"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
No single concept explains the past 200 years of human history better than Marx’s theory of the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall' (TRPF).
But how does this simple tendency at the core of capitalist accumulation lead to imperialism? 🧵
There is a curious phenomenon that results from the relatively brief window of time a single human lifetime provides: we perceive the current state of the natural world as “normal”.
This is known as the Shifting Baseline Syndrome. 🧵
Order of events:
1. Israel allowed an aid drop in Gaza during the night.
2. Israel then opened fire on the thousands of starving people who congregated at the aid drop.
3. Israel ran over victims with tanks.
4. In the morning, Israel blamed the victims for crushing each other
They lured, shot at and massacred Palestinians and then blamed them for creating ‘chaos’ in order to justify denying them aid.
That was the whole point: paint the Palestinians as dangerous and a threat in order to maintain the policy of starvation.
Calling this now: if the Biden admin begins cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, it will kick off the biggest wave of radicalization in a generation.
The implications of this article are pretty grim.
It sounds like biden is going to use title vii to pull funding from colleges who don't stop pro Palestinian protests which means colleges will Crack down on protesters and ask cops to cracks down as well
Americans in 2023: "The Houthis are about to find out why the US doesn't have free healthcare"
Americans in 2024: "Dear Abdul-Malik Badruldeen al-Houthi, I wrote you, but you still ain't callin…”
THE US NOW WANTS A 'DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION' FOR YEMEN:
US Special Envoy to Yemen, Tim Lenderking, said on Wednesday that the US is seeking a diplomatic solution for the Yemeni Armed Forces' blockade of the Red Sea.
This takes a turn from current US policy that has sought to solve…
On Nov 14th, Yemen announced they would begin targeting Israeli-flagged ships in retaliation for the massacre of Palesitnains in Gaza.
Earlier today, Yemen captured a ship in the Red Sea, an act which may turn out to be the most significant development in the war so far.
Why?🧵
In response to US+Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Yemen just hit another two Israel-bound oil tankers with drones.
This is interesting for a few reasons. 🧵
Russia announced today that starting immediately, they will begin selling natural gas to ‘unfriendly countries’ in Rubles. This is a far bigger development than is being reported. 🧵
French police unions are now openly threatening mutiny against the government unless they’re given the green light to begin executing protestors in the streets.
We're truly witnessing a radicalization on both sides in France.
This is an unreal communiqué by the main French police unions, essentially declaring France is in a civil war and that the police is in the "resistance" against the government.
This is the translation:
"Now…
Be prepared for a US foreign policy pivot to attempt to save what is now (correctly) seen as a growing risk of losing their forward-operating base in the Middle East by blaming the intelligence failure of Oct 7 and subsequent bungled response solely on Netanyahu.
Will it work?🧵
The bankruptcy of Instapot is being framed as the result of being “too well made” but the real story is far more sinister:
Capitalist leeches bought Insapot, took out $450 mil in loans that they used to pay dividends to themselves, and then went bust when loan payments came due.
I just read a disturbing paragraph in a New Yorker article about the Instant Pot, a popular electronic pressure cooker whose parent company recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy:
“So what doomed the Instant Pot? How could something that was so beloved sputter? Is the arc of…
For all those preaching less violent methods from thousands of miles away, here’s a video from one such attempt in 2018:
During a protest, IDF snipers intentionally shot a child in the head.
It is impossible to understand the current existential threat the US feels from China without first understanding what happened to Japan 37 years ago.
This is the story of the Plaza Accord 🧵
It’d be hard to overstate the significance of this victory by Yemen’s new government.
To have the entire US-led empire groveling at their feet, offering every conceivable concession, only to be told to come back when they end their genocide in occupied Palestine.
On Sept 28, 1994, a passenger ferry from Estonia to Sweden sank in the middle of the Baltic Sea, along with 852 souls. But what was officially explained as the tragic result of a defective bow design was, in fact, a massive NATO coverup.
This is the story of the MS Estonia.
Che was right. You cannot be a communist without genuine love for your fellow human beings. If you find the misanthropy creeping in, take a break from this blackpill factory.
On Monday, Israeli fighter jets bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus killing over a dozen people in an outrageous act of provocation against both Iran and Syria.
It is clear that Israel is intent on instigating a direct confrontation with Iran.
What’s the goal? 🧵
When reading predictions on the collapse of dollar hegemony, it can be hard to grasp what it means in material terms:
The USD is going to begin to sink to its true value.
But what is its “true value”? 🧵
US leftists when you tell them they're perfect little angels just the way they are:
👏✊🫶
US leftists when you tell them that they can't change the world without also changing themselves:
After successfully eradicating extreme poverty by 2019, China has now turned its focus toward addressing wealth inequality.
