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Welcome again to everybody, and happy anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam . Make yourself at home and pay your respects to Ho Chi Minh. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

Matrix homeserver and space
Theory discussion group on /c/theory@lemmygrad.ml
Find theory on ProleWiki, marxists.org, Anna's Archive

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

If you don't know what Matrix is

Matrix is a protocol for real-time communication implemented by various applications ("clients") -- the official one is Element for Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS), but there are many others, e.g. those listed here. It's also federated, like Lemmy. To use a Matrix client, you need to make a Matrix account at one of the Matrix homeservers (similar to how you can make an account on lemmygrad.ml or lemmy.ml but still access both of them). We have our own Matrix homeserver at genzedong.xyz, and you don't need an email address to register an account there.

A Matrix space is a collection of rooms (equivalent to Discord channels) focused on various topics.

The space is intended for pro-AES Marxists-Leninists, although new Marxists may also be accepted depending on their vetting answers.

To join the space, you need to first create a Matrix account. If you want to create an account on another server, you can likely register within your Matrix client of choice. If you want to create an account on genzedong.xyz, you have to use this form (intended to prevent spam accounts).

Once you have an account, join #rules:genzedong.xyz and read the rules. Then, join #vetting-questions:genzedong.xyz and read the questions. Finally, join #vetting-answers:genzedong.xyz and answer the vetting questions there. Usually, you'll be accepted within a few hours if there are no issues with your answers.

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I made this comment on reddit and people seemed to like it so I'll post it here too. I don't think it'd be worth a full in depth article on this topic in particular so I'll just paste it as it.

There are a variety of ideologies out there, but I think they fall into one of three categories. Animate, inanimate and dead ideologies.

Dead ideologies are the ones of feudalism, platonic Republicanism, the chinese mandate of heaven and ancien bushido and divine right of kings. These ideologies had their place in previous class societies like the Manoralist system and slave society, but nowadays have no class basis to survive on [what movement could form around reinstating serfdom?]

Animate ideologies are the ones that belong to classes and advance class interests that are existant. [Modern] Social democracy, liberalism and fascism are the ideologies of the Bourgeoisie, which are obviously animate nowadays. Meanwhile, Marxist socialism is the ideology of the proletariat who are also animate.

There are a plethora of ideologies which I consider "Inanimate" and only exist in the minds of ideologues. [Another name for them would be immaterial]. Ideologies like anarcho-communism, national bolshevism, anarcho-capitalism, among others, have no class basis. They go against political economy and are DOA because they serve no class's interest.

For national bolshevism for instance, it obviously doesn't serve the interest of the Bourgeoisie considering its advocating of DOTP, but the proletariat interest lies in internationalism and respect for self determination and mutual respect, which means it is counter to the interests of the proletariat as well. Ergo, national bolshevism withers and dies without a zeitgeist of either bolshevism, nationalism, or both, and only serves as a diversionary ideology. [The only possible exception would be an anti-colonialist perspective. I.e, bat`thism]

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By this, I mean gathering all the vile crap and bigotry these people say, whether a tweet or a politician quoted by a media outlet. If we admit these fascists may commit massacres on a mass scale, including within the West, I think it would be wise to gather and archive all the evidence for a future Nuremberg trial? I know many of us want them to get the death penalty without a trial, but I was thinking social-democrats/liberals should be in this database too because they should be held accountable for their bigotry. Or am I thinking too much and this is stupid?

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Not sure what to include or not, but I figure if you're not on twitter you might have missed it.

Lots of very disturbing new stories and details coming out. Basically the entire western elite is in on it. Details about using war-torn countries to traffic children too. They wrote guides about these countries, openly talked in emails about "bringing back some children" from their visits there.

More names, including of course a lot of Trump. Some perpetrators are still redacted but people are finding them out. Elon Musk, his brother Kimball, and Bill Gates are in it too.

Moot (of 4chan) had contact with Epstein and met him several times. Possibility that 4chan was created by "Israel" to stoke the modern far-right movement. Of course there's a lot of speculation and that's the problem with twitter, the cracked theories are lumped in with the actual facts and it gets hard to tell what's plausible or not. Lots of people want to get the views first so they find whatever they can and then form a theory even if they get facts wrong, just to be the first ones to get it.

An email from a redacted name saying they "are in China" dated last week of May 2009, and then "will be in the US for 2 weeks". People are trying to find who it could be, so far possibilities include Gates or Nethanyahu. They should cross-reference with the US mention though.

Oh yeah and that motherfucker Chomsky, pissed be his name, is also in the latest round.

You know who's not ANYWHERE in those files though? President of the goddamn People's Republic of China, Mr. Xi Jinping.

On the one hand it's nothing we didn't already imagined, but seeing it laid out like this from victim statements and emails is something else.

Are communist parties doing anything with this? They should.

