With the funeral of the late Khamenei drawing crowds of millions of Iranians, and many dozen visits from foreign delegations and high-up figures from around the world, the war itself has hit a temporary lull. It appears that the battle over whether the Omani route is legitimate is continuing, with transits sometimes relatively elevated (but still nowhere close to pre-war levels) due to American air support, and sometimes stopped by an Iranian strike. What’s currently happening in the negotiations is extremely unclear to me because of a massive deluge of conflicting information and intentional disinformation.
However, with Vance confirming on live TV that they are treating the MoU as an opportunity to refill oil stocks (not physically possible to any significant degree given current transits and the SPR’s current level) and that they’ll see where they’ll go from there, the US maintaining that Iran cannot be allowed to have a toll/service fee system, and of course the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, I currently can’t see how this ends without a return to war. The alternative, of course, is that either the US’s or Iran’s position is much precarious than they’re letting on, and they are bluffing but will capitulate under serious fire. I’ve been keeping my mind as open to the latter possibility as I have the former, and of course, it’s not as if Iran’s economic situation is all sunshine and rainbows and so that could potentially be the deciding factor, but to me, militarily, Iran has never looked stronger. The missile cities truly stood the test, and its air defense network is still plenty powerful enough to deter American planes and drones from getting too close to its airspace.
Elsewhere, we are nearing the completion of the latest wave of comprador installation in Latin America, with Colombia and Peru returning to a hard right political stance after a brief stint with more left wing politics. Venezuela is also being forced into submission regardless of which party is technically in charge under threat of overwhelming force by the US, after the US successfully bypassed Venezuela’s major and only defence, a well-armed and party-loyal population in the hundreds of thousands, by simply saying “If you take arms against us on the ground, we will do you what we did to Gaza.” Whether the Venezuelan people will continue to accept this humiliation or rise up is still up to debate, but if there is no response by the government at all, it does seem to spell a pause, though not necessarily the end, of Chavismo as it is currently conceived, and new developments will be needed to take Venezuela forwards. And, finally, Cuba has been forced to take the Dengist route (reform and opening up) for the possibility of survival after nearly a century of a more tightly controlled socialist economy, as the siege this time around proved even more impactful than even the very difficult times after the fall of the USSR. The next logical steps for the US will be to crush Brazilian and Mexican leftist politics, so we may see the ignominious return of the Bolsonaro faction, and perhaps even the man himself.
As I currently see it, with electoral tampering and fraud now both very commonplace and essentially unpunishable by leftist forces, there’s three main paths forward for the continent: 1) a return to the anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare that characterized much of the 20th century due to the once-again-confirmed failure of electoral politics; 2) just accepting submission to regional US hegemony as the US withdraws and relocates its forces and agents from Eurasia under fire, and hoping that maybe they can win an election here or there and that Somebody Abroad Does Something (the mythical “international community”, etc); or 3) the allure of the growing Chinese hegemony proves too powerful for even the American compradors to resist and they sign developmentalist business deals with them that undercut the IMF and World’s Bank plan to maintain imperialist underdevelopment.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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:
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.
Platner to fold? in light of another accusation, this time by a non-Heritage Foundation member.
Hasan has condemned. Over for the oyster farmer, over for dem senate control.
every week there is something new with this guy. One of the worst people I’ve ever seen
I don’t understand why SA is a red line for his supporters. You know you’ve been supporting an open and proud mass murderer, right? Why stop riding for him now?
His crimes suddenly become indefensible when they happen on domestic soil instead of some far away country where a bunch of brown people were unfortunate to run into him. That basically says everything about the mindset of socdems.
thank you!
i don’t know how you even make it TO the nazi tattoo shit, much less beyond it. he volunteered for multiple tours and then worked for blackwater.
ryan grim spent damn near a year reiterating the lie that successful “leftist” electoralism demands opening the ranks up to people with “normal working class backgrounds,” while he’s talking about a gaddammed merc! i guess you have to admire his sense of loyalty but then again grim picked a haircut at age 7 and is sticking with it for life. there has to be a limit
somehow it wasn’t a red line when it was biden
Resisting the urge to post a certain monologue from The Dark Knight
The only thing I would mention is that the race is (for the moment) really between two open and proud mass murderers. Susan Collins has been in the Senate since 1996, has been a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee for a over a decade, and is chair of the Appropriations Committee (who decides where the money goes, including to the military and intelligence agencies). It’s like an election between female Adolph Eichmann and a version of Oskar Dirlewanger who thinks Jews should have healthcare. One is a desk murderer with almost certainly a higher body count, and the other is the grunt with actual blood on his hands.
eirchmann v. dirlewanger is a good way to put it, and should clearly demonstrate why playing this game at all is a farce that will only drag you down with it
It’s different when his victims are American
They didn’t like how he didn’t shoot the victim in the head and dumped her body in a shallow ditch like he did to his other victims.
