A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of the USS Abraham Lincoln arriving at Thailand, looking worn after a very long deployment to the Arabian Sea.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleTo start briefly with Iran, there's been two significant developments over the last week. First is that Iran is now beginning to put into practice its policy that allows preemptive strikes - a policy which was authorized by the previous Khamenei a while before his death but has so far gone unused - to strike at Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan without a corresponding American aggression immediately beforehand. The second development is that Iran is now taking a firmer stand against the US Navy in the waters of the Arabian Sea, beginning by testing anti-ship ballistic missiles against the US fleet - so far without confirmed hits as of me writing this sentence - as it is obviously disadvantageous for Iran to simply not do anything against the blockade even with US logistics under strain. The US has attempted to dissuade these new strikes by striking Iranian oil tankers, to which Iran has responded by striking oil tankers aligned with the West. This is very much not a shooting war that the US wants to get into as oil stockpiles continue to decline and diesel prices are at all-time highs (though if adjusted for inflation, we still have a little more time before we hit absolute highs). The overall picture is of an Iran growing in confidence.

There's also been some encouraging news out of Yemen, where Ansarallah has been conducting a ground offensive weaken the enemy occupation of the western coast, including some breathtakingly precise drone-drop operations combined with using recon drones to guide ballistic missiles at enemy formations. As far as I'm aware, the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi tankers has been very successful, although stopping Saudi tankers from heading north towards Suez has been understandably trickier. I suppose if push comes to shove, they can continue to strike the very immobile coastal oil facilities rather than trying to hit moving ships at a great distance.

The news out of Russia/Ukraine has been quite miserable for particularly Ukrainian civilians over the past month or two, with Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian logistics and warehouses being met with much greater Russian responses on Ukrainian civilian logistics and warehouses. Ukrainian ports are now effectively blockaded, making exporting agricultural products in the same quantities as before essentially impossible, and within the cities including Kiev, food suppliers are scrambling to find smaller warehouses to place goods in so that they aren't as easily destroyed like the larger warehouses have been. I find it sincerely upsetting that the war has progressed to this point, though it's always worth noting that, first, Ukraine had a few opportunities to sign pretty good negotiating terms with Russia; and second, in comparison, Western wars begin at the step of making a conflict about hurting civilians, even to the extent of it being a detriment to strategic goals by not solely hitting military targets (most famously in Gaza, but also e.g. during Obama's term by bombing weddings and hospitals).

I will confess to not being as up-to-date on the situation in Europe, and especially Germany, in regards to the Ukraine War as I would like, but as a general statement, nothing I've seen over the last few years has demonstrated to me that Europe is capable of fielding a conventional force which would provide a formidable, let alone existential, threat to Russia at this stage. There's been lots of embarrassing stories about European missile, drone, and shell production being well below standards in both quality and quantity. My thoughts are now that I think the age of the US/NATO posing an existential conventional threat to China, Russia, and probably Iran (and perhaps others like the DPRK?) is now conclusively over, with Western bases proven to be indefensible with existing missile defence programs, their logistics very vulnerable to disruption, and their aircraft not being safe to use over airspace at least as well-protected as Iran's. The US can still do cataclysmic, nation-destroying damage to smaller, less defended countries like those in Latin America and Africa, but for the anti-US squad in Eurasia, the vast majority of the threat from the US is now a combination of financial/debt offensives and covert intelligence. We still have a long way to go on both those fronts, however - a minimum of a decade or two, I believe, even with Trump's inadvertently anti-imperialist accelerationism.

Lastly for this preamble, the annual SCO summit took place on September 1st in Bishkek, with the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, and others in attendance. A lot of the usual statements were made: down with hegemonies, down with militarising space, down with unilateral sanctions, up with local currency exchanges, up with cooperation, up with peace, etc etc. The big proclamation this time around was the Bishkek Declaration, which reiterated all those points I just mentioned. Overall, it's one of those documents where the content is mostly cool and indirectly jabs a lot at the US, but I find that paper is a generally ineffective barrier of protection against bombs and missiles, which is a pretty major avenue of... let's say, "international communication" in the current day. And I would like to see some real contenders to the World Bank and IMF taking shape soon if we're gonna truly start fighting hegemonism, but I digress.


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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


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[–] 93 points 4 days ago* (33 children)

Mamdani administration warns of terrorism threat posed by "far-left, far-right, anti-government" people as well as those motivated by "conspiracy theories, grievances, nihilistic violence"

https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/2098872192691806578

Boil All Social Democrats

meme

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  • [–] 34 points 3 days ago (5 children)

    Oh look the guy whom half the American left were willing to sacrifice all of Palestine for turned out to be as predicted by the “ultras” or “campists”.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 days ago* (4 children)

    How was Palestine “sacrificed” by supporting a candidate for NYC mayor?

