Image is of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and the fastest sinking city in the world. A new capital is being built elsewhere in Indonesia.
I was going to make Indonesia the COTW anyway (unless something really massive happened somewhere else) due to the elections that might really designate the end of an era in Indonesian politics. Michael Roberts wrote up a big piece on Indonesia about a week ago, one day before the election began, so a lot of this information is coming from him.
Indonesia has been ruled by President Joko Widodo for 10 years, but is now barred from a third term constitutionally. Under his presidency, the Indonesian economy has seen fairly good GDP growth overall - about 5% per year, or an average of 4% per capita - and is broadly popular with the electorate. The biggest problems are the common ones, such as a lack of jobs and a high cost of living. Widodo's successors have naturally promised more jobs and an economic plan that clearly draws at least some inspiration from China's rise from the periphery to the heights of the world economy and manufacturing, but this seems pretty unlikely for Indonesia because, well, Indonesia is ruled by capitalist bourgeoisie parties and China is not. Indonesia's main gigs are palm oil, nickel ore, and oil, with internal manufacturing of these primary commodities only slowly growing and reliant on foreign labour.
Indonesia has a rather big employment problem. On the face of it, things don't seem bad, with an unemployment rate of only 5% - but this is only because it counts anybody who works even a couple hours per week. 60% of the workers in Indonesia are in the informal sector, with no real labour rights, sick pay, or guaranteed wages. And half of the ~8 million unemployed are young people. Indonesia is the sixth most unequal country on the planet, with at least 36% of the population in poverty, and the four richest men own as much as the bottom 100 million. This was a natural consequence of the policies of the dictator Suharto, who came to power in a coup overthrowing the communist nationalist leader Sukarno and killing one million communists, a period covered by Bevin's The Jakarta Method. At a fundamental level, not that much has changed since Suharto, and the country seems doomed to a path of slowing economic growth and massive amounts of environmental degradation under a plundering elite who will presumably fly off to New Zealand with the rest of them once the seas swallow the country, unless a communist movement can be rebuilt from ashes and can learn the lessons of 1965-66.
Though results have yet to be officially announced, it seems that 72-year-old Prabowo Subianto is overwhelmingly likely to have handily won the election. Once banned from the United States for human rights violations - a truly phenomenal feat - he has been the Minister of Defense since 2019, was an army lieutenant under Suharto and was his son-in-law. While this is obviously a particularly bad outcome, none of the other candidates seemed likely to fundamentally alter the trajectory of Indonesia, so the game was rigged from the start.
The Country of the Week is Indonesia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
what do people think about this? it's very brave and selfless, but just doesn't seem very effective. someone did this a few months ago and it wasn't even covered in the media for a single day. I feel like if you're willing to die, you may as well [redacted] someone responsible on your way out.
In general it doesn't seem to accomplish much, but on the other hand, self-immolation is what kicked off the whole Arab Spring.
The Arab spring was a reactionary counterrevolution. Tactics that work for them don’t necessarily work for us
Nothing about the Arab spring can be called counter-revolutionary until well after March 2011
The graveyard kids of Cairo coming out to beat the shit out of the cops, the state trying to sic those pyramid landlords on the crowds only for them to get pulled off their camels and trashed, I remember that shit, the exhilaration, and I know plenty of Arab communists who remember the legions of young people who marched, anti-regime and anti -American in their outlook
The only real criticism you apply to the Arab Spring before the US and its allied states began their counter coups was that it was naive and disorganized, but that was the result of decades of left suppression
I follow Vijay Prashads line on this, the people were there in the streets correctly, they simply didn't have the tools and theory to translate thier action into real change and power, which left them wide open to the counter revolutions that started with Libya and Syria
Are you lecturing an Egyptian who lived through the event on the class composition and nature of the movement? I was there, it was western backed fascists and jihadist salafists, and their stupid Liberal comprador allies
I'm reminding a fellow Arab communist that everyone in the Arab world in 2011 was a "western backed fascist, jihadist salafist, or liberal comprador" but regardless people still took to the streets correctly
You seriously gonna tell all me those kids who came streaming in from the slums and highrises were on the payroll of the liberal comprador elites? Those motherfuckers were too busy sitting in cafes with laptops in faces tweeting about hope and change to notice what was going on
People forget this but it took everyone by surprise, and I mean everyone including the US empire and its allies, that why I know it was a correct moment and not some jumped up color revolution
It's just a shame there was no left to take advantage of it and in the end it got countered
It didn’t get countered. It succeeded in its purpose of destabilizing and destroying the Middle East. It destroyed Gaddafi. It installed western backed puppets or justified intervention to do so. It destabilized Syria and funneled soldiers and young men from Egypt, Libya and Tunisia into Syria in attempts to destroy Assad.
