By endangering the petrodollar, Ukraine conflict brings multipolar world & U.S. revolution far closer

The U.S. empire’s social stability can no longer rely on buying off the workers within its own borders. When Che Guevara observed that international worker solidarity gets undermined by the proletarians in the core imperialist countries receiving special benefits compared to the proletarians in the exploited countries, he was right. But with the contraction of capital, and the consequential introduction of neoliberalism to keep capital afloat, this has changed. Every year, the masses within the United States face conditions that are more like the ones in the Global South. The global wealth gap is still the primary wealth gap in a macro sense, but this widening of the U.S. empire’s internal inequality represents a contradiction which can bring about the empire’s defeat from within. And therefore a major step towards eliminating the global gap.

By endangering the petrodollar, Ukraine conflict brings multipolar world & U.S. revolution far closer

Speaker at DSA panel: “War creates the possibility for a push of socialists ideas” + “Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism

At a recent panel event hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) chapter for the state of Maine, Vladyslav Starodubstev, a leader of the Ukrainian pseudo-left Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), put forward the chilling perspective that “the war creates the possibility for a push of socialist ideas in Ukraine.” The panelists and DSA moderators stated their agreement with the speaker and demanded the US government deploy more tanks, missiles, and howitzers to wage war against Russia, regardless of the risk of nuclear holocaust.

Speaker at DSA panel: “War creates the possibility for a push of socialists ideas”

Related:

“Democratic Socialism” in the Service of U.S. Imperialism:

In “The Real Heritage of Harrington’s DSA,” we show where the reformist “democratic socialism” of 2018 came from, and what it actually stands for. Today’s Democratic Socialists of America hails the “tradition” of Michael Harrington and Norman Thomas, long-time leaders of the Socialist Party (SP) that gave rise to what is now the DSA. In that article (see p. x), we explain that this tradition has often, and accurately, been described as “State Department socialism.” Those unfamiliar with the left may think the term is a polemical excess or empty epithet. Not at all. In fact, intimate ties to the Department of State are only the beginning of the intertwining of the official social democrats with the agencies of U.S. imperialism. Activists who want to devote themselves to genuine socialism need to know what’s what. So here’s the story

American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism

American Shooter: The Intersection of Alienation and Desperation Under Capitalism

Universal Healthcare and Easy Access Mental Health Services

59% of gun deaths are suicides. Getting healthcare in the United States is nigh impossible for many people whether it be the cost of services, lack of insurance, or the stigmatization that comes from seeking medically necessary mental health services. We need to make concerted efforts to ensure that anyone who needs healthcare can walk into a facility and get the help they need with no questions asked nor strings attached. Whether it is nationalizing healthcare or instituting dual power healthcare structures we need to get this done and we need to do it now. Getting people the healthcare they need drastically reduces rates of mental illness while also reducing the rates of economically motivated crime which is sometimes violent in nature.

In May 2002, The Secret Service published a report that examined school shootings. Among much else, they found that the majority of school shooters had difficulty coping with loss and personal failures, attempted suicide, felt persecuted, and exhibited alarming behaviors toward those around them. All of these are signs to immediately provide accessible healthcare, particularly mental healthcare. We need to be proactive about getting people the help they need. Simply scapegoating mental health issues as the conservative gun lobby does is about as helpful as thoughts and prayers. We need to directly address mental healthcare and build the systems that prevent violence.

Stable Food and Housing

Violence is quite often a symptom of economic distress. Ensuring the stable material conditions of a community not only reduces the incentive to commit economically motivated violent crime, but it also reduces interpersonal violent crime. We need to build communities that have affordable housing and accessible food. The fastest and easiest way to work towards both is to ban R1 zoning because this form of zoning creates food deserts, makes communities car dependent, and skyrockets the cost of housing. This is not to say that we should not be working on dual power structures in housing. We also need free lunch and breakfast programs run by local radicals and community-powered housing programs.

Source: Socialist Rifle Association

Repost: Pro-Gun Activists Lie About Chinese Gun Ownership

Pro-Gun Activists Lie About Chinese Gun Ownership (archived)

In the efforts of pro gun activists to defend the 2nd Amendment from those who would take weapons out of the hands of the people, they get over zealous and fabricate certain facts to defend their position. One of those so-called facts is the often repeated claim, “commies are coming to take our guns away”. This is one of, if not, the most repeated statement. The automatic linking to gun control to communism. Therefore anyone who supports gun control with a rational (albeit incorrect) arguments is portrayed as being a communist. This kind of automatic association between those who support gun control and communism is just dishonest, and exposes the ignorance of the pro gun movement.

