Image is of Putin and Scholz sitting on opposite ends of a frighteningly long table back in 2022. Folks, the table is gonna get ten feet longer.

The latest round of US-Russian diplomacy is taking place on August 15th in Alaska, where Putin and Trump are meeting in-person to maybe try and bring an end to this godforsaken conflict. While I don’t want to totally discount the possibility that they may come to an agreement - you truly never know! - there’s a lot stacked against this encounter yielding much of anything.

Russia appears to have demanded a land swap; that Ukraine fully withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts (in exchange for unspecified Russian gains, but probably parts of Sumy and Kharkov) as a precondition for a ceasefire that could perhaps lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict, and Ukraine seems completely unwilling to do anything of the sort, saying that even if they wanted to, the process of just giving up a couple oblasts would take significant time and require referendums. I say that Russia has appeared to demand it, because there’s been a lot of confusion - probably in bad faith - about what Russian diplomats and Putin himself have said and what the demands even are. There are some who speculate that Trump will sell out Ukraine and blame Zelensky for refusing to agree with Russian demands, and there are others who say that this just the latest of many examples of the US and Russia meeting up with such fundamental differences that a deal is impossible, and that Trump fully expects to put sanctions on Russia after Putin declines some harebrained American scheme.

Anyway. After the summit, in late August, Putin is due to arrive for a visit to India, at Modi’s invitation. Previously, I was unsure exactly what India would do in response to American sanctions pressure, and now we appear to be receiving an answer, as Modi has made public statements that suggest that he is only getting closer to Russia. Fascinatingly, Modi will soon make his first visit to China in seven years at the annual SCO summit at the end of August, and Putin will be heading to China too on September 3rd. There is an increasing amount of dismissal about the potential of BRICS (especially one that contains India), and that dismissal is certainly rather justified, but I am still deeply curious about what developments may occur as the global south braces to face the remaining ~85% of Trump’s presidency.

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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    57·
    5 days ago

    BREAKING: 🇧🇴 Neoliberal candidate Rodrigo Paz has come 1st in Bolivia’s presidential elections. Without Evo Morales, the left has collapsed. The MAS party expelled him and now has just 3.2%. After 20 years of hegemony, the left has lost power. How did it all go so wrong?

    Evo Morales’ MAS won every election from 2005–2020 with huge majorities, thanks to nationalizing resources, redistributing wealth, and turning Bolivia from the poorest to the fastest-growing economy in the region.

    The party was led by indigenous movements, allied with unions and the progressive middle class. That coalition shattered after 2020 when President Luis Arce empowered the middle-class faction and banned Evo from running again.

    The split wasn’t ideological at first, but about access to state jobs and contracts. Evo’s faction was excluded, while Arce’s supporters feared losing their new privileges if Evo returned to power.

    The dispute exploded over who would be the presidential candidate. Arce stacked the courts, which granted his faction legal control of MAS, shutting Evo out.

    This split cost Arce his majority in Congress, leaving him unable to pass economic policies. This led to crisis & inflation. The economic collapse drove voters away from MAS. Rural indigenous communities largely stayed with Evo, while the urban middle class shifted to the right.

    Driving the war against Evo was Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo, now MAS’s presidential candidate. His personal ambitions destroyed the party, now polling at barely 3%.

    Due to their candidate being banned, Evo’s mostly indigenous supporters decided to boycott the elections. They have today shown that they’re still the largest section of the left (and that banning Evo was a disaster).

    This defeat wasn’t inevitable. It’s the result of the left tearing itself apart over who reaps the rewards of the state - a fate that can face any movement once in govt. Arce’s use of the state (police & courts) to settle the dispute through persection was the nail in the coffin.

    Is all hope lost? Of course not. Evo’s soiled ballots are set to win more support than any candidate. Something new will grow out of that movement. In fact, I predict that the new neoliberal govt will be toppled before its term ends, pro-US elites never survive long in Bolivia.

    • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      32·
      5 days ago

      The indigeous movement in bolivia is still organized and follows socialism so they jst have to outlast an unpopular neolib for a few years before they take the presidency again

        • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          23·
          5 days ago

          This has never worked in Bolivia. The insanely racist and segregationist oligarchy that ruled Bolivia for many years was swept aside by a popular insurrection in 1952 despite having the entire armed forces on it’s side. From that point onwards the oligarchy and the right never had much chance.

          Bolivia is rather unique because the miner’s unions as well as the peasant’s unions are extremely well organized and are not scared to fight, even if they don’t really follow classic marxist principles. They’re extremely hard to put down through violence and neoliberal/military goverments usually have to do a lot of negotiations with them. In fact, what doomed Che’s incursion into Bolivia is the fact that the military government of that time had a deal with peasant’s unions (Pacto Militar-Campesino), which meant that the military government would continue land reform policies in exchange for loyalty/peace from the peasants, Che completely miscalculated the situation and ended up dead.

