An interesting detail about the arrest of Mangione that many seem to be missing:

He wasn’t spotted by an employee, he was spotted by a *customer*, who has yet to be identified. This interview with another customer who was there at the time recounts someone who said “that looks like the shooter from New York”

He and his group laughed it off and left the restaurant, and only later learned that Mangione was arrested after they left.

The rise of Trump and Trumpism cannot be fully explained without first recognizing how, over the last two decades, American politics has been shaped by the rise of China. 🧵 Despite both parties preferring to deemphasize foreign policy in their campaigns, US foreign policy is the engine driving domestic policy. This is because modern US domestic politics is fundamentally a game of dividing up the plunder that foreign policy secures.

https://twitter.com/aurorachaang/status/1780263628803060072

US-backed attempts at foreign destabilization always try to leverage *real* grievances, not to bring any resolution to the aggrieved. Quite the opposite, they attempt to intensify.

The only correct position for the western left to take is to oppose *ALL* forms of intervention.

Yellen is once again traveling to Beijing, this time to try to get China to curb “overproduction”.

What's the real goal? 🧵 The goal of this pressure campaign is to somehow convince China to self-sabotage the foundation of their budding prosperity—their means of production—thereby eliminating the competition.

Why don't the capitalist countries try to out-compete China on commodity prices instead?

On Monday, Israeli fighter jets bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus killing over a dozen people in an outrageous act of provocation against both Iran and Syria.

It is clear that Israel is intent on instigating a direct confrontation with Iran.

What’s the goal? 🧵 While this attack represents a blatant provocation, it is not without precedent by western powers. Those old enough might recall a similarly atrocious act by the US in the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

In America, a "FICO Credit Score™ " is a blacklist administered by an unelected private oligopoly.

Americans are inducted into this capitalist credit initiative from birth, which controls everything from where they can live and which employer they are allowed to work for. In order to be allowed to live in a house when they're older, Americans must begin taking out loans starting from an early age—even if they don't need a loan.

Americans call this ritual to appease private banks and landlords "building credit".

This is actually great news for anyone hoping to witness the collapse of dollar hegemony this decade.

https://twitter.com/ap/status/1762523357159764419

Don’t take my word for it though, Yellen herself says as much!

https://twitter.com/benjaminnorton/status/1648502408279101440

It has become clear Israel has no plan beyond trying to force millions of Palestinians into the Sinai desert by starving and bombing all that remain in Gaza. Israel is acting as if any Egyptian objection to this plan is a bluff.

This is utter insanity. 🧵 Despite being led by a US puppet, Egypt is facing a dramatic economic crisis of their own that worsens each day of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Both Suez transit fees and tourism—key buttresses of govt revenue—have fallen off a cliff since Oct 7.

Earlier today, the UK govt convened an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss a joint US+UK joint strike on Yemen for their blockade targeting ships facilitating the ongoing genocide of Palesianians.

We are now at a critical crossroads 🧵 Having spent almost a decade showing they’re incapable of wiping out the Yemeni resistance, the US+UK again plan to strike this country in hopes it will deter the Yemeni people from standing against a genocide.

In response to US+Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, Yemen just hit another two Israel-bound oil tankers with drones.

This is interesting for a few reasons. 🧵 Firstly, the location.

Instead of hitting these ships as they transited through the Bab al-Mandab as previous strikes had, the tankers were targeted in the vicinity of the Maldives, over 2,000 km away!

Not enough people seem to catch what happened here:

Israel stole a number of *Palestinian* children’s bodies when they raided Al-Shifa hospital last week.

They then used these bodies to stage a film for private audiences depicting the bodies as *Israeli* children.

Follow this through to its conclusion:

Not only is Israel lying about the events of Oct 7, the lengths they’re willing to go to manufacture evidence proves that the 𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵.

https://twitter.com/ibnriad/status/1724872799532024151

On Nov 14th, Yemen announced they would begin targeting Israeli-flagged ships in retaliation for the massacre of Palesitnains in Gaza.

Earlier today, Yemen captured a ship in the Red Sea, an act which may turn out to be the most significant development in the war so far.

