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.
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.