Misbah, Qasemi

I am a voice for peace, equality, and justice. I'm against war, discrimination, and racism, deeply connected to the Palestinian cause, and committed to social justice. As a migrant touched by conflict, I share insights hoping to inspire change. If these values resonate, let's connect & grow together. #Peace #Equality #Justice

Lula just delivered a line that the liberal media will completely misunderstand. Standing before his supporters, he declared: "I highly doubt that Russia, China, or the United States possess an army as victorious as the army of democracy in this country." Let’s look at the reality of the army Lula is actually talking about. This army does not have stealth bombers, nuclear submarines, or drone swarms. It does not have Silicon Valley servers, Wall Street hedge funds, or CIA black budgets. This army is made of 64 million factory workers, landless peasants, and favela residents. Their weapons were not missiles. Their weapons were social networks that bypassed Silicon Valley censorship. Their weapons were the physical streets of São Paulo, where they mobilized in the millions to physically drag their candidate across the finish line. Their ultimate weapon was an absolute, unbreakable refusal to let the Bolsonaro dynasty sell their oil and rare earth minerals to the US empire. The empire fears no foreign military on earth. But it is absolutely terrified of a working class that remembers its own power.

In 2019, the Western media told you Evo Morales was ousted by a "pro-democracy uprising" because he "stole an election." Let’s look at the material reality of what the empire actually did to Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. Evo’s unforgivable sin was not electoral fraud. It was lithium. Bolivia sits on the largest lithium reserves on earth—the exact mineral Silicon Valley and the US military-industrial complex desperately need to build electric vehicle batteries and advanced weaponry. For 500 years, the imperial playbook in Latin America was simple: extract the raw materials for pennies, leave the locals in poverty, and sell the finished products back to them at a massive markup. Evo said no. He nationalized the country's natural gas and mining sectors. He lifted millions of Indigenous people out of extreme poverty. And when it came to lithium, he refused to let US corporations strip-mine it and export it raw. He demanded that Bolivia build its own battery factories, partnering with whoever offered the best technology transfer for the Bolivian people. So the empire deployed its 21st-century hybrid war toolkit. The US-backed Organization of American States (OAS) published a highly irregular report claiming there were "irregularities" in the election. Mainstream media outlets instantly screamed "fraud," ignoring the fact that independent researchers from MIT later mathematically debunked the OAS claims, proving there was no statistical evidence of a stolen election. But the empire didn't need evidence. It needed a pretext. The Bolivian military, taking cues from Washington, forced Evo onto a plane to Mexico. They installed an uneased interim president who marched into the presidential palace holding a giant Bible, declaring to the cameras: "God has returned to this house." Her security forces immediately turned their weapons on the Indigenous working class, massacring dozens of unarmed protesters in the streets of Sacaba and Senkata. And then, the imperial center got sloppy. Months later, when a user on Twitter pointed out that the US orchestrated the coup to secure Bolivia's lithium for the electric vehicle market, Elon Musk—the ultimate face of the Western tech elite—replied with a stunning confession: "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it." They didn't overthrow Evo Morales to save democracy. They overthrew him to secure the supply chain for Tesla. You can wave a Bible in the presidential palace. You can massacre the Indigenous working class in the streets. But you cannot wash the blood off the batteries.

"Back up, Ambassador. Back away. This isn't Havana. This is America, my friend." Read those words again. He did not say "this is the United Nations." He did not say "this is a forum of sovereign equals." He said "This is America, my friend." In the mind of the US empire, the United Nations is not a multilateral institution. It is American territory. Every nation that dares to speak inside it is a guest in America's house. And guests are supposed to sit down and shut up. But Cuba stood up. Cuba looked the most powerful military empire in human history in the eye and said: You are lying. And the empire's only response was street-thug intimidation. Here is the material reality Waltz is desperate to hide. The blockade of Cuba does not need a ring of military ships. It uses the US dollar as a weapon. It uses SWIFT, secondary sanctions, and the threat of financial ruin to terrorize any bank, ship, or corporation on earth that dares to trade with Havana. You do not need to fire a missile to blockade a hospital. You just freeze a nation's bank accounts so they cannot buy cancer medicine, baby formula, or fuel. That is a blockade by spreadsheet. And it has choked Cuba for six decades. But the world just voted 130 to 17 to end it. "This is America, my friend." No, Ambassador. This is the world. And the world just voted you down.

