Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
@SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net - just came back from touching grass and saw your comment asking me to comment, still catching up with the US election news and still processing.
(also I have no idea what’s going on with the mod situation or whatever that happened over the past week but I hope you stay and run the news mega because this is probably my only attachment to the site)
I will give my hot takes now for the sake of driving a discussion: Harris lost, the Democrats won, Trump a sacrificial lamb, third party movements annihilated, Biden will have the last laugh though he (or his demented mind) probably won’t live long enough to see it
First of all, the US electoral system is designed to PUNISH. What you’re seeing now is the (non-)voters getting disciplined. Trump didn’t exactly win, Harris lost because millions of voters did not turn up to vote for various reasons that we’re all too familiar with. If you refuse to vote for Harris, you DESERVE Trump. That’s what the libs are snickering about now. Arab voters chose to punish Harris for committing genocide in Gaza? Well, how about you getting punished by Trump who will hopefully deport all of you? The libs are going to be enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing minorities and immigrants getting punished under Trump and continue to scold those who refused to support them.
The Democrats will not change their way just because they lost the election. The system is working exactly as intended, and the new Trump administration is being used as a fascist terror regime to scare the (non-)voters back into the fold of the Democrats by 2026 mid-term elections. And because of this, the genocide against Palestinians will almost certainly be ramped up under Trump just to spite on the people who wanted to punish them for the genocide.
The main question is: will the American voters who have decided to sit out this election be scared enough by Trump into voting the Democrats again in 2026 and 2028? If so, then the system is simply correcting itself, and all the Democrats have to do is to be patient and wait 2 years.
To repeat: the US electoral system is designed to PUNISH. American Democracy^TM^ meant to rule by FEAR.
Meanwhile, the DNC will fundraise like no tomorrow until 2026. Wealthy liberal donors so appalled by Trump’s victory will be dishing out their live savings to protect “American democracy”. What’s unique this time is that the Democrats have also secured enough of the traditional Republican establishment donors who have splintered off Trump’s MAGA party that the DNC will now receive double income from both the Democratic liberal and the Republican establishment. Because of how Citizens United works, the DNC will go into the mid-term with very strong financial backing and will certainly have no trouble running their campaigns (reminder that Harris out-spent Trump 4:1 in this election - they have the money for sure).
As such, the Democrats will continue to rebrand itself as the new Republican Party over the next 4 years, achieving what they have already dreamed of for decades. This is a huge win for the Democrats even when they have lost the election.
Third, Biden has already set off a ticking time bomb when the Fed started to reduce interest rates back in September. There is no indication that anyone will stop the rate cut from now on, with Trump himself wanting to cut the rate even faster.
This is a deliberately timed policy such that when the interest income dried up, it will be at least 6-12 months (depending on the rate at which the deficits are drained) after the election. This means recession - and if you think the last two years of inflation was bad, what’s coming is going to be far worse. Many people will lose their jobs. I don’t know if it will be 2009 GFC level recession, but whoever is in the government over the next 2-4 years will be in hot water trying to resuscitate the economy.
Combined this with Elon Musk pledging to cut 2 trillion deficit, if they really went through with this, we’re going to be looking at an epic proportion of the US economy meltdown (which will also send shockwaves across the world so for those of you living in the Global South, don’t get too excited over this). I doubt the establishment will let it happen but Trump and Musk are both wildcards so anything goes.
Incidentally, the Wall Street will survive this round of onslaught no matter what, as China has already committed to a financial opening up and lifted all foreign investment restrictions for their manufacturing sector. China is definitely going after the foreign investment route, and I will not pretend that this isn’t a Biden foreign policy win for bullying the Chinese libs into agreeing to this bullshit. What is almost certainly going to happen is that the Wall Street will jump all in for the Chinese stock market and buy up Chinese assets while Trump struggle to re-industrialize the American manufacturing sector. Trump thinks he can take on Wall Street, but in the end China will once again save the American bourgeois class from their domestic “threat” (I don’t think Trump is an actual threat, but rather an aberration that needs to be corrected). The working class will suffer, they will blame Trump and the GOP by the next election, and the affluent libs will be as insufferable as you can imagine.