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From the article:


Portrait of author Mary Shelley left, the frontispiece to Shelley's novel 'Frankenstein' by Theodor von Holst, right| People's World composite

Yet another Frankenstein film has made its way to the screen. Despite critical acclaim and projected awards, it has little in common with Mary Shelley’s novel. Readers interested in Shelley’s political vision and the historical pressures that gave rise to the book are far better served by turning to the original text. To mark the 175th anniversary of Mary Godwin Shelley’s death, we revisit this novel.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—written in 1816, when Mary was eighteen, and published two years later—emerged during a period of political conservatism in post-Napoleonic Britain. Fear that revolutionary ideas from France might cross the English Channel fostered an increasingly repressive social climate. The legacy of the French Revolution, followed by years of war and economic crisis, produced widespread unrest and prompted the British state and its allies to suppress ideas perceived as destabilising.

Radical politics, religious dissent, and new scientific theories about life and matter were regarded as threats to social order. Materialist models in particular, which explained life through body, sensation, and experience, as well as early evolutionary approaches, came under sustained conservative attack. Journals such as the Quarterly Review denounced materialism and anti-scriptural science as threats to the established Church and as deeply system-destabilising. Debates about the nature of life were treated as politically suspect, leading to renewed calls for censorship and prosecutions for blasphemy. Popular unrest was further fuelled by economic hardship, industrial change, and movements for political reform, and included the Luddite uprisings (1811–19).

Shelley’s novel must also be understood in the light of her family background and intellectual inheritance. As the daughter of William Godwin, the leading English radical philosopher of the 1790s, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneering advocate of women’s rights, she grew up immersed in debates about reason, perfectibility, gender equality, and social reform. Mary Wollstonecraft, who died days after giving birth to Mary, was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Frankenstein reflects this legacy. The novel engages seriously with contemporary radical science, presents life as a product of material processes without divine intervention, and derives human development from sensation, environment, and experience. In doing so, it explicitly aligns itself with materialist modes of thought that were under fierce attack in Britain.

The frontispiece to the 1831 ‘Frankenstein’ by Theodor von Holst, one of the first two illustrations for the novel| Public Domain

The Shelleys’ and Byron’s exile on the Continent underscores this pressure: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s outspoken atheism and radicalism made England an increasingly hostile territory for him. After leaving Britain in 1816, Mary and Percy Shelley never returned during his lifetime. From Switzerland and later Italy, they observed British repression; Shelley and Byron produced some of their most radical works, while Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

Frankenstein was conceived in the summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva, within the exiled circle around Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s personal doctor, John William Polidori. Persistent bad weather—the “Year Without a Summer”—forced the group to spend long evenings indoors, filled with conversations about philosophy, natural science, and the nature of life. After collectively reading German Gothic fiction (especially the recent collection Fantasmagoriana [1812]), Byron proposed a literary competition: everyone should write a ghost story.

This prompt gave rise to two texts of lasting significance: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Polidori’s tale The Vampyre (1819). Polidori’s text established the modern literary archetype of the aristocratic vampire, Lord Ruthven, portraying him as a metaphor for a dangerous, blood-drinking feudal lord and thereby directly paving the way for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula (1897). Viewed in its historical context, this tale too is highly politically charged. While Byron and Percy Shelley’s own texts remained fragments, Mary Shelley transformed her vision into a philosophical novel that far exceeded the original “ghost story” and became a foundational reflection on science, power, responsibility, and social exclusion.

One of the most famous stories in world literature, Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist driven by curiosity and the desire to transcend natural limits, who animates a Being from assembled body parts. Rejecting the Being at the moment of its animation, Victor abandons his creation and leaves it to its fate. The Being initially behaves kindly, acquires language, literature, and human conduct, and carefully prepares for its first encounter with people. Repeated rejection, cruelty, and Victor’s persistent neglect eventually drive it to seek revenge on its creator.

The novel’s settings, Geneva and Ingolstadt, function as fundamentally opposed political spaces. Geneva, Victor’s place of origin, embodies the dialectical legacy of the Enlightenment: it is both a stronghold of repressive Calvinism and the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose philosophy radically challenged that order. The city thus represents a tense field of bourgeois duty, familial obligation, and the unrealized potential of radical social designs. Shelley counters this with Ingolstadt as a deliberately chosen site of rupture. In contemporary British perception, the city was inseparably associated with Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminati order, which conservative circles—stoked by pamphlets such as John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (1797)—regarded as the epitome of a Jacobin-atheist world conspiracy.

By having Victor Frankenstein establish his laboratory precisely here, at the epicenter of the feared “conspiracy of reason,” his seemingly private experiment becomes politically charged. His secrecy, solitary pursuit of creative omnipotence, and deliberate circumvention of established institutions mirror the conspiratorial practices attributed to the Illuminati. Shelley thus situates Victor’s ambition within a space of revolutionary transgression that links scientific creation with social re-creation. Victor’s failure lies not in his pursuit of knowledge, but in its irresponsible execution, his decisive abdication of duty.