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. In 1964, the United States destroyed Brazilian democracy. João Goulart was the democratically elected president. His crime was a reform agenda: Eradicate illiteracy. Let the poor and the illiterate vote. Force multinationals to reinvest their profits inside Brazil. And redistribute land from the hereditary landlords to the rural poor. Schools. Ballots. Land. Washington called it communism. JFK's first secretly taped Oval Office meeting — ever — was about Brazil. On that tape he asked: "What kind of liaison do we have with the military?" A year later: "We've got to do something about Brazil." Then: "Do you see a situation where we might find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?" He ordered American aid strangled to "put the screws" on Goulart. Robert Kennedy flew to Brasília to deliver the ultimatum in person, telling Goulart he could not criticize the United States "and at the same time get 250 million dollars from the United States. He can't have it both ways." American aid was never assistance. It was a leash. The CIA poured millions into opposition parties, newspapers, labor unions and landowner groups. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon drew up contingency plans with "a heavy emphasis on armed intervention." And here is the part that tells you this was never about security. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Goulart served as a secret back channel between Kennedy and Castro, helping prevent nuclear war. Washington overthrew him anyway. JFK was assassinated before he could act. Johnson did not hesitate. Three days before the coup, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy said: "We should not be worrying that the military will react; we should be worrying that the military will not react." And in the same meeting: "We don't want to watch Brazil dribble down the drain while we stand around waiting for the next election." On March 31, 1964, Johnson gave the order: "I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do." The Pentagon launched Operation Brother Sam. The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, six destroyers, and fuel tankers steamed toward Santos to resupply the coup. Goulart fled to Uruguay. Washington recognized the junta within 48 hours. The aid resumed like clockwork. Over 21 years the dictatorship killed or disappeared 434 people, tortured roughly 20,000, and drove tens of thousands into exile. Brazil did not hold another presidential election for 25 years. Now look at 2026. The hereditary landlord class that Washington armed in 1964 is the same landlord class that funded the Bolsonaro dynasty. Lula wants Brazil's rare earths kept out of Pentagon supply chains. He wants Petrobras to stay public. He wants BRICS to break the dollar's chokehold. So the empire sent the same weapons, updated. Fifty percent tariffs instead of a naval task force. Meta censorship instead of CIA cash. AI disinformation instead of paid newspapers. In 1964 they won. In 2026, 64 million Brazilians voted anyway. The empire never changed its mind about who owns Latin America. Latin America simply stopped asking permission.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called Lula’s victory "a breath of fresh air for Latin America." Let’s look at what "fresh air" actually means to the US empire. It means the Monroe Doctrine is suffocating. For two centuries, Washington has treated Latin America as a sealed room. They install compliant oligarchs, enforce dollar-denominated debt, and use the threat of sanctions to keep the region locked in a state of economic asphyxiation. Just months ago, the Trump administration launched the "Shield of the Americas" in Florida, trying to build a new military and economic cage to force the continent into a US-led cold war against China. But look closely at the founding photo of that summit. The two largest, most powerful nations in Latin America were missing. Mexico and Brazil. Sheinbaum and Lula refused to attend. They refused to be corralled. They refused to let Washington dictate their foreign policy or strip-mine their resources for the Pentagon. This "fresh air" is not a metaphor. It is cold, hard material reality. It is Mexico protecting its sovereign lithium reserves from foreign monopolies. It is Brazil rejecting the privatization of Petrobras and keeping its rare earth minerals out of the US military supply chain. It is the two largest economies in the region trading in their own currencies, bypassing the weaponized US dollar, and building a multipolar world right on the empire's doorstep. The empire relies on local landlords and comprador dynasties like the Bolsonaros to keep the windows boarded up. But the working classes of the Global South just kicked the doors off the hinges. For 200 years, the empire tried to turn Latin America into a sealed room. They are just now realizing the people inside figured out how to breathe.

