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.
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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.
Thailand is dropping bridges now in Cambodia with their F-16s, as well as plinking tanks and rocket artillery/MLRS launchers with laser guided munitions. Thailand has been threatening to destroy bridges for days now, while also targeting Cambodian "scam call centres" in the meantime. Targeting the bridge is an escalation.
Bridge heavily damaged
Trump has been talking about a "ceasefire" between Cambodia and Thailand that was set to go into effect this evening.
Update, Thailand has conducted a follow up airstrike to completely destroy the bridge:
Heavily damaged earlier this morning:
Now destroyed after the second airstrike:
One thing I think we miss as historical materialists is a prediction that the American military empire is "collapsing" imminently and will get owned in its next war. It may just pick weak and small targets and be able to sustain itself for a few decades more. More likely scenario is the "international order" of Pax Americana disintegrating and global unrest and border conflicts escalating sharply over resources and sharply oppressing and exploiting subject populations nearby that are otherized. A general descent into barbarism as the unjust and unsustainable "peace" unravels as America becomes too internally contradictory to police the whole globe and instead just focuses on regional domination. The "garden" the Americans created goes untended and overgrows, the seeds they set by spreading fascism and destroying socialism internationally bear fruit as their reactionary appendages each break off and begin in earnest their own projects. Nations like Turkey will become regional superpowers, imagine the shit they are going to get up to while collaborating with the "Greater Israel" cancer that will surely metastasize outwards further one way or the other like the Nazis, either out of desperation or expansive greed. They will probably lose American support eventually, but it might also be the case that America goes all-in on Israel as a hail mary for its own survival. Imperial Japan also did a similar gambit of an extreme all-or-nothing play that even they knew would likely fail by attacking the Americans and expanding aggressively in the Pacific.
Not everyone in the world will go this way of course, some are socialist or democratic in real ways that will delay their descent into turmoil and border skirmishes, but many others will be pulled in against their will like Venezuela. A world of war, but maybe not a world war with unified sides and alliances. Instead like 10 ongoing major conflicts at a time, which all of course only cause even more acute crises of mass migration and ecological and climate destruction that is causing the resource shortages that fuel the wars. I don't know how we can escape this downward cycle.
There's this funny thing called "revolution"
It will need to be global this time and not piecemeal, because otherwise it won't dent the overall trend of the world into resource-scarcity driven barbarity and war. You are right, I'm just hoping it's not too late
It's always needed to be global. We're here now because 1936 and 1968 were partial victories
i mean imminently. we don't have another century to have partial victories and collapses back into reaction
This already a thing of the past. Turkey and Israhell are already on a collision course, of course against Iran & Hezbollah they likely will still cooperate, but turkish military was already bombed by zionist forces, and there is a very good reason the zionists have been buying up Cyprus (the half not colonized by turkey).