The speed, depth, and scale of this wealth redistribution is already sending a shockwave of panic through western media.
In response to the significant losses Israel sustained after it launched a war against Lebanon in 2006, the US and Israel began developing a short-range air defense system called Iron Dome.
And for the first time since then, Iron Dome is at risk of being defeated. 🧵
What else can we do to achieve a ceasefire? We're blowing up White House phone lines, we're out on the streets, we're writing to our reps, collecting signatures on petitions. WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO???
As funny as it is, the billionaire marinara sub really overshadowed the story about the hundreds of refugees that drowned last week off the coast of Greece.
But what really should be getting more attention is that these drownings weren’t simply a tragedy, they were mass murder.
That the woman who was captured voluntarily insisted on shaking her captor’s hand upon release, it’s fairly clear why Israel has a policy of killing Israeli hostages.
Liberal ladder of Nazi minimization:
Step 1: “There are no Nazis”
Step 2: “There are a few Nazis like everywhere else”
Step 3: “There are lots of Nazis but Russia is worse” 👈 we are here
Step 4: “Are Nazis really that bad?”
Follow this through to its conclusion:
Not only is Israel lying about the events of Oct 7, the lengths they’re willing to go to manufacture evidence proves that the 𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵.
Every time a Zionist lie is exposed, we need to take it further than just “the evidence is fabricated” - we must ask why was there a need to fabricate it? Because no such evidence exists. Each fabrication is not just a lie itself, but damning proof that the claim itself is false.
In America, a "FICO Credit Score™ " is a blacklist administered by an unelected private oligopoly.
Americans are inducted into this capitalist credit initiative from birth, which controls everything from where they can live and which employer they are allowed to work for.
Very funny how the most brazen act of industrial sabotage in decades will be “investigated” by Sweden, NATO’s newest applicant, under close supervision of the US and will exclude Russia, the country that built and operates the pipelines.
Gazans are posting farewell messages to social media as the whole Gaza Strip loses electricity. They don't know if they'll be alive by the time it comes back.
@jessehoughtonMD
The Holocaust happened and we know it happened because of the mountains of incontrovertible evidence.
On the other hand, the events of Oct 7th were almost immediately egregiously distorted and there are now endless claims that have been shown false.
I support Hamas.
Hamas is a genuine expression of the de-colonial goals of the Palestinian people.
This conflict is not between Hamas and Israel.
It is a fight between the entire western world and the indigenous people of Palestine.
While forest cover has changed dramatically in the past several hundred years, the change in the forest makeup has arguably been more stark. Since european settlers arrived in the US, 90% of the virgin forests that once covered much of the lower 48 states no longer exist.
This'll sound completely absurd to people who subscribe to the "brainwashing" theory of propaganda, but the reason people seem to be seeing through the lies now isn't because of "TikTok" or "Trump".
It's because there is less material benefit to doing so. 🧵
Something has changed.
Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014 was the most destructive in the history of the conflict, but the IDF was able to operate w/near impunity. At one point, Israeli missiles took out a bunch of kids playing on a beach, right in front of a hotel housing many…
Western liberals somehow simultaneously believe that:
Russia is on the verge of economic collapse as a result of having no market for their gas
AND
Russia just sabotaged their most potentially profitable export infrastructure right before winter.
Liberals today:
“While I support the cause of the Algerian people I cannot condone their brutal actions targeting civilians in French cafes and discotheques in Algiers”
You can disregard what you see in headlines today:
Tupac Shakur's murder was orchestrated by the FBI
They saw his rapid rise combined with his increasingly militant calls for organizing and social justice as a major threat.
1: “🇺🇸 do not have biolabs in 🇺🇦”
2: “🇺🇸 have biolabs in 🇺🇦 that are for research only”
3: “🇺🇸 have bioresearch labs in 🇺🇦 that are for uh.. defensive purposes but we’re very concerned Russia is going to get their hands on them” 👈 (we are here)
4: “Russia did a lab leak!”
One way to understand this shifting baseline is to understand how the biomes we consider “natural” today have been heavily modified from what existed in the past.
Few environments demonstrate this better than forests.
mycelium - notes on imperialism
in online leftist spaces the overlap between solidarity for victims of western imperialism and solidarity for victims of non-western imperialism appears diminishingly small. the same is true of activist spaces i'm involved with in real life. 1/
It is becoming increasingly clear that the US is pushing for war with China within the next few years.
But to understand why, we first need to understand how the US came to be the global financial power it is today. 🧵
When the dust settles, there’s going to be a lot of hand-wringing from ostensibly pro-Palestinian westerners suddenly presented with the reality of armed resistance against brutal occupation (spoiler: it’s not pretty!)
But remember: settlers aren’t civilians
Massive Resistance offensive in Gaza. Palestinian Resistance fighters have infiltrated the border for the first time in history and have taken control of areas in the Israeli settlement of Sderot.