Exactly. Lesser evilism still holds, does it not? Be consistent in your “ideology” succs.
How anyone supported him after the Nazi tattoo is ridiculous. Accepting his excuse for having it is even more embarrassing.
Maybe a hot take for a news thread but I think the cultural response to SA in capitalist society has become so performative that instead of the usual response to seeing a Nazi (shrugs) they are forced to condemn with shock and horror as if this wasn’t the MO of every Nazi under the sun.
Shocking that they guy who did rpe and mrder for the US military in foreign countries also did some of that at home.
I hate seeing this guy show up. The fact that this one sentence “he was a guard at Abu Ghraib” is not disqualifying is beyond me. Every US soldier at that torture camp deserves… let me not say…
If he was an SS guard at Auschwitz would people brush it off the same way? Another standard where some people get to be human and others are not.
cut to the thousands of Nazis the US put into positions of power around the world immediately after WWII was over
Youre right
Right? I’m somewhat sympathetic to the argument that winning matters more than principles, because if you don’t ever win your principles can’t ever become practice, but there’s principles and then there’s fucking basic pattern recognition.
The troop with the Nazi tattoo that loved killing and war crimes so much he went back to be a mercenary is also a sexual predator? Wow. I didn’t know that. I just — you’re telling me now for the first time. 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄 🙄
Perhaps there is a lesson to learn here for Hasan. Weirdos who pop up out of nowhere and have fifty thousand red flags and no organizational backing are not to be trusted.
spoiler
He’s probably still gonna win unless he just drops out entirely.
That would require a situation change for Hasan. He is too isolated by fans who protect him and tell him nothing he does is wrong. Unless he loses a bunch of support its probably not possible and even then you are looking at a line to “why I left the left” road.
Honestly this type of existence is just harmful to the person and the people. It just does stuff to you when you just can’t ever be wrong. For one reason or another.
Hasan is petit-bourgeois. He has inordinate amounts of wealth compared to the majority of his audience, has at least some autonomy over his social relation to the MoP, and his position within this system would be under threat from class struggle.
He isn’t the most egregious evil of our times but he certainly isnt a revolutionary.
He’s also disgusting against women, I tried to watch his stream a while back and the first thing I witnessed was him watching a clip of Pam Bondi saying some evil shit, then he stops it to say she’s hot and then went on some tangent about how chat can’t deny she’s hot
He canceled a bunch of meet ups and event so the allegations are definetly true
Also axisworlders arent taking the news well
https://mander.xyz/post/54752444
It’s remarkable how the dem establishment believes all women.
Unless they accuse a party insider like Joe Biden.
“I don’t care about the personal character of Graham Platner,” Hasan has previously said. “I don’t care about the things that he’s done, unless it’s like literally irredeemable.”
Typical Hasan L, lol. Why anyone takes him seriously is beyond me. ‘Kingmaker’, what a joke.
So many people showed their whole ass with this one. Once the nazi shit came out it should have been over, but we get yet another example of people shredding all their purported principles and getting nothing in return.
Pretty consistent with a guy who did atrocities for a living.
He only has a week to drop out. After next Monday, general election candidates in Maine can’t be replaced.
Is it finally safe here to say that this guy is almost certainly not an asset/psyop? I can’t imagine an asset who would put themself through having every dark corner of their life dumped into the public like this.
They could be an unwitting asset who’s kept in the dark about being a pawn.
Sure, that’s fair, but it feels like there are probably much easier ways to do it than this. You can just get some normal Pete Buttigieg type loser to run an uninspiring campaign, instead. For better or worse, it seems like both party establishments were united on destroying this guy, which is why I don’t think he was not actually a plant/asset. But it’s also not lost on me that he’s running against (at least for now) the woman who has spent over a decade as a member of the Sentate Intelligence Committee and co-wrote the legislation that completely restructured the US intelligence community after 9/11.
