Capitalist powers choosing sides as world gears up for growing war
Al Jazeera, 10/16–United States President Joe Biden has “no plans'' to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at next month’s G20 summit in Indonesia, a senior US official says, as tensions over the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production continue to reverberate. Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia are on thin ice over the oil production cuts. Last week, the Riyadh-led OPEC cartel and an additional group of 10 other oil producers headed by Russia decided to reduce global output by up to two million barrels per day from November. The move is expected to lead to higher oil prices, which would help Russia pay for its offensive in Ukraine.

Biden has warned Saudi Arabia that there will be unspecified “consequences” for siding with Russia in supporting the cuts. The OPEC+ move undermines Western countries’ plans to impose a cap on the price of Russian oil in response to Moscow’s war in Ukraine. The move could lead to soaring energy prices, raising concerns in Biden’s Democratic Party about how it will fare in November’s midterm elections. Washington suggested Gulf producers were aligning with Russia at the expense of the United States and its Western allies.

U.S. preparing economy for war with China
The Economist, 10/13– “China’s government is planning on winning the AI race, winning future wars and winning the future,” warned Todd Young, an American senator, in July.

Western countries are embarking on a frantic effort to retain or regain their technological edge. On October 7th America issued fierce new restrictions on exports to China of advanced semiconductors and related equipment. “It’s a total clamp down, trying to cut off every head of the hydra of China’s chip industry.”

China’s output of a basket of sophisticated goods including information technology, pharmaceuticals and electronics is expected to surpass America’s this year…As well as trying to disrupt the flow of technology abroad, America’s government is investing more in innovation. In August Congress approved $370bn of spending on green energy, including lots of money for research.

D.R.C. is a key battlefield for U.S. and Chinese imperialists
Agence France Presse, 9/30– A military prosecutor in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday requested the death penalty for 11 people allegedly implicated in the murder of two Chinese mine workers this year. On March 17, a convoy of Chinese nationals returning from a gold mine came under attack in the village of Nderemi in Ituri province. Two Chinese workers were killed. A military tribunal launched proceedings against 12 people, including 11 army members, on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy…During a hearing on Monday, military prosecutor Colonel Kumbu Ngoma requested the death penalty for 11 of the suspects, who include two army colonels. Attacks on Chinese-managed mines and Chinese workers are not uncommon in resource-rich eastern DRC.

The revolution will not be on Twitter
New York Times, 09/30–Social media, which enables protests to organize and gather in once-unthinkable numbers, often with little or no formal leadership, may also paradoxically undermine those movements, according to a theory advanced by Zeynep Tufekci, a Columbia University sociologist. In earlier eras, activists might spend months or years building the organizational structures and real-world ties necessary to launch a mass protest. This also made movements durable, instilling discipline and chains of command.

Social media allows would-be protesters to skip those steps, spurring one another to action with as little as a viral post. The result is rallies that put thousands or millions of bodies in the street overnight — but that often fizzle just as quickly. Without that traditional activist infrastructure, social media protests are less equipped to endure government repression. Leaderless, they more easily fracture and struggle to coordinate strategically.

Protests were traditionally just one tool in activist campaigns to pressure governments...social media, by channeling popular energy away from such organizing, means that mass protest is now often the only tool, and typically ineffective on its own."