There’s way too much going on right now for me to really focus on any one country this week. The aftermath of the fall of the Nepal government has, somewhat surprisingly, reverberated around the world, and not only in countries that are enemies to the West as you’d expect; for example, Morocco’s government battle fiercely with Egypt’s and Jordan’s to be first in line to lick the dogshit off the boots of Zionists, and yet Morocco is currently embroiled in a large protest wave based primarily around a youth unemployment crisis (though their population is also remarkably pro-Palestinian, which generates additional friction). We’re also seeing similar protests in Madagascar, Peru, and Paraguay, and perhaps more will come. I’m personally fairly doubtful in the potential for meaningful economic results from these protests (the current imperialist system seems too deeply embedded for a movement that isn’t explicitly communist and anti-imperialist to alter conditions), but it is quite possible for new political results at least.
Outside of the developing world, it appears that the unpopularity of western leaders, such as in the UK, France, and Italy, is creating new levels of unrest. In Britain, the political system has become so utterly moribund that even the artificial democracy of a two-party system (more-or-less; the Lib Dems do exist I suppose) no longer suffices, with both Conservatives and Labour gradually sinking. The Reform party appears like it may become the new standard-bearer of the capitalists and petit-bourgeois - that is, the historical wellspring of fascism - and the Left Party (whatever name they eventually choose) may or may not rise to meet the occasion. In France, they’re on their fifth Prime Minister in two years, after Lecornu lasted about a month, attempting the liberal classic: promising change, and then appointing the exact same people who have ruled for the last few decades. And pro-Palestinian protests and general strikes have erupted in Italy, in defiance of their rightwing government under Meloni.
While there’s plenty of other events (e.g. continuing aggression against Venezuela that might soon erupt into a war) it would be remise of me not to mention the very much ongoing events vis-a-vis Palestine and a potential peace deal there, seemingly supported to some degree by Trump. It could be legitimate, and it could be some big act (very likely the latter, IMO). Both Trump and Netanyahu seem to believe that they’re very talented political masterminds, producing manoeuvres and feints that would make Machiavelli blush. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I trust the militant organizations inside Palestine to outplay these American failsons. Hamas and similar groups are not nearly as gullible as the Iranian reformist faction - though few people are!
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity'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.
Mamdani officially called Diaz-Canel and Maduro “dictators” and said “their administrations have stifled free and fair elections, imprisoned political opponents, and suppressed a free and fair press”. This is as Trump is openly calling for airstrikes against Venezuela and regime throw against Maduro. What a fucking snake.
I can’t say I’m surprised that an amerikkkan “democratic socialist” reveals himself to be just another social fascist in disguise, but the fact that he’s saying these things right when the empire is trying to manufacture consent for war, means he will have blood on his hands before he’s even elected.
He could’ve just said none of that, what would he even gain by railing against Cuba and Venezuela?
You (Mamdani) have talked about how you’re like a socialist that likes communists, and Cuba’s like a wholesome paradise compared to so much of the world, and even so much of Latin America.
And Venezuela isn’t perfect, but this is literally the worst time to be talking about their problems. When you say something is just as important as what you say, and this is like complaining about Saddam while letting the US off light.
Um acktually his Democratic party appointed
mindersconsultants informed him it was necessary to get more of the Latino vote despite the fact he was already doing well. By doing this he reassures first and second generation gusanos that his “socialism” is nothing like the real deal. Won’t stop Fox News and the NY Post and his opponents in their attack ads from depicting him as literally mega-Stalin of course but the consultants said he should.Zohran AOC Mamdani
I’ve been saying it all along. Running as a Democrat, wanting to “make cops’ job easier”, etc.
Dude is no leftist, and never has been. He just let DSA coach him on aesthetics, or whatever.
There’s a reason he ran essentially unopposed in past elections.
Interesting? I know nothing about this
Go read his Wikipedia article. It’s really bad especially when you compare him to the early political activity/career of people like Maduro or Corbyn. Even Sanders’s early college activism looks great compared to Mamdani.
His entire political history amounts to founding a branch of a Palestinian org when Palestinian solidarity was at an all-time low and winning a single primary election for state assembly. He has never faced real opposition, let along serious opposition.
Remember when the news mega had struggle sessions over Mamdani?
The amount of effort that is expended talking about this guy either way is kind of crazy. NYC mayor is a dead-end job (no NYC mayor has ever gone on to do anything politically meaningful after serving) significantly hampered by the city council, city bureaucracy, and wealthy/business interests. The most annoying thing about the whole debate around him here (to me, anyways) is people being assholes to other users because they don’t agree with someone else’s take on him. The most interesting thing is if he gets elected and that’s about it. Otherwise chances are high he just ends up being Woke® DeBlasio.
Remember last week when he was being glazed here? Maybe the people starting “struggle sessions” were just right too early
often the case.
