Fred Grasser

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

Pure socialism is pure idealism: a reply to Jacobin on China https://t.co/Hw9mmFEOtR #bennorton #china #socialism

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

Pure socialism is pure idealism: a reply to Jacobin on China https://t.co/f1a9Q4J5CZ #jacobin #china #socialism #bourgeoisie #pseudosocialism #xiaoHai

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

The Blockade’s Market Miracle: How Washington Starves Cuba, Then Calls the Hunger Socialism https://t.co/sO69LJhXJw via @kapone_prince #cuba #handsoffcuba #usa #imperialism #sanctions #socialism

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

China Locked the Vault: Wall Street Weeps for the Investor It Wanted to Recruit https://t.co/imoJ8aSikQ via @kapone_prince #china #imperialism #wallstreet #socialism #globalization

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

There is no democracy for the people under capitalism. There is only democracy for the rich (Lenin). Elections under capitalism are simply a mechanism of control for the ruling class to keep the masses divided and trapped in the very system that’s rigged against us.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Back in March I wrote 👇 that Iran was winning, and not only strategically but tactically too, but I genuinely didn't expect it would eventually lead - 3 months later - to a complete US surrender.

Because, make no mistake, this is what the "deal" that was just signed is: a complete US surrender, the likes of which it has never signed in its entire history.

Let's compare it with the 2 other most famous US capitulation agreements: the Paris Peace Accords with Vietnam in 1973 and the Doha Agreement with Afghanistan in 2020.

The most significant difference is that both the Vietnam and Afghanistan deals, despite being documents in which the US effectively conceded defeat, contained at least some face-saving provisions for the US.

For instance, in the Vietnam deal, North Vietnam accepted the continued existence of the South Vietnamese government, promised peaceful reunification, agreed to maintain the 17th parallel as a dividing line, and accepted international supervision. These were real (if ultimately unenforceable and unenforced) concessions.

Same thing with the Taliban: they guaranteed Afghan soil would never again be used to attack America, and agreed to negotiate a political settlement with the then Kabul government. The latter commitment was never seriously pursued - but both existed and gave the US a narrative: at least it could claim its post-9/11 objective had been secured on paper.

The deal with Iran is completely different: it doesn't contain a single meaningful concession from Iran. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is merely the reversal of a wartime measure they took in response to the US-Israeli attack. And the "reaffirmation" that Iran won't build nuclear weapons is just this: a reaffirmation of a position Tehran has had for decades.

As a reminder, there is a 2003 fatwa by Khamenei that forbids the production and use of any form of weapon of mass destruction, so "reaffirming" it costs Iran exactly nothing.

Meanwhile, the list of concessions and costs on the US side is staggering:
- Permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon
- A US pledge to respect Iran's sovereignty and not interfere in its internal affairs
- Full lifting of the naval blockade
- Withdrawal of all US forces from the region within 30 days after the final agreement
- A $300 billion reconstruction and development fund for Iran
- Termination of all sanctions: UN, IAEA, and every unilateral US sanction, primary and secondary
- Immediate Treasury waivers for Iranian oil exports and all related banking, insurance, and shipping services
- Full release of all frozen Iranian funds and assets, to be spent however Iran's central bank sees fit

So very concretely this is the US agreeing to 1) end the war and withdraw its forces, 2) end all hostile measures towards Iran that were in place before the war (the sanctions, the frozen funds, the interference in internal affairs, etc.), and 3) send hundreds of billions of dollars in what are, effectively, war reparations.

If that's not a complete surrender, I genuinely don't know what is.

And, cherry on the cake, in an absolutely perfect touch of historical irony, Trump literally signed this surrender agreement in Versailles (I'm not kidding: https://t.co/VLSduQtRJW).

History rhymes, but rarely this loudly, all the more because the historical 1919 Versailles Treaty was also signed in June!

Of course, it's fair - very fair, even - to suspect that Trump will not honor this deal. If he's proven anything in his political career, it's that he is agreement-incapable. Plus there's the Israel dimension: the document does say that the war should "end on all fronts, including Lebanon," but Israel has already made clear it considers itself unbound by the agreement.

