It goes further back. Coffee houses in Britain were a huge thing in the 1700s, where a lot of capitalist theory and practice was created.

Ty for adding that context. I thought most people would know part of the peace treaty meant that FARC became a political party and has secure seats in congress (which makes all the worst people in Colombia mad AF), when it's really not common knowledge. They seem to be doing well, although it's really hard to build political power when the bourgeois media has done nothing but demonize you and your name for 60 years. If anything it shows how attached they are to the FARC name. It should be said that many former FARC fighters (especially the lower-ranked ones) chose to step away from the party, and just returned home to aid in the development of the rural communities where most of the fighting used to happen (and still does sometimes), alongside some of the victims of the conflict, who have also returned home.

I have my criticisms of FARC while they were in armed struggle, but they seem to be committed to the truth and reconciliation process, so I'm willing to eat my words if they turn out to be decent people and see it through the end.

As you said, Petro was a member of a different, much shorter lived guerrilla group. M-19 seemed to be one of the more ideologically uncompromising guerrillas, and one of the more urban ones, too, with a lot of its activity in cities and its founders being graduates from public universities. They negotiated with the government in the late 80s, and entered political life just in time to be a key part in drafting the 1991 Colombian constitution, which, as liberal as it is, is a beautiful document that even radical leftist Colombians recognize as an achievement in enshrining the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country as a legal fact, and guaranteeing the rights of so many vulnerable Colombians.

I try not to be prescriptive about people's drug use, but I agree there is a well known connection between capitalism, the consumption of stimulants, and the racialization and prosecution of other drugs.

The fact of the matter is that the Global North's demand for cheap cocaine in huge quantities is based on the exploitation of nature and people in the global South.

I think it's an act. Italian society is so mysogynistic that she knows people will constantly underestimate her if she plays the ditzy part. But when it's time to blame victims of SA for their experience or to say the most horrid shit about migrants, she's suddenly very coldly competent.

The way drug production and trafficking works today (at least for cocaine) is extremely exploitative of the peasantry and the rural working class. I don't think you can reform the supply chain to make it communist, when the global North depends on cheap drugs procured violently.

ELN is closer to Maoism, iirc. FARC was 100% MLs, though.

After the leaders of FARC (mostly) gave up on armed struggle and signed a peace treaty with the Colombian government, some holdovers kept their weapons and continued to control rural areas of the country, but not as FARC, just local bands with limited geographic reach and little to no ideological consistency.

The ELN are more Maoist than ML, but their ideology has evolved on its own, so it's hard to pin down. They are currently in talks with the Colombian government to get a peace treaty, like FARC. The largest difference in how they're organized from FARC is that there isn't a strong central authority that calls the shots, so some parts of it have developed their own culture, while still being part of ELN.

ELN has a history of successfully stealing weapons and ammo from the Colombian military, and the Colombian military has a long history of collaboration and training by Israeli agents, so it's likely they have a bunch of Galils around.

This incident looks like the result of a turf dispute between two local groups, but nothing like the large scale conflicts between guerrillas in the 90s/2000s.

Putin said that it hit s military installation. Whether that is true or not, it's really hard to know. No side gains anything from being truthful.

I didn't understand that at all. Global south countries are already indebted in USD, to the US or to western lenders, and struggle to get the money to finance infrastructure projects and other programs because of that debt.

That's where China comes in with huge USD reserves, lends those countries the USD they need to build infrastructure, and offer the know-how through Chinese companies on how to build it. Then the terms of repayment don't have to be "pay us in USD", like it would be with any other lender, but it can be in yuan or other kinds of agreements, like payment in natural resources at a fixed rate.

I have my reserves on what the shape of these repayment plans might be, and what that means for the marginalized peoples of global South countries that enter the B&RI, but it is a move away from western hegemony, that's for sure.

Environmental storytelling I guess?

Also nukes, I'd imagine.

Good thing Ukraine is a liberal democracy where the will of the people will be heard.