The Western media is already trying to rewrite the story of Lula’s victory. They want you to believe it was a triumph of broad democratic coalitions and institutional resilience. But the material reality on the ground tells a completely different story. Three weeks before the election, Lula was trailing in the polls. The algorithms were rigged against him. The cosmopolitan bourgeoisie that backed him in 2022 had abandoned him. So Lula stopped talking about abstract democracy and started talking about survival. He promised to cut the workweek from 44 to 40 hours. He targeted the crushing cost of public transport. He expanded the social wage. He stopped preaching to the liberal elites and started speaking directly to the factory floor and the favelas. And when the far-right took a two-point lead after the first round, the working class did what the working class always does when the system tries to erase them. They took the streets. The mobilizations on Avenida Paulista and across Brazil were the largest spontaneous left-wing uprisings in the country's history. This was not a campaign managed by political consultants. It was an organic explosion of the popular classes physically dragging their candidate across the finish line. This changes the entire calculus of Lula's fourth term. In 2022, he owed his victory to a broad coalition of elites who just wanted stability. In 2026, he owes his survival entirely to the streets. The empire threw tariffs, censorship, and disinformation at him, thinking the working class was too atomized to fight back. They forgot that when you push a population to the brink, they do not just vote. They mobilize. Lula does not owe this mandate to the algorithms, the media, or the bourgeoisie. He owes it to the workers who built the country. And the streets always collect their debts.

This was never about left versus right. It was about class. The Bolsonaro dynasty represents the landlords, the oligarchs, and the foreign corporations that want to strip-mine Brazil and call it "development." Lula represents the factory worker who lost a finger in a metalworking press at a young age, and the 213 million people who build this country with their hands every single day. One side sold Brazil's rare earth mines to a US government-backed corporation for 2.8 billion dollars. One side promised to privatize Petrobras so US oil giants could buy the nation's wealth. One side waved foreign flags at their rallies and held Zoom calls with Netanyahu on stage. And when the working class voted them out, that side did not stay to fight for the country they claimed to love. They fled. Jair ran to Florida after his coup failed. Eduardo moved to the United States and started begging Trump to send the Marines to invade his own homeland. And now Flavio is in the air, escaping justice, joining his family in the empire they serve. The empire fights through its landlords. The people fight through their workers. One side begs Washington for an invasion. The other begs no one for anything but the right to exist. You can flee to Florida. You can "lick the boots". But a country built by the working class will never belong to the oligarchs who sold it.

History does not repeat, but the imperial playbook never changes. In 2015, Ashraf Ghani stood before the US Congress not as an Afghan leader, but as a World Bank liquidator. He begged for the "generosity of the American taxpayer," promised to open his country to US corporations, and rebranded imperial extraction as "self-reliance." Six years later, as his imperial-backed ghost army evaporated, Ghani fled in a helicopter to the UAE. The very taxpayer money he begged for was stuffed into his bags to fund his exile. He played the victim while the empire moved on to its next target. Fast forward to Brazil. The Bolsonaro dynasty just ran the exact same comprador playbook. Jair Bolsonaro begged Washington for backing, promising to privatize Petrobras and hand over Brazil's rare earth minerals to US government-linked corporations. His sons waved foreign flags at their rallies, treating Brasília like a regional office for the US empire. When the Brazilian working class rejected this extractivist neo-colony and voted for sovereignty, the so-called "patriots" did not stay to defend their homeland. Jair fled to Florida after his coup attempt failed. Eduardo moved to the US and started seeking American citizenship while publicly begging Donald Trump to send the Marines to invade his own country. And now, Flavio Bolsonaro is fleeing to the United States to join them, escaping justice after the courts seized his passport. Watch them go on Western media and claim they are victims of "political persecution." Watch them demand sanctions against the sovereign government of Brazil. But the material reality is undeniable. The empire does not fund nationalists in the Global South. It funds liquidators. It installs managers to strip-mine sovereign nations, and when the locals finally take back the keys, the managers flee to the master's house. Ghani took the cash. The Bolsonaros are taking the flight. You can beg the empire for an invasion. You can flee to Florida when the people vote you out. But you cannot sell a nation that belongs to the workers who built it.