This all just seems too convoluted to have been planned. It’s much easier for me to believe the “progressive movement and union leaders” that recruited him are just run-of-the-mill incompetent morons.
There is a history of dems getting excited about running troops because it allows them to say they love the troops just as much as the GOP. It wouldn’t surprise me if more credulous members of the American left have some of the same brainworms
Service members arent inherently bad, they are genuinely strategically useful if you hope to win. Lenin himself wrote about this. In the US huge swaths of the country are relatively poor with little economic prospects living in hollowed out farm and factory towns with a roaring opioid epidemic. If that’s you, you probably know people who’ve died in that vein and you’ve probably already seen military recruiters at your school. You could stay in your hometown with worsening prospects and find yourself scraping by or OD’d OR you could “see the world” and have guaranteed healthcare, housing, education, and good pay. A lot of working class people take that deal and are led to believe “we’re the good guys™” until they’re facing the contradictions of imperialism firsthand and getting radicalized. Pair that with the fact that huge chunks of the population share a greater respect for service members and it’s easy to see the strategic usefulness - even aside from the more historic / theoretical arguments. I’ve got comrades who were former military who now dedicate their lives to organizing for revolutionary socialism to pay back their time serving empire. I’d gladly support if they ran electoral campaigns because the strategic usefulness would be to big to pass up.
Edit: not that I support this dude or social democrats* just to say service members shouldn’t be written off, they’re strategically important.
Lenin spent years agitating in the political substrate of the Russian Empire, to the point that most of the army disintegrated in the field because of desertions. The moment he was living and writing in is distinct from the present moment in the Imperial Core. Soldiers in the imperial russian army were often peasant conscripts with no stake in the game. The famous Bolshevik mistrust of the military was rooted in the broadly peasant origins of the rank and file, and the broadly Tsarist origin of the competent officers.
One of the most important distinctions between Marx and Lenin is that Marx, or at least early to middle Marx, argued that capitalism would be strangled in its cradle (Western Europe), while Lenin argued that it would be broken at the weakest link in the chain. To take Lenin writing on the carefully engineered decay of morale in a military on the relative fringe of White Empire and presume it fits naturally with a voluntary, multi-tour soldier of empire is childish, at best. The idea that the majority of Imperial stormtroopers come from poor families is more propaganda. (Warning for Council for Foreign Relations source) The majority of recruits are ‘middle income,’ or in other words, not participating out of economic desperation.
Troops in countries where nationalism can be conceived as progressive can serve an occasional progressive role. Imperial British soldiers with experience ‘abroad’ from a hundred plus years ago were the inventors of concentration camps, and there was no revolution in the Home Isles. Soldiers, in specific places and times, have some degree of revolutionary potential. This is rooted in the material crisis facing a state, not the soldiers themselves. The people who inflict violence for a state will be aligned with that state unless significant material disruptions threaten the state’s monopoly on violence.
Great explanation. Lenin’s theorizing on Russian conscripts cannot be grafted onto the US military in 2026. Two very different scenarios.
dylan_g’s point about the possibility for troops to radicalize — that is almost trivially true, just as anyone could theoretically radicalize under certain conditions. But on the question of which class do you rely on for radicalization, I think US troops are far down on the list due to sheer amount of propaganda they are exposed to. Military training is basically self-MKUltra.
Among the “radicalized” ex-military, there is tendency to concede evil wrongdoings, but in an individualist, national-chauvinistic way that preserves the moral goodness of empire. “They lied to us to go to Iraq” instead of “Iraq is one event in a long history of imperialism predicated on bourgeois class interest and corruption”
(a) some people don’t care about airing their laundries
(b) but i don’t believe in psyop for another reason, he basically discredited like hasan, majority report, and rtx bernie, literally who gives a fuck about any of them, prince wouldn’t burn an asset on such small fish (or to put it another way, it would be more valuable to get him in congress). they are just that pathetic creatures to self own basically
i have absolutely no inside info on platner’s campaign or the fight strategists, but the inordinate amount of national media attention could well be a conveniently arrived testing of the waters for either prince or jsoc or some other faction deep within the mic to weave themselves into civilian government. i mean, the cia is pretty much openly running candidates in democratic primaries, so i’d imagine some money people on the dod side don’t want to be scooped.
Could you please add a non paywall link?
i’m too stupid unfortunately – here might be an archived link which i can’t manage to access to confirm if it works https://archive.ph/DOfb2
we are stupid together, comrade. nyt seems to be filtering archive.ph.