Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.
some is doing a lot of work there. we’re talking about high volume commodities. VLCCs are physically very large because the commodity being transported is just that, a bulk commodity. this isn’t smuggling fentanyl or diamonds or gold or something. I can imagine Iran getting some past the goalie but it’s hard to imagine it being a big amount of hydrocarbon products compared to what they can export.
climate change too. For most of my adult life, climate change was leftist kookery. then shit really started getting real with wildfires and smoky summers in the 2010s and now it’s talked about like the weather, something we just have to exist with, you crazy ideologue.
I finally got my hands on a copy of Nick turse’s “kill anything that moves” about systematic US war crimes in vietnam, and man right off the bat there’s this passage that seems extremely relevant to Israel and who knows how many other imperialist acts:
Preceding text is a high level description of the My Lai massacre and the one officer who was charged over it.
And then, in a stunning reversal, almost immediately after the exposure of the My Lai massacre, war crime allegations became old hat-- so commonplace as to be barely worth mentioning or looking into. In leaflets, pamphlets, small press books and “underground” newspapers, the growing American antiwar movement repeatedly pointed out that US troops were committing atrocities on a regular basis. But what had been previously brushed aside as propaganda and leftist kookery suddenly started to be disregarded as yawn-worthy common knowledge, with little but the My Lai massacre in between.
The pipeline system that routes oil from production area, on the east coast by the gulf, to the west, towards refinery and export capacity on the red sea. That material can go north on the red sea via the Suez canal, avoiding the Yemeni coast.
Libs will pontificate about how immoral it is and then go back to brunch
Which is another way of saying libs will love it too
Is this person notable for some reason? “look at this random zionist being a zionist” may be better suited to the slop or chapo communities.
is russia imperialist per lenin’s imperialism, part two
Which brings us to Russia, so let’s go through the points:
1. Production monopolies - Russia’s monopolies are primarily state-owned extractive monopolies that export raw materials and are price-takers on global commodity markets. This is fundamentally different from the price-setting monopolies of the imperial core, which capture monopoly rents through intellectual property, finance, and supply chain control. Russian firms are almost entirely dependent on US controlled market demand they cannot control.
2. Fusion of bank and monopoly - no. In the imperial core, multinational finance capital has outgrown its national borders and dictates state policy to violently open global markets for super-profits (e.g., Wall Street dictating US foreign policy). In Russia, the dynamic is reversed, with the state directing monopolies. Western finance capital nearly liquidated the country in the 1990s during the shock therapy, because the national capitalist class was weak and disorganised since they’d only just gotten their wealth from Yeltsin era state company selloffs. Which was the entire reason Putin was elevated by the local capitalist class in the first place, he was meant to put a stop to that liquidation. Under him, the Russian state centralised and subordinated its raw resource monopolies and banks to ensure the survival of the local capitalist class (essentially going protectionist to stop western states completely controlling its economy and bankrupting its businesses). This is what’s called Bonapartism: where a weak, disorganised national capitalist class hands the reins to a central state that then takes charge of coordinating individual capitalists in the interest of the wider capitalist class as whole. In Russia’s case, these state owned monopolies and banks also aren’t integrated into multinational production networks that are dictating global economic policy.
3. Export of capital: No. Russia overwhelmingly exports commodities. What limited capital export it does engage in isn’t driven by domestic overproduction looking for new countries’ economies to exploit. It’s driven by the need to secure access to essentials in a geopolitical climate where the US empire is actively trying to cut it off from global trade, and/or part of simple infrastructure-for-resources trade agreements. In this latter case see the gold mine deals in Africa, where Russia provides security for the mines via the Wagner group in exchange for a cut of the gold that it can use to bypass sanctions and trade for critical resources to keep its economy running.
4. Monopoly associations: No. Russia is locked out of most Western-dominated economic blocs and extensively sanctioned. It has no ability to unilaterally influence global institutions the way the US does. Its participation in BRICS is defensive coalition-building among national economies. BRICS exists to facilitate trade outside of the US empire controlled financial system, not to enforce monopoly cartels on other nations.
**5. Global territorial division: **no. Russia is defending its immediate borders against NATO encirclement to guarantee the survival of its national capitalist class. Its support for Crimea and the Donbas was driven by the material integration of those regions’ capital into Russian supply chains. Similarly the regional oligarchs in those areas wanted to secede because, due to their pre-existing economic integration with Russia, they faced total economic destruction if the EU association agreement put forward to the post-coup government was accepted.
