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.
News thread discussing potential nuclear war, genocide, some ten paragraph analysis of the political situation in Estonia or something:
News thread discussing a certain candidate in the nyc mayoral election;
I just finished reading it, lol
This site just like the sub are still very much into the question of electoralism
These kinds of struggle sessions always go too far. It's almost always leftists who share mostly the same ideals, but as soon as a difference pops out, people start calling names, throwing accusasions, generalizing one bad take to the whole character of the other person etc. We can surely be more understanding, unity is what gives as the most strength, not being as purist as we can possibly be.
Nobody on the left has formally reckoned with how the internet has changed interactions and discussions. You can give someone an excuse for righteous indignation and they become an absolute terror because their foolishness is somehow fighting the good fight. You also get their weird thing where people treat issues like metaphysical entities that feed on attention. If you just talk about one issue enough, it gets stronger. If you don't feed another issue, it starves and dies. I think that is mostly due to social media and the structure of forums imprinting on people's minds and they think that's how things in the world work. And it's not a matter of who owns the website. These issues don't go away just because it's a leftist website.
A big problem with the internet is that people can't read the tone and emotion of the person on the other side of the screen, and as such, will always filter it through the medium of how they are currently feeling. So someone who has had a bit of a bad day or is feeling antagonistic will probably react much more negatively to someone else. This, combined with the fact there are no real consequences for being rude or mean, can make internet discussions turn nasty far quicker than face to face conversation.
To be fair, while this is mostly people arguing on a niche internet leftist forum that holds zero weight on what is actually happening in the world, the question of reform or revolution is a perpetually unresolved issue for the left that dates back at least a century. And I believe they argued even more fiercely back then when the world was at a critical juncture - choosing the wrong path could cost your entire movement and years of effort that went into it.
Arguing over whether to go the reform path or the revolution path is already baked into the consciousness of every left wing movement, hence the split of the Third International from the Second.
First as tragedy, then as farce.
The farcical part is that a century later, Western internet leftists argue over the question of reform vs revolution when they don’t even have an organized movement like they did a century ago, and most unwilling to arm themselves. Is this even a serious movement? There wasn’t any debate to be had, until they actually get serious about organizing and rallying people behind their cause, and have formulated strategy to take power like what Lenin and Mao did.
we're never going to reform the
. maybe we can get the boot off of some people's necks a bit. the national circus is ridiculous but it makes sense for nyc comrades to spend some effort here. everyone else is just spectating and doing whatever they were doing before.
Spoken like a true doomer! /s
I saw the /s but seriously doomerism would imply there is no solution (like climate change, which is a legitimate issue for much of the world).
The problem with the American left is that nearly a decade after Bernie Sanders first became a well-liked public socialist figure, they still seemingly have not learned anything. There are arguably some small progress here and there, but I am surprised they still haven’t managed to organize a mass movement properly.
It is fragmented as ever. What exactly is their strategy to take power? Do they even want to take power? I don’t know the answers and I doubt they know it either. Compare that to the early 20th century socialist movements and you see a stark difference there.
Well DSA is the largest US "left" organization and their mass movement is the topic of this thread. Mamdani is the culmination of all of DSA's work put to the test, and I do hope he wins just so we can see what happens. I'm very certain of what will happen as many others here are, but hey, it's something I'd love to be wrong about.
The reality is that the post new deal US is peak labor aristocracy and it has permanently damaged the psyche of nearly every American, especially after the red scare and the destruction of anti-war movements during the Vietnam war via counter culture bullshit. Americans all have individualized ideologies based on various mixes of fictional books/ movies/games, religious fundamentalism, American exceptionalism, western chauvinist white washed history, and good old fashioned selfishness. There is no national identity, nothing to unify around. Even if you get access to new (for Americans) methods of analysis like Marxism, you have to plug it into your boutique, firmly established idealist framework and essentially rob the truth of it's very essence. Everything is a facade on a facade. Like all empires, the destruction of America will be a self inflicted prerequisite before anything different will happen. This is why I only organize with New Afrikans, Indigenous, and decolonial orgs in the US, focusing on building relationships locally with the most marginalized and oppressed. When crisis hits, we already have established logistical hubs, healthcare systems, food production and most importantly, positive reputations with average people who know we can rely on each other.
tl;dr: there is no strategy to take power, the best of us are organizing for survival now and in anticipation of what is yet to come.