Gaddafi, Mubarak and Assad at least were better than the protesting groups, the arab spring was a reactionary movement fueled by Qataris, Turks, Israelis, Westerners and Saudis - the usual suspects. They destroyed the last vestiges of secular baathism and soviet aligned nations, instead installing easier controlled ISIS and Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood types.
You think the kind of guy who took CIA guns and shoved a bayonet up Gadafi’s ass were prole heroes?
Those liberals posing about hope and change from the cafes were doing it on behalf of the Arab spring, they were pro-Arab spring. They were giving ideological cover to this “real moment” you talk about, exactly as you are doing now by obfuscating what happened. The people on the street were scum, they were extortionist salafists. You are naive and ignorant and being chauvinistic ignoring my direct experience with what occurred and the outcomes. My family and I were hounded and exploited for everything by what amounted to organized criminal gangs as they became the de facto government. My father had to give up basically everything he owned to thugs coming around collecting for "protection". Our women had to wear burkas where they never legally had to before. In Egypt a Qatari Islamist backed group got power first and then quickly was couped by an Israeli/Western backed power (Sisi), but both were reactionaries and imperialist compradors.
My father wasn't rich or well connected to the government either. He was just a normal working class guy. This was the typical experience of millions of Egyptians.
You're just describing the counter, which if you remember didn't start until March, almost 4 months into the Spring
What do opportunist scum in Libya have to do with the kids in Tahrir Square? Or the kids who were massacred in Bahrain by the Saudis, what about the Jordanians who flooded the streets and got shot down, the Moroccans who got their asses beat by police, you're telling me the US wanted Mubarak couped? The old bastard was one of their oldest and most well-behaved clients
Everyone was involved in the Spring, from poor slum kids, liberals in cafes, "extortionist salafists", leftists, old commies, trade unionists, students, fruit sellers, homeless, everyone, you're confusing opportunism for intentional conspiracy, also don't pretend you're the only one who had direct experience with what happened, I know plenty who also did, including the Egyptian commie who literally mentored me, they understood from the jump that 2011 was a 1848 moment and as such a necessary wake-up call for left currents in the Arab world who until that moment were extinct
The Arab Spring movement of Egypt installed an imperialist islamist group directly.
The Arab Spring movement of Libya destroyed Gadaffi.
The Arab Spring movement of Syria became the Syrian Civil War.
The Arab Spring in these nations was reactionary. These weren't "reactions" against the Arab Spring. This was the "Arab Spring" doing these things, and if anything Gadaffi and Assad needed to be more brutal in suppressing them earlier.
Of course they were reactions, the US Saudi axis immediately began to push at the weakest links, and the pathetic regimes of Gaddaffi and Assad were wide open, the mindless brutality of the Syrian army radicalized and turned large swathes of Sunni Syria into ripe fruits for Saudi-Al qaeda power, no different from the radicalizing terror the US visited on Sunni Iraq, it wasn't until the Russians intervened competently and purged the Syrian army of the open butchers that progress could be made against al-Qaeda and ISIS groups
And to say nothing of Gaddafi who disarmed his own regime in a pathetic bid to appease US power after 2003, the fool was too busy micromanaging his Amazon warriors to recognize the gangsterism building up in his country, his complacency above all other factors led to his downfall
The Arab Spring was a correct and necessary moment, but that doesn't take away from the tragedy of the Arab Winter that followed, just like the failures of 1848 didn't take away from the necessity that Metternich had to go
Insane chauvinism. "Arab spring wasn't reactionary, it destroyed the pathetic Gadaffi and Assad regimes"
How about fuck off? The arrogance of westerners to back coups and then blame the victims as "pathetic" when their relatively progressive projects get wiped out by fascists. Gadaffi was a goddamned hero and he should have killed the protesters faster and harsher and stomped out every western NGO. He went too easy. That's the lesson I take from this shit, don't listen to squishy left "they're pro freedom" bullshit and stomp them into the ground.
Bro you're Arab too, you know perfectly well we're ruled by weaklings and fools
Gadaffi and Assad aren't weak or fools. Gadaffi was destroyed by western air power and being too trusting of the West, but to be fair to him only the Kim family holds the adequate level of contempt for the West that a world leader should rationally have it's a common mistake. They're more saavy men then you because they recognize an enemy when they see it at least, whereas you call them "progressive" and make apologetics for them. The "type" that filled the streets in Libya was no progressive proletarian force.
