Would this effectively make aircraft carriers a non issue for the PLAN? It seems like an incredible feat of engineering to design something like that in and of itself, let alone to make it accurate enough to hit a moving ship in the sea.
These new weapons of war are truly terrifying - especially after seeing the videos of those Iranian hypersonics. I can’t imagine seeing those IRL along with the other missile and drone swarms from the perspective of the opposition…
That’s “HSR” - emphasis on air quotes since the best lines are a fraction of the speed and length of the far superior CRH lines. It honestly feels silly to even attempt a comparison. As someone whose lost people, nearly died myself to an impact with a drunk driver, and who has spent countless hours in stand still traffic between geographically close locations - this is the one material condition I think of the most. People truly don’t understand the scale and how much human life and potential is wasted sitting in traffic and spending paychecks on unnecessary car payments, maintenances, insurance payments, roads/parking lots etc. incredibly horrifying and inefficient system especially when you realize how flat and ripe so much of the US is for HSR.
Man every new tweet feels like an episode of [insert adult cartoon comedy here], still baffles me even after all this time.
In front of the golden arches of mcdonalds lol, what a shot!
Side note: you know of any credible estimates for the real spend? That would be great for agitational content
I don’t know how we can escape this downward cycle.
There’s this funny thing called “revolution”
4 weeks left in 2025… Let’s see if any of these get us to 2035.
Yeah same experience where I’m at and to such an extent that our work has raised the general baseline for a handful of adjacent local orgs and coalition partners. Previously soft non-profits have become more serious and agitational, expanded their scope, and adopted parts of our tactics. It’s pretty cool to see how quickly the Party’s gone from not even existing in my area, to becoming a seriously influential material force.
I think the holes in Mamdani’s socialism and potential are discussed enough here, and the broader popular perception is of course not a marxist analysis of his campaign. So I won’t rehash either, but I do hope to make clear what I think is often missing in online discourse, which is the potential it has for comrades organizing in the US.
Conditions are different from AOC’s start, and the political ramifications are less about the position and more about popular perceptions. Back then the zeitgeist was “Trump Bad”, liberal Dems enjoyed a big swing off of Trumps first term. But it was a swing and a miss: since then dems had a senile Biden, a flop Kamala, a genocide, nothing to show and fumbled things back to Trump and the right-wing, then said “time to fight” but steadily handing them project 2025 objectives. Add to that many Trump voters are disillusioned seeing jobs and the economy sink, the few safety nets many rely on - or may soon need - getting scrapped for cash by billionaires. I know plenty Trump voters who have completely flipped and are beginning to sound like stronger socialists in rhetoric than Mamdani’s fans without realizing it.
People who have voted dem their whole lives are disillusioned, people who voted with Trump are disillusioned, both sides have incredibly low approval and a spotlight has been cast on a socialist who beat establishment Dems and Republicans united against him.
In effect Mamdani caught the public eye at a critical moment and expanded the perception of socialism and socialist candidates along with their potential to be viable and win. Now people will go looking for this in their localities as @jack mentioned his firsthand experience.
Instead of that energy being directed toward similarly fraught reformism (as an ends) - they can instead be shown the power and potential of principled revolutionary organization and strategy, and we can potentially gain many new cadre. Of course this window of opportunity is clearly attached to Mamdani, and can fall if he falls and it’s our duty to use this opportunity while it’s available to the best of our ability. The tactics look different as well if you’re in NYC, a progressive metro area, or a rural town. But nonetheless the popularity of the situation and discussion provide an opportunity for comrades across the country.
This may be a viable tactic with slight alterations… first things first: we’ll need to find our best Bill Clinton dopple-ganger.
With their gaze on Venezuela I’m not so sure they’ll let a communist waltz into power in Chile so easily. There’s probably plots being drawn up as we’re typing.
Fwiw from Al Jazeera:
Activa Research, a polling firm, found that 24.9 percent of respondents planned to back Jara, compared to 16.9 percent for her next closest rival, far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast.
Hopefully Trump’s war-mongering will kill Kast’s chances and strengthen the hopes for an anti-imperial bloc in South America.
That’s insane. I bet they were blown away too. Even just reading wenhua zongheng I was stunned by the difference between they’re thinking and planning vs US think tank slop which reads like cheap PR. https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng/
We’re just in: Trump is recognizing Republic of NY as the valid NY govt! Pelosi’s pledging more tanks to the cuomintang! PRNY jets are now flying dangerously over sovereign New Jersey airspace at JFK! Very serious implications for global fish n chip production if Staten Island is handed to the PRNY…
I may be wrong but feel like at some point AES was trying to bring Nigeria into the fold as well or maybe it was Niger?
What do you think the chances are of these vassals supporting US in kinetic warfare? Seems like Milei is a given, but would Paraguay and Bolivia really have the political support for it?
Also do you feel the “narco-terrorism” angle works better against Brazil, among other countries in the region? My Brazilian friend said the criminal factions there are more like the cartels in Mexico. He spoke pretty intensely about them.
Know a guy who experienced this on deployment. They also falsified docs to extend the deployment of a new father with an infant waiting at home… Yes you read that correctly, someone died by suicide, unit was traumatized, and leaderships response was to falsify documents to keep this father from going home to his kids first birthday. Absolutely insane. Luckily the guy made a big stink and got to go home, still a messed up story though.
Yeah for any comrades in the US reading this, now is the time to be full swing organizing all the anti-genocide / anti war protestors, immigration defense, healthcare/education workers, medicare recipients, no kings attendees, unions, churches, civil groups, community leaders, etc in preparation for this scenario. There’s real momentum now for a general strike, Chicago’s mayor is taking interviews left and right to push one, and Dems are keen to co-opt but most importantly - seeing the same rapid decline in support and confidence that the Republicans are.
The opportunity arising can’t be understated: millions may go hungry and desperate, the economic and social impacts will spread rapidly and be widely apparent. Things will heat up rapidly with already historically low confidence in the system and a steady flow of stark contradictions like MILEI’s $40b, Israel’s Genocide, a war drive in South America, etc. When the heat rises, it’ll come down to how well comrades have prepared to give that energy unity and direction toward an alternative that folks see - not only as an idea in someone’s head - but the only just / viable path forward already being paved.
Yeah i wish it was brought to light more often in more damning ways by more sectors of the left to increase the general publics distrust of mainstream media and journalism. It’s amazing how blind trust in these groups is still as common as it is after all that’s taken place with the Gaza genocide.