitalism’s geopolitical economy, uneven and combined development. This nascent theory formed the basis of the Bolsheviks’ historical understanding of their revolution, the ‘revolution against Capital’, as Gramsci termed it because it took place in a backward rather than advanced capitalist country. UCD also framed the Bolsheviks’ analysis of anti-colonial nationalist movements and the fledgling USSR’s ‘nationalities’ problem (Trotsky, 1969; Mayer, 1964; Suny, 1993, 1998; Martin, 2001).
The first chapter of Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution is UCD’s locus classicus. In Trotsky’s view, human advancement before capitalism proceeded as backward countries ‘assimilat[ed] the material and intellectual advancements of the advanced countries’ by repeating the stages through which the advanced society had passed. It was ‘provincial and episodic’. Capitalism, by contrast, ‘prepares and in a certain sense realises the permanence of man’s development’ and rules repetition out (Trotsky, 1934: 26). Though unevenness was ‘the most general law of the historic process’, under capitalism it ‘compelled’ backward countries ‘to make leaps’. Thus, ‘a backward country does not take things in the same order’ as the advanced. Instead, it exercises the ‘privilege of historic backwardness’ by ‘skipping a whole series of intermediate stages’, as Germany and the United States recently had done while the United Kingdom was paying the price for its early lead (1934: 26). Such skipping compressed ‘the different stages of the journey’ in ‘an amalgam of archaic with more contemporary forms’ (1934: 27). Such combined development was the distinctive feature of capitalism.
While it was first systematically outlined by Trotsky, readers will have detected the similarity between UCD and Marx and Engels’s views on free trade and protection, and their understanding of the world order in terms of ‘relations between producing nations’ (see also Mehringer, 1978; van der Linden, 2007). Such an understanding also underlies their thinking on the differential development of European countries, particularly on German backwardness against English and French advance, and their analysis of its consequences, whether for philosophy or economic theory (Marx, 1843/1974, Althusser, 1969; Desai, 2012).spoiler
or her most recent book from 2023 where this is the opening quote:
what this means I dont know nor do i have the academic or ML chops to review all/any of her stuff
I appreciate you finding those references. It is a little bit sus, though I think still within a plausible space of scholarly mention, without me digging further. UCD is in principle accepted by Leninists as far as I understand, however it is not extended to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. The second quote, about conditions growing rotten, is pretty good and worth quoting if it fits the context, even if attributed to Trotsky.
Desai wrote a recent paper praising Lenin’s Imperialism. While I think Trotskyists are more anti-Stalin than anti-Lenin, she just doesn’t strike me as some closeted Trot. I certainly hope I’m right about that. She seems more focused on her own work about contemporary capitalism.
Why do Shit Rotter, Kiriakou, Tukkker CIAarlson, Blumenthal, Douglas McZio, Hasan DNC Piker, etc get to walk around free in the belly of the beast while other journalists are kidnapped and repressed to extreme degree?
Rotter and Kiriakou spent minimal time in jail but Mumia Abu Jamal is still in solitary. Husayn Dogru had his bank accounts frozen and cant feed his children. Ali Abunimah was tortured by Swiss government. Laith Marouf and Kit Klarenberg can’t return to their respective countries of citizenship…
Addendum: Pepe Escobar isnt a spy just an arrogant fool who still thinks Saudi is a sovereign BRICS country and Russia shot down an F-35 with nukes last June over Iran 😫
He’s going blind because they refuse to treat his diabetes.
Death to amerikkka, of course.
Speaking of Mumia, everyone here should watch this conversation on Frantz Fanon https://youtu.be/pm9xDMGIy_c
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
They are vulgar anti-imperialists. They lack a Marxist and anti-colonial framework. Many of them like Mearsheimer are barely vulgar anti-imperialist and should be seen as representing a school of imperialist thought that is no longer in vogue among modern imperialists. He spill the beans on how the imperialist game is played because he’s not going to be walking in the halls of power anytime soon and he’s old as fuck. Why not cash out and be part of the grifter circuit among other cranks like Pepe Escobar?
Jim Cramers of geopolitics and weapons science. Every prediction they give, the opposite happens. I guess there’s a market opportunity for such. State funded, I’m not sure. That’s more the other alt media sphere of Tucker Carlson and the podcast sphere. I think there’s a lot of seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is.
i’m not sure this applies to mearsheimer
Really? I’ve been watching them for a while and haven’t caught much off?
Maybe Marandi and his line about how good Iranian air defense is - back in 2019.
John Kiriakou, Scott Ritter
Yesssss I forgot entrapped pedo Scott Ritter. Also Alastair Crooke