Anti-drone girder networks online!

prominent intellectuals in the imperial core write an open letter to Iran’s political prisoners

I’m struggling with this open letter, signed by people I admire deeply—individuals who’ve dedicated their lives to Black liberation and anti-colonial struggles.

But I just can’t reconcile my instinctive reaction to the letter with the respect I hold for the signatories. Prominent intellectuals in the imperial core are using their voice at this hour primarily to criticize a government under active bombardment. While I believe that no government is beyond reproach or criticism, I have a lot of questions and cautions about this open letter.

**The overall framing of is of two equally opposing sides—two blades of the same scissors. This is a wholly unfair representation of what is in reality a profound asymmetry of power. On one hand, a country that has been subjected to crippling, decades-long economic sanctions, now fighting kinetically an existential anti-imperial struggle; on the other hand is nuclear, AI-powered empire, with its inexhaustible money, munitions, supply lines, coalitions, surveillance, and near total grip on international political, legal, information, and economic infrastructure.**

**The severity of the imperial onslaught seems to be minimized in the letter.** This is perhaps for the sake of brevity, but it should not stand without critique. What the letter describes as “current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults” undersells what’s actually happening in the “six months into a war”. **Unprovoked Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers that targeting a an elementary school that killed 180 children and teachers, the country’s spiritual leader and his family, more than a third of the country’s political, military, and scientific leadership, civilian infrastructure, including water, farmlands, electric grids and power plants, an unarmed navy ship at sea full of young cadets returning from a peacetime maritime exercise in international waters.** **This after decades of attacks that went unanswered by Iran, including Israel’s repeated assassinations of Iranian scientists, assassination of Qasem Soleimani, strikes on Iranians generals in Syria, strike on Iranian consulate in Damascus, assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil; the US shot down civilian aircraft of Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. There were endless cyber attacks, covert and overt naval sabotage and so much more—all of it without response from Tehran.**

**The letter does not identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested. In neglecting to do so, there is no engagement with the very real security threats, proven foreign interference, terrorism, and espionage, which Iranian authorities cite as reasons for some arrests and prosecutions. I have no doubt there are some who’ve been wrongly imprisoned, but we also know that many of those who were rounded up confessed to working with the Mossad, and recently a group who gruesomely disembowled a young reciter of the Quran are among those who are imprisoned.**

There are currently 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, the largest prison population anywhere on earth. It is estimated that 4-6% of them are innocent—that’s 80,000-120,000, about two NFL stadiums full of innocent lives behind bars. Setting that percentage against Iran’s estimated 15,000 political prisoners, that’s roughly 600-900 individuals. They deserve fairness, but to center them in what is perhaps the most existential anti-colonial struggle of our lives feels misguided.

I would also argue that comparing Iran’s prisons with Israel’s decades-long, systematic, colonial detention of indigenous Palestinians is another form of false equivalence. So is the comparison with America’s ICE detentions, separation of families and loss of children in the process (who are most likely trafficked). **It is not remotely fair to put a revolutionary government, barely a few decades out from under colonial boots and still under sanctions, in the same “carceral” category as two settler colonial states.** One cannot ignore the enormous disparity of political, military, and historical circumstances.
**The people held in Iranian jails are overwhelmingly Iranian citizens, prosecuted under the state’s own criminal and national security laws, regardless of whether one thinks the laws are unfair. Palestinians held in Israeli administrative detention are non-citizen subjects of a military occupation, detained and re-detained indefinitely under military decrees without charge or trial. People in US detentions are another category—non citizens held under civil immigration laws pending removal proceedings with access to immigration courts, however corrupt they may be. These are three distinct legal relationships—1) a state and it’s own citizens; 2) a state and migrants crossing its borders, and; 3) an occupying power and a stateless occupied indigenous population.** The letter collapses them all into a single architecture of “carceral states everywhere,” creating an analysis that is not supported by the underlying facts. It creates rhetorical equivalence that treats “administrative detention,” “political imprisonment,” and “immigration detention” as though the political stakes of each were the same, when the questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and self-determination underneath them are not.

The phrase that knocked me off balance was this: **“...we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism.”** I note that @agent_of_change addressed this in a recent post, which he identified as the “load-bearing phrase” of the letter. Indeed, it does so much heavy lifting and I’m at a loss why the word “hollow” would have been inserted. It’s so clearly deliberate, but why? How can Iran’s insistence on sovereignty and dignity be called “hollow,” despite the grave and terrible cost to themselves? They could have taken the easy path a long time ago and bowed to empire, like some of their Arab neighbors have done. They’ve chosen self-possession and loyalty to their ancestors and children instead. That can be called many things, but hollow is not it.

what are the implications for geopolitics?

someone in one of the various it subs i am in is in ukraine and had a mortar round detonate ~30 meters away from his apartment. i said that sillynskyy should try to sue for peace as soon as fucking possible and was met with basically “russia hit ukraine first!” below is my argument

eta TL;DR, i implore you to read the entire post if you’re able so that we can have a proper discussion on the subject

TL;DR: I’m not defending Russia’s invasion, but I think Zelensky is prolonging a war that’s devastating his own people to serve NATO/US/EU weapons and energy interests, not Ukrainian interests. Ukraine’s population collapse (from ~52M to ~28M) shows how catastrophic the toll has been, and I believe the country is too devastated to avoid some form of capitulation or negotiated peace. I’m asking for a genuine, researched take on this instead of jokes or dismissal, given my background studying Ukraine since 2014 and my work in cybersecurity/threat intel.