So literally Gaddafi was weak and foolish, you don't see Hamas, Ansarallah or Hezbollah being destroyed by air power or trusting the west, despite the fact Gaddafi had far more resources than all of them
But the "type" that filled the streets of Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia were, which has been my whole point
Not in Egypt dude, are you not listening to me? In Cairo it was jihadist fascists terrorizing people like me. Get out of your fucking 2010 radlib narrative and listen to the communist who directly experienced this telling you the truth. I don't know how to be more clear, the people outside were waving guns around, making women put on burkas, taking all of our shit. LISTEN TO ME. THIS IS WHAT WORKING CLASS PEOPLE EXPERIENCED IN EGYPT. Chaos, rioting, then this. When was the exciting part? I was scared as shit the whole time.
Gadaffi made the same mistake that every world leader outside of the Kim family did, trusted the perfidious anglos more than they ought to have. Doesn't make him a fool or weak, he was one of the best leaders in Middle Eastern history. What happened in Libya was reactionary and it was done TO LIBYA. It was not organic. It was pushed by imperialist capital and I take great offense at any westerner scoffing and calling him weak and pathetic. Seriously fuck off with that shit.
Existing as a state with a somewhat planned economy is much different than existing as a war machine distributed cell network of militias like Hezbollah or Hamas. Gadaffi didn't have "more resources" he was spread more thin, and had to do things like protect dams, power stations, universities, libraries, hospitals, etc. to maintain legitimacy and had to maintain a standing army and bureaucracy. You're not comparing apples to apples here.
Sorry that happened to you in your neighborhood, but I literally know a score Egyptian communists who had the opposite experience particularly in Tahir square, I'm not gonna discount yours or their experiences
Like I already said, EVERYONE was involved that includes reactionaries but more importantly also the working class and its a disservice to discount the working class struggles that were raging in those early months even if opportunism abounded
By their fruits you shall know them. Non-proletarian reactionary class movements result in rotten fruits. We see a bunch of rotten fruit (The protests culminating in the dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood then Sisi in Egypt, the protests culminating in the overthrow of Gadaffi and destruction of the Libyan nation, the protests culminating in the attempted overthrow of Assad and destruction of the Syrian nation...) This had the exact same "revolutionary potential" as the Hong Kong protests or the Mahsa Amini protests recently in Iran, zlich. Nada. This wasn't limited to my "neighborhood" it was a group in the coalition that controlled the city and regional government eventually before Sisi came in, people I knew from all over the city experienced the same.
The first couple days/weeks there was chaos and just general lumpen rioting giving cover for islamists to coalesce and organize. This is the part you're glamorizing. Then the organized islamists systematically started taking control of territory (like our apartment complex). Stop me when this gets "progressive". If you're opining that there wasn't an organized left to take advantage of the crisis, I agree. When you don't have an organized left with popular tie-ins to the people it's too early to attempt any type of "revolution" or exploiting an imperialist caused crisis to push for demands. Thus, any effort in "toppling" the governments at that exact moment by leftists was extremely short-sighted and ended up serving reaction, an error that should be learned from and not repeated.
Any Egyptian communist could have told you we were weak and not ready whatsoever for any type of class war at that time, not ready to be a major force or faction.
This all started from me saying the self immolation is not a particularly useful tactic for us as communists, and the example of sparking off riots at a bad time in what ended up being a reactionary movement in the end doesn't really prove otherwise.
Ok bro, next time we'll abolish the people and elect a new populace before we start the revolution
As Marx famously said after 1848, "Never attempt revolutionary change until liberals and reactionaries no longer exist"
One thing I really hate about leftists is how they turn defeat into an epistemology
yes "don't aid imperialist colour revolutions and read the room about how weak we are right now in this specific place" is exactly the same as "give up on communism and revolution". idealism of "revolutionary now and forever!". There are great perils at enacting revolution when you're not ready, ask Rosa
The only time self-immolation kinda worked was when the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolated himself in protest of the puppet regime in South Vietnam persecuting Buddhists. And there's many differences between how he did and how the vast majority of people did it. For one, Quang Duc had an entire congregation of Buddhist monks with him who blocked the intersections and surrounded him as one of them poured gasoline on his body. Quang Duc was also a senior enough monk to oversee more than 30 temples being constructed. In other words, he wasn't some rando, but a monk with rank. It also helps that he was protesting against a puppet regime propped up by the US and not protesting on behalf of some shitty Western NGO.
I don't think you can call what happened in Tunisia a reactionary counter-revolution.
