For more on the situation in Nepal, I recommend @MelianPretext@lemmygrad.ml’s comment here.
Following a “anti-corruption” protest movement spurred by a social media ban (but with much deeper roots) in which dozens of protestors were killed by state forces, the government of KP Oli has been ousted, and an interim leader is currently in power as the country prepares for elections. Notably, events have been characterized as “Gen Z protests”, and this leader was decided (at least partially) by a Discord vote. When a non-western government rapidly falls, it’s wise to at least glance in the direction of the United States, and there are almost certainly elements of color revolution here. But, as always, it’s more complicated than simple regime change - Nepal is a deeply troubled economy even as developing countries go.
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Despite winning 75% of the seats in parliament in 2017, the various communist parties have failed to unify towards forming a common agenda and solving the problems of the people. When the nominally united communist party split in 2021, infighting and opportunism eventually brought on the rightist politicians we see today.
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The Nepalese economy is not successful. Disasters are slow to be ameliorated, education and healthcare is underfunded, and poverty is fairly rampant. There have been significant developments made by the communist parties, such as electrification programs and some poverty reduction, but it has been insufficient.
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The petty bourgeois usually come from oppressed Hindu castes, and are frustrated by the domination of upper castes, and so are inspired by India’s BJP. They essentially want a return to monarchy, under the guise of anti-corruption, and despite their relatively small numbers, are powerfully organized.
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Of the countries that aren’t tiny islands, Nepal has the highest per capita rate of work migration, due to insufficient employment in Nepal. The jobs that Nepalese citizens receive overseas range from unpleasant to unbearable in both labour and wages, and this has generated rightful suspicion that the government cares more about foreign direct investors than their own citizens overseas.
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The government of KP Oli was close to the United States, and India’s Modi has promoted the BJP in Nepal. Both countries have sought to exert influence over Nepal, though Prashad speculates that, if there is indeed a foreign mastermind at work, India is more likely to be the culprit behind these recent protests, in a gambit to use the chaos to promote/install a far right monarchist government.
I agree with Prashad that it seems unlikely that mere electoral changes will result in anything terribly productive, though whatever government emerges will inevitably hoist the banner of anti-corruption to try and legitimize themselves. We have seen the same breakdown of electoralism as a meaningful pathway to solve national problems all across the world, from the superpowers to the poorest states. Until a rupture occurs, greater surveillance, policing, and repression seems guaranteed.
Last week’s thread is here.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Tyler Robinson is ex-Mormon. That really explains everything to me about the motive and character of this assassination. The family is Mormon and active in the local church still, and the rat father is LDS.
For those who did not grow up in the LDS church, it is fairly all-consuming. You spend 3 hours on Sunday at Church, ~2 hour each Wednesday at Youth Group, ~2 hours cleaning the church once a month or so, time doing service, time doing your assigned roles in the church as it’s all unpaid lay clergy. You hang out with Mormons all day every day. You have a certain certainty as you have the “gift of the holy ghost” which is basically deputized emotions given prophetic power, what you feel is always right. There is huge emphasis on the church being true, the only true church, with very specific rites and rituals that are required. This instills them a deep idealistic and romantic outlook, symbolic things are very real and materialism is a thing of the world. There are literal truths about existence that they have access to, the earthly world was one realm of many and they would eventually become Gods.
They are also very much into gun culture and vigilante non-government violence, as seen by the dudes who occupied the Malheur refuge in Oregon and the entire hundreds year history of Utah and their clashes with the US government, the native peoples they occupied and even just non-Mormon white settlers (Look up Mountain Meadow Massacre for starts, that’s the tip of the iceberg).
It’s not that they’re “rebellious”. They are very obsequious and subservient to authority. They just believe the authority of the world is mostly fake, or secondary, to the authority of the church and the prophet and Mormon material interests as a whole. Remember, Mormons are very rich and powerful and connected in Utah especially. Remember, the entire goal of their stated theology is to become Gods by accruing wives and children and obeying authority until they are rewarded.
When you first become ex-Mormon and leave the church, it doesn’t come off all at once. For some, they only partially do it and become Jack Mormons, drinking and sinning and doing drugs but maybe attending church once in a while when your active Mormon friends come pick you up. But those who break more radically are often pissed off and angry at the lies they’ve been fed their whole lives, justifiably so. However, they still feel that there is an absolute truth, have a very idealistic and romantic outlook and very violent outlook that shirks popular opinion and widespread culture as shallow and material.