As such, what I suspect will happen - as I wrote the day the MOU was announced (https://t.co/Hbh669Gvta) - is that the deal will split in two. The immediate concessions - blockade lifted, oil flowing, funds unfrozen - will happen (some already have) and probably stick, because reversing them would mean restarting the very war the US humiliatingly lost.

The deferred provisions - the negotiations on nuclear, the sanctions schedule, the reconstruction fund - will probably enter permanent limbo because, as I wrote then, the US won't get better terms on nuclear after showing they couldn't get them on the battlefield. And given sanctions relief and the $300 billion are tied to a final deal that requires resolving the nuclear question, and the nuclear question requires leverage the US no longer has, the whole structure is circular and never-ending.

On the Israel-Lebanon question, things are trickier. Israel, in some way, finds itself in a South Vietnam situation with its patron having negotiated a surrender over its head. The difference is that Thieu was too weak to sabotage the Paris Accords, whereas Netanyahu isn't: his ability to escalate in Lebanon gives him a de facto veto over the deal's most fragile provision.

Realistically speaking though, it's hard to imagine the US willing to restart the war, which is its own form of deterrence: if Israel keeps striking Lebanon in violation of the ceasefire, Iran can now retaliate with far greater confidence that the US won't come to the rescue - which ought to give Israel pause.

In effect, the end result is that the US security umbrella over Israel just got a lot thinner. Which means that, for the first time in a long time, Israel has to calculate the cost of provoking Iran without assuming the US will absorb the consequences. This points towards restraint, at least for any rational actor. But then again, the same government that dragged the US into this war in the first place has not exactly been a model of strategic rationality...

In any case, it's undeniable that Iran has just achieved something no other country has managed, ever: it withstood the full force of the US and Israeli military machines, and extracted a surrender agreement that makes the Paris Peace Accords look like a US victory by comparison.

To refer back to the title of my article below 👇: this was the first multipolar war, and Iran has definitely earned its place as one of the poles.

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

Marx in the Witness Box: How Jacobin Turns a Chinese Worker’s Wounds Against the Revolution https://t.co/kg5XzK1GPZ via @kapone_prince #china #jacobin #liberalpropaganda #imperialsm #revolution #labor #globalization

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

https://t.co/4Pvpj6NTWe #crisis #marx #economics #ai #china

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

https://t.co/pLHdid2b0J #censorship #IsraelisaTerroristsState #gaza #freepalestine #terrorism #eu

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

https://t.co/1wacRRjDZf
#Germany still is a #fascist state #raf #ulm5 #gaza #Freepalestine

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

https://t.co/GS04wcOK3h #imperialism #fascism #usempire #usa #usaterrorstate

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

Capitalism After the Robbery: Adam Smith, the Wealth of Nations, and the Clean Alibi of Bourgeois Political Economy https://t.co/ykm2VLzsNf via @kapone_prince
#adamsmith #bourgeoisie #capitalism #historicalmaterialism #globalization #freemarkets #economics #politicaleconomy

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

#naksa #palestine #gaza #israel #zionism #imperialism #eu #usa

[Stefan Talmon @StefanTalmon]

Germany's bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council ends in crushing failure

After Germany's reactions to events in Gaza, Venezuela, Lebanon and Iran, no one could believe that "its utmost priority will be respect for the rules of international law", if elected

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

It always astonishes me how there is virtually ZERO public debate - or even public awareness - in Europe about the decisions that will most shape ordinary people's lives.

These days, the EU is drafting a new anti-China legal framework where - quite literally - the more affordable and competitive Chinese products are, the more illegal they'd become.

You'd think EU citizens would want to be informed about such things - as it couldn't be more consequential for their prosperity.

Yet I bet virtually no EU citizen is even aware of it, beyond a vague sense that there is some sort of trade dispute going on.

So what's going on exactly? It all centers around a new legal instrument the EU is drafting called the "overcapacity instrument" (https://t.co/mNpCMudYyS).

