I posted this somewhere else with the source and libs pretty much asked me the time in moscow lmao. Gallup is in Putin's pocket confirmed.

Sources: https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-negotiated-end-war.aspx https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/19/poll-majority-of-ukrainians-want-peace-talks-to-end-war-with-russia/

I wonder why this is not covered by western media 🙄

After helping to overthrow leader Bashar al-Assad, “Israel” destroyed Syria's military capabilities and is seizing territory, annexing the Golan Heights and occupying more land. The Al-Qaeda-linked Salafi-jihadist rebels who now rule Syria, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have allowed Israel to do this. HTS leader (and former Al-Qaeda chief) Abu Mohammad al-Jolani said "We are not looking to engage in a conflict with “Israel”". Ben Norton reports.

This is part 1 with a link at the top and bottom of the page to read part 2 which just came out. That way you have the full essay be the time I post this.

50% of Israeli settlers in northern occupied Palestine are taking sedatives, 33% do not want to return to their residences, and 36% of the displaced are receiving psychological therapy, the Israeli Channel 12 reported, citing the Tel-Hai Academic College.

Israeli media had previously reported that hundreds of residence units in the settlement of Shlomi in northern occupied Palestine were damaged as a result of the war with Lebanon, adding that settlers would only return "when security is fully restored and all minor and major violations of the ceasefire are addressed."

The Israeli website Walla reported that before October 7, 2023, the settlement housed 9,000 settlers, nearly all of whom were evacuated in the early days of the war, noting that most of them had not yet returned to their houses.

Good talk.

This has been a long debate that I had with @multitotal@lemmygrad.ml and I wish to expose this here to add different points of view and enrich the discussion.

Context from my discussion with Multitotal -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6440034/5642022

This was a discussion made by multitotal and other people -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6447386/5645801

To start, I wish to lay the background of Syria with some sources from my own investigation.

Before the Civil War on 2011

Syria's economy was worth $68 billion, ranking 68th globally. It was a middle-income economy, on par with Paraguay and Slovenia, and boasted a diverse economic structure with low inflation.

Agriculture, industry, retail, and tourism were pillars of its stability. In 2009, agriculture contributed 22 percent to the economy, industry and excavation 25 percent, retail 23 percent and tourism 12 percent.

Source -> https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2024-12-12/Syria-s-fragile-future-can-its-economy-rise-from-the-chaos--1zhdSS3Ci76/index.html

Toll of the war

The civil war obliterated this diversity. Agricultural output has plummeted by at least 50 percent, according to the World Food Program. Infrastructure vital to the industrial sector, once concentrated in Aleppo and Homs, has been reduced to rubble.

Oil production, a crucial export for Syria, has collapsed from 380,000 barrels per day in 2010 to 40,000 barrels per day today - a drop of nearly 90 percent.

Tourism, once a burgeoning sector drawing millions of visitors annually to historic sites like Palmyra, has all but disappeared.

Meanwhile, poverty is endemic. The UN estimates that over 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, with more than half facing food insecurity. Inflation is rampant, and the Syrian pound, battered by years of war, has lost over 99 percent of its value since 2011.

How did it begin?

The creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces ->

Source -> https://disser.spbu.ru/files/2023/disser_en_yurk.pdf

Even with the US support, has the material reality improved for the Kurds?

With this, evidence suggests that it has not improved:

Source -> https://disser.spbu.ru/files/2023/disser_en_yurk.pdf

Kurds map 2018 ->

Evidence of US plunder of Syrian oil

Source -> https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202209/1274786.shtml

Now, with all of this context, I came to the following conclusion:

Supporting rojava or any other imperialist faction is the same as supporting the continuation of imperialist plunder of Syria. I prefer to advocate for the removal of the imperialist and for the unity of all of the people of Syria.

TLDR I don't support any imperialist funded faction but Syrian liberation from the imperialists. This means Syrian unity and not balkanization.

Hope to read all of your thoughts on this!!

These takfiri scum are more interested in killing Shias and other minorities than they are ridding Syria of INCREASED Israeli and American occupation. It's not really diplomatic to engage in games of I told you so, but to all of these people jubilant about Syrian sovereignty being replaced for Sharia Law, WE TOLD YOU SO

Can't wait!

Take care, y'all.

Full message is:

A health insurance CEO is gunned down and the ruling class recoils at the popular response. States ban access to life-saving medical care for women and trans people. Life expectancy is down. Trump promises to staff health agencies with vaccine skeptics, AIDS denialists, and conspiracy theorists.

