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.
Piracy
The US is claiming that the vessel wasn't flying any nation's flag, so not technically piracy.
Also piracy is cool.
The argument that it's stateless rests upon the argument that the vessel is sailing under a false flag and name, thus it's registration is invalid. The vessel on ship trackers is named SKIPPER and is under the Guyanese flag. However, on the US OFAC sanctions website, it's listed under the name ADISA and under the Panamanian flag, and is linked to a shell company in the Marshall Islands called Triton Navigation Corp that facilitates this (false flag and name) for Iranian and Russian oil trading.
Ah, my mistake; thanks for the correction.
Sparkling imperialism
... is now legal under the Rules Based World Order ®
bit of a tense issue here
Chevron currently runs most of the oil operations in Venezuela (as they are the only ones actually allowed to bring in spare parts for the machines) while Venezuela still technically controls the actual oil. It will be stepping on lots of Texas/CIA lobbyist toes to stop the tankers from shipping.
Edit: I personally think it is one of the reasons that, despite being gung-ho about a war, they haven't pulled the trigger yet. U.S. and international capital already has it's teeth sunk into Venezuela and is slowly draining it. Why kill the goose or force it into a position of fight or flight? The only reason would be because of competitors wanting to force their way in on what is essentially a monopoly for Chevron in Venezuela.
I don't think that's accurate. Venezuela smartly deploys oil revenue for socialist accumulation and that's exactly why the US wants to end their oil trade.
These things are aspects of the system, not a condemnation of it.
Venezuela deploys its oil revenue for socialist accumulation, but Venezuela is not in control of all of it's oil revenue. Again, Chevron is and has been the primary company which facilitates Venezuelan's oil infrastructure, on which it has only gotten more dependent as the sanctions have gotten tighter. However, this is a deal that is mostly on Venezuela's terms, basically for Chevron it was, 'make a deal that isn't great but better than no deal before someone else makes it first'. Maduro has literally offered concessions to provide additional American access to these areas of production in exchange for less sanctions, he just isn't willing to completely sell off the country's assets lock stock and barrel because Maduro loathes the U.S., and he is well aware what happened in the USSR when they did the same thing.
The U.S. wants to stop dealing with the Venezuelan government at all, no more sanctions, no more deals, just capitulation, full privatization and IMF loans. They aren't doing it necessarily because of Venezuela's socialist practices, they are doing it because they think they can, and nothing else that works in other countries in Latin America (generating unrest, couping the government either electorally or militarily) has worked for getting rid of Maduro and making Maduro totally capitulate to them. It destabilizes a local power in the region and shows off U.S. military might to Brazil and Columbia, right when they are starting to show some small signs of breaking from American hegemony.
Just because we like to focus on the socialist aspects of Venezuela doesn't mean that is the logic of the empire here. Remember, to them communism and socialism is resigned to the dustbin of history, to be brought out as a boogeyman against uppity progressive liberals to go 'you want no food, be like Vuvuzela' not actually a living breathing doctrine that needs to be crushed.
Edit: I may be exaggerating abit for the idea that it is sucking Venezuela dry, I just mean that they are literally involved in the oil extraction and shipping process, and I would bet good money that apart of the money made through this is partially laundered into U.S. covert ops. Imo it would explain why Maduro has been so coup resistant despite waning popularity, it feels like he has people informing for him, rather than the other way around. A compromise, for sure, but better than the alternative. It is either that or some of the compradors are actually deep cover plants, like what Cuba did in Florida. I would prefer the latter to be the case, because that means the revolution truly is still alive and well in Venezuela.
Between this, the repeated aerial probes, and the military buildup it really feels like the trump regime is trying to provoke Venezuela into a new Gulf of Tonkin incident
I think their original idea was for a border incident with Colombia or Brazil, but those two countries have told the US to fuck off and backed diplomatically Venezuela. Guyana seem to have calmed down since they probably didn't want to get into a conflict that would destroy their country. All that is left for the US is to use the puppet goverments in Trinidad and Tobago and Panama, and attempt to get Venezuela to bomb or invade Trinidad and Tobago to use that as an excuse to bomb mainland Venezuela.
Yeah good assessment. With few proxies to muddy the water with nonsense moralification over international order it's not so easy to make this look like anything else than "yeah trump just wants to do a war".
Is China just gonna let this slide orrrrr
Officially China gets much more of its oil from elsewhere. They're very likely to determine it's not worth it in my opinion
If Venezuela uses intermediaries then the full picture wouldn’t appear on this graphic
If we assume it's ALL going to China then it would be 365 million barrels, their maximum productive output is 1million per day.
I very much doubt that all of it is going there though. If it is then it's probably going through Malaysia alongside Iran's oil on this chart.
if they actually took one headed to China that could be best case scenario for Venezuela because no, I don't think China would just let that slide
Apparently it was a sanctioned oil tanker. There have been tensions in recent weeks between the US Navy, Coast Guard and sanctioned oil tankers, with the US telling them to turn back or attempting to interfere. Now they've actually seized one.
And?