First of all, the very notion of "overcapacity" is pretty ridiculous to begin with, especially the way it's being defined by the EU, as it basically means being competitive enough to export.

By this definition of "overcapacity," pretty much every European industry that's ever run a trade surplus - German cars, French wine, Italian fashion - has been guilty of "overcapacity."

I'm not even exaggerating: if you read this study by the EU Parliament on "Industrial overcapacities, with a focus on China" (https://t.co/TcwEBoL8mD), they define "overcapacity" as building more capacity than your domestic market can absorb. So the moment you build capacity to export abroad, you're in "overcapacity."

Utterly ridiculous.

And what this "overcapacity instrument" is about is creating a permanent legal mechanism for the EU to block Chinese competition across whole sectors of the economy, if they happen to be in "overcapacity."

In effect, this means that if China is competitive globally in a given sector in such a way that it exports a lot, that's proof of overcapacity, and legally it'd mean that the entire sector can be restricted from the EU market.

Which means it really, factually, is a legal framework where the more affordable and competitive your products are, the more illegal they become.

Which is a CRAZY economic concept! 🤦‍♂️

Please note that it's different from the anti-subsidy legal instrument, which the EU has already put in place in 2023 (the "Foreign Subsidies Regulation": https://t.co/SvPKFyN0zo).

This "overcapacity instrument" would be above and beyond this: it wouldn't even matter if a particular sector was subsidized by the Chinese government or not, the mere fact of its competitiveness in exports would be grounds for restrictions in the EU.

It doesn't take a genius to understand how badly this could impact everyday people: this is European consumers being forced to pay more for worse products by law, so that uncompetitive European firms don't have to improve.

Politicians frame it as avoiding a "China shock 2.0" but really this is choosing an even steeper self-inflicted decline than is already the case, where EU citizens would subsidize mediocre EU companies that would have even less pressure to catch up. It's a hidden tax: subsidies for uncompetitive firms paid by consumers instead of governments, which in turn makes them less incentivized to become competitive.

The first "China shock" did de-industrialize Europe somewhat, but at least it made things cheaper for European consumers. If this becomes Europe's response to a second "China shock" not only it'd make everything more expensive but it'd do nothing for EU industry: you don't become competitive by banning the competition...

Look at China itself: the way it industrialized was NOT by banning Western firms but on the contrary by welcoming them strategically and learning from them. You learn to compete by... competing, duh!

What I find most shocking in all of this isn't even the policy itself - you can make arguments for and against protectionism, and reasonable people can disagree.

What's shocking is that virtually no European media outlet is explaining any of this to the public. This is unarguably one of the single most consequential economic decisions the EU will make this decade, affecting the price of everything, and it's being drafted in near-total silence.

No newspaper is running the headline "EU plans to make Chinese goods illegal if they're too affordable" - even though that's essentially what's happening.

But that's what you call a "democracy" with "freedom of expression" these days apparently...

[Relearning Economics @RelearningEcon]

"Taxes are the life source of the Bureaucracy"

-Karl Marx

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran directly rejects Trump's claim that Hormuz "will be opened" as part of a "largely negotiated" agreement he just posted on Truth Social, saying Trump's claim is "far from the truth" and that Hormuz "will remain under Iranian management" with Iran retaining exclusive permanent authority over route, timing, method, and permits, per Fars.

Iran also confirms the nuclear file has not been discussed and that American officials themselves have told Iran in multiple messages that "Trump's tweets are primarily for domestic American propaganda and media consumption" and "should be disregarded." The "largely negotiated" deal claim therefore has no basis.

[Mick Wallace @wallacemick]

Iran has proven to be a far more responsible actor than Israel in West Asia. It is totally ridiculous that Western Powers have had no problem with a Rogue State with zero respect for International Law like Israel having Nuclear weapons, and now says it's concerned about Iran..???

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

#imperialism #USATerroristState #cuba #castro

[Fred Grasser @fred_grasser]

https://t.co/clyB7qU6IA #war #imperialism #censorship #usa