Losing in Ukraine to a resurgent and transformed Russia, defeated by Yemen, fleeing from Afghanistan, China containment failing, anti-imperialist fronts in East/SE Asia... We will probably remember 2021-2024 as the first big phase of the collapse of American hegemony in Eurasia. Russia today now wields the most effective and sophisticated military force in the world thanks to 2 years of fighting a NATO trained and armed country in conventional peer-level warfare, while only using a fraction of its capacity. No other country in the world compares.

Funny how, at this crucial juncture, CPUSA shares this utterly laughable smear job against Iran, which echoes the same "Shia sectarianism/imperialism" hasbara line that "Israel" loves to use to try to divide the West Asian axis of resistance. Yes, we all know Iran is not a socialist state. Thanks for that shocking reminder. You cannot simply hand-wave away their actual material resistance to imperialism in the region, even if you truly (cynically and incorrectly imo) believe it's all just realpolitik for them.

The Iranian response was strategically brilliant. They understood that however they responded to the embassy attack, the imperialists would accuse them of "aggression" thereby revealing their utter hypocrisy. By taking a "limited" action Iran achieved several things🧵

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1779536879215628642

First, Iran is completely insulated by international law, in contrast to "israel" which is committing genocide and constantly terrorizing its neighbors. How many times have the zionists illegally bombed Syria without a peep from the UN?

So in the last few weeks, RAND has come out admitting Ukraine can't win the war and calls for negotiations, the IMF admitted sanctions on Russia failed, and it was just revealed that the US secretly offered 20% of Ukraine to Russia to end the war (the US of course denies this). There is a lot to unpack with these revelations. First, it's apparent that the imperial planners have, for quite some time, privately understood the futility of the war and public statements regarding Russia's supposed failures and Ukraine's ability to win were lies.

This is Scholz's attempt to appear tough towards China but the subtext to this visit is that it is one of the first high-level visits to China by a major Western economy in years. He brought the leaders of 12 major German companies with him. Let's think about that.

https://twitter.com/Bundeskanzler/status/1588497705537458177

Germany is in a crucial bind right now, with the Ukraine crisis squeezing them on both sides. Outwardly, they have to appear tough on Russia and China, but inwardly they almost certainly know who was really behind the Nordstream attack (UK/US).

I believe COVID-19 was a stealth biological attack on China, designed to be the capstone of a multi-pronged effort to instigate an internal collapse of the country. You need not look further than the terror that China's Zero-COVID policy inspires in Western media. The context of the outbreak is too much "coincidence" for me: US trade war, imperial efforts HK and Xinjiang, etc. I find the geopolitical context enough to assign motive, while means and opportunity definitely existed.

https://twitter.com/bidetmarxman/status/1586083370014216192

Continuing my notes on Xi's report to the 20th CPC National Congress.

Part 3 - "The New Journey of the New Era: Missions and Tasks of the Communist Party of China." The theme is building China into a "great modern socialist country."

Part 2 here:

https://twitter.com/izak_novak/status/1585417100969279489?s=20&t=bb2Wo1wimJeZ9847voReJA

This section's focus is on socialist development, and the *kind* of modernization the CPC is pursuing: modernization of a huge population, common prosperity for all, material and cultural-ethical advancement, harmony between humanity and nature, and peaceful development.

Thread Part 2 of my synopsis & notes on Xi Jinping's report to the 20th CPC National Congress:

"A New Frontier in Adapting Marxism to the Chinese Context and the Needs of the Times"

Read Part 1 first here:

https://twitter.com/izak_novak/status/1585020397832982528?s=20&t=cXtfXu6F5TLC1-bmjy-qBw

(Photo above from CGTN, visitors take selfie at "The Power of Truth" exhibit at National Museum of China, marking the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx's birth)

The second section of Xi Jinping's report deals squarely with the questions and importance of Marxism adapted to China.

As an antidote to the ridiculous coverage of the event in the West, I'm going to go through Xi Jinping's report to the 20th CPC National Congress in detail, with my side-notes and context added.

The highlight for me has been a striking level of constructive self-criticism. The report sets the tone with an opening call to "remain
confident in our history, exhibit greater historical initiative, and write an even more magnificent chapter for socialism with Chinese characteristics in the
new era."

What is really going on with the UFO/UAP phenomena? This is obviously going to be highly speculative, but in order to come close to answering this we need to consider the problems with traditional explanations for what is happening. 🧵

https://twitter.com/izak_novak/status/1560383667909890048

First, a note about debunking. Many sightings can indeed be explained by human error/hoaxes. However, explanations need to be able to account for all of the facts presented. But most UFO debunkings look at one element of the story for a "gotcha" at the expense of all other facts.