So if you apply Lenin’s analysis, Russia is not imperialist. It is a semi-peripheral capitalist state, dependent on raw material exports and on the imperialist institutions and markets controlled by the US empire. Its ruling class is a national bourgeoisie whose survival depends on protection from the state, because it lacks the productive and economic power to protect itself against western finance capital. Could you say it’s a regional capitalist power trying to get more favourable terms for its bourgeoisie via pressure? For sure, especially in the context of the Donbas conflict (which then escalated into full war largely due to the US empire stoking the flames), but it’s not Imperialist in any materialist sense. And while they’re not some progressive force for the working class in themselves, they are currently a significant counterweight to the further expansion of the US empire, especially in their funding and arming of resistance groups that also oppose the US empire.
a couple miscellaneous ukraine links:
several years of gallup polling in Ukraine, including a graphic showing Ukrainian public opinion over time, specifically that a majority of the ukrainian public has wanted an immediate ceasefire/negotiation since ~2024.
and what I thought was a good comment on ‘is russia’s invasion of ukraine actually imperialism’, using lenin’s definition of imperialism.
I’ll focus on the Imperialism part specifically:
Lenin analysed imperialism as a stage of capitalist development, with a logical flow of events that determines imperialist development.
1. Production monopolies: due to the nature of capitalist competition, losers get bought up by winners, capital gets centralised and monopolies naturally form. These monopolies end up dominating high value sectors and by virtue of being able to undercut their competitors, become the price setters of the national market, and start competing internationally too, with real competition now existing between these giants.
2. Merging of bank and monopoly capital: because monopolies are incredibly profitable and reach a point where they basically can’t fail, private banks just keep giving loans to monopolies because they’re guaranteed to profit from it. You end up with a ruling class where the banks fund whatever the monopolies need them to, often with the same people on the board of directors of both banks and said monopolies, allowing them to dominate and direct the economy. This is what Lenin refers to as finance capital, or the financial-industrial oligarchy, that ends up dictating the direction of the country.
3. Export of capital: capital relies on the M-C-M transformation; money is used to buy commodities/investments that generate more money. But eventually these monopolies run out of profitable investments on the home front. They also saturate local markets, they reach the cap of how much they can exploit their own population before they stop being able to afford their products, and with the falling rate of profit (by nature of their use of machinery/automation/AI to undercut competitors), it’s also increasingly less profitable to invest at home as time passes. International trade hits a ceiling as well: they can’t cut prices further without destroying profit margins, and other nations put up protectionist barriers against their goods. That means they start exporting capital (not goods). They buy up companies in these nations and funnel the profits back to the core, any surplus value created is extracted out of said nation. They also use this to integrate supply chains of basic goods so they can produce things more cheaply. They export production to places where they can exploit workers more easily to increase their profit margins. By nature of the massive wealth of these monopolies, they start monopolising the economies of these other nations too. The export of capital exists to keep the flow of value going into the imperial core while keeping the periphery nations underdeveloped to act as resource extraction/cheap labour/production hubs. Thus making the core increasingly financialised as it deindustrialises by exporting its production abroad, and using the coercive mechanisms laid out in the next stages to extract imperial monopoly rents and forcibly open markets that allow them to not need to rely on domestic production anymore.
4. Formation of capitalist monopoly associations that divide the world: In order to ensure this exploitation can happen in the first place (since the imperial core’s economies become dependent on these international production chains as they deindustrialise trying to chase profits) you need international institutions to enforce it. Perfect examples are the IMF and World Bank who use “structural adjustment” to force global south countries to sell off assets to imperial core monopolies, remove labour protections and open their markets to the imperial core. Or things like the WTO which enforces IP laws to guarantee monopoly rents for imperial core companies. Because the relative economic strength of the imperialist powers shifts over time, these associations are constantly contested and renegotiated, which ends up generating trade wars, sanctions wars, and eventually military conflict, which brings us to the next section.
5. Global territorial division to guarantee profits: In order to enforce these organisations, you also need gunboat diplomacy/systemic violence to formalise these spheres of influence. See the US’s 800+ military bases (that we know of) around the world, and the global economic system set up around the dollar as the reserve currency (itself set up via gunboat diplomacy and coups) giving the US the ability to simply cut off nations from buying essential goods with sanctions. It’s also necessary because the imperial core who now has comparatively little production and relies on financialisation (just money, loans, investments that passively generate money, stocks, etc. as opposed to domestically producing tangible things to sell), can’t use said money to buy up/meddle in other nations economies if the dollar isn’t the reserve currency that everyone is forced to use.
cont’d in second comment
This is just about literally the plot of an Iain m banks novel, matter.
In 
news, today is National Truth and Reconciliation Day, a memorial day started several years ago to recognize and remember the horrors of the Canadian residential school system as well as the findings/calls to action of the Truth & Reconciliation commission.
If you are a Canadian hexbear user, your shitposting privileges are hereby revoked until you have read at least the TRC calls to action linked above and 21 things you didn’t know about the indian act. A couple other books I’ve learned from include Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an Anishinabe botanist writing on the wisdom of plants, Price Paid by Bev Sellars, former chief of one of the Secwepemc nations and residential school survivor, and Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens by JR Miller, a survey of Indigenous-European relations and political economy since colonization.
