Over the last week, Sri Lanka has been hit by their worst national natural disaster since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Over 2 million people (about 10% of the population) were affected; the death toll is currently climbing past 600; nearly a hundred thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed, transport infrastructure is heavily damaged; industry has been damaged; and farmland has been flooded. The cost of damage so far looks to be about $7 billion, which is more than the combined budget spent on healthcare and education in Sri Lanka.
While there is plenty to say meteorologically about how this yet another concerning escalation as a result of climate change (Sri Lanka does experience cyclones, but they are usually significantly weaker than this), it’s important to note that such disasters are, to at least a certain extent, able to warned about and their impacts somewhat mitigated. However, this requires both access to early detection and warning equipment, and an economy in which development is widespread - in this case, particularly in the construction of drainage systems and regulated construction, which has not generally occurred.
The IMF, on its 17th program with Sri Lanka, is doing its utmost to prevent such an economy from developing, as they instead promote reductions in public investment. On top of this, the rebuilding effort for Sri Lanka is already being planned and funded, and such donors include, of course, many Sri Lankan oligarchs, who will rebuild the damaged portions of the country yet further according to their visions, while sidelining the working class.
Perhaps neoliberalism’s decay into its eventual death occurring concurrently into the gradual intensification of climate change and renewed wars signifies the rise of the era of disaster capitalism.
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The Zionist Entity'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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
This cannot possibly be astroturfed lol. The numbers we’re talking about are absolutely wild, and so far beyond that the Western intelligence could feasibly pull off. And don’t forget all of these platforms are under the watch of the Chinese government and censors. You don’t get to be the #1 trending video on the largest video streaming platform without the government knowing about it. So far, Hu Xijin (the guy who always toe the establishment line) from Global Times has said that the guy over-interpreted things, don’t take it too seriously etc.
In fact, I don’t even think the government expected such overwhelming response in favor of the Cultural Revolution. Otherwise they would have “disappeared” the videos much faster than they would have allowed them to stay up. There were tens of thousands of views even at 2am after midnight (on bilibili, you can see how many audience there are in the video). There were thousands and thousands of comments from the youth writing in the comment section of the videos about how difficult and bleak their lives are (sadly the videos have since been taken down). It is as organic as you can get. Then the next morning the plug was pulled.
It seems like there’s always this hidden undercurrent within Chinese society which expresses itself as yearning for the CR. The CPC addresses it to some degree, but the undercurrent never goes away. Bo Xilai relied on CR iconography after all, and I can’t help but see Xi’s tenure in that light.
That’s certainly good to hear. I would just hope that this youth frustration is channeled into something productive. In the west, the same despair for the future is used to turn our youth into fascists, so left without direction, I would worry that Chinese youth could be pushed in a similar direction. Blind worship of the man without proper understanding of his actions and writing is easily co-opted by groups with ulterior motives (as Mao himself warned about). Though the US federal agents have been especially poor at manipulating things of late, though they don’t need to be successful every time, they only need to succeed once.
To paraphrase things others in this thread have said, China has developed into the wealthiest nation on the planet, yet it seems like the youth aren’t feeling like the prosperity has trickled down to them, so it seems like they’re hitting a tipping point right now. The CPC seems to want to keep the status quo going as long as possible, but it isn’t sustainable, and hopefully this is a wake up call to them and they actively try to reform things, otherwise I could see a youth movement moving in a direction that ultimately benefits no one in China, and only their enemies overseas.
If it’s grassroots, the only thing I hope is the movement secures its power well enough from because I’m afraid something else reactionary might bubble about too in crises and fill in the vacuum, when the more revolutionary progressive forces don’t get secured enough to get into power. Not something from the west, but from something close-to-home. At least from what I read from ‘If We Burn’.
That’s my two cents there, disagree with me when you will.
Anyways, good luck to the organic revolutionary wave, when the time comes!
It is still very far from being a real movement. This was an internet sensation after all. The collective outburst of long repressed dissatisfaction that one could always feel its latent presence, but could not actually see it being manifested in the real world.
As I have pointed out in another comment, it is the youth making their demands: they want to have a slice of the cake, and a seat at the table. With the implicit threat that if this continues, maybe something like a Cultural Revolution is not impossible. But at the end of the day, it’s dissatisfaction of the current economic climate and losing out their upward social mobility, so this is their form of “protest”.
The government will have to respond, one way or another.