While Flávio Bolsonaro was literally in the air, fleeing to the United States on a plane with his family, President Lula said the quiet part loud: "For the Bolsonaro family, Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking boots in the United States – just as they are accustomed to doing." This is the material reality of the so-called "patriots" backed by Washington and Silicon Valley. They wave foreign flags at their rallies. They sell the nation's rare earth mines to US government-backed corporations for 2.8 billion dollars. They promise to hand over Petrobras to foreign oil monopolies. And the second the working class votes them out, they pack their bags and run to the empire they serve. The empire does not fund nationalism in the Global South. It funds treason. You can flee to Florida. You can lick the boots. But you cannot sell a country whose people have remembered their own name.

The Western media constantly brands the Bolsonaro dynasty as "right-wing nationalists." Let’s look at the material ledger of their patriotism. The patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro, attempted a military coup, lost, and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. He is currently under house arrest, desperately trying to evade justice. His son, Eduardo, is actively seeking US citizenship while publicly begging Donald Trump to send the US military to invade Brazil. And now, following their crushing defeat in the presidential runoff, Flávio Bolsonaro is fleeing the country. CNN Brasil reports he boarded a plane to the United States with his wife and daughters out of fear of arrest after a court ordered his passport seized. US officials have confirmed he is currently en route to America. This exposes the unvarnished truth about the imperial-backed right-wing in the Global South. They do not want to make their nations sovereign. They want to turn them into extractivist colonies so they can live as exile landlords in Miami. When your domestic oligarchs beg a foreign empire for a military invasion, and flee on a plane the moment they lose an election, you understand why Lula’s victory was an act of national survival. The empire does not back nationalists in Latin America. It backs liquidators. You can beg the Pentagon for an invasion. You can flee on a midnight flight. But you cannot sell a country that has already remembered its own name.

Lula victory wasn't "fear of lost benefits", it was the loss of the entire nation to the enforcer of the "Donroe Doctrine" The Wall Street Journal looks at 64 million Brazilians rejecting a US-backed oligarchic dynasty and calls it "fear of lost benefits." This is pure imperial mindset. They reduce a sovereign nation's fight for its very survival into a petty dispute over welfare checks. What they actually mean is that the Brazilian working class understood exactly what was coming. They knew the empire was coming to strip the social wage, extract their critical minerals, and turn Latin America's giant back into an obedient vassal state.

Lula's reelection in Brazil wasn't just a standard democratic victory. Pepe Escobar calls it: The defeat of the "Mother of All Hybrid Wars." This wasn't just an election. It was a do-or-die battle against a toxic, multi-front imperial coalition trying to turn Latin America's giant into an extractivist neo-colony: The "Donroe" doctrine, Silicon Valley and techno-feudalism, the Zionism & Evangelical axis. Oligarchic sabotage, deliberately crippling the public bus transport in Lula's working-class strongholds on election day to suppress the vote. So how did a man in his 80s defeat the combined weight of the US Empire, Silicon Valley, and the domestic oligarchy? While Meta controlled the algorithms, Lula's campaign launched a WhatsApp channel called "Lula's Army." In less than three weeks, it exploded from 50,000 to 10 million followers. They beat the techno-feudalists at their own game. And then came the defining moment of the class war. During the final debate, Bolsonaro mocked Lula's missing pinkie finger, calling him "the 9 fingers." Lula struck back: He lost it at a young age in a metalworking press—a victim of the brutal precarity millions of workers endure. "Something very different from you, Bolsonaro, who has never worked That single exchange shattered the imperial narrative. The missing finger became the ultimate symbol of working-class dignity against oligarchic privilege. The empire threw tariffs, algorithms, bus sabotage, and a neo-fascist dynasty at Brazil. But Brazil is too big, and too wild, to be anyone's backyard. You can buy the mines. You can rig the algorithms. You can cripple the buses and beg for a military coup. But you cannot colonize a people who have remembered how to swing.