          Bolivia has a long tradition of working class people being well organized. And on the other hand the indigenous population are the literal owners of the land both legally and in practice (perhaps one of the most radical land reforms ever happens in Bolivia). If anything, Bolivia is a place where your classic neoliberal shithead government will end up collapsing sooner than later.

          • Boise_Idaho [null/void, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            17·
            5 days ago

            I guess the one bad thing about the Bolivian masses reducing Anez to a footnote in history is people won’t remember how the Bolivian masses reduced Anez to a footnote in history.

            • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              16·
              5 days ago

              True, but Bolivia is really THAT unique. I think once the neoliberals took control of the gigantic state that the USSR built it was over, the state was just about everywhere all they had to do is dismantle it. Bolivia is not really like that, it’s a much different society of course (Bolivia is like REALLY diverse) and the state itself is not even that big, and for that we can use Zavaleta Mercado’s (a brilliant bolivian thinker) concept of “apparent state”, which is kinda the norm in Bolivia and has pretty much always been. In Bolivia if you want to shake things up you don’t call the armed forces (like you would in, say, Argentina), you call the miners from El Alto to come down into La Paz with their dynamite sticks…, the state sometimes even plays a secondary role. And the white oligarchs really tried to dislodge the masses’ organization, from kidnappings to shootings to literal bombings, they always failed.

              Bolivia already went through a pretty terrible neoliberal phase already, from there MAS was born and a very dynamic era of social revolution happened. But unfortunately, like the MNR of 1952, it lost steam and it’s plagued with internal conflict. And while a new right wing government will pose a major threat they will bounce back. Still, I think MAS and Evo will have to sit their asses down and do a lot of self criticism, perhaps the party needs new leadership coming from the roots of the unions that support them, I don’t know, but this infighting will get them nowhere as it stands right now.

              There are some other issues tho, not strictly related to people’s organization and stuff but more to natural resources. Bolivian natural gas IS running out and the economic future is uncertain…

        • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          22·
          5 days ago

          It depends on the military and cops really, if they didn’t put leftists/Indigenous leaders in charge during the two decades, it could be a bad time. The organizations and unions that left MAS to follow Evo are still strongly organized and have a lot of power in certain areas and over certain sectors of production; they could potentially do a coup especially if Evo installed enough support within the military and police.

        • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          11·
          5 days ago

          not really, thats what the coup tried to do last time, it was an unpopular neolib who had only some support of the military and the police

          this next period will be the same

      • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        27·
        5 days ago

        Morales could’ve also appointed a successor instead of trying to run for president infinitely. He already had three terms and Bolivia has presidential term limits, the constitutional court already said that Morales was not going to be able to participate in the election two years ago. Two years to formulate some kind of succession plan. It’s a big own goal from everyone involved. Even if the idea is to be “president for life”, you still need a successor of some kind.

        • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          17·
          5 days ago

          here we see the effectiveness of term limits as liberal bullshit to limit effective pushback against capital

          Consider term limits. The US Constitution was amended to enforce term limits in direct response to FDR’s popular 12-year presidency (he died in office, going on for 16). As a policy, it is self-evidently quite anti-democratic (robbing the people of a choice), but nevertheless it has been conceptually naturalized to the extent that the 2019 coup against Evo Morales was premised explicitly on the idea that repeated popular electoral victories constituted a form of dictatorship. If rotation was important to avoid corruption or complacency, corporations and supreme courts would institute term limits too. Term limits ensure that in the miraculous scenario that a scrupulous, charismatic, and intelligent individual becomes a rebellious political executive, they won’t be in power long enough to meaningfully challenge the entrenched power of corporate vehicles manned by CEOs with decades of experience. Wolfgang Schäuble, a powerful advocate of austerity policy in Europe, succinctly summarized the extent to which electoral democracy is subordinate: “Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy.” One Party States and Democratic Centralism are not the result of lack of sophistication or cronyism, they are a proven bulwark that acknowledges that political power will often need to be exerted against the will of Capital, and so the wielders of said power must necessarily undergo a much more serious vetting process than a popularity contest.

          from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            12·
            5 days ago

            Having a successor is fine but if the people want Evo and feel like he did a good job, term limits aren’t a sacred idea. I think he would have been a much better, experienced leader than the competition. Especially after surviving the coup, and with the continued success of Venezuela and Cuba against outside aggression, I like to imagine Evo would have come back to office with a much more radical approach than he had before the coup. There will surely be much to learn from how Morales and the rest of the revolutionary movement move beyond MAS into the next era, and I hope they can overcome the repression they’ll be facing from the next administration, assuming they can even get settled into power before the people take to the streets.