iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Why bother occupying a country when you can force them to accept international arbitration that has a chilling effect on implementing socialist policy? Read my latest in NACLA.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Just thinking about how Trump bought debt in two companies that stand to materially benefit from the Strait of Hormuz being closed, after promising one of them to ease regulatory oversight on the campaign trail, and offering the other a $1 billion loan from the Department of Energy.

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 26/03/2026

For the last 46 years, the math of U.S. debt relied on a geopolitical bargain with the world: The U.S. could run perpetual deficits because its military secured global trade. But American consumers, already living under Covid-era inflation, are rapidly approaching their limit. trib.al/JaeJHXL

trib.al

The Next Financial Shock to Come From Trump’s War With Iran

America’s current credit rating masks a fatal contradiction, and a downgrade is the only honest assessment of an empire in decline.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

“The prevailing AA+ and Aa1 ratings rest on the assumptions of the unipolar, neoliberal era, backed by the now-dead Carter Doctrine.” My latest in @newrepublic.com

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Re-routing the geography of the Persian Gulf with nukes to create new flows for capital, as Newt suggested, would virtually guarantee the end of the unipolar, neoliberal era, and accelerate the trend towards more overt forms of imperialism, which are already emerging under the Donroe Doctrine.

responsiblestatecraft.org

What if we actually nuked our way around the Hormuz blockage?

Newt Gingrich thinks we need extreme measures to reopen the Persian Gulf. It’s safe to say that the era of frictionless global trade is over.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Trumpworld has discovered Schrödinger’s Boots. They are simultaneously on the ground and levitating, and can be used to fight a war that is both over and just getting started. Be sure to congratulate them on this theoretical breakthrough.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

The scale and scope of US political interference in Latin America under Trump is basically unprecedented since the Nixon administration.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Few people in contemporary international politics have been more vindicated than leftist NATO skeptics in South Korea and Japan.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Mainstream economists when you build industrial capacity using your own labor force and money: no fair! you’re doing it wrong! Mainstream economists when you build your industrial capacity through subordinate integration and recolonization of the periphery: thank you for following the rules!

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Killing fishermen in the Caribbean and artisanal miners in the Andes serves the same function for transnational capital, it clears the space for accumulation, creates a pretext for the establishment of “secure” resource corridors, and the legal architecture for dispossession.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The past few days have proven that spatial fixes cannot resolve the underlying contradictions of emerging industrial powers consuming more oil than they can extract locally.

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

*When you learn about empire in college Empire is subtle. Empire doesn’t need to announce itself to work. Some people may not even know that they’re living in an empire. *Empire when you’re an adult

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Carter Doctrine: in tatters Post Fordist class relations: exposed Oh yeah, it’s over for American empire

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Oops!… I did it again (started a war in the Middle East to recapitalize America’s oil sector and got in way over my head)

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

The “build it here” president just killed the US’ domestic ship building industry to solve a manufactured oil supply crisis. These companies should be filling orders for the next generation of dual fuel cargo ships. Once consumers get used to the reduced prices, it will be hard to unwind this.

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Decades of politically engrained Russophobia is really preventing us from recognizing the obvious cultural basis for transnational solidarity between the American and Russian working classes at the worst possible historic moment.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The neoliberal American empire that accumulated wealth through neo-extractivist deals with developing nations and subordinate integration with emerging industrial powers really managed to convince 30% of its population that it was getting the short end of the stick and deserved more.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

It seems like the average centrist liberal voter now feels more affinity towards Iran than the US, so I would say that the psyop is not going well.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

We’ve gone from neo-imperialism to the naked imperialism of the late 15th - early 20th centuries. Decades from now, researchers will wonder why our generation bothered to refer to this era as “neo-imperialist” at all.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Trump showed up to the Great Powers competition without maritime industrial capacity.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

The Copa de la Diversion logos dropped today. Some highlights:

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Dang, it almost feels like the War in Iran was a manufactured supply crisis to refinance the Venezuelan oil sector now that the US is in charge.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

The US is about to turn into the world’s first 21st century mineral cartel

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

So it turns out that leadership shakeups are not the same thing as reform or abolition. Who knew?