IMHO, the federal government has to fall before there's even a chance of socialism in the landmass currently called the US. Thinking the US can be socialist is like thinking the Qing dynasty can be socialist. There's so many dominos that had to fall before the CPC could even exist as a party with poor ideas about which strata of Chinese society had revolutionary potential (which was later corrected by Mao) and the chief domino is the Qing dynasty had to be overthrown first.
I think most people have this idea that US exceptionalism has to be combated before the US can be reformed/overthrown when it's the other way around: US exceptionalism can only be combated once the US is no more. The American dream will only cease to exist when America ceases to exist. It's idealist to think otherwise and we have a historical example with China. The movement against Confucianism and other traditional Chinese thought that served the feudal order only began after that feudal order ceased to exist. The 2000+ year old feudal imperial dynasty had to fall before intellectuals went, "damn, maybe Confucianism is not what it's cracked up to be" and the masses went, "damn, maybe these nerds saying Confucius ain't shit have a point."
I don't think anyone on the American left has a truly good idea of how to drive revolutionary change and create a mass organization in the US.
The closest I have seen anyone come to creating an organized mass movement are the Obama, Sanders, and Trump campaigns, all in a similar manner: popular/charismatic "political outsider" energizes a base of people through a presidential campaign that can then be channeled into an organization. Obama had it with Organizing for America, which was the organizing apparatus he set up that was entirely outside of the DNC (until he ended up rolling it into the DNC) but he is not a socialist and was primarily self-interested. Bernie kind of has that with the DSA but he wasn't really affiliated with the DSA at all (although the probably could have taken it over if he actually cared to), but he is also dedicated to the Democratic party despite not being officially a Democrat. Trump is basically an inversion of that, where years of wealthy conservative money creating the institutions necessary spawned a figure that could generate something along the lines of a mass movement to attach to those institutions.
You could probably put Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in there, as well, but those seemed doomed to fail in retrospect because they did not have a visible, centralized leadership.
I think this is important to consider. The US establishment has, for decades now, successfully captured any sort of mass movement and turned it into yet more support for the status quo. They have all the tools and tricks at their disposal to make sure any movement either just supports the system, or fizzles out (like OWS or BLM). It isn't easy to get around this, and I honestly don't have a solution myself, our American comrades do have it very rough when it comes to any sort of revolutionary optimism, so I don't blame them when a lukewarm demsoc gets their critical support because it is literally the closest thing to a left wing politician in their country.
Oh, 135 new comments? Must be some new major events in the world?
No, 3 new articles and 132 new comments of
>thread expressing annoyance over electoralism struggle sessions
>look inside
>another electoralism struggle session
Gotta push the comment count up to 1k before the end of the week, folks. I blame the rest of the news mega posters for slacking.
There's not much to post about to be honest. I could do some posts on the evolving air war in Ukraine, or Iranian ballistic missile performance, or various air defence systems, but actually writing it out would take hours, it's quite complicated, and it's not really "news". There also hasn't been any changes in the past few weeks, so I'd just be repeating myself, which is a waste of time for me, for the news mega readers, for everyone involved.
Russia is still attacking Ukrainian airbases with the weekly attack on Kiev, Ukraine is still attacking rail infrastructure with the weekly strike on Russian oil infrastructure. Russian long range air defence struggles to shoot down Ukrainian fighter aircraft due to an over-reliance on ground based sensors, Ukrainian fighter aircraft's air to air missiles are outranged by Russian aircraft's air to air missiles. Iranian ballistic missiles with the range to hit Israel still have relatively poor accuracy, shorter range Iranian ballistic missiles have precision strike accuracy.
Breaking down air defence systems and their capabilities would probably be the most interesting and new content.
IMO, there is stuff to post about, but it's depressing and/or controversial to this community. There's a lot of analysis that could be done with regards to the 10/7, the Gaza Genocide, and the wider conflict in the region, what can be learned, and next steps/options that can be taken to try and end the genocide. However, a lot of it is depressing and I think as a whole we aren't really ready to give that a good/fair analysis.
There's a lot of economics stuff going on but we also aren't the best econ posters.
the electoralism megathread reigns supreme
My actual reaction last night.
As a website that is (someone correct me if I'm wrong!) overwhelmingly American, I assume it's like this just because more people are actually familiar with the full electoral context in a way that most aren't for other countries. I'd guess that if this site was majority Estonian or something, local election discussion for that country would be very controversial.