Macron doesn’t hate social media. He hates that he no longer controls the narrative. When social media algorithms amplify state propaganda, manufacture consent for wars, and protect corporate wealth, it is celebrated as "connecting the world" and "promoting democracy." But the moment citizens use those exact same platforms to expose imperial lies, document war crimes, and hold the powerful accountable, it is suddenly labeled a "threat to democracy." They don't want a public square. They want a corporate billboard. So, democracy isn’t being damaged by the internet. It is being exposed by it. The elites are just terrified of an audience they can’t censor.

Lula's reelection in Brazil is not just a domestic victory. It is the single biggest geopolitical defeat the US empire has suffered in Latin America in decades. Here is what was actually at stake: The Resources: Brazil holds the world's second-largest rare earth reserves — nearly a quarter of the global supply. The US military-industrial complex is desperate for these minerals to break its dependence on China. The Bolsonaro dynasty was ready to hand them over. A US government-linked company already bought Brazil's only active rare earth mine from Bolsonaro-aligned oligarchs for $2.8 billion. They wanted Petrobras privatized next. Lula said no. These are our minerals. We will build our own economy. Palestine: Lula lost a finger in a factory at 17. He is the working class. The Bolsonaros are the landlords, the oligarchs, and the cheerleaders of settler colonialism. They waved Israeli flags at their rallies. They held Zoom calls with Netanyahu on stage. They posed with a map of Israel colonizing ALL of historic Palestine — Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights. Lula stands with Palestine and calls the genocide what it is. The Multipolar World: Lula co-founded BRICS. He is building parallel financial systems to bypass the weaponized US dollar. He called for a new global reserve currency. He wants Latin America to trade in its own currency, free from Washington's sanctions. The empire cannot tolerate a continent that refuses to pay rent in dollars. So how did Washington respond to a sovereign democratic choice? Trump slapped Brazil with 50% tariffs — even though the US has a trade SURPLUS with Brazil. The tariffs were never economic. They were punishment. Meta censored Lula's accounts and boosted Bolsonaro. The Bolsonaro campaign hired a US AI company to spread disinformation. Eduardo Bolsonaro literally called on Trump to send the US military to attack the Brazilian government. They threw everything at him. Tariffs. Censorship. Disinformation. Coup attempts. And they still lost. The American empire tried to enforce the Monroe Doctrine with algorithms, tariffs, and a puppet dynasty. But the Brazilian working class just voted to keep their minerals, defend Palestine, and build a world where Washington doesn't get to decide who eats. You can tariff the economy. You can censor the candidate. You can beg for a military coup. But you cannot colonize a people who have already decided they belong to themselves.

The conflict with Iran is not about nuclear weapons. It never was. It is a clash between two entirely different views of existence. The empire sees the world as dead matter to be extracted, priced, and dominated. Everything has a number. Every nation has a price. Submit to the ledger, or be destroyed. Iran sees the world as something with purpose, destiny, and meaning beyond the balance sheet. A civilization 2,500 years old that refuses to kneel before a spreadsheet. That is why sanctions don't work. You cannot starve a civilization into submission when it does not worship your god. And the West's only god is the dollar. The empire demands compliance. It wants Russia compliant, Iran compliant, Ansarallah compliant. Because these are the nations that looked at the "rules-based order" and said: No. We will build our own. But here is the part the ruling class cannot admit: The money is gone. - The US now pays more in debt interest than its entire defense budget. - Europe is closing hospital beds and cutting school funding to find another €155 billion for Zelensky. - The working class is told to accept "short-term pain" while the financial elite post record profits. The empire is trying to fight 21st-century wars with a bankrupt checkbook. So what does a ruling class do when it can no longer buy compliance, and can no longer enforce it? It panics. In the UK, the government is telling citizens to stockpile tinned food and water, blaming "Russian sabotage" for its own collapse. In Washington, they refuse to even speak to Putin about actual security. Instead they send envoys offering "reconstruction funds" as bribes, completely ignoring that sovereign civilizations demand security, not charity. They cannot accept that they are no longer the head of the world. So they will use the threat of World War III to distract you from the fact that the hospitals are closing, the debt is unpayable, and the empire is broke. They are preparing you for war because they cannot survive the peace of a multipolar world.