👽Credible UFO cases that I believe demonstrate the reality of "something" highly anomalous occurring - a thread: 1. The Ruwa, Zimbabwe UFO Landing (1994)

In this incident, some 62 students at the Ariel School near Ruwa, Zimbabwe claim to have witnessed at least one craft land just outside the school property and non-human beings exit the craft, then communicate telepathically.

The US gov has effectively admitted/declared that the UFO phenomena is a "real" thing, even if they do not offer an explanation of what it is.

But beyond the recent US gov disclosures, this phenomenon has been experienced around the world going back decades (or centuries). Most people are aware of the "leaks" of UFO footage like the one pictured above, as well as the disclosure of a UAP Task Force (UAP = UFO rebranding) within the Office of Naval Intelligence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentif…

Multipolarity is a broad concept that people of different political ideologies will attach their own pre-conceived notions towards when not grounded in histmat. Yes, in history there were periods of imperialistic multipolarity. Today's is much more complex. Multipolarity today is a situation in which the old unipolar order is losing its relative strength to states that are capable of exercising what we might call "true sovereignty."

The US stunt in Taiwan was designed to bait China into an overreaction that would compromise its broader commitment to creating a new, law-based international order.

Instead, China is following what was clearly a long-planned response. Some people were mistakenly focused on whether or not China would (somehow?) "stop" Pelosi from entering Taiwan. This would be a ludicrously dangerous move by China, plunging it into a direct conflict with the US for zero gain. I'm shocked anyone took that possibility seriously.

We're now seeing Western media slowly drip feed the reality that Russia was never going to lose the war militarily or economically, and that the US is using Ukraine as cannon fodder in a live fire war game with RU and to further subjugate its EU vassals. theguardian.com/commentisfree/… Can't wait to see the "Why I Was Wrong About the War in Ukraine" damage control essays from our supposed geopolitical experts on the "left" that eagerly told us all that "Putin went mad" and he "fell into a trap" instead of trying to understand what is really going on.

I know it's not the "cool" position, but I have absolutely zero hope of anything positive happening in the imperial core until well after the world has been irreversibly driven off the climate cliff and then the turn to naked fascism will be certain. Don't get me wrong, America has always been fascist and that's its true nature, it's just barely keeping the worst elements of it below the veil of liberalism and formal civility. When the climate crisis really begins hitting, that veil will be ripped off completely.

China executed a perfect judo throw by using capital's inherent short-sightedness against itself. Western Capital abandoned its manufacturing strongholds at home for short-term profits abroad but is steadily losing that advantage as China "domesticates" the whole value chain. That manufacturing is never coming back to the West. China's two-tiered economy creates stability unheard of elsewhere. While commodity production is relegated to semi-private enterprises, the natural resources, financing and infrastructure system is nationalized.

The vast majority of mass school shootings happen in the suburbs, not in urban centers. This is not a coincidence:

The American suburbs are the physical embodiment of the capitalist American hellscape that celebrates individual isolation and undermines communal bonds.

🧵

https://twitter.com/izak_novak/status/1529555440958328832

The suburbs are the alienation of capitalism embodied: human beings siloed into single-family lots requiring individual cars with no viable public transportation and little practical walkability, and little to no social activity outside shopping malls and theaters.

A really good test of historical literacy for an American:

"What was the historical inspiration for the Nazi concept of Lebensraum and the Nuremberg Laws?"

9/10 won't know that the Nazis were explicitly inspired by US genocide of Native people and its racist legal system. The easy answer is always to say "the Nazis were just Evil" which, yes, they obviously were.

But examining how that evil was enacted leads you back to the only conclusion:

America is the blueprint of fascism.

"Are we the baddies?" meme IRL

Are communist symbols "divisive" and for whom?🧵

We have the truth of history on our side and a nuanced understanding that communism is a force for good, while understanding the movement's real action in the world is inevitably imperfect and fraught with mistakes. I did not come to Marxism-Leninism because someone tried to hand-wave away the "bad" parts of the history of the PRC or USSR or make excuses for them. I came to Marxism-Leninism because comrades honestly and directly addressed the history of the movement, both its good and bad.

The Victory Banner raised by the Red Army over the Reichstag in Berlin on May 1st, 1945, marking the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi Germany.

150th Rifle, Order of Kutuzov 2nd class, Idritsa Division, 79th Rifle Corps, 3rd Shock Army, 1st Belorussian Front. The banner was raised by Alexei Berest, Mikhail Yegorov, and Meliton Kantaria. Berest was born in Ukraine, Yegorov in Russia and Kantaria in Georgia.

Berest was posthumously awarded Hero of Ukraine in 2005.