Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.
Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.
Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.
Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.
Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he's met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.
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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
The title is a bit of a mouthful but the relatively short substack post (from the many I follow) serves as a useful tool in linking classic modern Marxist concepts and literature with current news pages in the context of Malaysia
Neoliberalism-as-Neo-Imperialism: Post-13MP Constraints, Economic Dependency, and the Entrenchment of Oligarchy in Malaysia
2nd August 2025
Introduction: Neoliberalism Reloaded in the 13th Malaysia Plan
Malaysia’s 13th Malaysia Plan (13MP) was heralded as a forward-looking framework to guide the country through economic recovery and structural reform. However, its implementation remains deeply constrained by a global order where neoliberalism, under the guise of liberalised trade and tech optimism, acts as a contemporary form of neo-imperialism. This essay draws from Samir Amin’s theory of unequal exchange, dependency theory, and Gramscian analyses of hegemony to frame Malaysia’s structural vulnerabilities—perpetuated by ethnocapital alliances, comprador capital, and collusion with Global North monopoly-finance capital.
remainder
Malaysia’s trade diplomacy was recently celebrated with the United States reducing its reciprocal tariff rate from 25% to 19%—a move framed as a diplomatic win. However, as clarified in the MITI statement, critical export sectors such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals are already exempt from new tariffs. Hence, there is no new material gain in terms of value-add or market expansion.
Key Argument: This scenario exemplifies unequal exchange, where the Global South (Malaysia) continues to export labor-intensive intermediate goods at low prices while importing high-value technology at inflated costs—creating a structural transfer of surplus to the Global North.
Reference: Samir Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development, Monthly Review Press, 1977.
Further Source: MITI Trade Statement (July 2025)
Malaysia’s digital economy push, while ostensibly progressive, is underwritten by state-backed incentives to Big Tech platforms like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Meta, and Amazon AWS. These corporations receive tax holidays, land grants (particularly in Johor and Cyberjaya), and preferential tariffs for electricity and water—subsidised by public spending.
Key Argument: Comprador technocrats within Malaysia’s GLC ecosystem facilitate this “digital rent extraction” in return for elite brokerage. The rakyat, meanwhile, face increasing cost of living, inflation, and underinvestment in public digital infrastructure.
Reference: Fadiah Nadwa Fikri, “Eliminate the Culture of Worshipping Wealth,” NUS Southeast Asian Centre, 2023.
Data Point: Electricity subsidy expenditure, MOF 2024 report.
Relevant Concept: Sweezy & Baran’s Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review, 1966.
Economic policy implementation under the 13MP remains tightly bound to ethnocapital alliances, where state contracts, subsidies, and ownership stakes favour politically connected Bumiputera elites. This arrangement both maintains political loyalty and diverts resources away from meritocratic redistribution or innovative sectoral development.
Key Argument: The post-NEP ethnocracy continues to thrive under neoliberalism, which ironically delegitimises state redistribution while reinforcing state-backed rentier structures—creating a dual crisis of legitimacy and inequality.
Reference: Gomez, E.T. et al. (2022). Malaysia’s Political Economy: Ownership and Control of Corporate Capital. ISEAS.
Supporting Concept: Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution and hegemony through clientelism.
The IMF (August 2025) reports increasing geopolitical tensions, tariff risks, and stagnating multilateral trust in the global economy. Malaysia, with a GDP size constituting less than 0.3% of global output, finds itself trapped in the semi-periphery—dependent on FDI, vulnerable to external shocks, and constrained by domestic debt burdens and productivity stagnation.
Key Argument: Despite its ambitions for high-income status, Malaysia is structurally subordinated to global capital flows and FDI conditions. Its policy room is narrowed not only by fiscal limitations but also by ideological surrender to neoliberal integration.