I lived through it in Egypt. I personally know the scum that destroyed the state and how reactionary they were. I had to flee the country and every thing I was saying would happen came to pass
Once against asking leftists to stop supporting any type of movement that is vaguely “anti-corruption” and “pro-freedom” because it’s always rightwing imperialist dogshit, in the Middle East it’s usually jihadists and ISIS hiding behind a pro-democracy mask provided by western NGOs
We aren't talking about Egypt, we are talking about Tunisia. Someone self-immolating is what kicked off the protests in Tunisia.
But congrats to you on the Egyptian military taking back power in Egypt, I guess?
Lots of Tunisians and Libyans in the Syrian Civil War on the side of the jihadists. Interesting.
And?
just an interesting outcome of this "progressive" movement throughout the middle east that was all connected... that's all
Yeah, it's almost as if calling it the "Arab Spring" was a way to flatten a bunch of conflicts in multiple Arab nations that often had their own discrete and unique causes into a single conflict.
I can agree they had complex and divergent causes and grievances among the various nations, but it did all happen at once and it all ended up going in the same direction (hard rightwing, mass militant movement of hundreds of thousands of young men to Syria and Yemen). That's not a coincidence.
Right, but now you are just flattening all of these conflicts into one. Tunisia isn't Syria. Ben Ali was basically installed by the IMF in the 80s, privatized tons of the public assets and cut social welfare programs in Tunisia, and was overseeing the process of basically squeezing out smaller farmers in favor of agricorps in Tunisia (which was part of the background to the initial riots). Unemployment was incredibly high. He was backed by the West, and he was offered asylum in Saudi Arabia, which I can't imagine Gaddafi or Assad ever being offered. Tunisia isn't suddenly some socialist utopia now, but what happened there wasn't really a reactionary counter-revolution, either.
And no, it isn't a coincidence these happened all at once. A bunch of these countries had similar rampant economic issues that caused actual spontaneous turmoil. That is how many revolutions actually start: with a spontaneous set of protests or riots that some prepared and organized oppsition force steps in to take control of. Sometimes that's the Soviets taking control of bread riots. Sometimes that's some NED-backed party taking. Sometimes it's the Muslim Brotherhood.
I read a lot of the debate that happened below. And I agree with you. People fetishizing the so-called "Arab Spring" are unintentionally promoting CIA myths. Color revolutions are only successful because the US Department of Genocide and Exploitation finances them to the tune of billions.
There's a lot of English & Arabic scholarship on this that pretty clearly confirms the whole thing was entirely manufactured and only "succeeded" in places it was supposed to while being instantly crushed in Bahrain.
Wide sections of society were mobilized because that's how the US new psywar social media weapon "unconvential warfare" apparatus was designed and deployed. Lots of Arabs were and continue to be poor because of US strategy of underdevelopment and its not difficult to mobilize disaffected people. Im not surprised that Arab communist parties still have wretched opinions on the matter. Arab communist movements have been pretty awful for a long time now anyways.
Figured I'd share my input. Inshallah you will get the chance to return home to an Egypt that isn't fully under the thumb of zionist imperialism.
third or fourth self immolation for Palestine, if you're surprised by it you can guess why it's not a good idea
Yep news of these events is heavily suppressed. Media does a better job hiding these and hiding the motives than they do with active shooters
"maybe if I suicide this time they'll hear us" - the highly trained soldier
it's so strange that we've seen people self-immolate several times now but no one use the :doohickey:. not only is it probably less effective, but so incredibly painful. one of the few things where people keep taking the harder route.
for radlibs freshly radicalized, they often feel extreme moral guilt and their primary goal is a personal quest of moral absolution. That's why they do things like resign or self-immolate to wash away their own sins and absolve themselves, despite neither of those things actually being effective to ending the bad thing. They are on a personal quest, not a mass movement for change
Never resign from a position of power. Ever. Cling to it, muck up the works, make them drag you kicking and screaming out of it publicly and make a giant stink on your way out, preferably throwing spanners in the works and creating subfactions with anyone sympathetic you can find.
Yup, that was me... :x
Can't say I ever thought of setting myself on fire though
yeah the more common response is self-flagellation in the form of doom scrolling and "bearing witness" to pain. I see a lot of this on social media, just looking at child gore from Palestine all day and sharing it amongst each other. It's brutal, and people should see it once to be shocked into how bad the situation is but dwelling on it all day is more about self-punishment than any type of practical praxis.
They also are copying the Buddhist monk 释广德 but they are not Buddhists.
Westerner learns that "free press" idea is a lie
Wait, so this isn't even the first time? I guess that goes to show how news is suppressed to the point of completely tanking the efficacy of this particular tactic.
should have self immolated in an f35 smashing into tel aviv
Rash, dumb and a bit sad?