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 French protestors at the Place de la Republique in Paris - a Palestinian flag can be seen.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

To start as usual with the West Asia, I get the sense that we're once again teetering on the edge of war between the US/Zionists and Iran, with Iran putting itself on high alert and conducting a major military exercise using dozens of ballistic missiles. I greatly struggle to see for what possible reason the US would try and attack Iran again when it's been repeatedly proven that it simply isn't going to work and that the consequences you receive are much worse than the damage you deal. The only conceivable motivation is a near-manic short-term desperation to try and bend the curve upwards on upcoming electoral results. Trump apparently covertly asked Iran if he could symbolically bomb Pickaxe Mountain without retribution and was denied - for those unaware, it's a site in central Iran where the US speculates Iran is rapidly creating a nuclear enrichment facility for nefarious purposes.

The situation in Yemen continues its positive trend for Ansarallah, with their forces now entering Taiz proper after having taken all the territory around it, while also cementing their hold on the coastal plains near the Red Sea by taking some of the mountainous heights there. Egypt has made signals that it may get involved militarily, joining the club of countries that are trying and failing to stop Ansarallah. It's a situation that, if you'll excuse an imprecise historical comparison, is reminiscent of the situation in the then-newborn USSR, where an international coalition tried and failed to save the losing, reactionary side of the civil war there. With oil and transportation infrastructure getting hit all the time and various international meetings and summits getting cancelled and MBS seeming (rightfully) quite paranoid, the Saudi position is looking increasingly untenable. It has similarities with the Zionist entity in late 2023 - their choice is to stop their genocide, engage in diplomacy, and survive a bit longer; or continue their genocide and, in the process, anger everybody, and risk being destroyed in the process.

I admit that it took about two months longer than I predicted, but the spark that was the US attacking Iran is now a conflagration spreading around the world. Several of the protests didn't begin due to problems with fossil fuel supplies, to be clear, but it's certainly contributing to the public anger in pretty much every case. It's hard for me to even be aware of all the protests and riots going on, let alone mention them, let alone analyse them, so to just go through a smattering of the ones that have received a lot of press coverage, we have: France, which began as students protesting an idiotic attempt at education reform and now involves at least over 500,000 and perhaps closer to a million people; in Albania, where protestors are demanding the resignation of their Prime Minister and are now burning down state buildings; in Italy, Portugal, and Belgium, which are simultaneously protesting education and/or austerity; massive protests in India which began months ago due to economic hardship in general and the Chief Justice calling the unemployed "cockroaches" in particular; in Indonesia, with protestors angry at the lack of a meaningful response to the extreme wildfires; in Pakistan, protesting the slide into de facto dictatorship under Army Chief Asim Munir; and lots of smaller scale protests and strikes around the world usually consisting of people who directly depend on diesel (truckers, farmers, etc) who simply cannot afford to keep working while fuel is so expensive.

Without the influence of socialist organizations, it's likely that many protests will be at least temporarily repressed; however, while the situation in the Middle East goes unresolved and the Zionists continue to refuse to accept Iran's conditions, Lenin's dictum of "every society is three meals away from chaos" may start to apply regardless. We're still at least a good few months away from that in most countries, but the trend line is definitely visible.


Last week's thread 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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[–] 5 points 6 days ago* (5 children)

I wouldn't be using Venezuela as a shining revolutionary example at the moment. If you want to have a half-baked revolution that leaves your bourgeoise in power and end up a neocolony, I guess sure that's a path you could take

Venezuela also is not in the core so that argument is irrelevant. France is a core nation.

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

    Well the Soviet Union is deader than Bolivarianism could ever hope to be and we don't discount their revolutionary method. Just saying "it's part of the core" also doesn't cut it. A mass revolutionary movement can happen anywhere, and it should not shun whatever tools are available to it to build power on all fronts. I don't see why the Bolivarian model is inherently inapplicable to France.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

    The soviet union covered a quarter of the world and lasted 70 years and made the most advanced strides into socialism ever achieved. They defeated their bourgeois class. It's not comparable in any way, it's like comparing a glider to a jet plane when discussing air travel methods.