Again it must be repeated just how incredibly well timed the Fed rate cut in September was. I don’t know what the Biden administration was on but they have played their cards and adapted to a very dynamic geopolitical situation extremely well, that’s for sure. (I already wrote about how the Fed rate cut + a global recession will allow the US imperialists to take a big bite on the globe a while back, so I will just skip the entire essay here).
Fourth, this election also sealed the fate of third party electoralism. People would rather sit out than to vote for a third party. The bourgeois establishment has achieved their goals of preventing third party voting (not that it was ever an actual threat to begin with, now that we look back in hindsight) and the ratchet effect of Democratic-Republican bipartisan machine will continue to spin. I don’t think the third parties are ever coming back from this - Bernie Sanders had one good opportunity to run as a third party candidate when getting screwed by the DNC last time, but that opportunity to reshape the American political landscape is now forever lost. It’s either voting for the Democrats or face an ever vicious Republican party - those are the only choices left now. The only way out of this nightmare is a revolution.
Finally, we’ll talk about some wildcard scenarios. While I still think that Trump will follow the neocon strategy as before (or rather, unable to stop the wheels already in motion), the fact that you have Trump and Musk as two crazy people running the show warrants further speculations into the wildcard scenario that may arise. Most worrying is Trump wanting to appoint Musk as the DOGE minister to cut 2 trillion spending. This is going to be a huge drain on the US deficits that are important to flood the Global South and get them hooked on the dollar.
Not understanding how the US monetary imperialism works, they might just fuck this up and screw up the dollar liquidity essential to maintaining the US hegemony, while at the same time landing the US into a huge economic crisis that could be beyond what the establishment had envisioned. I have mentioned about Wall Street flooding the Chinese capital markets, but the US economy is so massive that an epic meltdown of the economy might end up inflicting such a huge blow on the Chinese export economy that even the Wall Street financiers get drowned there. This is obviously not something that the bourgeois establishment would like to see happen, and this could actually trigger WW3 if we are unfortunate enough to end up in this scenario.
thank you very much for your take!
WHY. WHYYYYYYY.
Neoclassical economics teach that for developing countries to become rich and transition into high income countries, they have to open up their domestic market so foreign direct investments can throw their money into and help develop your economy. Taking IMF loans is actually good and working hard to pay back your debt is a sign that you’re being responsible and credit worthy for foreign investors.
This is not just a China problem, but for many countries in the Global South. The Chicago school has forged itself as the mainstream brand of economics and has succeeded in exported its ideology to the entire Global South by training top students who went to study in the top economics and business schools in America and brought those ideology back to their countries.
The alternative viewpoint is from Marxist and heterodox economics like MMT that say you should not open yourself up to IMF and foreign loans, but instead work on self-sufficiency in agricultural and energy sector (which would include cooperation with neighboring countries such as forming a regional bloc among African and Asian countries, for example).
Of course this is easier said than done when US imperialist policies is to use its global institutions like the World Bank, the IMF and GATT (WTO) to force poor developing countries into opening up their domestic markets so foreign capital can come in and entrench itself within the economy, such that when the time comes, they can threaten to uproot your entire economy so your country become ever more dependent on the will of foreign imperialist powers.
As an example, ASEAN is a regional economic bloc for the ten Southeast Asian countries. To disrupt their independence, Agent Soros was activated and launched a speculative attack on the Thai central bank, and resulted in the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 during which many countries (including Russia!) defaulted and had to take IMF loans to save their economies. Mission accomplished. This is just an average example of how Western imperialism fucks with the Global South.
Ironically, Malaysia was one of the few countries that did not take the IMF loans during the Asian Financial Crisis. The current Prime Minister Anwar who is big on joining BRICS, was also a fervent neoliberal supported by the NED who pushed for taking the IMF loan in 1997 as the Deputy Prime Minister. He was then immediately persecuted and imprisoned for conducting sodomy by the Prime Minister of the time, Mahathir, leader of the far right Malay ethnosupremacist party whose anti-Semitism led him to firmly believe that the “IMF is a tool of Jewish cabal” to control their economy. Asian politics can be wild.
