🧵As decent-minded people around the world call for illegal sanctions on Syria to be immediately dropped in the light of the earthquake disaster, the pseudo-progressive Guardian cynically attempts to leverage this humanitarian crisis towards a project of regime change... If only we'd done to Syria what we did in Libya! NATO could've dropped its democratic munitions, destroying the country before the earthquake got to it. No doubt the resulting warlord governments of a fragmented Syria would've been well placed to deal with natural disasters 🙄...

🧵 Nearly 60,000 Covid-related deaths reported in China in the five-week period from 8 Dec to 12 Jan, following the easing of restrictions. Very sad, and a drastic increase compared to the last three years of extreme vigilance against the virus... Of course, China is a huge country. UK is currently experiencing 150 Covid deaths per day. Projected over five weeks and to China's population, that would be 110,000 deaths in the same period - nearly double what China has suffered. And this doesn't get a mention in the media...

🧵 Obviously I'm not a fan of the Qatari ruling family, but I'm also not a fan of hypocrisy and the whitewashing of 'liberal' imperialism. Why should Qatar be subjected to a level of scrutiny that's never applied to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe? ... Infantino makes an important point when he says "for what we Europeans have been doing the last 3,000 years we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons to people" (even if 3,000 years is a fairly extreme exaggeration!) ...

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There are lots of valid criticisms of Lula and his record in government, and a level of guilt by association, since various pro-imperialist liberals are also pleased by his re-election. None of this should distract from the immense historic significance of this victory... Lula is a key figure in the shift to a multipolar world. He was a driving force in the creation of BRICS. The PT governments were supportive of the left throughout Latin America. Lula and Dilma had excellent relations with China. Lula has a sensible position on Ukraine...

🧵 Putin's speech yesterday was nothing if not interesting. A mixed bag. He manages to get the basic geopolitics right in spite of a near-total lack of class analysis and a failure to recognise the reactionary nature of the Tsarist Empire... He brings up his criticism of the Bolshevik nationalities policy, which he feels weakened Russia and prepared the ground for the rise of nationalism post-1991. This analysis assumes that the Russian Empire before 1917 was some sort of voluntary association of equals...

🧵 On 'denazification'. This is a controversial term that Russia is using to describe its operation in Ukraine. Lots of people are questioning its legitimacy, as they believe that 1) fascism isn't really a problem in Ukraine; 2) fascism is more of a problem in Russia. Is fascism a problem in Ukraine? Yes. It's true that fascist parties didn't do well in the 2019 elections, but to a considerable degree that reflects the fact that their ideology & militia have been absorbed into the mainstream. For example, Azov led the 'resistance' in Mariupol.

🧵 A lot of Russians have "trust issues" in relation to the West. With pretty good reason, if you look at the history of the last century. Soviet and Russian hopes for friendship and peaceful coexistence with the West have always been rebuffed... 1918-21: The US and Western Europe wage a vicious war of intervention to overturn the October Revolution and reinstall the tsarist regime. Defeated by the Red Army, the battleground changes to international diplomacy, with the US not even recognising the USSR until 1933...

🧵 on 🇨🇳 and climate change.

Western media and politicians are trying to shift responsibility for the future of the planet on to China, as the world's biggest emitter (in absolute terms) of greenhouse gases.

This is nonsense, for many reasons, some of which I'll list... China's per capita emissions are less than half those of the US. Its average household power consumption is 1/8 the US. Unlike the West, China's emissions aren't driven by luxury lifestyles but by industry. Meaning the advanced countries have simply exported their emissions...

🧵 So #FreeTibet is a thing again? Let's talk about it. Support for Tibetan independence means support for imperialism & feudalism. For 70 years the US and its allies have nurtured a pro-independence movement in Tibet in order to dismember, weaken and encircle socialist China... Tibet's only period of (nominal) independence in modern history is from 1937 to 1950, during which time it was essentially a British colony. California and Texas have an infinitely more legitimate claim to independence than Tibet does...

🧵on 🇰🇵
For a socialist or anti-imperialist not to support the DPRK is untenable. We're talking about a country that has been building socialism for 70 years. Like any such process it has contradictions and problems, but the default position for the left must be one of support... North Korea faced a genocidal war in which 3 million of its people were killed and its entire infrastructure destroyed. It continues to face an ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation by the US - the most heavily-armed political entity in the history of the world...

Thread: Why focus so much on supporting China?

It's not simply a matter of liking jasmine tea and ancient pottery. It's a matter of:

1) supporting/defending socialism in general;

2) opposing imperialism and supporting a multipolar world;

3) resisting capitalist hegemony... The Soviet Union collapsed, along with the other European socialist countries. Of the remaining socialist states (China, Vietnam, DPRK, Laos, Cuba), China is the biggest and most advanced. As such, while Marxists should support all these, China has a particular importance...

[Thread] Western mainstream media is shedding crocodile tears over the fate of Afghan women in the light of the Taliban's return to power. This sudden concern for women's rights is cynical, disgusting and disingenuous... When a progressive government came to power in Afghanistan in 1978 introducing wide-ranging anti-patriarchal reforms, the US and its allies planned, financed and armed an insurrection of far-right religious fundamentalist forces (of which the Taliban are immediate inheritors)...