Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.
Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.
Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.
Thank you to @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Venezuela! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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 Bangladesh protests have been sus. Clearly there is some level of anger towards the Government and the economic stress since 2022 is definitely contributing to it but the protests have no clear goals (like most 'anti-corruption' protests), they want the Government out and replaced with what, a right-wing neoliberal Government?
For all its faults (and yes the Government was unnecessarily repressive), the current Bangladesh Government is fairly secular. I don't want to see Bangladesh fall into the hands of the right wing.
I'm getting Tiananmen Square vibes from it all (as in, student protests with unrealistic/undefined aims lead by foreign intelligence), but if it happened to a significantly worse country than China, though still one that is meaningfully not aligned with US interests in regards to China/Russia. Any time a protest has its aims basically be the overthrow of the government as opposed to a more concentrated aim like against a war or genocide, or in favour of labor/minority rights, I get a little suspicious, because that only ever happens to anti-Western countries.
Proletarian movements have materialist aims. If the goals of the movement aren’t explicit and based in hard class interests, it’s a fake color revolution led by bourgie idiots
It isn't necessarily lead by the bourgeoise. The luddites weren't lead by the bourgeoise. They were reactionary in the most literal meaning of the word. They saw something they didn't like so they broke it.
I know next to nothing about the situation in Bangladesh but it is obvious that the movement just lacks class consciousness. The lack of leftists who could impart class consciousness to the mass movement is most definitely by design but mass protests and coups are destabilizing and almost always bad for business and the bourgeoise even if some of them will be able to turn it to their advantage.
So over all I think it is more likely that this is blow back against the status quo and while not a leftist movement I think it is a move that will hurt the ruling class of Bangladesh, and their investors (mostly the usa) and make a large space for leftist ideas to take root.
No the Luddites were proletarian and had a class interest in the means of production. you could argue they made a strategic error in destroying them instead of seizing them, but they would have seized them if they believed they could have held them - they knew capitalist reaction would set in. They were not reactionaries.
Also says nothing of the fact that the Bangladesh government is geopolitically more aligned with neutrality or even towards BRICS, not the west if i recall correctly. They don’t recognize Israel and are majority Muslim. Smells like Arab spring bullshit to me
Read what Marx and Lenin said about the luddites. They were reactionaries who had no plan for the future and lashed out violently against machines instead of lashing out against capitalism.
Incorrect. Marx agrees with me, not you.
Marx is quite clear that the Luddites are a workers movement in its nascent stage before fully conscious, they are NOT reactionaries and they are not idealist bourgeoisie. They are workers involved in class struggle. Please don’t “read Marx” at me when you have no idea what you are talking about
How do you read this and not see he is saying that they lacked class consciousness? It was a workers movement but it wasn't leftist. The nazis started as a workers movement but because they lacked class consciousness and embraced reactionary ideas they decided to kill all the untermensch instead of killing the capitalists.
The Luddites were opposing technological progress and entrenching traditional methods. Blind opposition to progress and new ideas coupled the desire to enforce traditional ideas is the definition of reactionaryism. Reactionaryism isn't about any specific ideals it is about preserving the old ways even in light of the fact that they are outdated.
The luddites were a symptom of a broken system and with proper [leftist] direction they could have done good things and instead because they were ignorant they fizzled and did nothing.
My original contention is that proletarian worker movements have material demands, while bourgeois revolutions and counter-revolutions have idealist demands such as freedom, equality, brotherhood, etc.
The Luddites were a nascent, very early in the struggle worker movement. They had not yet developed full consciousness, but they are a worker movement and had materialist demands regarding the means of production and working conditions.
These Bangladesh protests don't seem to have clear materialist demands to me. The current government is relatively secular and pro-BRICS and anti-zionist, even if it is a bourgeois state, compared to the right-wing islamist opposition which would surely have many more compradors and sell-outs. The dissatisfied workers there seem to be led by the nose by the would-be compradors and petty tyrants considering the west has an interest in installing a more manipulatable right-wing puppet (like they did in Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, etc).
The Bangladesh riots started because of a specific labor law. They aren't idealist. They are opposing a law that demands that a certain percentage of public sector jobs go to the descendants of veterans of a specific war. That's a more concrete demand than the opposition to certain forms of automation.
Both movements have the same lack of direction because they aren't looking at the bigger picture. Both movements are/were fighting symptoms of the disease of capitalism instead of fighting the sickness itself.
i don't think the protests in Bangladesh are entirely bourgie. there are color revolutions which are much more co-opted than others, like the one in Venezuela right now, very obvious that the 'protestors' are mainly right-wing even if some of them may not be happy about the economic conditions.
This is a good article I read on this
I think I'm seeing more parallels with Indian anti-corruption protests of 2011 (wiki article is kinda biased). Regardless of the aims or goals, the protests contributed to the overthrow of the relatively secular albeit neoliberal Government with the fascists
. The protests were used by the capitalists at the time to get an even more 'pro-business' party in power.
Look at the kind of shit BBC was writing at the time
There are similarities and differences with Bangladesh currently, the protestors in Bangladesh initially did have a goal, remove the unfair quota system which didn't even give priority to the actually marginalized. There was dissatisfaction with the Government then, in part due to their neoliberal policies and the end of post-2008 stimulus which came around ~2011.
The main opposition to the current secular Government in Bangladesh are right-wing Islamist parties. In fact, the current Bangladesh Government's response to anti-Hindu protests in 2021 was praised.
The protests are a spiritual continuation of labor protests earlier this year and are proximally about the government increasing the number of bureaucrats it can hand-select from a pool of descendants of veterans of a particular war. Because they are hand-selected they will reflect the current ruling party.
This is in the context of roughly 40-50% youth unemployment, accounting for Bangladesh's informal employment economy. Students face similar if not higher rates when they graduate.
The US will always press the color revolution button if they want regime change. And color revolution attempts are often dual or multiple in character, with different interests forwarding different aims. Students demanding the end of quotas can be earnestly and correctly doing so but still be promoted by US interests that hope this can lead to destabilization. It's possible for the students to be right and to win and for the US to be wrong and lose despite trying to push the protests in their preferred direction. A lot of US successes are just a shotgun method where they tried 20 things and one of them stuck. If one of the 19 builds labor and keeps fewer right wingers in government staff jobs, that would bev good thing.
Walking the line here can be tricky. Obviously death to America and fuck their meddling. But we should also not abandon every group that receives some support. They might not even know it. We have to understand what the protesters want and how they will achieve it and what the impacts will be, then decide. While bringing healthy skepticism. e.g. when they bring out English signs intended for a foreign audience to say they yearn for freedom, we know they're part of an op lol.
As long as Bangladesh continues its look east policy the material conditions for the desi proletariat will improve.
By bengali family have mostly been horrified at the govt. retribution, nothing really about "liberalization," the US has an interest in preventing look east but part of it was for Bangladesh to decouple from India so idk.