This week, Yemen and Algeria joined on the side of Palestine,
Iron Dome is running out of missiles,
Hamas are popping tanks like it’s CoD,
Hezbollah’s big announcement is in 8 hrs,
And a bulldozer demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank was just BBQ’d.
Learning about the Palestinian struggle was a supremely radicalizing process and one of the foundational reasons why I’m a communist today.
Seeing that struggle continue in the face of this week’s overwhelming brutality has re-radicalized me in a way I’ll try to describe. 🧵
It’s hysterical watching western media outlets, some of the biggest apologists for empire, bunch their fists up and throw little temper tantrums over objectively accurate labeling.
@KWroz
@CBCAlerts
@CBC
Like many people on this thread, you're conflating state-media with public broadcaster.
Both are funded by government, but they operate very differently.
Slapping the same label on both is just wrong and shameful.
The full impact of this dramatic decline in whale populations is still not fully understood, but it is believed that the loss of the fertilizing effect of whale poop on ocean algae levels permanently crashed the productivity of ocean food webs and even altered global climate.
HAPPENING NOW: A US militarily vessel destined to take military equipment to Israel is currently at the Port of Oakland. Communities currently protesting and we call on everyone to come out to the port to say enough is enough. No more US weapons to Israel for genocide!
But even more dangerous to US long-term interests is the example set by Yemen’s resistance, in which a small desperately poor country, besieged for decades by the west, can intelligently and boldly rise up to defy an empire, inspiring others in the process.
But it’s difficult to understand what virgin forests even looked like when so few reference points remain. Many old growth forests have been replaced with “forests” that are much more accurately conceptualized as tree farms.
See I actually believe this guy saw atrocious images in the private screening he was invited to. It’s just that the images were most likely Palestinians.
Went to private IDF screening of unfiltered footage of 7th October earlier tonight. Seen things that I can never unsee. No words. But I am going to have to try and find some. Too much even to cry. Body still shaking.
As a result, whale populations were reduced by 99% in a single century. If we hadn’t switched to petroleum based oils in the beginning of the 20th century, it is almost certain that whales would have been hunted to extinction.
But these creeping losses aren’t just in iconic species.
Over the past few years, many people began noticing a dramatic decline in bug splatter on their car’s windscreens after long road trips as compared to years past, dubbed the “windshield phenomenon”.
As Twitter’s CEO calls for regime change in China, it’s a good time to remind everyone that western social media aren’t even “banned” in China!
These companies simply declined to follow Chinese regulations limiting user data storage and thus aren’t available on the default ISP.
Organized democratic mass politics isn’t easy, but it’s got a great track record and doesn’t involve mowing down elderly women with machine guns. Many on the Palestinian left, which is not a monolith dominated by Hamas, actually prefer it to terrorist attacks on civilians
Given our bias toward land biomes, our concept of healthy oceans is even more distorted. Beginning in the 1800s, the largest animals to ever live were subjected to an industrialized slaughter.
The reason? To feed our insatiable hunger for lamp oil, derived from their blubber.
An important point to understand regarding Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan:
The US isn’t “playing with fire” by pushing ahead with its instigation against China. It is intentionally trying to spark a fire that it thinks will burn China more than it burns itself. 🧵
It has become clear Israel has no plan beyond trying to force millions of Palestinians into the Sinai desert by starving and bombing all that remain in Gaza. Israel is acting as if any Egyptian objection to this plan is a bluff.
This is utter insanity. 🧵
Secondly, the lack of any reporting on these most recent strikes by western media appears deliberate. Similar to the severe undercounting of IOF casualties in Gaza, the US appears to be hoping to conceal from western audiences the true effectiveness of the multi-front resistance.
But part of this shifting baseline is also cultural, as slow change does not go unnoticed in all cultures. Aboriginal storytelling, for example, has multi-generational error checking that has accurately passed down oral history of islands that sank into the sea 10,000 years ago.
Subsequent study has revealed that, far from being an artifact of changing car aerodynamics or selective memory, this windshield phenomenon is a real artifact of a shocking global decline in insect populations.
There is a curious phenomenon that results from the relatively brief window of time a single human lifetime provides: we perceive the current state of the natural world as “normal”.
This is known as the Shifting Baseline Syndrome. 🧵
One week ago, China and Russia formalized an agreement with Yemen’s new govt to allow safe passage of their ships through the Red Sea.
Today, Russian warships entered the Red Sea —where US and UK warships are attacking Yemen.
History is accelerating.
JUST IN: 🇷🇺 Russian Warships have officially entered the Red Sea. Possible sea confrontation with NATO.
Russian Pacific Fleet entered the Red Sea and is heading towards Yemen where American and British ships have carried out strikes on Houthis.
