Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.
Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.
summary
The Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran’s demands.
For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran’s position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.
The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump’s announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I’m definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah’s attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.
As I’ve been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here’s a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.
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Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.
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Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).
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Situation in the Sahel: “Mysterious” third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.
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Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.
I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi’s recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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 the Zionists’ 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
If anything Venezuela as once one of the best examples of socialism through the ballot (only achievable via the communes and militant working class), kinda failing and stumbling right now, only further hammers down the point that electoralism and bourgeois legalism will eventually disrupt and bring down even the most entrenched and materialist workers party.
absolutely. In the future, we will all agree that the greatest victory of the Venezuelan revolutionary electoralists was that they developed the commune system to the point that it could challenge and overthrow the state that created them.
Bolivia and Ecuador also fall on this spectrum; though the dialectic is obviously still in motion, the pink tide has basically proven why you need to go Red
I would argue that the Pink Tide laid the groundwork for a greater wave of socialist victories that is about to begin, as we see in Bolivia. The material and organizational gains of the Venezuelan, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian projects substantially developed the capacity of the people to fight for greater sovereignty and socialism. Colombia is now undergoing that process and will hopefully be able to synthesize the lessons of its neighbors to avoid a reactionary backslide.
Even the French Revolution didn’t start out with people wanting to cut off the head of the King.
Yes, it’s a necessary step, but necessary to prove its insufficiency. Correa can be popular and Evo can make massive gains, but at the end of the day, the empire will find an opening
Maybe even viewing it as a step or laying the groundwork is too simplifying and undialectical. It is more like a box drawn arbitrarily around one part of a process that has no clearly defined beginning or end in the long Latin American struggle towards sovereignty and independence from the demonic Amerikkkan empire. Left wing electoral victories never stopped; mass popular mobilizations were never squashed; right wing retrenchment in elections and through corporate consolidation have been ongoing throughout. The revolutionary process is long and complicated and the Pink Tide was just a way to contain and in some ways downplay the genuine victories of the Latin American peoples. Those presidents may have been displaced, but the people never were. All the people of the Andeans have become substantially more capable at asserting their power through a combination of electoral and non-electoral means, and the latter are coming more into focus at this exact moment. A few revolutionary victories will lead to a bigger wave of moderate leftist electoral victories, some portion of which will fall, and a decade from now we’ll be talking about how the Pink Tide was impressive for securing socialist governments across half the continent and building up ALBA into a force that successfully repelled the US from Cuba, but it simply laid the groundwork for the unification of South American states about to begin circa 2036.
It’s as if people don’t understand that the masses of millions of people in the countries they are talking about are individual people who are the agents of their social movements.
“When all these Indigenous people got together and took over their government for the first time since colonization and ran their country for decades while making massive gains despite being under siege from all sides, it was a failure actually, it’s only use was to show how ineffective their methods were.”
Was the horse drawn carriage just an example of failure that needed to exist to prove how much better a train is? Or do things exist within a historical and cultural context, changing over time until they become something else? I don’t see a lot of horse drawn carriages these days and I see more cars than trains… I’m beginning to think the conditions we exist in are having some sort of influence on the available choices people can make, despite my unlimited imagination assuring me that the things I think should be happening are correct.
Did I ever say it was “just” that and that the “only” use of these governments was as an example of failure? I was clearly painting with too broad a brush but this doesn’t seem like an accurate representation of my position either: that 21st century socialism, while an important result of struggle, has vulnerabilities that the left movements must address to remain in power
to be extra dialectical, @Jabril@hexbear.net were both overreacting and underreacting to your comment
Adding the extra context like you are here makes it easier to take seriously but without it, to me, feels very silly to a degree that feels almost outrageous at this point.
I just can’t imagine thinking and saying the things people do about what is effectively millions of people actively building socialism. Something almost no one here is doing or has even been marginally a part of.
Many comments are literally conspiracy theories and speculation about something the commenters almost always have hardly a surface level of information about. I think there are ways to talk about that kind of stuff with sensitivity and humility but people can be very sure their conspiracy is correct despite no real evidence and somehow think that is a scientific approach.
Understood. In this case, I have more knowledge of this context than my pithy initial statement would imply and shouldn’t have fired from the hip. But there’s no conspiracy in looking at the Correa period, looking at Ecuador now, and attempting to understand why we ended up with a narcostate instead of a safe socdem experiment. That’s the scientific method, and while “go red” is an obvious oversimplification, the struggles of the pink tide are useful lessons for those of us attempting to build socialism in our home countries
Capitalism laid the groundwork for socialism. That doesn’t mean that we go around making pro-capitalism arguments and defending the forces of capitalism do we?
it’s not that, it’s that you have to fucking socialize means of production, you don’t have to reinvent management from first principles each time and listen to institutionalists, you have to make support for porky structural impossibility. and your only opposition party should be to your left and/or anarchists
and then you look at your imports and start eliminating hard dependencies, food most of all, energy imports if you have them, and then go up maslow pyramid according to the size of your economy
obviously small countries can’t produce phones or anything complicated, they can however eliminate windows licenses payments in government
i do find it very questionable, for example, that cuba (god bless them) don’t make their own paracetamol or simpler antibiotics, those are not hard things to make
Do you think there could be factors you are not aware of that make the decisions that you imagine you would make inaccessible for the people who are actually forced to make them in reality ?
That seems unlikely, I read the news mega
If they had just maxed their tech tree and followed the build meta they would have made it to diamond league
Just get modern pharma industrial process get via institutional spread!!!
Do you know enough about pharmaceutical manufacturing chain to assert that?
I recall hearing a long long time ago that Brazil was manufacturing its own drugs in house when the price was very inflated by patent-holders. Dont know what goes into making any given drug easy or difficult to make.
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