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.
Subjectively, it was extraordinary impressive for a country that bore the brunt of fascist extermination for 14 years to push back against an industrial power that didn't do shit in the two world wars. Objectively, the ultimate goal of the war was to remove US presence from the Korean peninsula, which can only be completely accomplished with the overthrow of the ROK and the expulsion of the US military from the Korean peninsula.
It's not about protecting its interests, which is a euphemism anyways, but about projecting military power. And the PRC currently doesn't have that. The US has over 800 overseas military bases. The PRC has a grand total of 3, 1 of which is in a country that also has a US military base, so it doesn't even count. It has two overseas bases, one in Cambodia and one in Tajikistan. How are two bases in central Asia and southeast Asia respectively remotely helpful in what's going on in South America? What's the Chinese equivalent of Guam? The Chinese equivalent of Guam is the PRC funding Hawaiian separatists to kick out the USians from their islands and making a deal with a once more sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii to build a giant Chinese military base. And the PRC can't just manufacture their way into 800 overseas military bases, so in order to make up this gap, the PLA has to compensate by being better than the US military in other areas. That's when the PRC having less nukes and less aircraft carriers starts to become concerning because the overseas military bases gap is far harder to overcome.
The US losing in Vietnam is tangential to the fact that it can even wage war in Vietnam in the first place. The fact that the US could even wage war halfway across the world killing millions in the process speaks to its logistical capabilities and its ability to project power. This is something a lot of people forget. I am extremely skeptical that the PLA could do the equivalent today. I don't think the PLA have the means to invade Peru or Bolivia. And I don't mean a decapitation strike or nuking their capital, but boots on the ground occupying their capital and major cities. At its peak, the US had more than 500000 troops in Vietnam. Most of those troops had stops in Guam, Japan, and the Philippines (going back to the US having hundreds of overseas military bases) before being shipped out to the ROV. They didn't all get shoved into a boat in California and sailed directly to South Vietnam.
Ignoring the political dimensions or the fact that the US will 100% never allow this to happen, can the PRC militarily invade Guatemala for the sake of overthrowing the current government that recognizes the ROC, install a new provisional government that recognizes the PRC, and wage COIN against a population that presumably will not take kindly to Chinese invaders? Forget whether it can prop up the pro-PRC government, can the PRC even do it?
I think we’re talking past each other. You mean more of a power projection across the oceans, while I am talking about Russia, China and Iran forming a defense pact to protect their Eurasian/Silk Road interests from Western imperialism.
I agree with you that China does not yet have the power projection capability, though that is not far off, but they can certainly form defense networks across the Eurasian continent to make it extremely difficult for the US to freely roam the airspaces and bomb Iran and the surrounding countries on a whim.
Again, we’re back to talking about the costs. The question isn’t about conquering a country, it’s about exerting high costs for the opponents to think twice about their military actions.
I’ve also noticed a lot of mental gymnastics especially on the pro-BRICS twitters on this matter, where on the one hand, Russia is single handedly holding back the NATO and the Collective West, on the other, they keep making excuses that Iran didn’t want to take China’s deal, so China shouldn’t help them. Well, an economic deal that doesn’t come with security guarantee isn’t going to worth much. Big surprise.