I will say that I suspect the Lebanese armed forces has aligned with Hezboallah due to the threat of Israel.

The recent action of theirs to suspend the disarming plan by the government citing the threat of Israel signals to me that if they felt the Lebanese government is too compromised by Western powers, then the military may see fit to “correct” the situation.

I have trust in the resistance and its capability to survive the brutal conditions of the empire. However survival will be still be paying a heavy toll of blood that, if avoidable, I’d hope for its subversion.

Perhaps I’m simply jaded but I don’t see that going well eitheir, simply for the fact that so many Lebanese will die as Israel, Jolani, and whatever US-aligned faction of the Lebanese armed forces that still exist attempt to devour southern Lebanon.

My experience watching the Syrian diaspora justify the murder of Syrian minorities might color my impression to negatively though. I fear that the Sunni Lebanese population would rather their country were destroyed trying to eradicate Shiites over uniting with there fellow countrymen against invaders.

I can’t really say if that will or won’t happen, as my experience is solely with Shia Lebanese, and I’ve little interaction with Lebanese Sunnis. Perhaps they are less sectarian, but generally that isn’t a hurdle I’ve seen Arab Sunnis pass.

Of course they’re using the fuckers with no connection to the Levant to butcher its people.

I pray and wish for the Lebanese armed forces to realize that Hezboallah is not their enemy and that in order to actually defend the nation it requires the smashing of all US influences.

Abs fucking of course Iran will refuse to throw its weight around and directly threaten Jolani.

I’m so sick of the Arab world’s petty nationalism and the Iranian government’s unwillingness to put itself foot down.

Also where is Russia in the situation? I don’t mean this as a denouncement, but a genuine question this time.

No no, you are correct about dealing with Wahabbimdm, I was just elaborating what that may look like, and the source of Wahabbism.

I’d say Wahabbism is a direct consequence of the US support for the Arab Monarchies. Wahabbism can only be attacked by staunchly opposing Monarchism which exists on the Arabian peninsula. They needed a way to undermine the Arabic republican movement from Nasser, the Baathists, and Ghadaffi, and so salafi Islamism was the method of doing so.

The US also liked to used the concern of minority populations (particularly the kurds) as a cudgel against the Arab Republics. Therefore addressing their concerns while eliminating petty bourgeois and bourgeois elements of those movements would need to be addressed.

Frankly I think a more regional anti-colonial nationalism is better suited to deal with the contradictions of West Asia and North Africa. Although a form of Pan-Arab solidarity should exist, I think Arab nationalism is dead in the water due to its own contradictions.

In the Levant for example, the primary issue is the splintered territory of what should be a contiguous diverse nation. For Egypt, it would be to create stronger links with the African continent it’s based in, and throw out peninsular influence. For the peninsula, it would the overthrow of their monarchies.

Circling back to Syria, their needs to be an understanding that any force connected NATO ally or Peninsular power can’t be trusted to Constructing a stable state. It should also be known that Israel’s attempts to balkanize are not going to provide minority rights for those new ethnostates, as they shall not have any capacity to express sovereignty.

In regards to the western left, I honestly don’t blame them to some degree. When such a large diaspora population lauds the Jolani regime as some kind of savior, how the hell does a white leftist go about opposing it? Syrian diaspora will hate you and the Syrian minorities that are victimized are vilified by those same diaspora as Kafir or Mushrik.

Not to mention that Basher was still brutal, yet becuase of his political incompetence he gained nothing from his hard stance. He took the worst of both worlds, getting his hands dirty by thr start of the war, but never ending it with a final decisive act, leaving his userpers to have a window of opportunity.

So in the western left, who is your ally in thus affair? The small Syrian minority community that lives in the diaspora? That’s not enough if 90% of the other diaspora just call you an Iranian agent or something of the like.

Plus what are you defending? Re-establishing a status quo of a partially liberalized economy which prolonged the war? A socialist republic in a country you’re not from and which socialist forces have little to no power? A return to basthism, which crumbled under its own contradictions? A return of Basher whose fucked off to Russia becuase he couldn’t be asked to lead a country, or any other Asaad, whose family drama essentially plunged the country into instability? A federated state like what the Rojavan puppets call for? A series of balkanized ethnostates to defend against Sunni Arab dominance?

The most the western left can demand for in regards to syria is a complete withdrawal of US forces and interference. But that’s the same demand for the entire region, what can they specifically say on Syria.

The death of Pan-Arabism, leftwing Basthism, secular Arab Republicanism, and Arab socialism, has made it quite difficult for any non minority Syrian leftist to navigate the political landscape.

The thing I do want more of is for the American left to discuss the crimes of the Jolani regime more thoroughly. We need to better discuss just how propped up the Jolani regime is, and how this fundamentalist scum would disintegrate from power if the US withheld its support.