Why?🧵 Marine shipping accounts for 80% of the world's trade in goods, and a full 12% of ships pass through the Suez Canal.

The southern end of the Suez is accessed via the Red Sea, which in turn is accessed via the Bab-el-Maneb, a constriction less than 30 km across at its narrowest.

Be prepared for a US foreign policy pivot to attempt to save what is now (correctly) seen as a growing risk of losing their forward-operating base in the Middle East by blaming the intelligence failure of Oct 7 and subsequent bungled response solely on Netanyahu.

Will it work?🧵

https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1725542339475607995

The rapidly mounting tally of Isreali soldier deaths from the failed ground invasion, combined with the international black eye from supporting a horrifying genocide, is further eroding what little soft power the US has left.

https://twitter.com/aryjeay/status/1725550633720197216

In response to the significant losses Israel sustained after it launched a war against Lebanon in 2006, the US and Israel began developing a short-range air defense system called Iron Dome.

And for the first time since then, Iron Dome is at risk of being defeated. 🧵 Iron Dome has 10 missile batteries in operation throughout Israel, with the key component being the Tamir missiles.

The missiles are designed to intercept incoming Qassam rockets. Famously, each missile costs $80,000, while Hamas’s rockets can be produced for <1/100th the cost.

If you’re watching this apocalyptic genocide unfold before your eyes and you feel powerless to stop it, please read. 🧵 Al-Aqsa Flood was a meticulously planned operation by a group with intimate knowledge of their enemy

What that means is the planners did not only anticipate Israel might retaliate with this current level of unrestrained brutality, they were counting on it

So what are its goals?

This'll sound completely absurd to people who subscribe to the "brainwashing" theory of propaganda, but the reason people seem to be seeing through the lies now isn't because of "TikTok" or "Trump".

It's because there is less material benefit to doing so. 🧵

https://twitter.com/martyrmade/status/1716188598381490222

Part of becoming a communist is realizing that people aren't mindless sheep. They are largely rational actors that are constantly adapting and internalizing a framework that they feel best explains and justifies their material reality.

Some are bewildered at the apparent lack of forewarning of the Al-Aqsa flood and feel it’s not possible that Israel was caught unaware, and thus conclude the current offensive must be a false-flag by the IDF.

However there’s a much simpler explanation: Huawei 🧵 Earlier this summer, both Russia and China moved to ban iPhones for workers in government or state-owned firms. The implication was clear: despite heavy marketing to the contrary, iPhone security is compromised.

“But China still has billionaires!”

They do. And Evergrande is a great example of why. 🧵 Billionaires are the inevitable end-result of the tendency toward monopolies in capitalist markets; a flurry of mergers, acquisitions, & bankruptcies eventually produces a winner.

In the west, winners go on to rewrite the regulatory landscape to permanently cement their victory.

How much money do you think Canada’s govt would have left to spend on universal healthcare, schools, and clean water without all the tax revenues derived from land and mineral wealth gained through violent displacement of the original inhabitants? 🧵

🇨🇦 has perfected a type of settler-politics that can be summed up as a solemn land acknowledgment, followed by calling in the RCMP to arrest First Nations land defenders trying to stop construction of a pipeline through their land.

Case in point: BC’s Coastal Gas Link pipeline

In the early 2000s, China’s Xinjiang province suddenly began experiencing deadly waves of terrorist attacks, and hundreds of people were killed.

There's lots of evidence the US was involved in instigating these attacks as an attempt to destabilize China. 🧵 How?

By funding extremist religious groups, particularly groups like ETIM, in China and neighboring Afghanistan whose goal was to turn Xinjiang into a separate fundamentalist Islamic state.

This degree of fundamentalist Islam has no historical precedent in China.

In 2022, Nord Stream was bombed, forcing Germany to import gas from the US.

In 2023, the govt of Niger—France's largest supplier of uranium—was overthrown in a coup.

Are these events connected? 🧵 Since the Russia-NATO war in Ukraine began in early 2022, Germany’s energy mix has dramatically changed.

The first change involved banning the import of Russian coal into the EU in the summer of 2022, ostensibly as a response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.