My sources for the preamble come mostly from here, here, and here.
The thread image depicts Kenyan police, trained by the Zionist entity, in a meeting with President Ruto before being sent to Haiti, sourced from this article.
As has been planned for the last couple years, foreign police officers have been inside Haiti for a few months now. It will surprise nobody to learn that this has not gone very well. Gangs continue to control much of the country, and violence has continued in the form of massacres and forced relocations (approximately 1.3 million). Something like 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is under the control of one gang or another.
The aim by the US was to import 2500 police officers to Haiti from a wide variety of countries. One of those was Kenya; President Ruto had to fight his own country's courts to force this through, and ironically is now apparently considering withdrawing those officers once the UN mandate expires on October 2nd. The issue here is not only the limited manpower (Haiti has a population of 12 million), but also very pedestrian things, like the fact that the officers who arrive don't even speak the language.
The situation in Haiti appears to be a fairly standard operation of American national control, in which both battling sides are being supported by the US in order to create maximum disorganization and prevent a coherent political force from arising and thus threatening their Caribbean interests. While the US funds foreign forces to arrive in Haiti to "control the situation" or similar justifications, the Haitian gangs get their weapons smuggled in from the US itself. That this is happening alongside escalations against Venezuela is obviously not a coincidence - in a world in which American interests are being gradually shrugged off, and where the American state military is becoming rapidly more impotent and unable to dissuade and defeat even tiny states like Yemen, total imperial dominion of their immediate surrounding territory must be ensured by any means necessary.
The police and the gangs are likely designed to be mutually reinforcing, without even much kayfabe of fighting each other. As an example, once the Kenyan police arrived, they immediately began brutalizing anti-government protestors instead of focussing on gang activity. They were trained by the Zionist entity, after all.
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'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.
It is quite silly how people on Hexbear can both claim to be against capitalism, but also to claim that restoring capitalists as a class, and giving them more and more power is actually somehow good, and that everybody who agrees with people like Stalin on economics is an 'ultra' and bad.
I wish people had a better understanding of the effect the presence of the profit motive has an economy, compared to maintaining a planned economy.
Read Losurdo's Class Struggle. And if you don't want to read the whole book, read chapter 3. It's not like I have no ability to see the possibility of harm from markets or a capitalist class or profit motives, it's that I understand class as more complex than vulgar Marxists and Ultras want it to be. And I understand international struggles as class struggles in themselves
Ok, does Losurdo provide any evidence for capitalist restoration somehow being good for the working class, or is that just his raw opinion with no backing there?
This is just obvious cope, frankly, and ad hoc justification for literally just giving up workers' rights to restore capitalists as a class and giving them more and more power.
So far, you don't have anything to show for this supposedly being beneficial to the working class (in a manner that isn't just bounties of colonialism).
So far, since the Sino-Soviet split, the PRC has aided NATO and has not taken action that would make up for that in terms of international anti-colonial liberation.
The PRC is still probably the best bet as a force for making the world better, but the current PRC is a far cry from the USSR and the pre-split PRC.
"raw opinion with no backing" lol being dismissive of an astonishingly well read author in a book with an enormous catalogue of valuable citations building a basic concept of class struggle and showing how it's succeeded in history empirically. Good luck with that.
I can recreate his arguments if I mist, but you're just arguing at a different level. What does "restoration" mean in a context where political and economic power are delineated?
"Cope". Well buzz off and read the book. You're responding to something you entirely misunderstand. You act like me offering you a book to read was an argument in itself. What colonialism is China benefitting from?
Your view of international class struggle is also very limited to current obvious contradictions and entirely missing the context of a history leading to this, a huge set of systems which undergird the relationships, and the real ways things change. I'd say that summarizes your mistake with regards to class struggle in China too tbh
I should say I'm also sad that China isn't doing more directly right now for Gaza in a direct way. I also understand simultaneously how a long term strategy to prevent the coming genocides can be regarded as more achievable given China's relationships to the situation beforehand and now. I'm skeptical of China for that reason, but the argument you've made are just swings and misses, entirely missing why it's Happening
Considering that that's the usual mode in which people who hold the position of 'capitalist restoration and empowerment is somehow secretly good and communist' operate in, I don't think how you could complain even if I was actually dismissive. And this is after your 'the Bolsheviks were ultras, bad and wrong' sort of dismissal, haha.
And yet, you haven't actually provided any evidence for your predictions that capitalist restoration is good and awesome (despite the loss of workers' rights), and/or that the PRC will definitely undo that restoration and that it is just a temporary 5D chess thing (despite the PRC showing no interest in that, and there being no economic interest for the leadership of the PRC to do that). So far, your crowd has been wrong - the PRC has not been reverting back to an economy without capitalists (and without the profit motive), and has not been stopping colonialism.
You should stop pushing your pro-capitalist position so aggressively, and only come back when you have something to show for it.
Is this a serious question? Do you not know about the most obvious difference between planned economies and ones that have capitalists as a major class?
I am going to recommend you do the same and study a bit of economics and history instead of going 'bringing capitalists back is great, and everybody who disagrees is bad'.
It's pretty obvious that you are just trying to invent a reason for how things are actually cool and good in the world, and how the PRC is just engaging in 5D chess despite its leadership showing no signs of that.
I will read the book, but only after I actually do have the time. Right now, I do not, and will likely not for a year.
Haha. You are the one who initiated this, and you are the one aggressively pushing pro-capitalist nonsense.
You literally said this:
So don't try to lie about not trying to be hostile at this point.
It's also cute how you assume that you understand this topic when your entire point is that the PRC will definitely do something against capitalism and colonialism at an unspecified point in the future, and will eventually undo the capitalist restoration. (Or, rather, at best that is your claim, - the other possibility of you being a class collaborationist who wants capitalists to exist in perpetuity is the less charitable interpretation.)
Cute assumption that is based on nothing, made by somebody who doesn't even understand the implications of the presence of the profit motive in an economy.
Going to note that you aren't pointing to any sort of historical context that I am supposedly missing.
Well, so far my predictions about the PRC don't seem to be contradicted, while you have nothing to show with regards to your promises of the PRC eventually doing something.
You are making an assumption that this is the strategy that the leadership of the PRC are trying to follow. Let's be honest, you are just trying to engage in mind-reading, and there is no evidence for this assumption being true.
Again, my perception of the PRC's leadership having no interest in undoing its capitalist restoration, having no interest in ending colonialism, and having no interest in ending capitalism in the world keeps being validated by how things have been unfolding. You have nothing to show for your aggressive pushing of your silly pro-capitalist position.
EDIT:
Going to also point out that the fact that you don't understand why socialist movements so commonly adopted planned economies is very revealing of your lack of understanding of these topics.