Breadtube / Leftube

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27634801

Israel and Jews are treated in the West like special snowflakes, and that we need to seek support, approval, and permission from Jews to denouce Israel's crimes. Ultimately this wastes energy and distracts from the goal of justice for Palestinians.

Should we have asked 'Aryans' and Germans for permission to destroy Nazi Germany? No! Should we have asked whites and Britons for permission to destroy apartheid South Africa? Obviously not.

So why do we ask Jews and Israelis for permission to destroy Israel?

TLDR: Foundings Zionists agreed with and worked with Nazis, seeing themselves as supporting the superiority of the Jewish race the same way the Nazis did so for the Aryan race.

Both movements used the same techniques:

• Palestine was Jewish lebensraum, and was stolen with the same techniques as the Nazis
• both touted fake 'socialism' (e.g. kibbutzes) while actively working with their preferred capitalists to further racial superiority

Zionists were rather indifferent to the Holocaust, and spent barely any resources on saving Jews from it. Zionists explicitly wrote that they wanted to save only those most useful to future Israel, and not all the other weathless Jewish rabble.

Only after the Holocaust ended did they start touting it to support Israel.

TLDW: The Nazis massacred hundreds of thousands of Warsaw residents and razed the city to the ground, even as they were retreating from the Soviets.

Israel's treatment of Gaza is exactly the same.

A lot of people view this rise of fascism as a some as a sort of fundamental opposition or reaction to the liberal or neoliberal order under which we're living. You know, it's like do you want fascist Trump or neoliberal Kamala? That sort of thinking […] seems to me to be both individualizing—like making fascism into something fascist ideologues do rather than like a constellation of features which make up a fascist society—but also kind of undermines the various continuities between neoliberal societies (and liberal ones) and fascist ones. And it's in this context that Clara Mattei offers a really important intervention which clarifies these important continuities.

Specifically, Mattei highlights how austerity as a form of authoritarian state practice functions to rebalance the capital relation in favour of capital, and in doing so paves the way to Fascism in the early 20th century.

The book: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html

Prolewiki has an excellent write up of why Russia is not (yet) an imperialist country that I will quote below.

In certain circles, there have been attempts to paint the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as a war between two imperialist countries, the United States and Russia. Similarly to the above Chinese example, this is incorrect.

Unlike the western powers, Russia does not have any capital monopolies that control the world market or supply chains. Russia having Gazprom and an extraction industry doesn’t mean they are imperialist. The essence of imperialism is monopolistic on a global scale, which is precisely why Russia is not imperialist, not whether they have capital generally. A perfect example of monopolies that share the world amongst themselves is the West, specifically the United States in their control of the WEF, IMF, World Bank, and UN Security Council, allowing the western powers to enforce this dominance through jingoistic foreign policy, embargoes, and hindering the development of other countries. Neither Russia nor China has anywhere close to this level of global power through finance capital.

Russia lacks finance capital and division of the world's resources. It only has 4 of the top 100 corporations in the world and 6 of the top 500. 82% of Russian exports are raw materials, including 58% oil, 11% metal, and 6% food. In 2017, Russia imported $106.2 billion worth' of machine goods and only exported $12.8 billion. Russia does not have any of the top 100 corporations in terms of capital export, and most Russian capital export is capital flight to tax havens. Russia only controls 0.7% of the world's wealth and has much less wealth per adult than the United States ($8,843 vs $336,528). Russia has intervened militarily in other countries such as Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, but not to seize natural resources like imperialist countries do.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5780257

American dream is a propaganda to attract poor people to come and be exploited for cheap labor from poverty stricken countries caused by America in the first place.

Scott Ritter discusses the history of false pretenses the US government has used to repeatedly search him, and the events around the most recent raid.

TLDW Summary of Discussed Points:

FBI's Raid of Ritter's House

When Scott Ritter went on his book tour in Russia, he talked with the Russian embassy about what he was doing so they wouldn't suspect him of anything malicious. Since Ritter was a former intelligence officer, this was important to clear up misconceptions. The Russians talked with him and showed him an essay about peace written by Anatoly Antonov (the Russian ambassador to the USA). Later, Ritter used this as a source in an article he wrote as a journalist, in which he lays out how he obtained the essay.

The FBI used this to accuse him of "working for the Russian government" and raid his house. They're using the Foreign Agents Registration Act act (FARA), which lets the US gov act against any citizen who writes non-State Department approved stuff on the basis that they are "working for a foreign government".

The FBI raid carted away his massive archive of already-declassified evidence of the Iraq War sham on false pretenses of "keeping classified documents", which Ritter has used over the years to write articles, books, and documentaries on the Iraq War lie.

The FBI took away all his family's electronics and bugged his TV, so he had to replace those.

Kursk Offensive Aftermath

Ritter has previously met and talked with Apti Alaudinov, one of the Russian commanders now assigned to clean up after the Kursk Offensive. Apti has said that the Kursk Offensive was the result of the Russian Ministry of Defense leaving parts of the border poorly guarded against NATO-armed units. Apti and co. have already knocked out the Kursk invasion’s logistics, is capturing their equipment, and now just has to kill and capture the leftover Ukrainian stragglers. Ritter is waiting to interview him in a bit.

On a related note, Ritter says the US government regularly releases known fake declassified evidence to produce false inflammatory headlines in the media about Russia, China, Iran, etc. and lie to the US people. Any stuff in the US media about this invasion is guaranteed bullshit.

The invasion force was equipped with the nicest NATO gear (Starlink, latest training, live US intelligence) and speak English/French/Polish, indicating this incursion was planned and executed by NATO, not Ukraine alone. Do not believe the shit in the media about Zelensky ordering this alone. NATO ordered this, its failure is just a nice excuse to get rid of Zelensky for someone more malleable.

We will see severe Russian retaliation for this, possibly even attacking F16 bases in Poland and Romania in return.

Overall Russia-Ukraine Situation

The Russians have exhausted Ukrainian reserves and are advancing continuously, forcing the Ukrainians into unreinforced positions. The Kursk invasion has used up all of Ukraine's new equipment without distracting any significant amount of the Russian army, as the Russians merely deployed troops from reserve to clean up and did not shift any off of the frontline.

In response to the invasion, Russia is changing their peace deal to unconditional surrender for Ukraine and incorporate all Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine into Russia. Russia has no choice but to do so to halt further NATO assaults on their borders.

Israel and the Axis of Resistance

Israel is fatally losing from the Palestinian genocide. The Houthis have completely shut down Israel's southern port, Hezbollah has depopulated Northern Israel via their rockets and settlers' fears. Most of the world is committed to a two-state solution, which will require Israel to remove its settlements and make it collapse.

Israel cannot take on the Axis of Resistance. It is running out of tanks, spare parts, and ammunition. Its army is exhausted. To stay in power, Netanyahu wants to keep the conflict just below all-out war so he can stay in power.

Hezbollah and Iran are looking for a balance between an effective response to stop Israel from attacking again without provoking all-out war, for example by bypassing the Iron Dome to take out airfields and F35s, to show even more clearly that they can destroy Israel's military if needed. Russia and China are also working to help this along.

America is an empire in decline, and this crumbling empire seeks to take everything down with it. I don't want that solution, and that's why I and [alternative media] struggle to correct this slide by empowering the American people with knowledge and information about the reality of what's going on so they can better hold their government officials accountable for what's done in their name. … The US, in my case, is seeking to interfere in my ability to carry out advocacy journalism by manufacturing .. a case of violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

— Scott Ritter