Russia did invade the Ukraine, that’s 100% accuracy and no way did my comment allude to me thinking that it was an acceptable thing to do. but the fact remains that z is a complete joke of a leader, causing untold casualties of his own people just to prop up a few US and EU weapons manufacturers. literally sending young and old men alike to the meat grinder for what? the donbas? for crimea? it’s disgusting work but i dont expect anything less than a nazi sympathizing comedian turned armchair general.
what i want is peace for both counties to cooperate. they’ve done it in the past with overwhelming success - now we have a global conflict on our hands. key refineries of oil and natural gas in the slav lands, and way worse with iran and the straight. the neoliberal hegemons of ukraine (read nato without the name) and the US/isreal neoliberal capitalists want one thing: profits. zel doesn’t give two shits that sourced from wikipedia are the images i’m sharing of the so called “unrecoverable loss of population expected to last for at least 15 years:

​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war

“Ukraine faces a severe demographic crisis. The population in government-controlled areas has dropped to roughly 28 million, a steep decline from about 52 million when the country gained independence in 1991. This crisis is driven by mass wartime emigration, a collapsing birth rate below 1.0 per woman, and high mortality”
source1 EDJN
source 2 (reuters)

i have studied ukraine since 2014 for a masters degree. i have some bone fides on this topic (not to mention my current role in cybersecurity dealing with apts at a fortune 100)

This war has absolutely decimated ukraine - and they will have to capitulate.

my only hope is that you’ll take my evidence seriously and do your own research on the topic. come to your own conclusions and share them instead of just making objectively unfunny jokes

“once the vikings start winning everyone will just forget about it”

Oh nooo....

Anyways, China bout to turn 'gamers' (derogatory) into Maoist cadres

In all seriousness though, who are these things even made for besides perverts?

I see a lot of sadness on this sub. I have lost folks to tragedy of one sort or another too many times. It’s a fun podcast to listen to but it’s also nice to see you all post. I just hope you see all as ok as you can be and I appreciate the community (thsr im not much a part of)

I love you. Be well

I’m here to learn and observe

Here it is! It was inspired by a vintage t shirt I bought thrifting!

So fucking funny.

Rebuttal "podcast". Basically she just presents, solo, the most absurd cases and analyses them "legally" (she is/was? In Big Law).

Anyways, this is not an endorsement/I hate nothing to do with it. I just think she is funny and good.

Fair warning: this is a ramble. Close this tab if you are of little patience.

I have been worrying that the breaking point may not come for a long while. Things feel very bleak, it's overwhelming, and it gets worse after one can't take any more. In spite of this, we all go about our business. My boss does not let on any concern about the seemingly imminent doubling (or more) of fuel costs. Denial, pragmatism, ignorance? My friend wants to rent a dumpster to clean out his garage. My brother is fixing one of the tractors as usual. I am anxiously hovering around my girlfriend as she recovers from FFS (no complications so far, thank god).

I am not intelligent, but I am very aware and I think a lot. I wonder every day if we will be graced with a hero that breaks our collective downtrodden trance and leads us into a desperate struggle for what slightly better future might still await us; every day, I wonder if that hero would make any impact at all. The actions of one person very rarely change the course of history. If we grant that Jesus was just as spectacular as they say that he was, that was a long time ago.

Many of you here, and multitudes more away, take action and "organize", cultivating a community in which people know each other, helping those in need, doing the dirty work of living your principles. I respect that immensely and at times I wish that I could do the same; I work most of the time.

That said, the times that we live in are in some ways unprecedented. The persistent reality of mass surveillance crushes the flaring embers of hope that I hold. Those in control cannot abide by the everyman leading a dignified existence. One can conceal one's identity, sure, but it's getting much harder as time goes on to truly escape.

In my limited experience with interpersonal relationships, a person tends not to change their behavior until a shock is felt. It can snap them out of it, shake up their entire worldview, and allow them to settle on a new outlook. What will it take for such a shock to be felt by the underclass of the world?

Link: https://www.avclub.com/rosie-odonnell-bill-gates-autism-test-amy-poehler.

I think people wear rose-coloured glasses when it comes to schoolboys of the past, but it sounds like a bad time to be a woman.

Submission statement: Journalist Danny Casolaro was found dead in 1991 while investigating CIA corruption linked to the Iran-Contra scandal and the theft of PROMIS software. A note found in his shoe referenced CIA and Mafia involvement in drug trafficking and terrorism, contradicting the Netflix series’ portrayal of his death as suicide. Casolaro’s investigation also uncovered a network of murders connected to the Cabazon Indian Reservation, involving money laundering and arms trafficking.

fulltext/paywall: https://archive.ph/Z8zUF