In the original 1818 edition, Shelley finally performs a remarkable reversal: it is not Victor Frankenstein, but the Being he creates, who proves to be the reflective observer, consistent moralist, and analytical thinker. Victor’s failure lies not in his pursuit of knowledge, but in its irresponsible implementation. Shelley’s tone towards Victor is often ironic or quietly contemptuous; he appears intellectually reckless, emotionally immature, and incapable of sustained responsibility. Shelley dramatizes the collapse of Frankenstein’s godlike ambition: “But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Chapter 4). What follows is a decisive abdication of responsibility.

By contrast, the Being functions as an attentive scientific observer. It carefully documents its development and systematically reflects on sensation, language, emotion, and social relations. Its gradual learning unfolds through sensory experience, observation, imitation, and engagement with literature (Plutarch, Goethe’s Werther, Milton’s Paradise Lost). This process mirrors contemporary physiological and pedagogical research, particularly theories that emphasize the shaping role of environment, nerves, and experience. Shelley thus links scientific attentiveness with ethical competence: in this respect, the Being succeeds where Victor fails. It follows processes through, observes consequences, and reflects on the moral implications of knowledge.

Crucially, Shelley presents the Being as fully human. It is a moral creature with a developing character. Naturally benevolent, it performs good deeds in secret, restrains its anger, and approaches its first attempt at human contact thoughtfully, hoping that reason and compassion will overcome prejudice. Its moral goodness endures repeated rejection and violence; only the systematic denial of recognition and care—primarily by Victor—ultimately transforms its desire for compassion into revenge. Its plea for a female companion is expressed as a claim to natural justice, sociability, and mutual affection, and Victor’s destruction of the half-finished female marks a decisive betrayal that completes the Being’s isolation.

Shelley reinforces this critique through the novel’s structure. After Elizabeth’s murder—Victor’s bride—the narrative reverses the roles of pursuer and pursued: Frankenstein becomes the obsessed hunter, mirroring the Being’s earlier quest for compassion. Victor thus suffers the fate he had imposed on the creature, should he create a companion—exile from the “civilized” world into the wilderness. It is no coincidence that their final chase takes place in the Arctic, a region of eternal ice associated in Shelley’s Europe with political stagnation and restorative conservatism. Walton conveys the perspective of this society. The Being is granted nearly the last words of the novel: in an extensive account of its perspective, it confesses its crimes, expresses remorse, and declares its intention to withdraw from the world, while Victor dies unrepentant, clinging to his self-justification.

The novel closes with the tragic insight that neglect, isolation, and the refusal of responsibility by individuals and society can destroy even the most promising moral beginnings. The monstrous, Shelley suggests, lies not in the creature’s origin, but in Frankenstein’s abdication of scientific, social, and ethical duty.

Read in this light, the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, articulates on the level of myth the same political problem embedded in Victor’s education and ambition. Mary Shelley frames Frankenstein with Milton’s Paradise Lost, using as her epigraph Adam’s challenge to his maker: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me man?” The question shifts judgment away from the creator’s authority towards his responsibility and towards the rights of the created. The Being’s grievance is therefore as political as it is moral: it is denied recognition, community, and justice; it embodies the radical claim that authority without responsibility generates violence. The epigraph thus positions Frankenstein as a critique of illegitimate power and aligns scientific creation with contemporary debates about tyranny, equality, and revolutionary reform.

Finally, the novel situates its concerns within the broader horizon of imperial and expansionist ambitions. Victor’s friend Clerval’s idealistic desire to improve living conditions in India (clearly representing the thinking of the British Empire), and Walton’s Arctic expedition in search of a Northwest Passage—still largely unexplored in 1816—evoke the glorification of expansion, mastery over nature, and empire. Victor embodies the dangers of this mindset: while seeking to penetrate the secrets of life itself, he lacks the ethical and social resources required to wield such power responsibly. By contrast, the Being cultivates discipline, reflection, and moral restraint, carefully navigating social encounters and ethical choices. Only sustained exclusion and rejection transform this moral potential into violence.

The Being’s response to societal abuse prefigures Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, some thirty years later. Heathcliff’s trajectory similarly exposes societal hypocrisy and confronts readers with their prejudices. In different registers, both women challenge the norms of British bourgeois society, issuing a powerful plea for radical rethinking.

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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by pcalau12i@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

I do not mean to say Trotskyism is an ideology that I disagree with or think they make bad arguments, but I mean to say that Trotskyists genuinely do not believe in anything. It is just an anti-communist movement in communist aesthetics with no actual beliefs other than being in opposition to every actually-existing communist movement.

I have trouble explaining to people what precisely I mean by it is not a real ideology, so here are some paraphrasings of real arguments/conversations I have had with Trots to illustrate what I mean.

