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.
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.
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.

Federal Reserve cuts US interest rates for first time since December The Guardian
Simultaneously, China sells TikTok.
Here’s what I wrote 8 months ago when Biden was going to ban TikTok:
Trump finally got the Fed to cut rate. China sells TikTok to hold up their part of the bargain. Read the linked comment above for full analysis. Much of it still holds up despite the shifting dynamics in the global economy and geopolitical tension over the months.
The US and China will continue to maneuver and maximize the leverage of their bargaining chips in the negotiations, until a new status quo emerges.
All this continues to imply that there is no decoupling between the two countries, despite what many wish to happen. As usual, the Global South continues to be screwed. But perhaps the biggest loser here is Europe, who will be forced to purchase American goods and de-industrialize themselves.
Thank you for your update. Do you have any thoughts/former posts on what it would take for China to begin decoupling? I recognize it's not an on/off switch, but I'm curious what you think would need to happen globally. My understanding is that so long as the US remains the gaping maw at the end of the global supply chain, it will always be in China's interest to sell to them. Even if domestic consumption in China increased or African consumer economies developed, I still struggle to see a world where the US is replaced as the foremost buyer of Chinese goods
Perhaps it’s easier to answer if we frame the question this way first:
Why should a country that possesses 31% of the global manufacturing capacity, one that pioneers cutting edge technologies in telecommunications (5G, 6G) and 6th generation fighters, one that builds amazing infrastructure all over the country, one that dominates the world in green technology such as solar panels and EVs, continue to have its economy heavily reliant on exporting cheap goods to foreign countries?
In 2024, China’s export surplus soared to a record $1 trillion, a clear indication of its failure to reorientate the economy away from the export sector despite vows to implement a Dual Circulation Model (export balanced by domestic consumption). Instead, we have deflation and poor consumption problem. Read my comment here for more elaborate explanation of that part.
Furthermore, has China’s domination in solar panels and EVs translated to wage growth to the workers in those sectors? The answer is no. If anything, there is a serious risk of those workers facing unemployment as the government is now stepping in to intervene with its “anti-involution” policy - production is scaling down and the consolidation of the industry will cause many to lose their jobs.
Ask yourself, does this even make sense? It does not! The only reasonable explanation here is the indoctrination of neoliberal ideology. I have been constantly ridiculed by some users on this site for saying that China’s economy follows a neoliberal model, but I’d really like to see how they can answer the above questions that isn’t rooted in neoliberalism.
Here’s the more elaborate answer:
The core tenet of neoclassical economics (which justifies neoliberalism) is that governments have to “balance their budget”, i.e. you should not spend more than you earn. If you want to invest in domestic economy, you should find a way to earn revenues first. Otherwise, austerity or borrow.
This led many developing countries to follow an “export-led growth strategy”, pioneered by the IMF, which entailed orientating their economy into prioritizing export goods, and which included lowering wages and suppressing local demand, in order to gain competitive advantage in the export market. They then place those foreign currencies earned on the asset side of their central bank balance sheet to create equivalent amounts of local currencies (which goes on the liability side of the balance sheet) for domestic investment. This allows those countries to run very low deficit, as long as they can earn a lot of revenues by selling cheap goods to wealthy Western countries to offset their domestic spending.
If you cannot earn those export revenues, then you have to institute austerity, or borrow from financial institutions. That’s the neoliberal way of doing things.
Starting in the 2000s, after joining the WTO, China had been able to leverage its vast (and cheap) labor pool to earn huge sums of export revenues by selling cheap manufacturing goods to Westerners (the foreign reserve currency of China soared to $3.2 trillion USD in the 2010s, and only stabilized after Obama ended quantitative easing in late 2013), and in turn, allowing China to create the domestic currency and grow its economy at double digit for nearly a decade, while neatly keeping its deficit under 3% to meet the IMF recommendation.
By 2009, as the GFC caused a slump in Westerners’ consumption, China turned into infrastructure building to offset the loss of GDP growth in the export sector. However, instead of the government/central bank creating the money through deficit spending to build infrastructure (which would have caused high deficit, a severe violation of the IMF rule), the Chinese government (both central and local) borrowed heavily from the financial institutions to finance those infrastructure building. (It’s more complex than that, because of the involvement of shadow banks (LGFVs) and a series of shenanigans that caused the local governments to recklessly speculate on land/property prices while taking out huge sums of loans that they can no longer repay).
Once again, the consequence of trying to “balance the budget” and trying to please the IMF instead of just driving up the deficit spending.
Another important point here is that the decentralized nature of the Chinese economy also caused a lot of tension between the central and local governments.
For example, the central government relies on tax revenues from the local governments to replenish its budget (“balancing the budget”), and the local governments themselves rely on value-added tax from the private sector.
So, if the central government wants to fight land speculation, then the local government (as well as the entire financial sector that had went all in on land speculation) would be in deep financial trouble, and this would cause the central government itself to lose revenues, failing to “balance the budget”. So, it keeps a blind eye.
Similarly, because the decentralized nature of the economy (especially after the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform) forced the local governments to finance their own industries (instead of being burdened by the central government), the local governments had to rely on rich business people (the ones that would go on to become billionaires) and deep corruption networks emerged from such constraints imposed from the central government.
If the central government tries to fight the billionaires, then the local governments would lose their financial support, the industries would lose subsidies from the local governments. That means less value-added tax for the central government, causing a failure to “balance the budget”. And so, even though the government has been eagerly fighting corruption for the past decade, it never seems to end lol. Keeping a blind eye on some corruption has become a necessity.
I can go on but you can see where this is going. It all goes back to how the neoliberal model has been deeply embedded into the Chinese economic system.
That’s what Socialism with Chinese characteristics actually mean - building Socialism through Neoliberal principles.
This is interesting. I was coming at it more from a perspective of "what material conditions need to emerge that would allow China's economy to decouple from the US", but your contention is that by agreeing to play by the Master's rules, the well has been poisoned. Even if the material conditions were to emerge, China would lack the desire or even capability to pursue decoupling because their institutions have operated on neoliberal principles for so long and vital industries are inexorably linked to the neoliberal order. I'm inclined to agree with you on this.
For me it begs the question, what - if anything - can China do to rectify the situation? I'm from the US and lack the knowledge/hubris to prescribe solutions so curious if you know of anyone writing about this
Well, when the Ukraine war started in 2022, I had serious hope that the US confiscating Russia’s $300 billion foreign reserves would push China into serious decoupling and de-dollarization. I was completely wrong on that. So, I cannot tell you what would finally push the leadership over the edge, but it will have to be a lot more than what Trump is doing right now.