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.
The actual project cited called "Yuva Netritwa: Paradarshi Niti” (Youth Leadership: Transparent Policy)" ran from July 2021 to June 2022 and selected some 60-70 people for training.
I mean if any other protest from then, and I mean there were a lot of protest, managed to overthrow the government then will it also automatically be a color revolution because NED money once flowed here few years ago?
My point is that the scale of the protest was too large to have only evidence being some report from 2022 running a training program. The most suspicious part for international audience might be the use of discord to elect the interim PM, which is a fair thing to be worry about, but the burning of Supreme Court and the Singha Durbar is even more suspicious event for us. guess is there was some internal conspiracy involving Nepal Army due to their inaction for most of the day.
not denying it couldn't possibly have been a color revolution but just haven't seen any credible evidence of US involvement. Also that NED training program might even be related to MCC since the timeline match more.
Yes, it just flowed once. The CIA only did one thing and then left.
There's much more evidence. Hundreds of organizations, with millions of dollars of receipts. Among these are The Committee to Protect Journalists, The Federation of Nepali Journalists, Freedom Forum Nepal, The Gurkha Welfare Trust, Alliance of Youth Movements, Hami Nepal, Open Technology Fund, DRAPAC VPN Project, Legal Aid & Consultancy Center, Initiative for Democratic Renewal, etc. etc. with 1000 more trusts, NGOs, charities, initiatives, ministries, yada yada.
NED just admits to a bit of it outright on page 26 of this document about their 2024 budget. Notice they are even entangling themselves within the labor movement like they did in Poland and Chile to destroy those socialist governments. This is what they outright admit to, this is the tip of the iceberg of all the covert activities they actually do. There's shady CIA shit going on at massive scales, and there's tech giant and social media manipulation, billions of dollars of private NGO money, and there's a comprador-liberal rot in society that is the base that sustains all of this social infrastructure. People you know are beneficiaries of this widespread patronage network and that influences you in ways you are not fully aware.
https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Asia-Grant-Listing-FY24.pdf
Brian Berletic details it in his videos on the subject. Grayzone's reporting is of note because it is bringing to light and emphasizing even more additional supporting evidence. Not because it's novel in its overall point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgZXwXIVZTk
He cites all of his sources in the description of the video. You'll have to watch the video to hear his arguments, but they are not only compelling they are completely open and shut with zero room for doubt. This was not "co-opted". It was planned and orchestrated for decades in the open by the Liberal-Comprador portion of Nepalese society alongside western NGOs, charities, churches and "rights groups".
You can't just go around denying this and obfuscating it without expecting pushback. We weren't born yesterday.
The only problem I have with the whole 'Color revolution' theory is the minimization of the government's incompetence. Maybe I am just hung up on that a lot and both can be true.
Assuming that protest is a color revolution and moving forward is still the best bet rather than being blind sided from it later on. Yet will still iterate the way the government shot it self so badly should be a case study on bad governance.
The take is similar to the communist party here. Only America and India has sufficient power to absolutely destroy Nepal and the fact that something like that happened should make it very very suspicious.
Just personally don't see why US would want to move against the government when their guy (Sher Bahadur Deuba) was guranteed to be prime minister after a year. Felt like the whole thing reduced their influence since they control the largest party here which suffered the most.
This sounds like you want to play a moralizing blame game and not determine the best path forward. The question at the precipice was: Do we hand over our sovereignty to western capitalists by going along with their petty bourgie Liberal NED funded and led revolution? Yes or no? There was only one correct answer, and it has nothing to do with the question of "fault" or "blame" in some specific case or incident. Why should the Nepal government acting incompetent mean that the entire population should surrender their sovereignty to western control? One does not follow from the other. The western capitalists having a functioning mechanism of revolt built up within Nepalese society should have been a warning to back off from the edge and try another approach once the communists have the clear upper hand for any turmoil and upheaval.
The working class communist party was not supporting the revolt. That should have been a clear indication of its nature and of the communist parties understanding of their own level of strength.
I'm a bit confused, are you agreeing that it was indeed a color revolution? That seems to contradict your previous position at the start of the thread, where you said that this was an organic revolt and that some minor NED money for a couple years, years ago, doesn't make it a color revolution. Have you re-assessed your understanding within this comment chain due to the evidence presented? Because you haven't otherwise addressed any of my specific evidence or arguments but just brushed over them and didn't engage with them. I truly encourage you to watch that Berletic video and wrestle with what he presents. I don't see how a communist and anti-imperialist can come out of that video with any other conclusion
I did not meant to moralize but meant we should not to blame all of internal and systematic problem to US alone and recognize how liberal democracy was the reason for government failure. Even tho the government was formed with Marxist-Leninist party, its not really socialist in nature.
The Nepal government acting incompetent will lead to Nepal surrendering its sovereignity so am more mad at the government. If the reason behind the backlash had been some pro-monarchist protest instead of the student protest then they would have been in power. There even was a violent pro-monarchist protest few months ago and their activities had been increasing a lot so can easily imagine them leading the large instead of discord government. At least now their influence has died down since people are not constantly pissed off at the government.
I do not get the vibe this particular protest was due to western influence but assuming it is and acting on that basis is more safer option for communist parties here rather than just waiting for hard proof. A liberal government was overthrown and will probably be back to same situation but maybe some communist parties can gain more power too.
There's that word again. Blame. This is idealist mode of thought. Who is "to blame" doesn't matter and is irrelevant. The US was in control of the revolt and thus it should have been opposed. Simple as. Now that the imperialists have their victory, Nepal has a long road of struggle ahead of it to even get back to where they previously were. More likely they will slide into more reaction, more IMF funding traps, more neoliberalism, more western propaganda, more western take-over of instutitions and more anti-China positions. This is how neocolonialism functions, the capture is slow at first and ideological and deeply rooted in the comprador class of society which holds a lot of cultural sway. You are too close to it to see it, you are refusing to look at the facts.
Your "vibe" does not override the billions of dollars in receipts. I'm sorry. I'm a materialist not a vibist. The one who pays is the one in charge. The revolution was paid for, we have the receipts, and we know who was paid and who paid the money.
The government's main source of incompetence is letting these NGOs and infestations build-up to the extent that it did instead of going full Lukashenko and liquidating their little projects. THAT is what the people should have been in the street pushing for, kicking out the colonizers and destroying/expropriating their organizations. Instead this revolt did the opposite, going out on the streets on behalf of western social media and NGOs to encourage deeper penetration into Nepalese society.
yeah I guess I am bad at explaining my point. The pressure in Nepal was building up for a long time and it exploded with that revolt.
Well good luck to us then. Will be pretty funny if the the Juche party getting on top after this but probably not.
You understand that next time you have to fight against the western NGOs and not with them right? And by government incompetence you don't mean failure to liquidate these western spies and collaborators and break their comprador class into pieces like Lukashenko did, I'm guessing? Because if we're doing an autopsy on how to prevent this tragic failure and defeat then that's the lesson that should be taken. Decolonialism is not just a phrase. It requires excising certain elements of society from power, it means breaking colonial structures and organization apart. It means taking an axe to the patronage networks.
China showed how to do this in Hong Kong. You suppress the "revolt" and its leaders and destroy all of their money networks.
I will keep that in mind when marching off to burn the Parliament next time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgZXwXIVZTk
Watch this already because I know you haven't because you haven't yet once responded to any of my specific pieces of evidence. Instead you keep ignoring it and reasserting unfalsifiable vibes and repeating that there's no evidence (because you refuse to look at it)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Also do you know what caused the protest?