  • Trot: Trotskyism is opposed to the stageism that the Mensheviks were using to justify not having a revolution.
  • Me: We also disagree with the Mensheviks.
  • Trot: It's not just about disagreement but the ideological reason as to why!
  • Me: You mean this? quotes "Foundations of Leninism givng an argument as to why we should oppose stageism as an ideology
  • Trot: That doesn't prove me wrong.
  • Me: I wasn't trying to prove you wrong, I'm asking where we disagree.
  • Trot: We disagree on the fact that we believe the survival of a socialist revolution depends upon the international revolution.
  • Me: But, we also agree with that. quotes the same thing stated in "Foundations of Leninism"

Then he stopped replying.

Another conversation.

  • Trot: Socialism in one country is stupid.
  • Me: Revolution can't happen simultaneously all at once due to uneven development, so it has to happen on a country-by-country basis.
  • Trot: That's a straw man! We don't believe it has to happen all at once!
  • Me: Okay, well I wasn't saying you did, glad we agree then.
  • Trot: Nuh uh we don't agree, because Stalin dissolved the Comintern and replaced it with the Cominform and made deals with western countries!
  • Me: This was a discussion on Marxist-Leninist ideology, not on Stalin's policies specifically, so I don't care to address that there, please stay on topic.
  • Trot: You're a LARPer who refuses to acknowledge the failures of the USSR!
  • Me: Most all MLs are critical of decisions made by the USSR but that doesn't inherently contradict Marxism-Leninism since MLism is not "whatever the USSR did." You still are not staying on topic.

They never went back on topic so I left this conversation myself.

I just recently had another interaction with a Trot that looked like this.

  • Trot A: Marxism-Leninism is an anti-communist ideology.
  • Me: What specific disagreements do you have with it ideologically?
  • Trot A: Socialism in one country is anti-communist!
  • Me: What does "socialism in one country" mean to you?
  • Trot A: leaves the conversation
  • Trot B: joins the conversation
  • Trot B: Socialism in one country means anti-communism!
  • Me: That is really your definition of it?

Neither Trot A or B ever reentered the conversation and responded.

I challenge you if you meet a Trot just try to pressure them to give a clear ideological disagreement as to where they actually differ from Marxist-Leninists. They will always do one of four things:

  1. Straw man the Marxist-Leninist position. Such as saying socialism in one country means entirely abandoning the international arena, even though SIOC was not an answer to should we build socialism in one country but can we after western revolutions failed and it was clear the USSR would be isolated for some time, that they shouldn't abandon the revolution. Foundations of Leninism is very clear that the revolution is an international one and socialism in a single country will inevitably revert to capitalism if the international revolution never succeeds, but that the revolution still occurs on a country-by-country basis. They also straw man MLism as "stageism" claiming they support the Menshevik belief that you should never have a communist revolution in a semi-feudal country, even though Stalin also attacks that position which he calls the "Chinese wall" theory in Foundations of Leninism (the idea that a "Chinese wall" of capitalism must separate socialism and feudalism).
  2. Deflect the conversation to Stalin's personal decisions or personal character. It doesn't matter your opinion of Stalin personally, but Trotskyists treat Trotskyism as Trotsky-worship so they have a legitimately hard time imagining that Marxism-Leninism is not Stalin worship. There is no requirement to agree with every decision Stalin made to be a Marxist-Leninist or to even like Stalin personally. I think it is wrong to waste your time defending Stalin from a Trot, because it is ultimately off topic and plays into their obsession with Trotsky and Stalin's personal character.
  3. Just throw out vague terms in opposition to any AES state saying they're "authoritarian" or "revisionist" but then refuse to ever give specifics if you try to pressure them into doing so.
  4. Some Trots are really leftcoms and not Trots, so they fill the ideological void with leftcom arguments, despite them going directly against Trotsky's own beliefs. I have even argued with a Trot once who switched to defending the Menshevik position saying that revolutions in semi-feudal countries should have never happened to begin with, even though that was definitely not one of Trotsky's own beliefs!

Trust me, if you engage with Trots like this you will clearly see what I mean in their complete lack of any actual beliefs. It's not even correct to say Trotskyism is a revisionist or anti-communist ideology, as it is not even an ideology, they don't believe in anything and cannot genuinely articulate a single genuine disagreement.

It is more of a movement that exists for no other purpose than to oppose all AES countries and all parties aligned with them while doing so in communist aesthetics.

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submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by ghost_of_faso3@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

This is the state of the UK military recruitment at the moment (2nd listing is just a random chef job I found to compare)

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In every single fucking article about this, including the wikipedia article, if it is mentioned at all, describes this as a botched seduction. What is this you ask?

"Eric, it seems, had attempted to take things further and make serious love to Jacintha. He had held her down . . . and though she struggled, yelling at him to stop, he had torn her skirt and bruised a shoulder and her left hip."- Eric and Us, 2006

In what fucking world is this "seduction?" If you had seen this, what would you have done? Would you laugh, maybe cringe a bit? Or would you be running off to get someone, anyone, to help someone who is obviously being raped?