Zohran Mamdani killed Rosa Luxemburg
The Pelosification is in progress
This is bad even by Bernie standards who would probably say something similar but qualify it with a call to end the embargo or praise the literacy programs and with Venezuela maybe he would condemn the strikes on the boats and say something vaguely anti war
Sadly the best possible interpretation is that he was actually being honest when he said a few weeks ago “that he didn’t know much about Cuba” and this is just pure ignorance speaking (which is quite profound like how do you have that much political experience plus dsa organizing without knowing basic facts about Cuba) If it’s not ignorance and he knows what a betrayal this is and is doing this as a cynical political calculation not only is that disturbing it also speaks to god awful political instincts like if you wanted a PC answer there’s a million better ways you could have done that you just gave a standard neo con answer dumb ass
Bernie called Hugo Chavez a Communist dictator
I know.
That’s why i said he would have given a similar answer with an additional qualifier (zohran can’t even qualify it)
For example here’s a statement from Bernie in 2019
Zohrans statement is even worse because he can’t even throw a half ass bone to the left about “well also regime change is bad”
He did say that in the full statement IIRC. It’s still worthless because it’s still wrong and manufacturing consent for intervention.
Interesting i was just going off the image that’s being widely shared
Normally I dislike out of context stuff getting shared but like you said zohrans inaccurate defamatory statement towards the two countries just lends consent to do regime change anyway so I don’t feel bad for zohran here at all
Seems like he’s starting to fall for the trap deblasio fell into where he tried to please every group and ended up pleasing no one
high praise
Never support a democrat
How long wil it take for the DSA and the “left” to drop the Democrats for good?
How long wil it take for the
DSA and the“left” to drop DSAthe Democratsfor good?Did someone have a talk with him?
APAB
Just say you’re more worried about the repressive regime in the US. Jfc
He’s running for mayor, what does it matter what he thinks of Cuba and Venezuela? It’s not like he’s going to move the needle on foreign policy in any way.
At this point he should just say what’s needed to not get himself unnecessarily attacked and focus on winning the election.
Makes it harder for the left to oppose imperialism when you’ve got self-labelled socialists with a platform as large as his actively supporting the imperialist narratives that are going to be used to justify invading.
It makes the soft-left that like him but aren’t politically educated fucking impossible to educate because we’re just “tankies” with the wrong view. He should be laundering left wing views into the mainstream, not fucking expressing the state department’s own line.
Yep, he is effectively setting the boundary for how far left you can go to still be taken seriously. It’s severely disappointing to see this level of opportunism; if he was more principled, he would take calculated risks to push that boundary further, not cash it in for his own interests (that will fail to cause qualitative change in the status quo because he’s only running an electoral campaign with no parallel revolutionary movement or strategy).
Good way to describe it. Also why it’s so important that Corbyn and Diane Abbot were so unapologetic in their positions.
If Zohran took the pro-Cuba and Venezuela position, a lot more people would look at him and say “Oh I guess it’s ok for me to believe that too”. But now we have to contend with the pragmatic crowd calling them childish positions.
He’s running for mayor so why is he pushing chauvinist fascist lines that he doesn’t need to? Talk about a fucking worm.
like, just talk past these media freaks, every time they bring up cuba you go “cool story, let’s talk about fixing the fucking subway like new yorkers actually voted on” or whatever
every politician does this and yet he just has to give his honest opinion about this because he really believes it
do you actually, genuinely believe they’ll stop accusing him of supporting maduro or whatever now?
He’s hiding his power level. Do whatever is needed to not make himself unnecessarily painted as a target by the mainstream presses who are desperate to find some dirt on him.
You are trying to engage in mind reading here. There is literally no way for you to know what you are confidently claiming here.
I was told by another user this last time we had a “struggle session” about Mamdani. So it must be true.
Incredible bit.
He’s not. A few weeks ago, he said he didn’t know enough and called Venezuela repressive. Then some podcast gusanos talked to him. Then he said this. He actually just believes what he’s saying.
Are you really suggesting a wealthy labor aristocratic DSA member believes AES states are bad? It’s unprecedented!
Actually Mandani is hiding his power level if you would just trust him. He can be even more racist if he wanted to.
Yeah, I’m sure this time it’s different
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net I love your takes on economics, China and BRICS, but respectfully I feel that American politics appears to be out of your wheelhouse.
it really feels like they’re doing a bit sometimes
I don’t think so. They’re exceedingly competent. Just not as it pertains to domestic Burger Reich affairs.
Dunno about that. They certainly write long comments about Chinese economics, but I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily accurate. Talking about Mamdani’s “power level” seemingly unironically doesn’t exactly improve my opinion of their other posts.
that’s why it feels so off. One comment will be a wall of text about Chinese fiscal policy that’s well cited and then the next is like a snarky shitlib comment from twitter in 2017
Another user here once said that even reading a a Michael Roberts blog post is equivalent to getting a phd in economics just to be able to discuss shit.
