Upstream

NEXT WEEK: cuba pt. 3: che guevara and the building of socialism w/ @HelenYaffe

It’s not lost on me that the attack on South Pars occurred on the eve of the anniversary of Iran’s oil nationalization—a significant assertion of sovereignty over natural resources. That assertion was met first with a CIA-backed coup against the democratically elected government that claimed that right; it then evolved into decades of US-led sanctions designed to cripple the ability to develop those resources; and it has now culminated in the US bombing the very infrastructure built despite those efforts to halt it. Equally important is that South Pars is home to Iran’s largest anti-imperialist labor union, defending workers’ rights while protecting them from imperialist appropriation. This attack, therefore, is also a direct assault on the union and its significant struggle for workers rights.

@parandeye_zard @snackvampire only thing liberal media knows how to do is speculate about individual intentions and motivations, ne'er a material analysis in sight

the 'they killed Larijani so the US has no one left to negotiate with!' line is honestly pretty silly — whether or not Iran will be willing to negotiate has more to do with conditions on the ground than individual personalities.

@Ahmed_hassan_za reminds me of how mad biden was at netanyahu while continuing to shovel money into his war chest

Trump says he was unaware that Israel would attack the Pars oil field and that Israel "will not launch any further attacks related to the Pars field."

NEW [UNLOCKED] PATREON EP we spoke with @EyesOnSouth1 of @VocalPolitics1 about the ongoing assault on lebanon by the zionist army and the resistance to occupation and ethnic cleansing in lebanon and the region more broadly

What Israel is doing to Southern Lebanon is *clearly* aimed at ethnic cleansing and colonization, using the same tactics as in the Gaza genocide. Nearly 1 million people forcibly displaced. We have to reject this evil with all our might, and support those who are resisting it.

And if you want to better understand the historical context for the current embargo and efforts at regime change - the latest wave of US attacks on Cuban sovereign development - then you would do a lot worse than listen to Manolo de los Santos' 2 part series on @UpstreamPodcast

Brilliant conversation with @EyesOnSouth1 on @UpstreamPodcast about Hezbollah, the Axis of Resistance, and the US-Israeli war against Lebanon and the region:

Major Breaking News: Iran's Security Chief Larijani just issued the following statement and warning: “I've heard that the remaining members of Epstein's network have devised a conspiracy to create an incident similar to 9/11 and blame Iran for it. Iran fundamentally opposes such terrorist schemes and has no war with the American people. We are defending our country against an aggression launched by the US and Israel. Iran stands tall in doing so in order to teach the aggressors a lesson.”

NEXT WEEK'S PATREON lebanon pt. 1: resisting occupation w/ @EyesOnSouth1

This is smart but they need to make inflatable fake hospitals and schools to really throw off the US and Israel

Discussion works through Iran's struggle for sovereignty at multiple scales, and even took a deep dive into some of the theoretical implications of the war for how we understand relations between capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism, and, on the flip side, anti-imperialism.

@Forever_noir_ @khrachvik they fundamentally misunderstand the role of the state under capitalism—the state intervening on behalf of the capitalist class is the ROLE of the state under capitalism

@khrachvik I really despise “socialism for the rich” that is a meaningless term. Socialism for the “rich” is capitalism. Socialism for the ownership class is capitalism. Idu why we’re trying to get pretty with words. Capitalism didn’t die, it’s at its peak…right now.

I’m a Communist and he’s correct. Capitalism died in the 20th century. The question is now whether we’ll have socialism for the rich or socialism for the people.

NEW EP @bikrumsinghgill joins us to discuss the regional and global implications of Iran's fight for sovereignty against the desperate and despicable grip of the epstein empire

This is a really powerful, important podcast episode with Prof David McNally -- I strongly recommend it. It nicely debunks the myth that plantation slavery in the Atlantic was some kind of “pre-capitalist” mode of production – a favourite claim of those who try to sanitize capitalism of some of its most heinous crimes. The claim shouldn’t need debunking – world-system analysts have long established that capitalism is a 500-year-old system that relied very heavily on bonded labour for centuries – but it absolutely bears repeating. Plantation slavery was very clearly capitalist: it was commodity production for the world market (not for the consumption of the owner, as in pre-capitalist forms of slavery), geared toward profit maximization, capital accumulation, competition, and reinvestment in the expansion and intensification of production. There are some Marxists who claim that Atlantic slavery doesn’t fit Marx’s definition of capitalism, because enslaved people were not paid wages and therefore could not produce surplus value. McNally shows this is an incorrect reading of Marx, and an incorrect view of how plantation production worked. It’s also crucial to understand that enslaved people were at the forefront of resistance against capitalist exploitation. The British ruling class likes to claim that Britain “abolished slavery”, as though this was some benevolent gift handed down from above. Far from it. It was slave rebellions and revolutions that abolished slavery! Specifically, the Haitian revolution in 1791, Bussa’s rebellion in Barbados in 1816, followed by the Baptist rebellion in Jamaica in 1830- some of the earliest general strikes in working-class history! This eventually forced Britain to understand they would not be able to sustain the system. And then there was the general strike during the US Civil War, described by Du Bois, when up to 500,000 enslaved people refused to work and fled to union lines, totally crippling the plantation economy. 200,000 of them took up arms on the union side and fought the slavers, contributing substantially to the defeat of the fascist confederacy. Heroes one and all. Teaser to the episode here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tea…. The full episode is available via Patreon subscription to @UpstreamPodcast (worth it!).

This was a really solid episode. Give it a listen!

The US bombing of schoolchildren in Iran is the biggest single US massacre of civilians since My Lai. The Israeli bombing of Tehran’s oil storage constitutes the biggest single act of chemical warfare against a civilian population in history. Grotesque new depths of barbarism.