There is literally no law during the revolutionary period that prohibited anyone form having any guns. There is absolutely no source for claiming that the Party took people’s guns away. The claim that Mao or communism took guns away from people is completely made up. JEWS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF FIREARMS OWNERSHIP are liars, Huan Zhu is a liar. There is no trace of gun control in the revolutionary period, there is however very strict control under capitalism. This shows the pathetic lengths these defenders of gun control sink to. They have to lie about others in order to defend gun ownership. You don’t have to lie, there are perfectly good reasons for defending guns. Almost all of which I personally support.

So what are the facts surrounding Revolutionary China and gun ownership? Well this is what we do know for a fact. The Communist Party after the Long March resettled in the countryside where they began work with the peasants arming them against the government. Mao and the Communist Party armed the people against the country. As the Japanese were attacking China, the Nationalist (and I stress capitalist) Party was only interested in suppressing the peasants, not the Japanese invaders. Mao organized the defence against the invading foreign army while the capitalists were only interested in killing the people of the nation. Eventually the Nationalist party leader Chang Kai-shek realized the Japanese were destroying the country. The communists gave people guns in order to defend themselves and attack those doing harm to them.

In the revolutionary era the people were armed, people carried their guns into work. Some carried them out into the fields as they did agricultural work. Communist China didn’t ban people from having guns they were the ones that gave it out, capitalist China did ban them. Oh, and unlike certain YouTube video making Pastors and pro gun websites, I have sources in the description.

Originally posted 12-02-2020

Related:

YouTube Video by Jason Unruhe

Re-post of The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise)

My personal notes:

Republicans will blame gun violence on mental health, psychiatric medications, or violent video games, yet they aren’t willing to support solutions, such as affordable healthcare, affordable prescriptions, or defund the military industrial complex! As for Democrats, all they will offer is banning guns!

Speaking of mental health, and psychiatric medications, Peace Labor May made some good points in her most recent YouTube video (you may have to turn your volume up).

Re-post of The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights (Reprise)

In light of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’m re-posting a link to my left argument for gun rights from 2017. (One among many. See links at end of article)

Some points covered in the article:

The class concept of the state. It’s not a neutral arbiter to be trusted with a monopoly of armed power. “The concentration of wealth and the concentration of armed power in the hands of a few, are both bad ideas—and the one has everything to do with the other.”

The net effect of eliminating the right of citizens to possess firearms will be to increase the power of the armed capitalist state. Whatever strict gun-control regime is instituted, ruling-class families and institutions will still have all the guns they want.

But what about horrible mass shootings? Recognize that *gun homicides have declined even as gun ownership has increased,*. that mass shootings are a small portion of gun deaths in the US & a lousy index of the social problem of gun violence. But they do grab one’s attention.

For the full argument, go to the article:

The Rifle on the Wall: A Left Argument for Gun Rights
(Reprise)

Related (including some random archived links that I noticed were behind paywalls and/or 404):

A Marxist-Leninist response to Gun Control

Read More »

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’VE BEEN SANCTIONED!” – The New Russian Supermarket Gameshow!

Get ready to CRINGE! 😀 “A lot of truth is said in jest” – Here’s a lighthearted, and hopefully entertaining tour of a Russian Supermarket, showing the level of hardship shoppers are facing 3 months after the West imposed a record level of sanctions against the Russian people and the economy.

More updates from inside Russia as events unfold.

iEarlGrey on YouTube

Also available on Odysee

Rumble

As a podcast

Telegram

YouTube: “I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’VE BEEN SANCTIONED!” – The New Russian Supermarket Gameshow!

Sources:

Read More »

The New New Right Was Forged in Greed and White Backlash

The New New Right Was Forged in Greed and White Backlash

The matter of money should not be understated. Radical left movements, unlike the New Right, are not popular among billionaire funders; that’s what happens when you challenge the actual “regime” of capital. To highlight the path not chosen by the New Right, then, is to show their active desire not for liberation but for domination — which is nothing new on the right at all.

Related:

Two Religious Conservatives and a Marxist Walk Into a Journal

Neoreactionaries

The Different Ways That US And Chinese Governments Use Their Power

Russia’s war on Ukraine both reflects and deepens a global split that should remind us of Karl Marx’s famous remark: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” The United Kingdom already lost its particular social order—its empire—while the United States is now losing its.

The Different Ways That US And Chinese Governments Use Their Power