A week ago, the Bolivian left-wing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), currently led by Luis Arce, decisively lost the round of elections against the right-wing. This comes after a prolonged period of "infighting" between Arce, and Morales, who previously led the MAS prior to the 2019 coup which briefly installed Jeanine Anez.
I put infighting in quotes because despite the nominal similarities between Arce and Morales, it is clear that this is not merely a counterproductive battle between two men - instead, the Bolivian left has arrived at a time of unavoidable conflict between two competing strategies. The electoral strategy is represented by Arce, who has aligned himself with a more middle-class-oriented campaign that is more economically liberal, whereas Morales represents a more working-class-oriented campaign that seeks to go further than tepid reform.
Such a conflict between electoralism and revolutionary action is inevitable in any and every developing country that 1) possesses a functioning left-wing party or organization, and 2) is under internal and/or external pressure by capitalists. This crisis must be resolved eventually - and this electoral failure is how such a crisis is manifesting right now. So while the Bolivian left has indeed lost the election, it is not yet defeated. The revolutionary campaign can, if it is willing, still ultimately stand triumphant. But what must be done is a real movement towards socialism, which goes beyond technocrats reforming from above, and instead transforms the state into a full political project of the working class, in which their movements, organizations, and protests are genuinely empowered. Such a project will involve repression by the forces of reaction, not least by the United States, but it is the only road left to take.
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.
Israel'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.
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.
My friend, the USSR did not become a global superpower until the Cold War.
Also, China is in an extremely powerful position for being integrated into the global economy - an advantage that the USSR did not have. It can literally stop world trade and force countries to come to the negotiating table if it really wants to assert its role as a world leader.
Again, you are underestimating how much dependent the Western powers are to China’s industrial capacity.
EDIT: In case I’m not being clear, China restricting its exports would force Western economies to fold or at least be willing to negotiate. This is why the rare earth export restriction was so effective. However, China cannot do that on a greater scale because its economy is heavily dependent on exports… a key feature of its neoliberalized economy. It believes that giving up the export revenues would mean the balance sheet cannot be balanced, and the workers will lose their jobs unless the government pumps the deficit up. Higher deficit would violate the IMF rules though… so it’s not an option.
There's plenty of genocides that the Soviet Union didn't intervene in during the Cold War. Case in point was the genocide against Chinese Indonesians after Suharto seized power. Suharto liquidated the third largest communist party at that time, and the SU didn't even suspend diplomatic relations with Indonesia.
People need to stop having this alt-history of the SU in their head. The SU didn't go around invading random anti-communist countries. The SU arguably didn't even invade Nazi Germany, but merely finished a fight that the fascists started. At best, the SU funded various communist parties and supplied various Soviet-sympathetic militants with weapons with occasional deployment of Soviet military personnel like Soviet pilots during the Korean War. There's nothing wrong with what the SU did. The CPSU was more than willing to provide military material support and ideological training to orgs who were receptive to their aid, but the ultimate responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the anti-imperialist orgs and militants.
Fundamentally, I don't think the Chinese political class cares enough about Palestine to make any serious geopolitical moves. And I don't think their geopolitical calculus would seriously change even if every single neoliberal economist gets Hudson-pilled. They probably care about Palestine as much as the DRC or Sudan, which are also suffering from US proxies (Rwanda and the UAE). Why do you think the PRC was far more willing to sell Pakistan weapons than Iran? It has nothing to do with the CPC embracing neoliberalism and everything to do with geopolitics. Iran is an unreliable partner due to reformists fuckery while Pakistan has a much longer working relationship with China on top of being a very reliable check against China's geopolitical rival India. Is it China's fault for not giving Iran preferential treatment for the sake of counter-hegemony or is it Iran's fault for having factions within their political class that are borderline traitorous sellouts to the West? Whatever the answer may be, at the end of the day, Pakistan brought more to the table than Iran and was treated accordingly.
Ideological constraints, as I said. Economics determined by neoliberal ideology, which then dictates (or constrains) their geopolitical stances.
Again, you only have to look at the difference in foreign policy before and after the reform and opening up. Two very different forms of economic systems that yielded diverging foreign policies.
Finally, you are still underestimating how deeply the Chinese economy has integrated itself into the world. The USSR was nowhere near that. To put it another way, the USSR had a robust self-contained economy that, for the most parts but not always, shielded itself from the fluctuations in the Western capitalist economies, and its means of channeling its geopolitical dominance is through its military force that rivaled those of the US.
But China is a completely different beast. It has 31% of the global manufacturing capacity. I repeat - one-third of the world’s productive forces that are fully integrated into the globalized economy. The leverage that China has on the world today simply did not exist in the USSR.