Over the last week, Sri Lanka has been hit by their worst national natural disaster since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Over 2 million people (about 10% of the population) were affected; the death toll is currently climbing past 600; nearly a hundred thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed, transport infrastructure is heavily damaged; industry has been damaged; and farmland has been flooded. The cost of damage so far looks to be about $7 billion, which is more than the combined budget spent on healthcare and education in Sri Lanka.
While there is plenty to say meteorologically about how this yet another concerning escalation as a result of climate change (Sri Lanka does experience cyclones, but they are usually significantly weaker than this), it's important to note that such disasters are, to at least a certain extent, able to warned about and their impacts somewhat mitigated. However, this requires both access to early detection and warning equipment, and an economy in which development is widespread - in this case, particularly in the construction of drainage systems and regulated construction, which has not generally occurred.
The IMF, on its 17th program with Sri Lanka, is doing its utmost to prevent such an economy from developing, as they instead promote reductions in public investment. On top of this, the rebuilding effort for Sri Lanka is already being planned and funded, and such donors include, of course, many Sri Lankan oligarchs, who will rebuild the damaged portions of the country yet further according to their visions, while sidelining the working class.
Perhaps neoliberalism's decay into its eventual death occurring concurrently into the gradual intensification of climate change and renewed wars signifies the rise of the era of disaster capitalism.
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 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.
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.
Proposal for new Entry Requirements for People Traveling to the US
Imagine finding out your family member went to the USA and gave the US government all of your phone numbers, email addresses, residencies, date of and place of birth, etc. I could see myself ending all communications with somebody who did that to me.
That makes it very easy for potential communists to be identified and arrested. And we know how many no-contact ghoul familiy members a lot of comrades have.
Is the no-contact thing as prevalent in other countries? I was under the assumption that the particular silliness and vitriolic nature of US politics was more associated with that kind of thing.
increasingly yes, since 2016 there has been massive export of vitriolic politics across the globe. Besides it may take only one comrade's identity being given to the empire to root out entire cells/parties/groups. And on the digital resources front even medium-sized socialists/broadly leftist/anti-imperialist groups are hopelessly outmatched in comparison to the letter agencies.
very depressing that the empire's rot infects the rest of the globe
My sister is gonna fucking narc on me what the fuck
time to start buying burner phones and providing her with new phone numbers every month to try to salt your information with bullshit
just another pile on top of the fucking mountain of reasons to not visit America
honestly a shame, the national parks look nice
10 years of business email addresses?? All family phone numbers for 5 years??
Hahahahaha
What not enough space for first pets name either?
It's kinda cathartic to watch the empire kill its own soft power.
People are going to stop coming to this country. Does the US not understand that it's a major global tourist destination? #3 in visitors, #2 in revenue.
Are they? They stopped caring about internet privacy.
the document's estimate to how long this information will take to fill out? 8 minutes paper form, 4 minutes website
it would take me like three fucking hours to come up with all this
The death of American soft power keeps coming
Critical support to forcing CBP agents to handle poo poo in a daily basis
Marco needs more v-bucks
No blood sacrifice required? Too lenient!
How do you think they get your DNA?
lmao what the hell
The Fifa cup is going to be a fiasco.
At least these smelly foreigners will not take the stadium seats away from hard working american Fans.
Maybe the US will find a new love for football, and abolish the NFL
that implise something fundamentally changing with americans , this wil not Happen, but i expect them to use the empty statiums as a flex against "soccer"
192.168.0.1
Hey, why are you located at my WiFi Router? Are you invading my house?
9.11.200.1
10.0.0.2 for me, what's going on?
10.4.20.69
Exporting the israeli system of tracking people to the globe
That's the tribute (population control & message manipulation) provided by the Zionist entity, with palestinans as lab rats.
And this is for ALL travellers?! Like, holiday visitors or longer visas?
Thats just for ESTA-Visas , like uk , Germany , France , Australia , Japan. (this )