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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image depicts one of Iran's many anti-ship options, which include missiles, drones, mines, midget submarines, and more. The particular missile shown is the Abu Mahdi cruise missile.


Below is my weekly summary/preamble, spoilered so that you can get down into the comments more easily.

preamble

I don't think I've ever seen a ceasefire that, for weeks, is so obviously about to be broken at any given moment and yet nonetheless continues. So-called Operation Freedom may mark a resumption of hostilities, as the US seems to once again be trying an active role in attempting to take control of the Strait of Hormuz. The initial, ridiculous claim was that the US Navy would itself be escorting ships (i.e. just getting your destroyers sunk for no reason), and as expected, this was just said to try and calm markets. Nonetheless, there is reporting that other military measures may be taken against Iran soon if they continue to keep the Strait closed, so we'll see how that all goes.

US gas prices at the pump have hit close to record high numbers, and generally the average citizen is growing mightily displeased with Trump, even those in previously safe demographics. Unfortunately, this discontent is not immediately geopolitically relevant - as both parties are staffed from top to bottom with pro-war Zionists with only a small group of exceptions, and third parties will necessarily never be allowed to take power, there is no way for US public discontent to manifest itself in a change of policy. What is more likely to cause changes in policy will be grumbling from American capitalists, of which there are many factions. The fossil fuel capitalists seem perfectly content for this situation to continue indefinitely, with record profits. I imagine the financial sector is pretty nervous, but aren't currently demanding Trump cease fire - same for the tech industry which has now been engulfed in AI, as the bubble seems to be close to, but not quite, popping. Smaller businesses and agriculture are perhaps the most likely to be crying uncle, but may have limited representation.

Going back to Western Asia, the situation from last week has remained broadly the same. The Zionist tactic in Southern Lebanon appears to essentially be "If we can't occupy this land, then you won't be able to, either," as they are doing their utmost to physically destroy as many towns and villages on the border as possible. Hezbollah's success at keeping Zionist territorial gains fairly minimal, and the growing onslaught of not only anti-tank guided missiles but also FPV drones causing chaos where the Zionists attempt to hold and advance, have, I believe, partially contributed to Iran not pushing the issue of a comprehensive ceasefire in Lebanon so far as to cause them to feel the need to resume fire on the occupied territories.

The US blockade has truly been a mixed affair. While it's obviously quite leaky and many Iranian ships are getting through, Naked Capitalism and others have pointed out that it's not just Iranian ships that are transporting goods, and that there are ~70 Chinese ships with Iranian oil that are much less willing to risk running the blockade. But, once again, the success of the blockade isn't all that relevant. Iran has experienced periods of a couple years straight without meaningful oil exports and survived, and their extensive land borders make a true siege impossible - goods can and are still pouring into the country, and with Pakistan recently allowing Iranian exports through their border, as well as the Caspian Sea in the north and Iran's railway link to China, Iranian exports can still leave just fine. Another interesting indication is that China's government has ordered Chinese businesses to ignore US sanctions against Iranian oil, so we'll see how that develops. And while the issue of maintaining sufficient public cohesion in the wake of economic suffering is a potential long term problem, we haven't yet seen any meaningful scenes of public discontent inside Iran. Internal unity appears to be staying at record levels in the face of total war.

Even being as careful as possible to check my own biases, it's difficult for me to form any other conclusion other than that Iran is winning, and people like Armchair Warlord have even pointed out that American tactical victories have been pretty minimal so far.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


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[-] seaposting@hexbear.net 71 points 1 month ago

Cost of living crisis: managing the pain, protecting the system

Some choice quotes

…The rising cost of living is not simply the result of global shocks or temporary supply disruptions. It is the outcome of how the economy is organised. Food, housing, transport – these are not just necessities; they are profit centres. Every ringgit a household spends passes through layers of pricing, markups, debt, and rent extraction. By the time a family buys cooking oil, pays rent, or services a car loan, they are not just consuming. They are sustaining a system that continuously takes a share of their income at every step.

…The government’s instinct is predictable. Convene the Cabinet. Consider targeted subsidies. Perhaps tighten price controls on a few essential goods. Offer reassurance. These are politically necessary moves, but they are also deeply limited. They help households cope with high prices without asking why those prices are persistently high in the first place.

…Cash aid, in effect, becomes a transfer from the state to workers, back to corporations via consumption.

Which is why China’s push for infrastructure is a productive investment in the welfare of the country’s people. That said, in capitalist societies, infrastructure yet becomes another form of “rentierism” and adds an additional burden alongside the material costs of construction and maintenance. This highly relevant open-access journal article sums it best in their abstract:

abstract

It suggests that the expanding profile of various state-controlled entities in local capital markets constitutes a new form of state financial activism responsive to (upper) middle-class consumption preferences such as modern infrastructure, urban housing and low-risk investments. This activism highlights state agency and complicates the propositions of the emergent literature on state capitalism and financial de-risking that focuses on increasingly close alignment of the interests of states and international portfolio investors. Accordingly, the authors caution against unilinear conceptions of the state in which activism is primarily geared towards accommodating the preferences of international investors. The article posits that states are actively trying to establish new market logics for the benefit of their domestic middle classes via the development of domestic capital markets, and that the emergent role of middle-income country (upper) middle classes as financial consumers reconfigures processes of state-managed financialization.