If Epstein was around back then, Blair would have been sat next to him on his plane and be talking about how the soviets weren't really socialists or whatever, just like that fucker Chomsky. Im so glad I managed to avoid the influence of that ivory eminence tainted in the disgusting stains of bourgeois impunity

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The US dollar has experienced accelerated depreciation during the last weeks of January, reaching levels not seen since March 2021. The dollar index (DXY), which measures the value of the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, has fallen below 97 points, approaching four-year lows against the euro and the British pound. This weakness represents the culmination of a structural erosion process that has seen the dollar lose approximately 10% of its value over the past twelve months.

This depreciation is not solely due to typical macroeconomic cycles, but rather to a growing loss of confidence in the global financial model centered on the US dollar. An analysis by Zero Hedge states that "gold's movement is a vote of no confidence in the entire global financial architecture." More than a safe haven, the currency has become a risky asset in the face of the aggressive monetary policy pursued by the Trump administration and Washington's increasing fiscal fragility.

This constitutes a systemic loss of confidence. As Erik Bethel, former director of the World Bank, pointed out , the artificial demand for dollars that sustains the US economy stems from the fact that 60% of the world's central banks hold reserves in this currency. When that demand disappears because global actors no longer want to use the dollar, the system suffers: "All that artificial demand for dollars disappears and we sink," warned Bethel, who anticipates scenarios of massive inflation or even hyperinflation if the trend continues.

2026: Convulsive onset as a symptom of a structural shift

The past few weeks have been marked by extreme volatility in currency and commodity markets . The Japanese yen has experienced sharp movements that have disrupted global stability, and in response, on January 23, the U.S. Treasury Department conducted a rate check to assess a possible intervention in the foreign exchange market and curb the yen's decline against the dollar. This episode, initiated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, reveals the level of nervousness among U.S. authorities regarding the destabilization of Japanese bond markets.

Yields on Japan's 10-year Treasury bonds (JGB) rose 4.5 basis points, reversing recent gains, as the yen weakened under inflationary pressure (CPI at 2.1%) and five consecutive trade deficits. Some analysts warn that Tokyo may need a US bailout, creating a paradox: who saves the savior?

Meanwhile, precious metals have experienced a historic rally . Gold surpassed $5,100 per ounce on January 26, marking a new all-time high. During 2025, the yellow metal appreciated between 60% and 71%, its best annual performance since 1979. Edu Estallo explains that "gold is the asset that historically wins when stock market valuations are stretched too far and confidence in the fiat system falters."

The S&P 500/gold ratio has touched an overvaluation line that has historically preceded major crises: 1929 (Great Depression), 1968 (the stagflation of the 1970s), 2000 (the dot-com bubble), and 2011. On each occasion, gold outperformed equities for years afterward. Estallo warns that this is the fourth time since 1880 that this pattern has repeated itself, indicating a structural cyclical shift where gold is regaining ground against overvalued equity assets.

  • The orange line represents the purchasing power of the dollar, and the blue line represents the purchasing power of gold (Photo: Fidelity Investment)

Silver, meanwhile, has exceeded 161% gain in 2025, driven by supply and demand constraints linked to artificial intelligence and photovoltaic solar panels, trading between $107 and $110 per ounce.

This shift towards physical metals is a sign of the aforementioned "vote of no confidence against the entire global financial architecture." Copper and other industrial metals have also shown strength and reflected a structural rotation of capital towards tangible assets in the face of the deterioration of fiduciary instruments.

Debt vs. gold: A tectonic rupture

2025 has been a dismal year for the US dollar, with the DXY index plummeting by over 9%, its worst performance since 2017. This made it the weakest currency among 17 major global currencies. Such weakness occurred despite the Trump administration's promises to strengthen the dollar and transform the United States into a "Bitcoin superpower."

The recent weakness of the dollar is explained by a confluence of monetary, political, and strategic factors. On the one hand, the Federal Reserve maintained interest rates in a range of 3.5%–3.75% after a series of cuts scheduled to conclude in December 2025, reducing the relative attractiveness of dollar-denominated assets. At the same time, the deteriorating US fiscal situation is eroding the currency's credibility, while, for example, the government struggles to contain the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds, which increases the cost of servicing the debt, already exceeding military spending.

The macroeconomic context that explains this decline is an unprecedented debt crisis. According to The Kobeissi Letter, global public debt interest payments reached $4.9 trillion in 2025, an increase of $1.6 trillion in just three years. Total global debt climbed to $346 trillion, rising by $55 trillion over the same period, and for every dollar of global GDP growth in 2025, ten dollars of new debt were generated. During these three years, while debt expanded, gold appreciated by 142%.

  • In blue, the growth of global debt and in red the percentage of global GDP corresponding to debt (Photo: Global Debt Monitor)

The United States adds $ 1 trillion to its debt every 150 days and, according to warnings from Bethel, pays more than $1 trillion annually in debt interest alone, exceeding the War Department's budget. This debt spiral has eroded confidence in fiat currency and was financed through printing money, which expanded the M2 money supply by approximately 40% between 2020 and 2022, according to data from the Mises Institute.