Unknown demographics nonwithstanding, those USians are definitely the loudest and tend to assume they're the only ones. Would be interesting to learn what the demographics really look like. I think it would be good not to assume anyone's nationality on here or it'll become a self fulfilling prophecy by alienating the rest of us.
There's a subset of posters who will talk about electoral politics anywhere and everywhere else on the planet, but the second anything even vaguely related to US electoral politics comes up, it's like a contest to see who can be the most performatively leftist/"anti-electoralist".
Elections in global south countries actually mean something
Electoralism is electoralism. And France, the UK, and the rest of Europe aren't the global south.
I personally think most election posts aren't meaningful because most elections aren't meaningful in the grand scheme of things. I mostly skim over election posts unless they're about countries I have little knowledge of. The only noteworthy one is how MAS split between Morales and Arce because the speed in which support of MAS collapsed overnight when Morales disassociated himself from the party is yet another indictment against electoralism. Morales is ultimately supported by a mass Indigenous movement while MAS went from being a vanguard party of sorts to yet another bourgeois party.
Everything else like the DPP floundering in lawfare or Corbyn starting a new party isn't very meaningful in the grand scheme of things. To use my two examples, there isn't a real path forward for Taiwanese separatism anyways and Corbyn's party will most likely not succeed in the end nor be as impactful as Palestine Action. The recent French election where so many people here were hyping up the results amounted to a wet fart since Macron didn't have to step down.
In BRICS, South Africa has a coalition government now in the unholy marriage of the ANC and DA, and the EFF lost a lot of support to the MK party. This has really screwed up the political scene and is part of why the ANC and DA leaders both went to the US to meet Trump and get embarrassed on TV.
People here call Keir Starmer "kid starver"
They also talk about UK elections and Jeremy Corbyn starting a new party.
Jezza became a pariah from British media calling him an anti-semite, the other guy is a democrat party member.
Jeremy Corbyn is still doing electoralism. Bernie Sanders was a pariah of the US political media in two election cycles, too. They were calling Zohran an antisemite, too, so it must actually be fine to talk about him and election then, right?
he's a democrat
And Corbyn would still be in Labour if he could
And how did that entryism and reformism work out for him?
Poorly, partly because he has the political instincts of a moron. So why do all of the posters who cry about electoralism when anyone talks about US elections love to talk about elections anywhere else?
I personally wish you would shut the fuck up about elections in the empire and get to work on actual revolutionary programs
Elections outside the empire are relevant because socialism and anti-imperialism can actually happen via the ballot box. It cannot inside the core.
Please tell us more about how the Iranian people need to wise up and vote out Pezeshkian and the reformers.
Iran is not in the empire, it’s elections are real
Right so electoralism lol
There is not a single more "impactful" election than the US presidential election, purely due to the power the office holds as head of the global hegemon. If those elections don't mean anything , then no global elections mean anything.
Where did I say I am against all electoralism? Reread my comments. I’m against it inside the imperial core
Talking about elections isn't electoralism, that's what my comment you responded to is about.
Also, how did that line of thinking work out for Mossadegh?
Mossadegh didn't defend the gains, but if he has defended the gains against the west it would've been successful electoralism.
I'm not convinced of the distinction that Zposter is making, but it really feels like you're stuck in a universal ideal discussion (elections always bad or always aren't bad) when ZPoster is describing the material conditions that would change how electoralism functions
Maybe Mossadegh should have voted harder.
I didn't make a statement about electoralism, I made a statement about some of the posters here performatively complaining about "electoralism" only when US elections are brought up. Saying "Global South elections matter more" is a ridiculous statement, because the impact of US elections has far-reaching global impact due America's position as global hegemon.
You misunderstand here that the point ZPoster is making is that US elections have almost no impact on global politics (because both parties agree on the vast majority or topics on that stage and collaborate to maintain that), while global southern elections can put people into power who will fight against that hegemon. It's still limited and not the answer to anything in itself (like you mean with Mossadegh, it wasn't enough) but it's at least something with impact. Hamas was elected, and that has had very vast effects relative to the choice between Trump or Kamala.
I'm not entirely convinced that the politics of Hamas and Mossadegh didn't precede elections and make them unnecessary (haven't thought that part out yet). But this is at leats where you are talking past ZPoster