I’m sorry but given this level of engagement here its no wonder xhs gets to roleplay as both a CN “ground news reporter” and econ expert. Very few people are actualy interested, I’m not calling anyone out but in general, nobody actualy cares about Marxist economics which is why IMO someone like him can sometimes literaly copy paste recycled mainstream garbage e.g monetary theory, mainstream policy, keynesianism, MMT(all garbage anti-Marxism) and pass it off as what “China needs to do” without ever actualy quoting an actual Marxist(Chinese or western) or do so very sparingly. Don’t get me wrong I think his heart is in the right place, its not malice, but its also not correct at all.
I do not know what competent means here I ought to think it should be more than regurgitating mainstream shit. Like how you can tune in to some Youtube CGTN “business” shit right now and hear the same stuff he talks about. Like clearly China isn’t doing socialism and its not realy on a path anymore(IMO) and its why the cracks are showing and instead of proposing taking a rifle and pointing at the capitalist leadership and influence among the CPC they rather daydream about monetary policy giving money to the poor(social democracy) while ignoring this is not a long term solution etc…
Be more respectful of fellow posters here.
Please explain how any of what I said is not compatible with Marxism?
I have said before that Michael Roberts’s problem with MMT is that he still think in terms of fixed exchange rate regime, and for reasons I don’t understand, unwilling to learn how to think in floating exchange currency mechanisms. All of his critiques against MMT would be moot the moment he starts thinking in how the currencies can simply float.
This is also the problem with Keynes, who, to be fair, lived in a world where gold standard was dominant. The Keynesians could not solve the wage-price spiral problem, which directly led to Thatcherism and Reaganism aka neoliberalism after the 1970s. This is a fact.
Only Stalin figured out that the Soviet ruble could be decoupled from gold when most of the world was still stuck to gold standard, and through a series of credit reform, was able to finance the development of the post-civil war USSR and rapidly industrialized the country without the dreaded inflation problem. This is also a fact.
I have said many times before that the major influence of my thinking came from Prof. Jia Genliang who is a actually a well respected political economist (aka what Marxist economist is called in China) from People’s University.
His books, the Great Internal Circulation (2020) discussed the US-China trade war and why the Internal Circulation aka domestic consumption economy has to supplant export-oriented economy (External Circulation) in order for China to reduce its reliance on the US economy, and MMT in China (2023) discussed how the monetary system works in China and its limitations from not allowing the government to drive up spending deficit.
Yeah please tell me where on the Chinese mainstream news outlet talks about government driving up deficit spending to resolve the domestic consumption problem.
“Why don’t people take my advice of overthrowing the CPC seriously”
a. That’s fiscal policy
b. I’m certain they aren’t for giving one-off stimmies
c. Calling for a wage floor and loose full employment is a basic policy many Marxist economists advocate for.
I absolutely agree that the biggest bane of contemporary Marxism has been the utter negligence of the political economy, even though Marx wrote almost exclusively on it. Now, with the west co-opting discourse on Marxism and moving it solely to the softest of social sciences, they’ve been able to silence the opposition and even proclaim unscientific trite such as the STV the orthodox position. You will scarcely find even contemporary Marxists accept the LTV, even though the theory of exploitation literally rests fundamentally on it!
Despite all that however, it’s not impossible to agree with Keynes and the MMT crowd on macroeconomic issues especially. And I somewhat agree that what China is doing can hardly be called socialism. It’s more like just the NEP, capitalist economy with a socialist state overseeing it. Still however, we don’t have a better option that China right now. They’ve been pretty clear in at least dealing with however wants to do trade, which is certainly a good thing for future movements of ours that will hopefully take over.
I’ve watched Game of Thrones and House of Cards, so I’m pretty sure I know how American politics works. He’s playing to survive the political game in the long haul. Actually makes me think he’s competent for once.
SMDH didn’t watch Andor.
For real, I haven’t watched it lol. I haven’t had time to watch TV shows in the past few years but it’s certainly on the list.
Waiting for Mamdani to oppose China’s turning its economy to import-based so we can finally flip xiaohongshu
I think he is just as sellout like the thousand other “leftist” candidates that have also soldout
lmfao
lmaooooo
Yeah, Mamdani is probably the only guy I’d say that about. Normally I say that people hide their right wing power level, not their left
But the way this dude went from posting memes about communist mayors and being DSA cadre to shaking hands with cops and condemning communists on a heal turn really paints a picture
Either of hiding his power level or rapid cooption by the dems (or a little of both)
look everyone, it’s a rube!
Ah yes, capitulating to Zionists and imperialists definitely gets them off your back, it for sure won’t just give them more fuel to critique you. He’s got the election in the bag, he doesn’t need to do this