The dollar's share of central bank reserves has fallen from 66% a decade ago to 56.92% in the third quarter of 2025, according to IMF data. These institutions have accumulated 9,500 tons of gold since 2010, of which 3,700 tons represent unofficial, undeclared purchases, which have accelerated since the start of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022.

Countries such as Russia, China, and members of the BRICS are diversifying their reserves into physical gold, especially after the freezing of Russian assets in 2022. Basel III, a set of internationally agreed measures to be implemented in 2025 to strengthen the regulation, supervision, and risk management of banks, recognized physical gold as a Tier 1 asset, equating it with Treasury bonds, which has legitimized its role as a pillar of financial stability.

  • Gold's appeal is growing as US government interest payments rise and new debt-related vulnerabilities emerge (Photo: Bloomberg)

The struggle for resources and the industrial dependence of the Global North

The decline of the dollar standard coincides with a structural crisis in the supply of critical raw materials. The International Energy Agency warns, in its 2025 annual report , that China dominates the refining of 19 of the 20 key strategic minerals, with an average market share of nearly 70%. In the battery sector, Chinese control exceeds 85% of global capacity and reaches 95% in anode manufacturing.

This geographic concentration creates systemic vulnerabilities on the other side of the planet. More than half of strategic minerals are subject to export controls, and the restrictions imposed by Beijing in 2025 on rare earth elements and battery components have highlighted the fragility of Western supply chains. A 10% disruption in rare earth magnet exports could affect the production of 6.2 million cars, one million industrial motors, and 230,000 civilian aircraft, according to IEA estimates.

In Europe, primary aluminum production has collapsed by 25% since 2010, leaving the continent with a structural deficit of 93% between domestic consumption and production. Slovalco, one of the most technically advanced plants, remains closed because high energy prices make smelting mathematically impossible, as it requires between 13 and 15 megawatt-hours per ton.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has pointed out that we are witnessing the simultaneous collapse of the fiat monetary order, the domestic political order, and the international geopolitical order, placing us "on the brink of war." Peter Schiff, for his part, anticipates that this crisis will be deeper than that of the 1980s: "This time it won't be the United States abandoning the gold standard, but the world abandoning the dollar standard."

The struggle for natural resources—evidenced by tensions over Greenland and trade sanctions or tariffs—is set against this backdrop of growing scarcity. The United States, far from being immune, exhibits a critical dependence on imports of processed minerals and advanced manufactured goods that its domestic supply chains cannot replace. The collapse of European aluminum production and China's control of critical minerals leave the Western bloc in a position of structural vulnerability as it attempts to maintain its monetary hegemony.

The combination of unsustainable debt, trade wars, resource scarcity, and geopolitical fragmentation presents extreme scenarios, including the possibility of internal conflicts in the United States, as some analyses suggest. The question that emerges is not whether the system will change, but how profound the transformation will be and which actors will define the new monetary order emerging from the decline of the fiat dollar.

The military attack against Venezuela demonstrates how the destructive influence of the United States is the only political tool left to a deindustrialized economy that has fallen into such a massive external debt that it now threatens to end the dominant and lucrative monetary role of the dollar.

Or is this an opportunity to reinforce the dollar's hegemony? A deliberate depreciation of the dollar can operate as a tool of structural power. By weakening, the United States pressures the central banks of other countries to intervene in foreign exchange markets to prevent excessive appreciation of their own currencies. This intervention typically takes the form of massive purchases of Treasury bonds, which in turn reduces the yields on these assets. The end result is cheaper financing of the US fiscal deficit, externalized to the rest of the world and free from domestic political costs.

It only remains for the world to finally understand this and decide to break with the chains of subordination and permanent transfer of resources towards a fictitious capital that constantly needs artificial respiration to survive imperially.

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cross-posted from: https://ibbit.at/post/163491

Image by Tanner Boriack.

Early on Saturday, January 3rd, Venezuela was attacked on behalf of oil, mineral, tech, and weapons profiteers in a regime change operation. Since then, the Trump administration has threatened Iran, Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico. What unites these threats? The U.S.’s quest for endless resource extraction to power its increasingly deadly global empire. And it’s not slowing down. These resource wars and “operations” are emerging as the AI drive also ramps up. In July, Palantir and the Pentagon signed a 10-year, $10 billion agreement. In April 2025, Palantir won a $30 million contract with ICE — a significant development in their decade-plus-long partnership that we are now seeing play out in their increasingly militarized, unrestrained murders and abductions in Minneapolis and around the country. This increasingly inextricable partnership between AI and the war economy is throwing us into a fast track of climate and environmental chaos that threatens us all.