In parts of the world and in Malaysia, (financial) Capitalism has fully developed and has long shown it’s progressive limits. It is now time for scientific Socialism.

the full news article

When Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said the cost of living must be “managed” and its impact “curbed”, he acknowledged a reality Malaysians already live with daily: prices are rising, and livelihoods are tightening.

But the language matters. To manage is not to solve. To curb the impact is not to confront the cause. This is the quiet politics of our time, where symptoms are treated but the structure producing them remains untouched.

The usual story that Malaysia’s cost of living crisis is about “inflation” or “global pressures” is too convenient. Prices are not rising in a vacuum.

What Malaysians are experiencing is a class problem: the cost of reproducing everyday life (food, housing, transport) has risen faster than wages.

The rising cost of living is not simply the result of global shocks or temporary supply disruptions. It is the outcome of how the economy is organised. Food, housing, transport – these are not just necessities; they are profit centres. Every ringgit a household spends passes through layers of pricing, markups, debt, and rent extraction. By the time a family buys cooking oil, pays rent, or services a car loan, they are not just consuming. They are sustaining a system that continuously takes a share of their income at every step.

So, when traders say gradual price increases are affecting them, they are not wrong. But they are also part of the chain. Rising costs cascade downwards: from producers to wholesalers, from wholesalers to retailers, and finally to consumers. At each stage, margins are defended. The burden accumulates at the bottom.

The government’s instinct is predictable. Convene the Cabinet. Consider targeted subsidies. Perhaps tighten price controls on a few essential goods. Offer reassurance. These are politically necessary moves, but they are also deeply limited. They help households cope with high prices without asking why those prices are persistently high in the first place.

The diagnosis for Malaysia’s cost of living crisis is as follows:

  • Wage suppression as a development model: Malaysia’s growth since the 1980s has depended on cheap labour (including migrant workers), weak unions and state discipline of labour. The result is expected: productivity rises but wages stagnate. Workers produce more value but receive a smaller share.
  • Commodification of necessities: Basic needs are organised for profit: housing becomes a speculative asset, food is controlled by supply chains and middlemen, and transport is car-dependent and profit-driven. This means capital extracts rent from survival itself.
  • Oligopoly and politically connected capital: Key sectors are dominated by large conglomerates, GLCs, and politically linked firms. This is not a “free market” but a managed capitalism where profits are protected.

Under Anwar, the policy response has focused on cash transfers, targeted subsidies, and mild wage adjustments. These do not solve the problem. They merely subsidise capital by helping workers afford high prices without changing why prices are high.

Cash aid, in effect, becomes a transfer from the state to workers, back to corporations via consumption.

Just don’t touch the underlying system!

Cash transfers and subsidies, for instance, provide immediate relief. But they also allow the underlying system to continue functioning as before. Money flows from the state to households, and then quickly back into the same channels of rent, interest, and profit. Relief becomes a stabiliser, not a solution.

Take housing. It absorbs the largest share of income for most households, yet prices are driven less by construction costs than by land speculation, financing structures, and market positioning.

Or transport: a car is no longer just a purchase, but a long-term financial commitment shaped by loans, fuel costs, and infrastructure that leaves few alternatives.

Even food, the most basic necessity, is embedded in supply chains where value is added and extracted at every stage. In this context, to “manage the impact” is to accept that the structure remains intact.

Essential goods, housing and mobility

A more honest approach would begin by asking harder questions.

Why are essential goods treated as avenues for profit maximisation? Why does housing function as an investment vehicle before it serves as shelter? Why must mobility depend on private ownership that locks households into years of repayment?

Food, utilities, basic services are social needs

Addressing the cost of living requires more than cushioning its effects. It requires reducing the extent to which everyday life is exposed to profit extraction.

That means expanding genuinely affordable public housing, not just facilitating home ownership at high prices. It means building reliable, accessible public transport so that owning a car is a choice, not a necessity. It means ensuring that essential goods, such as food, utilities, basic services, are priced with social needs in mind, not just commercial returns.

Entrenched interests, political constraints

None of this is easy. Each step runs into entrenched interests, institutional habits, and political constraints. But without confronting these realities, the cycle will repeat: prices rise, relief is offered, pressure builds again.

The danger is not that the government is unaware. It is that awareness stops at management. Because in the end, a society cannot subsidise its way out of a system that makes living expensive. It can only change the system, or continue paying for it.

this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
133 points (100.0% liked)

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