France isn’t panicking because the Sahel is "failing." It is panicking because the Sahel is finally succeeding at kicking out the occupier. Let’s look at what France is actually "losing": - Niger’s uranium, which has powered French homes for decades at a fraction of its real value. - Mali and Burkina Faso’s gold, which lined European vaults while their own people stayed poor. - The CFA franc, a colonial currency that kept West African economies chained to Paris. So, yes: a geopolitical earthquake—and a challenge to France’s old position in the region isn't chaos. It’s the sound of a nation finally kicking out a bully who has been stealing from them for decades. Who will win? The Sahel has already won the most important battle: waking up. By kicking out French troops and making new deals with countries that actually build roads and trade fairly, they are trading a thief for real partners. France will lose because its entire model is based on theft, and the tap has been turned off. For France, a host nation's independence is the only real crisis.

It feels like madness from the outside, but it is actually cold, structural necessity. The West cannot "live peacefully" because its entire economic model is fundamentally dependent on extraction and hegemony. Peaceful, equitable coexistence would trigger the immediate collapse of their system. Consider the material reality: 1️⃣ The Dollar Premium: The US economy survives by printing the global reserve currency, allowing it to export inflation and fund massive deficits. If the world trades in local currencies, that privilege vanishes, and the US debt bubble implodes. 2️⃣ The Imperial Subsidy: Western living standards and corporate profit margins are artificially propped up by cheap resources, energy, and labor extracted from the Global South. Equitable trade destroys that subsidy. 3️⃣ The War Economy: The US military-industrial complex requires perpetual conflict to justify its trillion-dollar budgets and keep weapons manufacturers profitable. Peace is literally bad for their GDP. They aren’t choosing domination out of random malice. They are choosing it because their system cannot survive without a victim. The "madness" isn't that they are destroying themselves; the madness is believing a parasite can survive once the host learns how to say no.

Marco Rubio stood in Athens and praised Greece as "a model ally" and the center of a Western civilizational revival. Greece: the country whose economy shrank by a quarter during the debt crisis. Whose pensions were cut up to 40%. Whose hospitals collapsed. Whose young people emigrated in the hundreds of thousands. Whose ports, airports, and utilities were sold to creditors — including Piraeus, now majority-owned by COSCO. That destruction was not imposed by Russia, China, or Iran. It was imposed by the EU, the ECB, and the IMF — Western institutions enforcing the fiscal discipline of the order Rubio says Greece should be proud to defend. He stood in the country his own system immiserated, told its people their suffering proved their civilizational virtue, praised them for accepting it — and asked them to spend more on defense. The empire does not only extract from the Global South. It extracts from its own periphery — including the periphery it calls the cradle of its civilization.

The Confession: Buried in Rubio's Acropolis speech is the most important sentence he spoke: "Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power." He meant this as an indictment of America's rivals. It is a definition of empire — and an exact description of the United States: - Territory: Greenland, Guam, Puerto Rico, Diego Garcia. 750+ bases in 80 countries. - Resources: Congo's minerals, Latin America's lithium, Gulf oil secured by fleet presence. - Markets: IMF conditionality, structural adjustment, forced liberalization. - Energy: the Carter Doctrine — the Gulf as a US vital interest to be defended by force. - Power: "the head of the world." The moment you admit international politics is a competition for territory, resources, markets, and energy — you have abandoned every claim about a rules-based order and an international community. You have described a system of material extraction. And in that system, the United States is not the referee. It is the largest competitor, with the biggest gun. Rubio's diagnosis of the world is completely accurate. He just forgot it applies to him.