    A mass revolutionary movement can happen anywhere, and it should not shun whatever tools are available to it to build power on all fronts. I don't see why the Bolivarian model is inherently inapplicable to France.

    Just one more election in the core. Just one more <- Electoral cope for hundreds of years since Marx. The one thing Marx was extremely wrong about that we still have (western) Marxists being wrong about. The revolution will not start in the most developed part of the world but instead on the periphery via violent revolution. History has proven this dozens of times over. To discount this point is to discount a century's worth of anti-imperialist analysis and Marxist dialectic and retreat into 19th century ignorance.

    This is why imperialism is the primary contradiction. The revolutionary duty of those in the core is to sabotage their own nations so that the collapse of their empires is accelerated, and to organize into a disciplined party to be ready to move when this causes conditions to deteriorate rapidly domestically. It's not to win bourgeois elections for minor reforms, which only causes complicity in social fascism and colonialism - using ill-gotten superprofits for their own consolation and separating themselves from the global proletariat into their own class of social fascists.

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  • [–] 17 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    I agree, but I wanna point out Marx also agrees with you! Marx is slandered as thinking the revolution will start in the developed core. This is incorrect. The reality is Marx (and Engels) consistently (from the leadup to 1848 onwards) pointed to the revolution starting outside the core (at the time britain).

    In 1848 (i can dig up quotes if u want but on my phone atm), Marx and Engels consistently pointed to the revolution starting at the peripheries (e.g. Poland, Hungary, Italy) and spreading closer to but still not in the core (e.g. France, Germany), leading to a military confrontation between the revolutionary bloc and the english-russian alliance. Marx and Engels view was that only such a "world war" (they used this phrase) could give the proletariat in the core the opportunity to rise up without being instantly squished by the british-russian military alliance.

    This is the sequence of events they predicted in their newspaper: national bourgeois liberation revolutions at the periphery (e.g. poland, hungary); bourgeois revolutions closer to the core in germany-france-italy; war between revolutionary bourgeois germany-france-italy-hungary-poland and reactionary feudal-bourgeois england-russia; proletarian revolution in both these bourgeois blocs.

    Later on, in December 1869 letter to Engels iirc, Marx explicitly revised this further, saying that because the English proletariat benefitted from the colonial oppression of the colonies (he talks about ireland in the letter, but its applicable to e.g. india as well) theyd never accomplish anything until they were rid of ireland (i.e.. that ireland rebelled and threw the english out)

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    This is a good point, later Marx did adapt his theories on this as you stated. Lenin was also the major theorist that developed the marxist understanding of imperialism, and moved us beyond domestic economism of social democrats like Kautsky into international solidarity and revolutionary defeatism. It is not a coincidence that the most prominent Marxist who investigated this line of thinking later headed the first major successful revolution. History proved him correct, it proved his strategies and tactics and analysis correct.

    I'm not a "third worldist" i'm just a Marxist Leninist who has read Lenin.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago

    If Marx were plucked from Cologne in 1848, many supposed marxist would call him a third worldist imo

    The idea that Lenin innovated new ideas about imperialism etc is an interesting one to me. On the one hand, the more I read Marx the more I see everything people say Lenin "innovated" already objectively present in 1848-9 writings of Marx and Engels, and Lenin seems more to uphold those views against revisionists like post 1914 Kaustsky. But on the other hand from the perspective of communists in the early 20th century, without access to anywhere near as many of Marx's writings, these things may have been seen as innovations ig.

    like a big example of something framed as an innovation is the idea of the proletarian revolution immediately succeeding a bourgeois revolution instead of coming after decades of bourgeois rule. This was hugely contentious in 1917, and Lenin was called "non-marxist" for saying it, but that was basically the view marx espoused back in 1848 wrt Germany's bourgeois revolution when germany was less industrially developed than 1917 russia

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