Spain has done more than Turkey tbh

Uh oh! You’ve been downgraded to semi-periphery, you are now an export market and obligated to die for us when we tell you to.

No. There’s the global hegemon, and then there are the lesser regional powers that can’t project force very far beyond their borders. Russia has been fighting for a decade over a relatively small piece of land that’s literally directly on its border, it just isn’t strong enough to even be an empire. There is only one empire under hegemony

That will certainly change in a multipolar world, but that means we can pit them against each other. Without a hegemon that can rally the entire imperial core against every revolutionary project, this new world will be one where revolutionaries can use imperialist rivalries to create space for themselves. Multipolarity is the precondition for revolution.

And in this new world, we’ll need to reevaluate the contradictions. Russia is my enemy’s enemy at this historical moment but in the new world I expect that to change. They are neoliberal capitalists, after all.

My comment implies there is a primary contradiction, and the choice is between US hegemony and multipolarity.

There is an empire, and only once it is destroyed can we even begin dealing with any of the lesser contradictions.

It’s impossible to fight the entire world all at once. I say we choose the lesser evil.

It’s how you vote anyway, right? Why not just apply that on a larger scale?

Israel and USA can go and fuck themselves with a bomb shaped dildo for all I care.

Okay, so we can agree that Israel and the US are evil.

So. What does it say about Ukraine that they are on the same side?

Sanctions are siege warfare.

Consider the fact that Iranians living in other countries might have different opinions than people who actually live in Iran and have to live with the consequences.

Hey, if you didn’t want Iran to have a nuke, maybe you shouldn’t have assassinated the leader who was opposed to Iran having a nuke?

Yeah, that’s basically the purpose of the EU.

Spain actually might break, likely a side effect of the US’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against Spanish-speakers.

Autonomous kill bots that hallucinate children carrying guns.

It’s only 24 miles wide at its narrowest point. You’re right that they couldn’t clog it completely, but making the waters un-navigable for large oil tankers seems doable. Especially since the crews wouldn’t just have to watch out for the sunken ships, but also large and dangerous chunks of floating debris and hazards they can’t see under the water.

The imagery conjured by “death valley” to me is a boat graveyard - endless wrecks from shore to shore.

One needle can’t. Wanna find out how many flaming wrecks Iran can fill the Strait with?

Never mind the fact that workers aren’t going to sail to their deaths into “death valley”. Even with hazard pay it’s going to be hard to actually find crews for every vessel, and the costs of insurance would be enormous.

Iran saving the world from endless US aggression by keeping them occupied.

Yeah, if the Strait becomes “death valley” then that quickly transforms into economic collapse anyway.

A bunch of immovable wrecks will close of the Strait just as well as a blockade.

When it’s our turn, shall we just hug it out with the former ICE agents and border patrol? Just send the fascists home?

Because if we do, they will come back. They always do. After the Civil War we just let the slave owners and the Confederates go, and they came back with the Klan and Jim Crow. After the civil rights movement we just let the Klan and their politicians go, and they came back with “tough on crime” and “states rights” and now they’re wearing masks and murdering people in the street again.

We can’t do this anymore. When we defeat them again, and we will, we can’t let them regroup. Marx said it himself: “We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”

Unless the US stops all of its oil producers from engaging in international trade

It could, though. The fossil fuel lobby would oppose this, of course, but they’re not the only lobby. Never mind the fact that all of Trump’s supporters drive oversized vehicles. Amazon doesn’t want high fuel prices, neither do Uber or DoorDash, neither do GM or Ford or Stelantis, neither do farmers, neither do construction companies, neither do data centers, neither do military contractors or the Pentagon, and so on. There are a lot of economic and political forces that want to keep fuel prices down.

This would begin a collapse of the old economic order, of course. If Canada and Mexico could be convinced to go along with this, lead by the US’s new “hemispheric dominance” strategy, we might see oil prices totally diverge between East and West.

I have no idea what is going to happen.

The US briefly tried out democracy during Reconstruction but the white terrorists quickly defeated that experiment.

The difference between 2008 and today is that the US is a net exporter, which means the US has the option cut its exports to keep oil prices down at home. That’ll have fascinating effects on global oil markets.