Reference: IMF Blog, “New Standards for Economic Data,” July 2025. (https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2025/07/31/new-standards-for-economic-data-aim-to-sharpen-view-of-global-economy)
Theoretical Base: Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Theory
Conclusion: Towards a Post-Dependency National Strategy
The 13MP will not succeed unless Malaysia dismantles its dependency logic—whether on U.S.-China supply chains, Big Tech’s infrastructural colonisation, or the institutional entrenchment of ethnocapital and comprador elites. Only through a radical re-imagining of national development priorities, with a return to social wage policies, public digital infrastructure, and class-based redistribution, can Malaysia reclaim agency from neoliberal-imperialist constraints.
Linkages of Neoliberal Dependency in Malaysia: Capital Entrenchment & Global Tech Hegemony
Semi-related, since it’s been a while I followed Malaysian politics, but how is the new Anwar government doing compared to the previous BN rule?
I know that the socdem DAP has been completely neoliberalized, are there any left wing forces within the Pakatan coalition government these days?
My understanding is that Anwar himself used to be the NED candidate and supported by the US during his political imprisonment by Mahathir, so he’s very much a neoliberal, but has since “rebranded” himself as a repentant opposition leader.
It’s not as straight-forward. Basically PH gained power after the 2018 elections but was based on a tricky coalition with certain smaller parties. After the so-called “Sheraton move” in 2020 which involved many members in the ruling coalition defecting to the opposition thereby disrupting the tenuous majority in parliament, lead to PN gaining power with help from BN for 1.5 years.
This temporary alliance was then also beset with problems that lead to the 2022 snap elections. But the problems didn’t stop there because the results again saw a deadlock in which the 3 main coalitions, PH, BN and PN unable to secure a majority of the parliamentary seats. After negotiations, PH finally rose to power with Anwar appointed as PM, with BN supporting his candidacy.
Outside the political spectacle, the government has continued it’s neoliberal trajectory for nearly 4 decades, for example the privatisation of public healthcare and corporatization of GLCs for profit-maximisation. The government has recently given a cash handout of 100RM (~170CNY), a populist measure to dampen the discontent many people on the ground feel despite official statistics of very low inflation. A clear band-aid that does not solve the structural issues that are facing the economy,
As a result, there has been a lot of disappointment within the activist-NGO circuit, even for the NED funded ones, who were hoping for larger reforms that failed to materialize.
The socdem DAP has never really escaped it’s “democratic socialist” identity which stands in stark contrast to anti-imperialist Communism and Marxism - from it’s beginnings (as the Malaysian branch of Singapore’s PAP) to it’s current formulation. Although I would admit, it has probably drifted definitively into the neoliberal camp for decades at this point.
I’ve mentioned this before but Malaysia has no existing parliamentary party that is willing to decisively break from neoliberal politics. Malaysia has heavily suppressed and disempowered mass movements that face multiple contradictions upon multiple axes, in which ever since the 80s the Left has never really recovered in terms of popularity and mobilisation. There are perhaps a handful of parties and organizations I can name that truly fit the Left label, but regardless it’s going to be a long road with no straightforward path before a credible Left alternative will rise.
Anwar’s history is mired with complications that go beyond just his NED and Westward-facing smiles. To call him “the” NED candidate simplifies the political situation, which in my opinion is like calling Putin a comprador in 2005. In some regards that is true, but material reality limit a colour revolution style capture of the Malaysian political scene.
Anwar Ibrahim’s first rise to power was through an Islamic activist current in the 70s and 80s, with ideological affiliations with the Muslim Brotherhood. His disagreement with Mahathir and subsequent detainment, and extensive engagements within the policy-making circles in the USA is well-known, but consistent with the Malaysian political scene, he does not fall into the classic US-funded comprador politician found in other Global South countries. Because that would be a case of self-inflicted harm that disrupts his own class interests, and I have to give props for the ruling classes here in maintaining some level of cohesion and not committing suicide through US involvement (moreso than it already has).
A fun fact that I also forgot until I was reminded of recently was that Anwar Ibrahim actually proposed to revive the Mahathir’s old ideas of the Asian Monetary Fund 2 years ago.
I think the best way I can describe Anwar Ibrahim’s positions is that he is a product of internal contradictions within the Malaysian political economy as much as the international contradictions. In a way he represents a “new normal” of multipolar neoliberal capitalism where the old is still in the process of giving into the new.