Post in question I believe https://hexbear.net/comment/5579978
I'm not sure a US recession is as baked in as you say. I appreciate that lowering interest rates will stop or slow the big pump of $ into the US economy and world, but couldn't the trump admin moderate this with deficit spending and stimulus that is targeted to the American economy?
If the rate cut is not compensated by an increase in government spending, then recession is a certainty. It is a mathematical problem.
And Trump literally said he’s going to get Elon Musk to cut government spending because “inflation is caused by too much spending” which is one of the most pernicious myths of the neoclassical economics that unfortunately we see not only being peddled by the right, but from the left as well!
The unique situation with the US under the Biden administration is that the high interest rate paradoxically paid out huge amount of money (about $1 trillion in 2023 alone, and has exceeded US annual military spending) mostly to the rich people, and the trickle down has so far been enough to keep the economy from going under.
By cutting rate, you are slowing the outflow of the money, and if the government is not going to play the role of a big spender to stimulate the economy (Elon Musk wants to cut deficit by 2 trillion!), then there isn’t going to have enough money in the circulation to drive the economy. People will be laid off, consumption (demand) will plunge, businesses will close down, the supply chain will falter, large corporations will then consolidate the assets of all the failing businesses (just like they did during the 2009 GFC and the 2020 pandemic) as the people get squeezed even harder.
The question here is whether there is a revolutionary potential in America or it’s a “everyone out for themself” kind of situation, if the latter then it’s fascism time.
I’m not sure I understand the details of the “negative list”, but it appears that 2 items from that list have been removed, and either one or both relate to the manufacturing sector? If so, unless each item has a tremendous amount of details, it would seem that not a lot will have changed from the status quo i.e. if there are only one or two items on a list that are restricting the sector, then there couldn’t have been much restrictions in the first place? These are questions, though, not statements.
Those were the only two restrictions left for China’s manufacturing sector: foreign investors were not allowed to invest in “publishing printers“ which have to be controlled by Chinese owned companies” and “production and processing of traditional Chinese medicine”.
It’s a complete removal of all restrictions on its manufacturing sector and a signal to foreign investors that China is not going to become a protectionist country (which it should).
This is what most anti-hegemony countries are banking on. All of Biden's administration's planning will go to complete waste if Trump (and Musk lol) fucks it up, and their calculations are that Trump will completely fuck it up.
Can you expand on the monetary policy part with Biden cutting interest rates?
Oh nevermind you did in another thread. ty anyway!
100% yes. I've been responding to liberals' "will they learn?" takes all over
and IRL that, "They need to be DESTROYED, not reformed." Even if they did "learn" a bit and change their policies and/or messaging slightly (and let's be real: it'd just be the messaging), it'd just be temporary and it'd just be a way to preserve their second uni-party ballot line and existence as the "left wing of fascism". We don't want them to learn from it, because that'd just be taping the mask back on for a bit. We want the working-class to recognize what they actually are, instead! Rip the fucking band-aid off! Anything else is just seeking to prolong the inevitable, and cause far more suffering in the end.
I think this is an opportune time to go hard on this messaging. Kick them while they're fucking down!
P.S. - Also, the "ruling by fear" bit is another pretty good symptom of fascism we can point out, I think. Kind of a "meta-politics" bit.
That reminds me, time to buy more doge. It makes just as much sense as wasting a payday on voting for parties that win .005 percent.
The fates of third-parties were sealed in 2004. They did better in raw numbers and percentage of votes in this election than they did in that one. Anyone expecting them to seriously reshape the political landscape was dreaming too hard. Both parties are as strong as ever and the political landscape won’t be changing within any of our lifetimes.
That doesn’t mean I think third-parties won’t occasionally have strong runs. They did consistently worse during the Great Depression and then George Wallace came with an unusually strong run for a third-party candidate. Despite that, people still largely voted for the Dems or Repubs.