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.
You are right about EVs having a higher profit margin in Europe. So what? Are they gonna ban every import from China? Good, let them do it. We saw how brilliantly the sanctions worked against Russia. I beg them to do it against China. Let's unravel this thing 2 decades earlier. USA thinks they can squeeze China like they did with Japan. But China is no Japan. I don't see Apple leaving China (they tried but they failed), I don't see Tesla, I don't see any of the other big USA ones leaving. The simple truth is if you are a company that doesn't do business in China you are a company that can be beaten. West(TM) can squeal, can scream unfair but at the end of the day they will have to choose between having to live with China or economic suicide.
You put too much on the table for a comment section. In brief. Who works on those EV factories? Workers. Who pays them? The factories. With what money? From profits. Sounds great in theory. USA tried that model up until the 70s and it blew up due to high inflation and led to neoliberalism/reganism. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but you sound like advocating for some type of MMT (a.k.a repackaged Keynesianism). I see that from liberals in China. I think it would be a huge mistake. I don't want to relive the last 50 years but with China as (monetary) imperialist protagonist instead of USA.
Maybe I'll make a post in the future in regard to MMT, China and how to avoid the same mistakes labour did in 20th century. That's all for now.
Called it. Touched a nerve didn't I? The only ones that rival libertarians on the "you don't understand economics" are MMTers. 2010 called dude, they want their snake oil economic theories back.
So USSR under Stalin were doing MMT now?! Haven't heard that before I admit. Go tell that to your boy M.Hudson, see how fast he will throw a vase at you. Although these days he seems too embarrassed to associate himself with MMT.
To all this ahistorical bull I have to say during Stalin's period USSR did a thing called war communism. They nationalize/collectivize everything, they mobilized all their productive forces to the maximum, they focused on heavy industry. They industrialize their economy in about 27 years while it took other countries more than 100. They did all that because THEY HAD TO. Noone wanted to trade with them and the Nazi threat was looming.
And all this came with an ENORMOUS cost for the people of USSR. But it had to be done. And of course it was reflected on growth, since Russian was one of the least industrialized countries in Europe and industrialize in such a small period of time. But that wasn't supposed to be a model for other countries to emulate! It happened due to absolute necessity. Comparing 30s USSR to the current situation is nuts.
How's the "father of MMT" Mosler doing these days? Is he still running his tax evasion schemes? Still waiting his answer on how can a country like Greece or Armenia do MMT? I remember those people back in the recession years coming to my country advising the "lefties". Yeah didn't end well for us but I bet they made a lot of money giving speeches and selling books...
Oh so 99% of the countries on the planet! If your theory doesn't work 99% of the time, IT'S NOT A GOOD THEORY. Greece goes to drachma tomorrow. Now they control their own currency. HOW ARE THEY GONNA PAY FOR CANCER MEDICINE USING MMT? How about Armenia (that I mentioned and you didn't answer)? How about Angola, Bangladesh, Morocco, Colombia? And you have the nerve to say I'm obtuse? Get out here and take your bogus theories with you.
First of all China's average Monthly Money supply has more trippled in the last decade. I agree it must pick up but its by no means sluggish.
The real issue rn is the sluggish credit cycle. Who is generating the debt that drives the exponential increase in money circulation that you want now that you (China) are killing land finance. What is the asset base backstopping financial activity that goes hand in hand with that money generation now that land is not the fulcrum? Helicopter money drops still require central bank operations to issue a ledger, aka debt. No market economy has a choice on this matter. You either generate collateralized asset to drive money circulation or you don’t have a market economy. China right now is a market economy through and through. The USSR in the 30s and 40s ? Orders of magnitude less so. A weakness to that comparison to keep in mind
So, one should think of land sales in the Chinese economy the same way one thinks of Treasury Bills in the US economy. T Bills are the US’s unique magic sauce. That’s what the US economy discovered when FDR made war bonds go BRR. Capital formation is whatever collateral you can issue as a promise for future repayment. It doesn’t need to be land. China is trying to shift the basis of capital formation from land sales to more abstract financial instruments but it cant happen overnight. What is needed is a new ,mature, credit generation mechanism that fits China's current state of development,administrative capacity and local finances.
Details MUST be very ironed out before attempting such expansions. Sure China is attempting to develop their bond market for example and is slowly itching twoards tax reforms but its not nearly there to support what you are advocating. Comparing it with a mid 30s NON capitalist, non market, massively planned and non globalized /financialized to the slightest USSR economy (with completely different resources and demographics as well as regional disparities and levels of development) doesnt help. Until local finances are sufficiently unlinked from land sales and the bond markets and tax system are sufficiently mature and reformed what you are saying cant happen. Restructuring must come first before any large monetary expansion but also happen slow and controled enough to not cause a bigger crisis. A delicate balance but one that China is walking at the momment quite efficiently
Many chinese economies advocate (more conservatively) for the direction you describe ,even before and during this plenum. The holdup is in the details of what the specific circulation and dept generation mechanisms will be and how they should work, how to steer them to the right kinds of activities and behaviors, use of credit, resources mobilised, the system’s turnover velocity etc
What is this mechanism gonna be based on?
It's one thing to turn gradually towards domestic consumption and increased standards of living (things that China is already doing) based on your economic output and it's another to run large deficits for an extended period of time and still have a functioning economy. I only know one country that has done it in history and it did through monetary imperialism...
It lead to the victory of neoliberalism because it was a carefully prepared reactionary movement to the inflation question. It doesn't mean it is correct, and in fact, just like now, it wasn't stopped by having surpluses, because they didn't happen. If Japan can survive for 30 years, it's dead, and the vast amount of post-doc number wanking justifications for every single crisis are pathetic.
MMT just focuses on the real, measurable constraints and sidesteps the inflation question by admitting it is incalculable, but approachable on a case by case basis by affecting on demand and/or supply, without passing the full cost to workers. It is not "just increase bank accounts, it's fine", it's money not being a real resource, but a means of acting on them. No, we don't know how to have capitalistic growth without capitalism yet, but we know we can tell them to pound sand when they demand money for nothing and maybe they will invest, create the demand and they will come - imperialism not withstanding-, freeing resources if you need to (sorry, no more luxury housing or airbnbs, are you going to just close now?), or admit it can't be met and curtail it .
Japan is able to run those high dept-to-GDP number because, by suppressing all other financial investment mechanisms in its' economy, it has deemed dept as one of the most profitable places for a Japanese person to park their savings accounts. They have essentially tied dept to savings. They are buying their own dept like crazy and finance their government expenditures that way but at the cost of increased inflation. The reason that they can still get away with it, is because they have some of the biggest car and tech industries in the world. But they haven't grown in decades, their country is literally dying (one of the 3-4 worst birthrates on the planet), , they are one of the most depressed countries in the world and their debt keeps rising. Where will this end? Should they let the dept go to 700%? What happens when their actual economic engine (their industry) slows down? Presenting Japan as the model for your theory is not the win you think it is...
It's the same as everyone else, the american stock market, the whole point of this system. That they don't decide to invest in innovation anymore is an orthogonal choice, the deficit and the debt aren't preventing anything or leading to inflation, until the mini-oil crisis, and less than everyone else. The whole point of QE in the first place was to increase inflation, remember? Did not happen, as it did not happen anywhere else until real goods became scarcer.