In my view the fall of Syria is just as much the fault of the political impotence of Arabs as it is the Western left’s chauvinism in regards to Bashar. The western left is always behind, and bring too late to the correct conclusion is infuriating, but their material context within the imperial core at least explains it. What is the excuse for the Sunni Arab majority who still continue to push sectarianism against Shiites like myself rather than accept that Jolani and the Syrian revolution was nothing but a US directed sham (the sham of Sha’am you could say)? Alawites are still denounced as Asaadists by them, and they declare Iran and Hezboallah as equal or surpassing the evil of the zionists.

I’m not trying to exonerate or infantilize Western leftists for their incompetent refusal to engage with geopolitical reality. Their obsession with purity fetish and perfect martyrs have doomed the Syrian nation to its current state. However it’s truly understated just the depths of denialism from the Sunni Arab majority who salted the chance of Syrian prosperity growing on a once fertile environment.

“Governing” 4 million people… yeah “governing” is certainly a choice of words to use for tyranically overseeing a besieged city.

The existence of Idlib is proof enough that Bashar and Russia were not nearly as ruthless as the west makes them out to be.

Had it been his father Hafez, I don’t suspect Idlib would have sustained.

I always suggest Blackshirts & Reds to start out with as it does a great job at deconstructing the nature of anticommunist propaganda.

From there I’d suggest Reform and Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg in order to dispell the often reformist slant people trend towards.

Fron there probably State and Revolution by Lenin, as it is just a very good comprehensive text that allows people to see how Marxism should function.

After that then follow any number of ML reading guides, and intersperse it with other texts of interest that they may feel unknowledgeable about and want to improve.

I’d also recommend any book on the specific material conditions of your local community if it exists. For example, Palo Alto: A history of California Capitlism and the World should imo be read by every Californian communist at dome point (I’m still trying to get through it myself).

Honestly it still works in my opinion. Particle of Hitler definitely hits different, but this also gets the point across handily.

I know other Shias use the old the flag, but I can’t express how much I fucking despise seeing the that three star nightmare fabric in every Syrian diaspora community I interact with.

There might be a civil conflict going on since Jolani was recently attempting to deport a French group of terrorists formerly allied with, and other foreign terrorists now feel betrayed.

This shouldn’t be understated, Azerbaijan may as well be the continuation of the armenian genocide in national form, and is spurred on by Türkiya.

She argued that reforms in a bourgeois system are to be understood as stepping stones towards social revolution, tools to help organize the working class into revolutionaries by showing them what’s possible when their organized.

The thesis is the first paragraph of the introduction:

At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal—the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

She however explicitly criticizes Bernstein and other opportunists for assuming that reforms are the be all end all of revolution. Opportunists at the time (and today) argued that a socialist soceity could be built by continuous reforms in the bourgeois political system until eventually you reform out ant vestige of capitalism.

Luxembourg points out why this is impossible and how we must use reforms to further the revolutionary struggle.

I think they might just mean that running local candidates is more useful than for example, the CA governor race.

Don’t get me wrong I’m okay with the exposure strategy, it’s a great way to use American obsession with electoral politics to agitate. But when it comes to actually weilding electoral politics as another tool for struggle, then local elections are pretty good steps to take.

The only other country with an entirely private nuclear industry I the US, and it’s a fucking disaster that can’t get anything built.

I don’t believe that the Lebanese government saw reason. I think they determined that trying to disarm Hezboallah could likely lead to the government being diposed from power.

Otherwise I see no reason for such a comprador state to change course on their routine of throwing the nation’s body atop a sword.

They eitheir feel Hezboallah is powerful enough and has the popular support to replace them as the state apparatus. Or their is a non-negligible portion of the military that would act in response to the effort to disarm.

I really think a USSR situation is going to happen here in the US and west as a whole.

As China continues to out perform the capitlist world and the global south shifts their relations, the west will be isolated and new generations of its population will eventually long for the progress of the socialist world.

That is if you don’t end the world in a fire ball first.

Quick correction, this thorium reactor, which is based off of a recently developed Chinese design, is a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR), not a light water reactor.

Their moderator and coolant is molten salt, which expands and contracts due to heat from fission chain reactions.

It’s more so a trend of Türkiya (especially Erdogan) supporting and funding “pan-turk” groups and propaganda efforts. These pan-turks nearly always act in favor of imperialism and basically promote reactionary historical revisionist ideas. For example, Azerbaijan likes to claim that Iran is occupying Iranian Azerbaijan (a region in the north west of Iran) while constantly cooperating with Israel to undermine Iranian sovereignty. It should he noted that honestly Azerbaijan being a part of Iran has more precedent then some large independent Azeri state (though that’s more because Iranian is argueably a transnational identity).

The central Asian countries also face a deluge of propaganda pushing pan-turkic propaganda, which often align with post soveit nationalism or islamism.

Then there’s militant group’s like ETIM (East Turkistan Islamic Movement) which as you are likely aware are the Uyghur separatist that the PRC cracked down on. They are currently pillaging in Syria with there 1000s of terrorists basically completely funded by Türkiya.

Pan-Tueks spread this bullshit idea of some massive Turkic empire made up of the combined Türkiya, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iranian Azerbaijan, Xinjiang, and probably a portion of Russia.

My hatred for Türkiya grows more everyday.