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.
Final thoughts
If the first two parts of the videos were critiques of the wealthy elites that have infested the highest level of the CPC, which, believe it or not, are still tolerated by the party itself (there has to be an outlet for the people to channel their anger into), then the third part was what made it all the more controversial.
The author of the video series ended part 3 with: “Big brother (referring to Mao), your ideas were too forward for your time, which made you almost a god-like figure to us, this is what we [mere mortals] could never compare with… and only after years of experiencing the brutality of life, fighting for our last breaths, that we are only beginning to understand your insistence back in the days [for a Cultural Revolution].”
The ban hammer finally came. But it already reached a record of 37+ million collective views within a few days.
Whatever it is, it can never be taken back. The Gen Z kids have made their voices known. Perhaps the energy behind the so-called Gen Z protests happening around the world was real after all.
The government will have to respond. On the one hand, the government relies on the bourgeoisie to deliver the GDP numbers (very important numbers!), on the other, they have to take care of an increasingly dissenting youth who see a bleak future for themselves, which is made more dissonant by the fact that China is actually growing into a superpower.
I believe there will be more strict crackdown on revolutionary ideals to prevent a re-run of the Cultural Revolution. All of the leadership today, the liberal reformers, were victims of the Cultural Revolution. They are deathly afraid of it.
Finally, if you want to watch the film for yourself (which I recommend!), try to find the extended version. The absolutely breathtaking rendition of the Steppe Women Militia dance sequence was missing in the standard version, which you can watch here , starting at 1:40 mark!
You can also watch the original version here taken in 1976 (remastered).
Do NOT let Redditors find this out lmao
I support the Maoist youth. The CPC needs that internal pressure to strive for socialism. With all the wealth China has accumulated, why shouldn't it be time to take those big strides away from the capitalist mode? It won't happen top-down.
They're not going to recreate the cultural revolution because the conditions are so wildly different. But maybe youth rage can coalesce into organization, and if it's distinctly Maoist in character it certainly won't be easily swayed by capitalist influence.
Mostly because of dependency on imported resources. They need to get the country off oil and uranium imports for energy security in the event that they are cut off from international markets if they take the socialist mode. They import 70% of their oil needs.
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.
Europe in the 19th century was haunted by the spectre of the French Revolution.
The world bourgeoisie in the 20th and 21th century are haunted by the spectre of the Russian Revolution.
China in 2025 is haunted by the spectre of the Cultural Revolution lmao.
This seems like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
The genie is already out when they started to teach Marxism-Leninism in schools and the nation portrayed itself as a socialist country.
When the economy was trending upward in the last two decades, people don’t mind too much about which political ideology and economic system.
Now that the kids are increasingly realizing that they do not, in fact, live in the socialism as portrayed everywhere in the media, and that this is in fact, not the Marxism they were taught in school, suddenly they begin to question everything.
Even though the so-called Marxism-Leninism class is somewhat of a joke these days, and it’s more of a patriotism class, the ideas have been implanted into their minds. With the youth taking up the tangping (lying down) movement, they now have more time to read and study Mao and Marx and Lenin! Funny the things you do while being unemployed.
Having said that, I doubt there will be a re-run of the CR. It would take a lot more coalescence of the dissatisfaction to get there, and the government still has a lot of authority to crack down on the dissent. Furthermore, I don’t think the rest of the people would want something like that.
But the youth have already made their demands: they want to have a slice of the cake, and a seat at the table too. And that’s up to the government to decide on how to meet their demands.
It doesn't seem like the liberal faction are going to be able to do anything to stop this in the long term that wouldn't also destroy the country. Capitalism is never sustainable forever as a mode of production, so it was a foregone conclusion that it would have to either be replaced (as is the stated plan) or the country would be destroyed (what has historically happened from most capitalist collapses). I don't see how a crackdown would accomplish anything but intensifying the unrest, as you say there are a huge number of class-conscious proletarians with Marxist educations. The only thing that I think would realistically slow these developments would be a resumption of improvements in living conditions, which isn't just a switch that can be flipped without changing anything else.
Hmm… if we look at the Lost Decade Japan, the trajectory was similar. The Japanese government saved the older employees at the expense of youth employment, and the end result was that Japan had to endure zero growth for 30 years until very recently, when enough of the elderly have died to allow the wealth to trickle downward again. So it’s always possible to keep the stagnation going for decades. I don’t believe that a sufficiently developed society can easily “collapse” just like that.
I think it will be interesting to see how seriously the youth take up the revolutionary ideas? Is it just cosplay? A ritual to vent their anger into the internet? Or is there more substance behind it. I do agree that the Chinese kids are more class conscious than most other countries.
However, I honestly doubt it can grow into a tangible movement because unlike Western capitalist countries, there is no history of trade unions in China. The people don’t even know how to organize protest movements, don’t know how to strategize to make demands from their own government. Everything would have to start from scratch.
This is actually a big advantage for the Western left wing movements who have faced off capitalists for more than a century and have an actual history of trade union movements that succeeded in making real gains and progress in the late 19th and early 20th century.
More importantly, it would require organisation. The actual CR had the country's strongest revolutionary organiser agitating it on a backdrop of far stronger student organisation that had been inherited from the actual revolution.
They are not as organised anymore and they would be doing it all themselves without experience and without that agitating voice.
Could you kindly verify it's the extended version? (Can't find info on the lengths of different cuts) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XoThanE2Q4
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: