davel

We have entered a strange, late-stage Empire era, comparable to the Soviet Union’s Glasnost, in which elements of the US imperial braintrust can see with blinding clarity Washington’s entire hegemonic global project is stumbling rapidly and irreversibly towards extinction, and announce so publicly - but their insight does not translate into evasive governmental action at home. The RAND Commission report elicited no mainstream coverage or comment whatsoever, proof positive there isn’t a concomitant effort to manufacture consent for its radical, far-reaching prescriptions.

Were we living in a unipolar age, a multipronged PR campaign would immediately ensue to convince Americans of the righteousness of the Empire’s mission, and the necessity of investing in US “defense” to the tune of trillions. The media’s silence on the Commission’s findings definitionally reflects an omertà among the US political class. The fatal “disconnect” between the Pentagon’s operational and industrial planning identified by RAND will endure. So too ever-intensifying US military impotence. We’re spectating the Empire’s final acts in real-time.

The Spectator interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_USzVCWzh10

Israel’s decision to assassinate Nasrallah, using some of the enormous bunker-busting bombs the United States has been arming it with, is beyond foolhardy. It is outright deranged. Israel has removed – and knows it has removed – a moderating influence on Hezbollah.

Israel’s action will achieve nothing apart from teaching his successor, and leaders of other groups and countries labelled as terrorist by western governments, several lessons:

• That Israel, and the West standing squarely behind it, do not play by any known rules of engagement, and that their opponents must do likewise. The current restraint from Hezbollah that has been so baffling western pundits will become a thing of the past.

• That Israel is not interested in compromise, only escalation, and that this is a fight to death – not just against Israel but against the West that sponsors Israel.

• That Israel's ideological extremism – its Jewish supremacism, and its endless craving for Lebensraum – must be met with even greater Shia-inspired extremism.

Decades of western terrorism in the Middle East unleashed a Sunni nihilism embodied first in al-Qaeda and then in ISIS. Now, the West, via Israel, is fomenting for the Shia resistance its own ISIS moment. The moderates in what the West dubs “terrorist organisations” have once again lost the argument. Why? Because the US imperial project known as “the West” has once again demonstrated it will not compromise. It demands full-spectrum, global dominance – nothing less.

Israel may make very short tactical gains in killing Nasrallah. But we will all soon feel the whirlwind.

Honestly this all seems too good to be fully true to me, like a wish fulfillment fantasy. The NED’s new guard installed at this high a level can’t be this ignorant of the org’s purpose, right? Or perhaps they really can be. Perhaps senior NED staff will have to be re-replaced, or else the whole project scuttled and replaced by something else. Maybe this kind of work has to return to its clandestine roots.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s government may have also sought to undermine Azov, as two bloody friendly fire incidents suggested. First, in July 2022, a Russian pre-trial detention center was reportedly struck in a HIMARS missile strike, killing 40 prisoners from the Azov Regiment. Then, in January 2024, a plane carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs was shot down in Belgorod. Many on board were Azov members.

Accordingly, Farion’s assassination raises the question of whether civil society actors rejecting any form of settlement with Moscow are being eliminated too. The CIA spent expended heavy resources to training a dedicated assassination squad for Kiev. The unit is so effective, US officials fear its operatives could go rogue and execute targeted killings the world over, with one former senior CIA figure reportedly warning: “We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad in the 1970s.” The Washington Post has reported that Ukraine’s proficiency at such operations “has risks for Russia… but it carries broader risks as well” for the rest of the world.

If a CIA-backed outfit in Ukraine is turning its guns on its former sponsors, it would follow a well-document history of blowback. Whether or not Farion’s assassination was the product of an intelligence intrigue, it is clear that Kiev’s chickens are coming home to roost.

Found from S4A’s Mastodon post. S4A is an ultra-leftist, but he has his moments.

People often ask me what I think about Midwestern Mussolini. I think they're shit.

This whole article, "In Defense of the MAGAcommunism Strategy," dated May 27, 2024, lays out praise for Jackson Hinkle, who has stated that Marxism isn't about abolishing private property (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDXG4h5w1bY ), and Infracel, who…where even to begin there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ntTm-XBa4 )? Those two aren't spreading Marxism but a toxic synthesis of revisionist Browderism, cultish Lyndon Larouche-ism and neo-fascist Duginism. We generally call the end results, the pathetic wastes of life who believe in that garbage, "patsocs" ("patriotic socialists," stemming from one of their early controversies) or "nazbols" ("national bolsheviks," after the associated fascist-with-red-symbolism movements). And for Hinkle and Infracel, and I guess the Midwits now too, "grifter" also fits well. The right wing may have bad politics, but they sure have more money! (Hinkle's former mentor, Jimmy Dore, can tell you all about it.)

The article begins by talking about the author's sports coach, who supports Trump and "wants a political and economic revolution." Does he though? What you tend to find in that camp aren't anything like revolutionaries but confused and hateful bigots who're invested in every reactionary prejudice there is. We know this because decent people with any amount of solidarity refuse to stand with the shit the Trumpers do publicly and have been doing publicly for a long time. While a few of them may come around some day to some extent, most of them will remain on the capitalists' side for life and as hazards to a genuinely revolutionary working-class movement. In the short term, it's more realistic to plan to face them in combat than it is to think they'll willingly renounce their ignorance.

And what do Trumpers mean by an "economic revolution"? There are only two possibilities for running an advanced industrialized society: capitalism and socialism. And Trumpers definitely don't want socialism. Rather, what you get out of them tends to be crudely stated, petty-bourgeois, fascist middle-class politics. Instead, communists - which, again, to be clear, Hinkle and Infracel are not - generally should speak firstly to the advanced masses, who can help to guide the middle masses and to contain the backward, most ideologically captured masses. In other words, we don't start with the least class-conscious people who are tailing the 1% the most. Unfortunately, this describes a lot of the US population, but it is what it is, and denying that will get you nowhere you want to go.

Finally, the author states, "I haven't agreed with 100% of what Jackson Hinkle has said in the past three years," and yeah, I sure hope not, but let's be real: the Midwits agree with enough of Hinkle's 💩 to get on board with the founding of his new, fascist political party, the deceptively titled "American Communist Party" (ACP).

Give these 🤡 🤡 🤡 a very wide berth.