You, the American people, have the power to forestall this grim fate. You need to force your government to distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.
We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed.
this reminds me of osama’s ‘why I did 911’ letter in which he advocated for american citizens to view 9/11 as the price paid by society for imperial war. that letter also seemed… misguided w.r.t. american sensibilities.
A couple articles on nakedcapitalism regarding dedollarization, the tldr for which is to not hold your breath for dedollarization because the USD is a hot commodity.
this one is about the non-central bank but still major pseudo state actors that are buying lots of USD
China’s state banks (per the Bank of International Settlements) have almost as many foreign assets as the central bank (PBOC). Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has almost as many foreign assets ($986 billion) as the government has FX reserves ($1.1 trillion at the end of August). Japan’s FX reserves are on the books of the Ministry of Finance and the GPIF is overseen by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor—so these are almost all assets of the Government of Japan or the broader public sector, not its central bank. Korea’s National Pension Service has more foreign assets than the Bank of Korea has FX reserves.
What’s more, the available evidence suggests that the dollar share of these pools is in line with or higher than the dollar share of global FX reserves (it depends on the institution and jurisdiction). In other words, by looking at the (easily available) data on the world’s static holdings of formal FX reserve assets, scholars and analysts miss most of the growth in the world’s sovereign and quasi-sovereign foreign assets.
and this one is michael hudson saying what ‘ought’ to happen, with a good preface from Yves about how what ought to happen is unlikely to happen, followed by Hudson’s usual incisive analysis of political and economic history.
From Yves’ intro:
This lack of consensus and will among the so-called Global Majority has been evident at all the BRICS summits. BRICS has been somewhat effective at getting participants to cooperate to improve bi-lateral trade payment mechanisms. However, there has been no movement towards establishing a new currency. Even more revealing, BRICS statements have reaffirmed the importance of the IMF and World Bank. BRICS states want to reform their governance, as in have more say over how they are run, not replace them.
where is XHS when you need them!
it’s devastating to scroll around and hit the icons for different landmarks, stores etc because the links all show photos from before 2023.
A deep dive on the operational and tactical details of Ansarallah’s offensive to Mokha recently. This is a good article, lots of pre-2026 background and discussion. The use of fake comms to “order” retreat during their attack is brilliant. Worth reading in full
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-seven-day-lightning-offensive-that-changed-yemens-war/
But the Houthis were fighting on another battlefield as well: communications. After abandoning the use of “Claude” over fears that it had been infiltrated by the United States or Israel, the Houthis reportedly assembled a team of Houthi, Hezbollah and Iraqi experts. Vehicles carrying sophisticated communications software were sent to intercept communications between government forces on the front lines extending from western Taiz to Mokha. According to NRF officials, electronic warfare units detected and were able to listen to 5,346 radio communications devices near the front line: 3,181 around the al-Barh front in Taiz and 2,165 around Hodeidah.
According to information I received, the system was then used to send withdrawal orders to front-line units while those same positions were being massively struck by missiles and drones. The effect was devastating. After the fall of Alwaziah district in Taiz, some fighters were afraid the Houthis might storm Dhubab and cut the supply line, particularly those who have families there; they abandoned some front-line positions to rescue their families. The residents thought it was a final pullout. The fighters thought they would come back to their front-line sites, but time was not on their side, according to military and political sources. Some were informed about the withdrawal while others, including commanders, were not.
describing the country as “on the slide”, which he blamed on high taxes and high immigration.
Are all the immigrants coming in and siphoning up gas? These fucking nonces
Yes
It’s crazy that that article takes the possibility of irgc sleeper cells in Canada seriously but doesn’t mention masood masjoody, the Iranian guy who was killed by diaspora monarchists in Vancouver. One is a fever dream, the other happened concurrent with the publication of that cbc article
Days after Masjoody disappeared, 10 other outspoken diaspora figures, most of them critics of the monarchist campaign or the war with Iran, were tagged in an ominous message on the social platform X.
“Soon you’ll have to find the corpses of many,” it warned.
The post, written in Farsi and topped by a knife emoji, came from a since-deactivated account named for the SAVAK, the feared secret police once used by the monarchy to crack down on dissent.
100%, the local organization I’m part of does a ton of potlucks in addition to other events and the potlucks are always the best attended.
fun fact: potluck isn’t actually a bastardization of word potlach in the pacific northwest, but the potlach was made illegal for basically the same reasons you’re advocating for foodsharing and potluck events. the potlach system was really important to Indigenous political organization, national identity, and resistance to colonization.
On the most recent radio war nerd they interviewed the amkmapping guy and specifically talked about how rumours of Russia capture of Dobropolye are exaggerated. Fog of war etc but noting all the same