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  • [–] 16 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    it shows exactly what promises to make to get americans to forsake internationalism. Who cares about imperialism when we might get healthcare? Who cares about maduro or hamas when we get 5 grocery stores

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  • [–] 18 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Mamdani was definitely briefed about Maduro being to be held in NYC - remember his slanderous comment about Venezuela and Cuba decrying them as “evil dictatorships”, about like two weeks before the raid on Caracas?

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  • [–] 52 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    mario saved more people than mamdani by making them approve procedures for a week, and increasing shareholder value simultaneously.

    and he wasn’t even far left (smh) or far right, just median voter encountering medical system

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  • [–] 40 points 4 days ago* (13 children)

    Well, as long as he understand centrism as I do--Stalin, located squarely between Deng and Mao--then I'm ok with this, though find it a bit underdeveloped.

    Where are our DSA comrades? Any word of regret or did this fit the strategy? And has he genuinely improved thing in new York (but that would only be concessions, not worthy of being called a step towards socialism)

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  • [–] 27 points 3 days ago (12 children)

    Where are our DSA comrades?

    Howdy.

    Any word of regret or did this fit the strategy?

    Someone in his administration (with him standing near, yes) made a vague comment about right AND left wing terrorism. Ok. Sure, not something I think is helpful and I guess I’d criticize him for this extremely low stakes thing, but frankly this is ridiculous to think him not immediately grabbing the mic from this woman and condemning her means my thoughts on the use of Mamdani overall should be discarded.

    And has he genuinely improved thing in new York

    I don’t live anywhere near NYC, so I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that polls as well as anecdotes point him being incredibly popular right now in NYC, so I would assume he’s doing something right. I saw a poll that showed over 60% of respondents didn’t just approve of him, but said he had gone beyond what they had originally expected. That points to someone actually getting things done that people want.

    but that would only be concessions, not worthy of being called a step towards socialism

    Comrade I’m not having a go at you, it’s just I get tired at seeing this point made. Your typical DSA comrade agrees that you CANNOT vote in socialism (p sure this is even DSA’s official line, not sure but I do know this is absolutely what my chapter holds to and I don’t think we’re particularly radical). The point - one of them at least - is to use elections to develop class consciousness. For the longest time I myself thought this was bullshit. But then instead of just quote-mining Lenin, I tried to take a serious look at the conditions around me as a US American. I do think there is actually fertile ground for revolutionary, socialist consciousness in this country; but it is so deeply underdeveloped. Decades of red scare propaganda has led people who would otherwise be down with socialism to dismiss it out of hand just by its name. That’s the first - but not last - hurdle we have to overcome. I’ve been a communist since 2019. And I’ve had more fruitful conversations with people IRL in the last year than I have in all the years prior to that, and Mamdani and other DSA folks getting elected is probably the biggest reason for that (coupled with the deteriorating material conditions ofc). I believe this is what’s needed now. Inshallah there will come a day when politicians like Mamdani will be our enemies, but that day is a long way off. In the meantime I choose to think dialectically about it and realize just because a strategy would be bad down the line when class consciousness is more developed, doesn’t mean it’s bad now.

    And I’m just talking about the national impact of Mamdani. Everything I’ve heard about DSA’s involvement in Mamdani’s election campaign is that it was huge for uniting the working class and helping actual socialist organizers cut their teeth and struggle together. So even if Mamdani ends up accomplishing little, or this current public interest in socialism fades, I would still consider it moving the ball forward.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Inshallah there will come a day when politicians like Mamdani will be our enemies, but that day is a long way off. In the meantime I choose to think dialectically about it and realize just because a strategy would be bad down the line when class consciousness is more developed, doesn’t mean it’s bad now.

    I interpret that as "the democratic socialists will hand us the class consciousness we will hang them with"

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  • [–] 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

    NYC comrade here, 100% agree with this analysis. Every other headline up here since his election has been some kind of win or another for the people of this city, his polling numbers are through the roof and this absolutely sparks more conversation and discussion of class consciousness as a whole up here.

    People are regularly asking why the fuck this "socialism" isn't just the norm for a mayoral administration, and what "socialism" really means in that case.

    Of course I don't see the whole picture, nor am I as involved as I really should be, but the culture and conversations are absolutely shifting in a positive manner up here.

    Of course general public opinion and by extension a lot of talking points are far, far behind what we would consider valid from communist perspectives, but his administration has been a huge boon in getting some people to see just how ingrained and ridiculous the anti-socialist slander is in our country.

