You mean MAGA fascism?

The USSR dissolved under the illusion that they were going to liberalize their highly industrialized economy and open up to the entire Western market.

The richest state in America, California, derives half of its tax revenues from capital gains e.g. stocks and bonds and various financial assets. If this is the economic structure of the richest state (I don’t even have to talk about New York property market), then every other state in the rest of the country is going to endure an even worse fate. Good luck seceding and immediately losing the privilege of having the strongest purchasing power in the world.

Any serious attempt at doing so will immediately find out this is impossible at the planning stage, because they first have to figure out how to run their economy independently from the rest of the country. Any talks about secession are mere rhetoric and can never happen in America as long as the dollar is king.

No, it’s never going to happen.

America has already exported its industries to the Global South. This is the price it has to pay for the ability to get “free ride” from all over the world simply through printing money. As such, all US states are bound together by the power of its currency - the loss of which will lead to severe plunge in purchasing power and living standards.

Not a single state in America - not even the richest state - can afford to secede without losing a large part of material privileges they’ve been able to enjoy all these years through exploiting labor and extracting surplus from the Global South.

Unless they’re willing to live like Brazil or Italy, but Americans would rather wage a war with the rest of the world than to willingly degrade their own material conditions like that.

I managed to avoid making any comments about the BRICS+ new member states last year. Letting Saudi Arabia join the BRICS is a joke. It’s the last thing you want if you’re serious about de-dollarization.

I’ll still keep an eye on the fanfare this year but don’t expect anything groundbreaking to come out of it.

This Putin?

From April 11, 2024

"Unfortunately, we have seen a series of strikes on our energy facilities recently and were forced to respond. I want to emphasize that, for humanitarian reasons, we did not carry out any strikes in the winter; we did not want to leave social institutions, hospitals, and so on without power supply. But after a series of strikes on our energy facilities, we are forced to respond," Putin said.

https://www.vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2024/04/11/1031347-rossiya-vinuzhdena-otvechat

He’s too soft and that has emboldened both Ukraine and the US over time.

It reminds me of the recent Speak No Evil horror films (both the Danish original and the American remake) in the same way that the US will keep pushing your boundaries and see how much you’d let them get away with it. Maybe there are some hard truths in those movies.

Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world (5000+ sanctions) until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 (now at 19000+ sanctions and counting).

The West sanctions any country, corporation, entity or persons who trade with Iran that does not adhere to their specific list of what they allow and what they don’t (energy, commerce, shipping, weapons, etc.).

The US and the EU represent an economic bloc with a population of 600 million high income consumers (relative to the rest of the world) and with very desirable currencies. If you want to earn those sweet money from them, you cannot do business with Iran. Most countries would steer clear of trading with Iran precisely because of that - financial imperialism. They need to earn dollars and euros by selling stuff to Western countries to keep their own economies afloat.

If you think about it, the US believes that they live in a Dark Forest universe. They truly believe that they have to annihilate their opponents before these emerging states/powers surpass their own technologically and escape their sphere of influence.

I am seriously starting to believe that this is the reason Obama likes the Three Body Problem series so much, while taking the wrong lessons from the books, which was a cautionary tale about how the most “rational” belief of destroying your opponents before they have the capacity to do it against you may let you overpower them in the short run, but ultimately lead to the mutually assured destruction of our world. It emphasized that a bit of irrationality, naivety and delusional about our opponents are sometimes needed to put a stop into this chain of madness.

We’ve been very lucky that Putin, who is in control of thousands of nukes enough to blow up the world several times, does not see the world in the same Dark Forest state as the US does. Putin is naive and even delusional about a rapprochement with an imperialist West for years, and yet it was exactly this attitude that kept the peace for as long as we have (even with the war in Ukraine, there is a lot of restraint from escalating further).

Iran can build their own MRI machines (originally part of collaboration with Siemens) and high quality turbine engines. Their industries are going to be fine.

However, the sanctions still pose a significant toll on the economy because the lack of foreign trade still means the inability to import certain technologies and essential commodities from abroad.

The writers strike was never going to work when they failed (did not even bother) to expand it to an industry-wide strike. They got screwed and ended up in a worse position than they started.

This is why labor activism without Marxist theory is fighting a steep uphill battle. Without understanding how capitalism works, there is no strategy. It’s like trying to treat a disease without medical knowledge - it’s all based on luck and no better than flipping a coin.

The 2007-2008 writers strike worked because the interest rate was starting to come down amidst a looming recession by early 2008. The 2023 writers strike happened while the rich people were still getting free interest income from the government despite the industry downturn (the Fed rate hike allowed the bourgeoisie to shelter the storm while indebted working class gets screwed with ever higher penalty rate from high interest) - it was never going to work unless they managed to expand it to the rest of the Hollywood adjacent industries.

Russia’s finally unleashing their secret weapon. Ukraine is doomed.

There is no returning to status quo. The Zionists are fighting for the survival of their ethnosupremacist ideology. The American imperialists are fighting for holding on to the control of the Near/Middle East before their geopolitical influence is overshadowed China-Russia-Iran in the region. The strategic goals of Israel and the US are now fully in sync with one another. The war in Ukraine changed everything - it accelerated the process and forced both of them to respond to the new geopolitical reality.

With Iran on the verge of giving up its nuclear non-proliferation policy, this means it’s now or never. Either you reshape the Near/Middle East regional politics to align with your interests through violent force, or you watch it slip away from your hands forever. And when it seems the latter is going to be the case, scorch the entire region if you cannot get it, nobody else should.