In August, I learned about an AI program created by the U.S.-armed Israeli military called “Where’s Daddy.” The program is designed to track individuals Israel is targeting in order to kill them at home with their families. In October 2023, the AI war giant Palantir entered into a contract with the Israeli military. Since 2021, the Israeli Occupation Forces have been working with tech companies like Google on AI programs such as Project Nimbus, used to surveil and murder Palestinians. “Where’s Daddy” and other overlapping systems represent the newest phase of this. The program characterizes the families of these alleged combatants as “collateral damage” and is often far from accurate, killing entire families without the “intended targets” even being there. The tech companies developing these programs do not have anyone’s “safety” or “security” in mind; they are solely motivated by profit. This cruelty is no surprise— these companies are the same ones building toxic data centers across the U.S., largely in working-class and Black and Brown communities, in the newest phase of environmental injustice.

We’ve been hearing about AI more and more as it enters the commercial market in increasingly pervasive ways. In particular, much has been reported about AI data centers entering communities and the opposition to them. Many of these fights have been taken up by environmental organizations; it’s estimated that data centers could consume approximately 21% of global energy by 2030. In order to sustain this energy use, data centers need cooling. Mid-sized data centers use as much water as a city of 50,000 people. Meta’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana is projected to use as much water as the entire city of New Orleans. Another Meta center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is projected to use more power than the state of Wyoming itself.

These centers not only increase electricity bills for communities that can’t afford them, but they also generate significant air, water, and noise pollution. Some centers regularly use diesel “emergency” generators to meet increased demand. Each generator is the size of a railcar, and thousands are littered across data center hotspots like Northern Virginia. As a result, toxic chemicals are seeping into the lungs of residents, causing asthma and long-term illness. Data centers are known to create noise pollution, with constant hums that can lead to hearing loss, anxiety, cardiovascular stress, and a host of other long-term issues. Furthermore, equipment is certain to break down and lead to toxic waste and electronic pollution.

“Critical” minerals are required for the operation of these data centers. The process of obtaining these minerals, supposedly also used for green technology, requires the militarization, destabilization, and total plunder of mineral-rich regions. These minerals are supposedly “critical” for energy transitions, and some have advocated more “sustainable” methods for maintaining data centers through “green” technologies.

The use of these minerals is clear: The Pentagon recently became the largest shareholder in MP Minerals, one of the largest mining companies in the Western Hemisphere. Why? Aluminum for fighter jets. Titanium for missiles. And copper, lithium, cobalt, and many others for data center batteries and semiconductors. The more data centers are built, the more minerals are needed. This process of extraction has murdered millions in the Congo, destroying the soil, water, and forest: one of the largest “lungs” of the planet. It has led to the newest phase of imperialist aggression on Venezuela, a mineral-rich country with the largest oil reserves in the world (oil, of course, is also essential for data centers). Additionally, it has led to the attempted subordination of the Philippines to semiconductor production. The U.S. also seeks to use the archipelago as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the U.S.’s looming war with China, its largest competitor in the AI and mineral race.

These are the impacts we already know to be devastating. But this is also new technology, which means there’s a lot we don’t know and a lot that’s being intentionally hidden. Lack of transparency is the norm in this industry. As data centers rapidly expand and buy up land around the country, the actual companies behind them hide behind non-disclosure agreements. This is not dissimilar to the intentional concealment of the military’s role in global emissions, enacted through U.S. pressure at the third U.N. Climate Change Conference in 1997. Decades later, the issue of militarism is still left out of climate conversations.

The parallel makes sense, considering how the AI industry has fused with the war machine. The U.S. military is one of the most environmentally destructive forces on the planet. In its oil consumption alone, the U.S. military is the world’s largest institutional polluter. The U.S.’s 800+ bases in 80 countries globally are known to regularly leak jet fuel and cancer-causing PFAS chemicals, along with a toxic cocktail of hundreds of other chemicals. While training exercises like RIMPAC in the Asia-Pacific region authorize the deaths of thousands of sea creatures, in environmental sacrifice zones like Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, toxic waste from military facilities has killed infants hours after birth. In bomb testing sites like Vieques, off the coast of mainland Puerto Rico, lung cancer and bronchitis rates have been shown to be 200% higher than on the mainland for men, and 280% for women. And the oil-motivated “war on terror” emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from 2001-2017.

Now we are entering a new era of resource wars that will further destroy the planet as the AI race with China accelerates. The relationship between AI and the U.S. military goes beyond the Pentagon’s contracts with Palantir, Meta, and Microsoft: last June, executives Shyam Sankar (Palantir), Andrew Bosworth (Meta), Kevin Well (OpenAI), and Bob McGrew (Thinking Machines Lab, previously OpenAI) were sworn into the U.S. Army as lieutenant colonels. Michael Obadal, executive of the AI-war manufacturing company Anduril, is now the Under Secretary of the U.S. Army, still with hundreds of thousands in Anduril stock. Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir, is himself a major funder of Anduril. In June 2025, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and Anthropic entered into $200 million contracts with the Department of War. The more you look at the partnerships between such companies and their executives, the Pentagon, governmental departments, and other entities, the more tangled this military-tech-industrial complex all becomes.