I remember when I went through the nu-Atheist phase of my early ex-Mormondom, I consumed hours of atheist “philosophy” on YouTube and forums and chats. I was in college and also taking philosophy 101 classes and my mind was being blown. I was moving to the left, very pissed and rebellious against the Bush-era conservatism of my father and family. I could see if I was familiar in hunting and handling guns I might just do something stupid out of the “principle” of the thing, if caught in a weird mood. This is like radliberalism times one hundred. Mormons are the most American religion, and an ex-Mormon is the most American radical.
4 Israeli soldiers got smoked in Rafah
sourceSeveral Northeast States (and NYC) have announced the Northeast Public Health Collaborative
I know the west-coast announced they did the same two weeks ago.
Spicy shit is happening internally in Your Party:
Interestingly I do not have an email from that morning, so whatever it was that they believe got sent out to all members did not reach me nor did it reach my spam box.
EDIT: Alright I think I’m up to speed now.
Allegedly Corbyn’s faction were going to go ahead with a membership announcement without Sultana’s approval, using the finance systems from his faction’s backers, rather than hers. Allegedly her side having the finances and Corbyn’s side having the mailing lists/info from PJP was part of the balance and this would have put all the material elements of the party under the Corbyn faction’s control so this was a last minute attempt to prevent a coup.
This is why she was excluded from the signatures on the above email (cut off in my shitty crop)
Her statement is:
So basically, what looked like a data breach is actually factional infighting.
Trots are being trots. You wonder why I hate trots so much when they do this shit in every single org.
TL;DR: One party leader is accusing the other party leader of fraud while one party leader accuses the other of sexism.
My personal odds are over 50% that this kills the party completely.
seem to arrive fasterThey literally just locked his ass up because they shut down the abusive health centre where he was previously being “cared for”. I’m surprised they didn’t try and use
aktion T4MAID on him.shit like this is why I’m going undiagnosed
Estonia renames and defunds ‘Russian Theatre’ to Europeanize the institution:
The rebranding to Downtown Theater comes with a 15 percent budget cut, which saw eight actors laid off last week.
“We have a new artistic director, who has outlined their vision of what a contemporary, clearly [non-Russian] European-focused theater should look like,”
https://news.err.ee/1609802388/gallery-russian-dropped-as-tallinn-theater-renamed-downtown-theater
[Norway, Klassekampen] SV refuses to negotiate state budget with Labor unless the Norwegian Oil Fund further divest from Israel
One of our left-wing parties doing some cool stuff.
Machine-translated excerpts below with some corrections.
spoiler
SV [Socialist Left-party] demands that the Oil Fund must withdraw from a number of companies that, according to them, contribute to violations of international law in Palestine. This includes companies such as Airbnb and Tripadvisor. If not, SV refuses to negotiate state budget with the Labor Party.
[…] Sources have told Klassekampen that no form of negotiations or talks are underway.
[…] SV’s ultimatum list is based on two sources: a 2024 UN list and a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
There are 16 companies left after the Oil Fund has sold itself out of several companies that can be linked to Israel’s international law-rich occupation in the West Bank and warfare in Gaza.
Six of these companies were on SV’s original list, including the US company Caterpillar.
The downsales have aroused powerful reactions in the United States. According to NRK, the US Department of Foreign Affairs has contacted Jonas Gahr Støre directly, while Republican Senator Lindsay Graham has said that the decision «will have consequences».
In SV, they think the Labor Party is afraid to trigger even stronger reactions if they agree to SV’s demands. The party understands this, but still believes that the right thing is to continue to divest.
At home in Norway, there are more and more people who advocate a complete boycott of Israel. Klassekampen have been told that Labor will not promise SV that a divestment from the companies on their list should come at another time – not even far ahead in time.
SV has negotiated with the Labor Party and secured the government majority for state budget throughout the previous parliamentary period. After this year’s election, Støre and Ap are still dependent on SV’s support if they are to have a majority for the state budget on their side.
Saudi Arabia’s Defense Pact With Pakistan Is A Strategic Loss For The U.S. of A. | Moon of Alabama
this post has been checked for anti-trans brainworms by real hexbear patriots ✅
corbyn on that fumbling (?) the bag train
or sultana decided that boomer waffling takes too long, and they decided to just torch everything. blessed behavior
everything must be done publicly, to make you look like biggest dipshits around:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jerome-powell-federal-reserve-interest-rates-b2828551.html Jerome powell cuts interest rates a quarter of a percent. yeah not promising
The UN Commission concluded that Israel was committing genocide, and Israel responded with denial and a study from one of its universities/think tanks defending its behavior.
I’ll try to finish the PDF throughout this year but this is really difficult to push through.
