Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it's just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a "domestic terrorist" and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration's policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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 Israel's 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:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
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.
Anyone that considers that they have to rely on the empire to topple a government they dont like are only admitting that the opposition they are a part of is extremely weak. Applies to Venezuela as well.
Imagine the only way to have a communist revolution is by quite literally having China come and kill your leader for you, instead of the mobilized masses causing the abdication. Is that a revolution at all?
I heard a saying from a Chinese person that went "If an egg is broken from the inside, it becomes life. If it is broken from the outside, it becomes food".
I'm not sure I follow, assuming the reports of widespread unrest and protest are true (and I emphasize that I don't know to what extent they are), then wouldn't that be the people trying to topple the government from the inside? I don't think my friend believed the notion that what is happening is only Western meddling, but at least in part an organic movement. And I don't know what to believe, which is why I'm asking.
The thing I have trouble buying is that Iranians who are genuinely fed up with the theocracy and want to topple it can't imagine anything better to replace it than a monarch directly funded by the great and lesser Satan. Even if he is pinky promising to be a "transitional figure".
Make of this what you will
The economic situation is in sharp decline there so there has been genuine discontent. But the Americans and Israelis used operatives on the ground to massively exacerbate the conflict, piggybacking on existing protests to using violent and terrorist tactics like burning mosques. They are not heeding some kind of call, they were waiting for any situation they could exploit to turn into a full blown civil war.
Of course the economic situation would not have been in that state without US sanctions, which are the underlying cause of the grievances. So yes, the imperialists manufactured it.
~~That's very in line with the usual CIA/regime change MO. But what are the documentation for this? I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but I need something to back up these claims to my friend.~~
EDIT: nevermind, I just noticed a bunch of comrades supplied me with links
Did he answer?
I'm curious if he gave anything other than the usual stock answers
Not yet. He shared an opinion piece by a diaspora Iranian middle east expert he follows (and who he assured me is "on the left"), which I'm in the process of writing a response to. I should say that my friend is neither stupid nor a bad person. He is just in the liberal academic mind-prison, and I'm taking my time to talk to him about this because he has potential, and could definitely be radicalized.
The opinion piece kind of does the first two of your bullets. It is a sort of scolding of what he sees as "the left" having a superiority complex about our influence on Iran, that our intelligence agencies should have any power to dictate a vibrant and politically active country like Iran. He essentially just concludes that CIA/Mossad influence and western sanctions don't dictate what happens in Iran. And it is actually problematic to even suggest it, since that takes away the agency of Iranians. He hilariously tries to back this up by referring to 1953, saying that "Iranians were active participants" in the coup. As if that legitimized it, or was evidence of a mass movement for regime change. Absurd. Applying that logic to the bay of pigs shows how ridiculous it is. The author essentially want people to sort of "leave Iran to the Iranians" which in some ass-backwards way means not talking about western influence and meddling.
I'm in the process of writing all this to my friend, making sure to be very measured and careful. I want him to see how brainwormed this sort of western academic coverage really is, but without spooking him or making it too adversarial. The answers in this thread has been really helpful.
Yeah most of my friends are left-leaning liberals, but still very much liberals, so I understand. Not many principled Marxists walking around.
So how does that square up with the devastating sanctions and the excess deaths it has caused? Surely their first demand should be to stop the sanctions. Western politicians readily admit that the role of sanctions is to make people so unhappy that they rise up against the government. It is a kind of "mind control", just not the comic book kind.
Second demand would be to not bomb Iran ever (as they did it last year), and don't assassinate scientists.
In my experience they might admit the contradiction, but still uphold the superiority of "Western values" or whatever, then forget about the convo a week later.
This article sounds like a rehash of all the classic idealist positions.
“CIA/Mossad/sanctions don’t dictate what happens in Iran” > if they didn’t have any influence, why would they bother doing them? How could sanctions that cut Iran off from the global economy not have any effect on what happens in the country? This is classic “what no material analysis does to a mfer” territory
“Take away the agency of Iranians” > again classic idealism. We should be more worried about not crediting Iranians with agency in the intellectual sphere than about the most powerful empire in the history of the world and its rabid attack dog doing everything it can over decades to cripple the country, apparently
“Leave Iran to the Iranians” > sure! Then the author should surely direct their criticism at the people actively intervening in Iran, not leftists criticising said intervention??
I wish you luck with your friend
Absolutely. I'm actually hoping I can use this convo as a springboard to talking about materialism/idealism, I think if done more as a "this is why we often end up disagreeing" rather than "here's why your opinions are shit", it could be really productive (again, I have a lot of faith in this guy over most libs I know).
that's exactly how the usa operates, it inserts itself into already-existing fractures and inflames them to the point of rupture, then installs usa-friendly puppets in the aftermath
That's the pattern in almost all revolutions: a semi-organized organic mass movement topples a weak and unpopular old order, but there's no consensus on what comes next. Whichever force is most organized tends to win support and establish itself in power. Color revolutions are basically the imperialist version of a Leninist approach to revolution.
Realizing this I'd basically what made me an ML, although I still value my anarchist comrades ❤️