Image is of smoke rising after Iranian missiles impact a US military site in Bahrain.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
After a few weeks of both diplomatic and military manuevering - mostly over Iranian control of Hormuz - we have hit the hottest phase of military exchanges since at least the MoU period began. The US has generally focussed on striking southern Iran, although they have also sporadically hit transportation infrastructure elsewhere, which was repaired in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, Iran has struck a wide range of targets, with an interesting focus on Jordan, but has, up to the time of me writing this, so far relented on striking the Zionist entity. The US and Iran have had little periods of mutual military strikes during the “ceasefire” before, and so it’s hard to tell for sure whether this yet another temporary spat or if it represents a full return to the pre-ceasefire conflict.
A complicating factor in this conflict is that Ansarallah has become increasingly active, and seems eager to start to break the siege it has been put under by threatening to attack Saudi Arabia and Saudi-aligned forces. This has put Iran in a somewhat awkward spot. On the one hand, it has greatly helped Ansarallah resist foreign attackers and has even recently sent civilian airplanes into Sana’a to begin to break the siege. On the other hand, Iran has, with China’s help, generally desired to improve its relationship with the Saudis over the years. While in this latest war there have been a major dispute between them over whether Iran is “allowed” to strike US military infrastructure located in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis strike me as considerably less anti-Iran as the UAE, let alone the Zionists, and did send a delegation to Khamenei’s funeral. I guess we’ll just have to see what happens next, but I strongly suspect that Iran is going to help Yemen over the Saudis.
And finally, Lindsay Graham has died of a sudden heart attack a suspiciously short time after visiting Ukraine. He was a true enemy of civilian populations all the way to the end of his life, and he seemed to particularly despise children. He advocated for using nukes against Gaza and the total annihilation of anybody and everybody who had even the meekest criticism of Zionism. If God (and, more pertinently in this case, Satan) does exist, I hope Graham is extended the exact same level of courtesy and respect in the afterlife that Graham extended to all Palestinians.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
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.
Imagine throwing your country away for the US
Most of these Gulf countries can be understood as US military bases with national anthems and UN seats.
What can I say to convince people that this isn’t the case?
It keeps being assumed this is counter to their interests. When a materialist analysis shows it’s consistent with them when one understands who they owe their existence to and whose interests they align with given these are DotB states.
Sure it may not be ideal but given Trump is leaning the pressure on them they really don’t have any choice. They sink or swim with US power so it’s rational, logical, reasonable, sensible for them to take some amount of these actions. We can quibble about oh should action 80 be taken when a more modest action 40 would satisfy Trump and sure individual actions may not be maximized for efficiency to serve their interests and preference but broadly speaking antagonism towards Iran and alignment with the US and zionist entity is within the interests of these states. Because states are not hollow vessels. They are run to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or that of the proletariat. And their bourgeoisie has specific interests and pressure points from the empire. Now is it to US interests to do this? That’s a valid question. But to the extent the US thinks its to its interests to act this way it isn’t unreasonable for these states to follow it.
Sure it screws the proletariat but that isn’t the state we’re talking about, the state doesn’t represent them. Frankly the state they’re “throwing away” wouldn’t exist without the US (well US and Britain, the Euro-US greater imperialist project which has been operating in the region for centuries) in the first place.
IMO beyond the above analysis on drives and interests in a material sense there is the fact that this looks like a deadlock situation. That is the US can’t defeat Iran or overthrow its government but Iran cannot or does not wish to undertake the sacrifice and burden of dislodging the US from the region or taking on and dismantling the gulf states (beyond it’s current strait closure economic pressure). So they trade blows these two sides neither able to defeat the other and neither yet escalating to a point that is seen as intolerable. The oil crisis may make this situation in time intolerable for the US in which case they may back off and bend the knee but if they do these countries will have served the US loyally and Iran will back off and make peace with them and they’re no worse off and have shown their necessary loyalty and can rest easy at night that they won’t be overthrown by their masters (the US who they actually have to fear, not Iran).
People presume a maximalist victory for Iran that results in punishing these states for their attacks when in fact Iran has shown itself to be an appeaser and compromiser. Assuming for a moment it achieves all its maximal aims set out in statements and the MoU and pushes the US out of the region entirely, gets compensations, sanctions lifted, etc. Iran isn’t going to be vengeful, they’re not going to attack these countries once the US leaves and make their leadership pay. In other words once this all settles one way or another the leadership of these countries get to go back to normal. If it doesn’t settle and drags on for years of blockade well that would be another matter but that’s far through the looking glass into a different world and at some point in the future down that path we might see the rational choice shift for the leadership of the gulf states and we could see them pursue a different path in light of that. But for the moment what they’re doing isn’t unreasonable from their perspective and interests.
On the other hand assume for a moment a US victory where Iran has to give in, stop blockading the strait, and bend the knee in some way even if its just a return to pre-war status quo. Well then they’ll have won big. Because betraying the US given its control of the world financial system is not an option. They’d have no ability to sell their oil and the US would simply blow up their refineries if they tried. Whereas Iran acts very restrained and neighborly. Given this kind of analysis why wouldn’t they act as they are?
I think the problem is, that people too often think in terms of nations, not of classes. They might think they are taking about material facts, but that’s not a Marxist historic materialist analysis. And it’s important to distinguish between compradors and nationally aligned capitalists.
Look at Lebanon. What is happening is not reasonable from a national point of view at all. It is only rational from the point of view of a faction of the ruling class that has been bought and paid for by US interests. The compradors not only betray their citizens, they betray their own capitalist class, too. That’s why a national front alliance between national capitalists and progressive forces is possible against the compradors and imperialists.
In Iran too, there’s a faction among the ruling class, who wish to become compradors or who stand to gain most from renewed international trade. If they had their way completely, they would give cheap concessions for Iranian oil fields to US firms for a cut and sell out this national resource to the imperialists. It happened in so many countries. The resistance is aligned with national capital, who need to protect their assets and market against US imperialism.
In general, military defeat of an anti-imperialist country will involve a strengthening of the comprador class in that country. They will have strong political leverage against nationally aligned capital and try to break the national front between them and the proletariat.
many have done it, and many will continue to do it, as long as the imperialist dollar spends and the imperialist check clears
Throwing your country away for the US, which has already demonstrably abandoned you when you are under attack by a nation which is not even a global power
Lebanon is that you?
Imagine betraying your country for millions of dollars.
I’m imagining it 🤤
The idiocy and greed are boundless.