    A lot of people still want to "drain the swamp", and people like Mamdani can at least get more of them on the correct side of the aisle to do that.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    And I think it's been useful for people to see rents being frozen, landlords fined etc. Like if it can happen in New York, why not in LA and elsewhere

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    But these are concessions so doing little to develop anything which should be considered socialism, no? Im not opposed to concessions, of course, but they are often strategically inept to fight for.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    For sure, that is just more enforcing standards than building socialism. But I think most Americans are so far away from class conspicuousness it is good to see just a small action actually take place.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 child)

    From the outside, it sometimes genuinely seems better for the world if Americans' living standards dropped significantly instead of improving so that they are more willing to struggle against their government. When people are doing well enough, they are willing to fight wars in Iraq over 20cents a gallon. If they were doing worse, they would be materially incentivized and forced by their circumstances to maybe reconsider the whole arrangement.

    Sounds heartless, but its pretty easy to imagine billions being much better off if the measly 300 million in America just got their standards dropped by half (caveat, this requires thr bourgeois to maintain levels of wealth, otherwise they will be seen as also hurt by something and the American people will just support another genocide to get their cheap shit back)

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago

    I don’t think you’re wrong. You’re describing the sort of thing that leads to revolutionary conditions. But the problem we have in the US is, given the current status of socialists and fascists and well as just the background radiation of settler colonialism and imperialism, a precipitous decline in the material conditions will probably lead to outright Nazi-style fascism. And that’s not good for anyone, especially folks in Global South. Think about what Trump is doing in LatAm x100.

    So us socialists in America have a mission, and we don’t have a lot of time to do it. I think electoralism is one approach - one tool among others in the toolbox. Class consciousness is so low in the US that I think pretty much any approach at this moment is progress. As we build consciousness, then yes, certain methods need to be discarded. But at the moment, I do believe using electoralism in specific ways gives us a lot of “bang for the buck”. Also, I keep a loose grip on all this. I’m not certain I’m right and am open to being wrong. But I am building on what some comrades I know IRL and are much smarter than me - and are much more closer with the people - have done, based on their own understanding of the situation around us.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 days ago

    But then instead of just quote-mining Lenin, I tried to take a serious look at the conditions around me as a US American. I do think there is actually fertile ground for revolutionary, socialist consciousness in this country; but it is so deeply underdeveloped. Decades of red scare propaganda has led people who would otherwise be down with socialism to dismiss it out of hand just by its name. That’s the first - but not last - hurdle we have to overcome.

    Hasanabi momento

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    is to use elections to develop class consciousness

    I’m a bit confused how this can happen except rarely. Elections in the USA are hard to influence. In many states the cheating of vote counts are bad. In fact, it’s so egregious that it’s a taboo to speak of it in most political discussions. This includes New York, whose voting systems company are owned by a fascist. New York City had a rich history of cheating. Mamdani was allowed to win, probably because he was too popular. This is a very rare occurrence.

    Even in states that do only paper ballots that are recounted publicly; raising awareness through elections presents, at best, the same problem as in many countries Europe. But the oligarchs in the USA are more powerful.

    Most American people cannot publicly criticize broken elections, they cannot understand democracy because of that. And if they cannot understand that democracy means voting and counting accurately, then they cannot have their awareness raised by using elections.

    The only way Americans can be helped is by being forced to by more enlightened people

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago

    My comment sounds a bit more snarky than I intended. I am very disappointed in many things, but Im not American so was genuinely wondering if DSA marxists still support him, are supporting him due to democratic centralism (DSA doesn't do that, right?), or were trying to win out as a faction now opposed to Mamdani's failures.

    But your 'the US is ripe for revolution but elections can build class consciousness' argument is still missing a ton of steps, parts that I've yet to find on any publication from DSA, how one gets from social democratic concessions won through elections to people fighting for ownership of the reins of the political economy. I think that gap is scary and difficult, and that theres a hope which bridges it in people's minds. But that hope has been historically misplaced many times.

    The people that are now questioning 'what is socialism, then' due to these lukewarm policies are not meaningfully closer to class consciousness because they're still asking that question entirely within the framework of imperially allowed ideologies, namely, the winning of concessions for value directly stolen. Muddling class conscious building work with social democratic policies does not seem effective to me. How do they get from Mamdani to learning about what it means to be exploited and how ending exploitation means not just getting benefits but controlling the production and distribution at the outset? Is that something DSA can focus on now, or is a bigger election the focus instead? Is there meaningful enough opposition available to electoralists to ever make that shift? Are DSA marxists relying on pure debate to end up at the reins of the party or is there some material incentive seen which will force that within the party, other than the general force towards socialism that history provides?

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  • [–] 16 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    Who is the woman who is speaking? Kinda weird that the tweet doesn't actually mention her.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Took a while to find, but that's Rebecca Weiner, deputy police commish.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 days ago

    this is Rebecca Weiner, an NYPD Deputy Commissioner, member of CfR, and a Columbia Univ professor who organized the violent repression on Hind's Hall. She is also the chief of NYPD's Counterterrorism Bureau, which has an office in "Tel Aviv" and is modeled on Unit 8200

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