Westerners have bought into Israel’s self-mythologizing of fighting to the death for their settler-colony, and even resorting to a “Samson option”.
But history has shown that when rubber hits the road, these settlers are cowards and choose to flee rather than fight.
idk why everyone is excited about Iran here, like yeah I hate Israel too but escalation between the two seems basically bad for every single person in the world, and its not like there's some angle where a nuclear power just walks away and decolonizes
The idea that Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia maintained by a decentralized network of millions of volunteers around the world, is mostly a myth.
In reality, the vast majority of edits are made by a core group of around 3,000 very active editors. 🧵
Get ready for a sizeable chunk of the squishy “pro-Palestinian” left who fetishize the underdog to immediately yank their support as soon as Palestinians, Yemenis etc begin showing signs of not being helpless smol beans
⚡️BREAKING
Attacks on US bases in the region are imminent
A US official told Sky News Arabia that the Houthis are preparing to attack US bases in the Middle East
Ansarullah is at war with the US for striking Yemen
Somewhat overshadowed by yesterday’s “Chinese spy balloon” hysteria was the revelation that the CIA has recently been trying to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine that involves offering 20% of Ukraine to Russia.
@iseawhales
@TheAgentNDN
The proper response to this is that USians have a duty to support Native American sovereignty and decolonial efforts like Land Back.
And if the US were forcing Native Americans into a concentration camp like Israel is doing to Palestinians, they should expect an Oct 7.
The first ever pride flag raised in Gaza 🏳️🌈
Yoav Atzmoni who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community wanted to send a message of hope to the people of Gaza living under Hamas brutality.
His intention was to raise the first pride flag in Gaza as a call for peace and freedom.
📸…
A few hours ago, the pressure in Nord Stream 2, the undersea gas line connecting Russia and Germany, plummeted and began leaking gas bubbles into the Baltic sea near the Danish island of Bornholm. 🧵
But once you become aware of the shifting baseline, it’s hard to see wild spaces the same again. There’s an eerie feeling you can’t shake when visiting forests or spending time in the ocean. It’s a feeling of stillness and almost tangible *emptiness* that permeates.
Even many forests officially classified as “old growth” have been logged as recently as the beginning of the 20th century, despite some forest characteristics taking thousands of years to fully develop.
“Reuters and AP are good neutral news sources”
“Sanctions are a good tool to use against bad countries that avoids the unsavoriness of bombing them”
“The Israel conflict is very complicated”
Widespread pesticide use combined with replacing fields of wildflowers with soy or corn are the primary culprits. And while some might celebrate a decline in what are often deemed pests, insects form both the irreplaceable base of the food web and pollinate countless plants.
But if the US cannot guarantee safe passage to Israeli-bound/connected ships, then Operation Prosperity Guardian is an utter failure.
This embarrassing failure is a severe blow to perceived US naval power and their ability to bully subordinate states into military ventures.
The US State Dept just announced Blinken is postponing his trip to China as a result of a Chinese weather balloon accidentally drifting over US airspace.
Here’s why this entire thing is a charade 🧵
Part of the shifting baseline results from our tendency to be less likely to notice something is missing than notice the appearance of something new. For example, in the 1960s, people began reporting the peculiar absence of bird songs during spring time.
Love when the truth slips through...
In response to Yemen targeting US/UK/Israeli-linked ships, current US strategy is to keep the Red Sea closed to ALL ships to exert pressure on countries not being targeted.
In essence the US, not Yemen, is blockading the Red Sea!
Israeli propaganda can’t help but undermine itself.
The only way Israel would have known to test a random bone fragment is if Hamas returned her identified body to Israel out of respect after she was killed in an air strike, since Jewish custom requires burial within 3 days.
Correction: Shani's body wasn't found, but rather a body part (part of her skull) that matched Shani's DNA.
The forensic determine that she couldn't survive without this part, so they informed the family of her death.
In 2015, the annual routine underwater survey of the Nord Stream 1 pipelines came across a remote operated vehicle rigged with explosives right next to one of the lines in Swedish waters.
The umbilical cable had been cut. The drone’s national origin was never disclosed. 🧵
Other ocean species weren’t so lucky. European settler descriptions of the Atlantic cod stocks off the Grand Banks of North America recount fishing grounds so plentiful and dense with fish that they could be walked on.
Human caused extinctions aren’t a new phenomena in our history, but the *rate* of extinctions during the past 50 years has accelerated to the point of becoming a threat of the same magnitude as climate change and nuclear war for our long term survival.
To all the Lockheed Liberals going apoplectic in my DMs right now:
Please know that we are NOT laughing at how your fav color revolution’s pants got pulled down, and that your complaints are being heard and taken with utmost seriousness.