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.
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.
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.
Russia and Iran and Venezuela are not gonna withhold oil from China if they start improving worker rights, expropriating property, and establishing collecting economic structures. China would remain the center of the world’s economy.
Sure, which is why the west is setting up the chessboard against China by assaulting them.
The west doesn’t actually have to take them over either. If they block the Malacca Strait they cut China off from most of their imports. 80% of China’s oil comes through the Malacca Strait
But Chinese trade and diplomacy marches on. The west continues to fail in their objective, but so far they can’t afford to flip the chessboard, either.
Ships can go around. The Yemenis blocked tons of trade through the equally important Suez and ships went around. Costs and delivery times went up, but trade carried on. The diversion around Sumatra is way, way less than the diversion around Africa. And the west would need the support of Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia in killing their most important economic tool in order to piss off their biggest trading partner. Otherwise the west would need to block it militarily, and that would necessitate an occupation of Singapore - all in waters where China’s navy could easily operate. And they’d probably have Vietnam’s support, given how important the strait is to them as well. All of this for China-bound or -originated ships to just take a few days longer to go around Sumatra and harbor in Jakarta instead of Singapore.
Sure, ships can try to go around. But most of the other gaps are not viable for large scale shipping as they are too shallow and the Indonesian sea is not calm nor does it have developed ports for shipping at large scale. Most of the shipping will have to go all the way around Australia.
Additionally piracy has not been eradicated in the Strait of Malacca, which is only 2.5km wide at its narrowest point. The routes through the other straits feature considerably more piracy and you can bet on the US quietly boosting the pirates.
I think you underestimate the harm that raising the cost of energy in the country will do to Chinese manufacturing, European manufacturing essentially collapsed as energy costs became economically unsustainable.
I think you’re underestimating how significant this would be for China due to its manufacturing.
I haven’t really done the math but how many millions of barrels can Iran and Venezuela even supply? I am suspicious that they would not be able to fulfill China’s existing needs:
All of this is somewhat moot, China recognises this problem itself and is aiming to completely electrify the country to get off oil entirely. My point however is that moving to the socialist mode before removing the vulnerability would be a bad move. They should get self-sufficiency first. Luck of geography meant the USSR was able to fully provide everything it needed within its own borders, China doesn’t have the same circumstances.