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Automated ports Dual fuel cargo ships Gantry cranes You need these three things to create the 21st century mercantilist empire that Trump is dragging us into. It’s not a world I want to live in but I’m simultaneously terrified by how ill-prepared Trump is to maintain it.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I hate empire and I also hate how terrible Trump is at managing his empire This is the burden of being a socialist who was raised on the Civ games

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

We really did it again. The US manufactured another supply crisis in the Middle East to finance our capital intensive oil sector in the Western Hemisphere. And this time with Venezuela in our pocket.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Carter Doctrine (1980-2026) It kept shipping lanes open but could not resolve the underlying contradiction of industrializing powers consuming more oil than they could extract locally. In lieu of flowers, please send aid to Cuba.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

The US simultaneously beat itself and lost the American Baseball Classic. The contradictions of America’s mercantilist empire keep piling up.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

We really did it again. The US manufactured another supply crisis in the Middle East to finance our capital intensive oil sector in the Western Hemisphere. And this time with Venezuela in our pocket.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

What’s it called when multiple great powers are fighting wars of choice with transparent economic motives, regional wars have broken, or are close to breaking out in Africa, South America, and South Asia, trade is disrupted in the Indian Ocean, and the world is fragmented into economic blocs?

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

SAW, but the protagonists are in a live podcast studio and all the equipment is booby trapped.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

That’s because, in this metaphor, we’re fighting the war from Berlin.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of every critical geographer being offered jobs simultaneously to all of the risk analysis firms.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Who will be the first politician to suggest this was an Iranian drone?

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Minnesota work culture: The water cooler talk after a weekend snowstorm inevitably centers around shoveling the walk. Whoever did it in the least amount of “passes” wins. People on corner lots get a +1.5 spot on passes. Those who didn’t shovel go in a social “penalty box” until lunch.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

If you have a hover boots concept, now is the time to cash in with the American military industrial complex.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Mainstream economists when a centrist president is overseeing an economy growing at a modest annual rate: “Why isn’t Joe Biden doing more to steal Latin America’s resources?” *When a far right president is deficit spending to fight an imperial war: “Short term pain, long term gain (for us)”

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Centrist lawmakers gave up way too much ground by allowing the arbitrary line between aerial bombing and “boots on the ground” to become widely accepted in our war discourse. Hawks will always move the goalposts to justify their actions. We get bogged down by semantics, and Iranians pay the price.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

- fighting a pointless war in the Middle East, near our sub-imperial proxies, where we have a ton of fixed capital - prediction markets undermining our politics - culture that is deeply nostalgic for its “renaissance” The US is not the UK circa 1956, it’s the Venetian Republic circa 1797

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I fear that when this US-initiated War in Iran ends, the American empire will control most of the hemisphere, and many people will never even notice. Most of those who do will say something in passing confusion like, “Oh, since when are Peru and the US so close?”

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Not to shamelessly plug my own writing, but you should consider reading this essay where I argue that Trump wants to turn Cuba into the next Panama or the Bahamas, basically a node for capital flight from the US and Latin America.

fpif.org

The Court, the Crab, and Cuba - FPIF

What does the Trump administration want with Cuba?

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Reposted by Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦

flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Civilisation has been in a moral and artistic nosedive ever since they made it possible to play as Bowser in Mariokart, and win races for evil

Eliezer Yudkowsky & @allTheYud
X.com
I wonder how much of Western civilization's collapse is downstream of writers and scriptwriters deciding they were too cool and sophisticated to write about good people doing good things.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The fix is coming for Cuba. The moment the new comprador elite takes over, Venezuelan oil will rush back into the market (except this time with the US taking its cut).

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The most important lesson from the history of empire, going all the way back to the Venetian Republic: Don’t start a war where you have a bunch of fixed capital locked up.

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Logan McMillen 🌹🕊️🌎🇱🇧🇵🇸🇻🇦 @southerngradient.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

As the world teeters on the edge of an epochal energy transition, the US has launched a two-front war to preserve capital: violently asserting dominance over the fossil fuels that power the present while simultaneously enclosing the critical minerals required to build the future. My latest in FPIF.

fpif.org

The Expansion of the Donroe Doctrine - FPIF

Trump is attempting to synthesize the dying Oil Revolution with the ascendant Mineral Revolution.

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