Many organizing groups are rightfully building power against the data centers that literally fuel it all, pushing for increased regulation and transparency. At the same time as Palantir makes new deals with the Pentagon, regulations in sacrifice zones are being thrown out the window. On December 18th, the House of Representatives passed a bill backed by Microsoft, Micron, and OpenAI to fast-track data centers. The bill significantly reduces the number of environmental and financial factors that can be considered in permitting processes. It’s simple. These communities are becoming the Camp Lejeunes of a new age: the new toxic waste dumps in the belly of the beast used to power the war machine. They must be fought against at all costs.

Regulation is crucial. It’s also far from a long-term solution. There is a lot that we don’t know, because a lot is hidden: just how much of these companies are tied up with weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon, and proxies like Israel; the environmental destruction caused by military usage of AI; the specific usage of all of these data centers. But it is obvious that AI is becoming inseparable from war-making, that increased AI means increased war-making, and that increased war-making is resulting in new and increased forms of unfathomable environmental destruction to communities around the world and here within the belly of the beast.

AI has been creeping up our necks. The horrific “Where’s Daddy” program existed long before I heard of it. It seems like these products are popping up in every corner of the market before we can even start discussing them. Their emergence has been intentionally designed to not only conceal their role in environmental destruction, but also their role in the militarism destroying communities from Virginia to Gaza.

No part of this is sustainable — not the war economy, not unending extraction, regardless of how much “green tech” it produces, and not an AI-driven speculative economy. We cannot afford to have splintered conversations either; these AI and tech companies are war profiteers. The new Cold War on China drives this. The genocide in Palestine drives this. The war on Venezuela, Latin America, and the Caribbean drives this. And so our organizing must be unified against the impacts, mechanisms, and causes. Against data centers and the wars that drive them. We need to stop the blood. But we can’t lose sight of why and how the bullets are fired.

The post The War Intervention: AI, Data Centers, and the Environment appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


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"The United States, very consciously and explicitly, collaborated with the Nazis after World War II, helped them escape justice, and then put them in charge of death squads in South America. It was the USSR that ended the Holocaust."

Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2016447231516094464/vid/avc1/1280x720/3uV37C9lIwhcJpwK.mp4

Source -> https://xcancel.com/DaniMayakovski/status/2016447396243255699#m

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When it comes to being against the state, if they really cannot get you on anything (your job, citizen status, your criminal record, if you’re licensed to carry a firearm, your actions while being against them), they will then come for your sexuality and more personal details.

Now, this singular instance of a news org making things up about Alex Pretti isn’t the fullest example, but it shows you really what they do. None of these things are real, no pictures are of him, and it’s obvious the article was AI generated; but the people in comments on Facebook believed it, and what’s it take for the state and the right to co-opt this into their rhetoric?

You can see people digging into Kyle Rittenhouse’s victim’s backgrounds; their criminal records and such.

It happened to Martin Luther King Jr.. When they couldn’t get him on anything, they would then start making things up, or digging into every little thing he’s ever done.

From the FBI’s fake letter to MLK where they pose as a Black American: “Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. I repeat - no person can argue successfully against facts. You are finished. You will find on the record for all time your filthy, dirty, evil companions, male and females giving expression with you to your hidious abnormalities. And some of them to pretend to be ministers of the Gospel. Satan could not do more. What incredible evilness. It is all there on the record, your sexual orgies. Listen to yourself you filthy, abnormal animal. You are on the record. You have been on the record - all your adulterous acts, your sexual orgies extending far into the past. This one is but a tiny sample. You will understand this. Yes, from your various evil playmates on the east coast to [__] and others on the west coast and outside the country you are on the record. King you are done.” (FBI-King Letter, paragraph 4). In this, they attempt to reach into King’s personal life and bring out (fake, probably) his “evil” acts.

This shows the morality at the time, but also how King’s life as a man of God was being turned against him. These people had nothing, so they turned to fake slander.

They did this same thing to Renee Good. They literally could not muster and explanation or rebuttal for her execution, so they turned to her sexuality. They no longer cared that she was murdered for no reason, they admitted they liked that she was killed while being a lesbian. They are now making things up about Pretti, but it just shows that they support his death because they think he was queer.

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How does a "ragtag" opposition manage to smuggle 50,000 Starlink terminals into a heavily sanctioned fortress?

The recent chaos in Tehran was not a genuine uprising but a US-Israeli orchestrated regime change operation. Its failure means a whole lot for US hegemony in the region.

Source -> https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/01/27/763028/How-Iran-Defeated-the-US-Israel-Regime-Change-OP

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Some people don't believe me when I try to warn them about the content creator grift. I don't care, I'm coming for all of them if they start spouting shit like this to their audience. They have a responsibility towards their viewers.

Second time I see him tweet shit like this.

At this point he should just stop pretending he's any sort of leftist. His mental health will thank him.

archive link so he can't scrub it off the internet: https://archive.ph/XWZD6 (still loading as of posting but should be ready eventually)

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