Healthcare affects every single worker, so what can the Marxist theory of “social death” contribute?

Tune in tomorrow to find out. And don't forget to LIKE ✅ and SUBSCRIBE 👇 http://youtube.com/CPUSA

Back cover (if you can't sleep count the typos...)

Video form (more in depth): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGnsG-QFQ2o

The website: https://whatifithappenedtoyou.com/

it’s long. what are your thoughts on it?

Hijacking Luigi's arrest with another amazing speech by Michael Parenti.

Full lecture: Anti Sovietism in Media (1986)

I feel like modern communist theory (or at least, the theory of people I have seen) has a major bljnd spot that is causing a lot of issues.

When we think of settler colonialism we think of the yeoman farmers of olden days stealing land from natives. Our understanding of settler colonialism is entirely based on an agrarian settler colonialism which was a feature of early capitalism. This leads to many communists who think that places like North America no longer operate on a settler colonial basis.

However, as far as I can see, American settler colonialism has transformed into its urban and "peaceful" (from a legal/liberal standpoint) stage. The typical modern North American "settlement" is a suburban neighbourhood.

These suburbs qualify as settler colonialism because

1. They consume the American country's land, water and energy resources to an extreme degree.
2. They expand uncontrollably by tearing apart dense development and destroying the environment (although the expansion has slowed down)
3. The North American superstructure caters to the needs of the suburbs at the expense of the "pure" proletariat. The American governments, at the federal, state and local level subsidise suburban development to an unsustainable degree.
4. The wealth of the suburbs is mostly from inheritance, but the prospect of one day becoming a suburbaner (the "American dream") kept many American proles in line, until the modern times where the dream seems out of sight (because the settler mode is inherently unsustainable, even more so than non-settler capitalism)

What does this mean for our american comrade's political tactics? I'm not sure to be honest.

I don't like how these Evangelical "Christian" devils that come from the hole of Babylon we call America, support Israel, and have these batshit far-right views

I don't like how these Political Sunnis that hail from Wahhabism and Salafism are opposed to Arab socialism, and Shia self-determination, and call their fellow Muslims, takfiris

To this, I blame for the former

And for the latter, I blame the Saudis gov't, the Emiratis gov't, the Turkish gov't, Qataris... can we have an emoji of their flag burning

World Systems Theory and related concepts often come up whenever people try to explain why Westerners are psychotic counterrevolutionary scum, etc. It's often suggested that white Americans in particular love third-world exploitation because it directly benefits those same white Americans. We might say "White Minnesotan Joe Cracker wants child slavery in southern Africa so he can get his cheap electronics." And yeah, that makes sense up to a point...

But Joe Cracker might not understand the relevant supply chain or even the basic composition of his smartphone. He probably doesn't even know about the existence of said exploitation, much less its nature or purpose. Maybe Joe Cracker WILL revolt without his cheap goods, but he probably doesn't actually know what goes into producing them or keeping the prices down. So what decisions is he making that render him "complicit" in the profiteering of some massive international corporation like Apple? Falling for their ads?

It's also worth pointing out that his iPhone doesn't actually make him richer any more than a Hulu membership does. It's a cute little toy, but it doesn't obtain food, housing, medicine or fuel. It's a cell phone with a billion bells and whistles and a monthly subscription fee. One could starve to death with it in hand. Is this really the "wealth transfer" we keep talking about? This is the socialized bribery Americans perfected?

It seems to me that Joe Cracker is complicit in fuck-all. He doesn't materially benefit from low wages in southeast Asian textile plants even if he wears one of those shirts they make every single day. It seems that he's just a different kind of poor from the Bangladeshi serfs who make his sneakers, the kind of poor with tap water, McDonalds, and WiFi. Poor overseas workers make the stupid shit, poor Americans buy the stupid shit, and they both struggle, but at least Joe Cracker has some killer kicks to go along with the Taco Bell and the wireless internet in his shitty apartment. The Nike execs, meanwhile, can smoke cigars and watch the line go up from the VIP lounge.

"Bread and Circuses" seems like a much better explanation for the behavior of these Westerners. Who says Joe Cracker has a good reason for throwing his verbal weight behind an ongoing genocide in Gaza, screaming about nuking Moscow over a slice of Ukraine, and pearl-clutching about the 100 billion victims of Communism in Xinjiang?

In this video, Mohammad Marandi spits facts about the Syria War, Syrian Rebels, and US backing of the war.