For more on the situation in Nepal, I recommend @MelianPretext@lemmygrad.ml’s comment here.
Following a “anti-corruption” protest movement spurred by a social media ban (but with much deeper roots) in which dozens of protestors were killed by state forces, the government of KP Oli has been ousted, and an interim leader is currently in power as the country prepares for elections. Notably, events have been characterized as “Gen Z protests”, and this leader was decided (at least partially) by a Discord vote. When a non-western government rapidly falls, it’s wise to at least glance in the direction of the United States, and there are almost certainly elements of color revolution here. But, as always, it’s more complicated than simple regime change - Nepal is a deeply troubled economy even as developing countries go.
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Despite winning 75% of the seats in parliament in 2017, the various communist parties have failed to unify towards forming a common agenda and solving the problems of the people. When the nominally united communist party split in 2021, infighting and opportunism eventually brought on the rightist politicians we see today.
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The Nepalese economy is not successful. Disasters are slow to be ameliorated, education and healthcare is underfunded, and poverty is fairly rampant. There have been significant developments made by the communist parties, such as electrification programs and some poverty reduction, but it has been insufficient.
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The petty bourgeois usually come from oppressed Hindu castes, and are frustrated by the domination of upper castes, and so are inspired by India’s BJP. They essentially want a return to monarchy, under the guise of anti-corruption, and despite their relatively small numbers, are powerfully organized.
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Of the countries that aren’t tiny islands, Nepal has the highest per capita rate of work migration, due to insufficient employment in Nepal. The jobs that Nepalese citizens receive overseas range from unpleasant to unbearable in both labour and wages, and this has generated rightful suspicion that the government cares more about foreign direct investors than their own citizens overseas.
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The government of KP Oli was close to the United States, and India’s Modi has promoted the BJP in Nepal. Both countries have sought to exert influence over Nepal, though Prashad speculates that, if there is indeed a foreign mastermind at work, India is more likely to be the culprit behind these recent protests, in a gambit to use the chaos to promote/install a far right monarchist government.
I agree with Prashad that it seems unlikely that mere electoral changes will result in anything terribly productive, though whatever government emerges will inevitably hoist the banner of anti-corruption to try and legitimize themselves. We have seen the same breakdown of electoralism as a meaningful pathway to solve national problems all across the world, from the superpowers to the poorest states. Until a rupture occurs, greater surveillance, policing, and repression seems guaranteed.
Last week’s thread is here.
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Israel'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.
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.
Trump’s polling is fucking disastrous right now.
How bad is it? Even white people and rich people are negative.
Overall: -13
By race
spoiler
Hispanics: -30
Black Americans: -73
Hwites: -5
By age
spoiler
18-29: -26
30-44: -25
45-64: -9
65+: -15
By income:
spoiler
<50k: -24
50-100k: -13
100k+: -4
Also there’s a bunch of questions in there about political violence and Charlie Kirk. One interesting tidbit is that Harris voters are 15% more likely to say political violence is sometimes justified than Trump voters. Another interesting one is if people feel like we are at a “significant turning point in American politics”, and 67% of respondents said yes. Whites were more likely than Blacks or Hispanics to say that, but everyone is in the majority.
There’s also a bunch of issue-specific polling on Trump’s presidency. Jobs/economy, inflation/prices, immigration, civil rights, crime, and guns. He’s negative on every single issue. Some by small margins (immigration, crime) and some by huge margins (economy, inflation). 60% of people disapprove of his handling of Epstein.
Despite all this, the Democrats still have worse approval than the Republicans! 60% of respondents describe them as ineffective compared to 35% who say the same for Republicans. The two party system is creaky and weak right now.
Trump will just post ICE agents outside voting locations in districts that have a lot of minorities and drive down participation. The Supreme Court just declared they can grab people based on skin color. Not many people will want to deal with that on behalf of a shit political party.
Living through “First time?” is kinda funny.
If you subscribe to the belief that the root of conservatism is fear then you must also subscribe to the belief that conservatives will be the first to get scared when the violence begins.
Whatever you can say about Democrats and republicans, the republicans definitely wield power more effectively - so the poll results make sense.
Democrats staunchly refuse to change anything and yield all power to do so.
Democrats are very good at what they do. They accomplish exactly what they want, which is nothing. It only seems like they are incompetent because people take them at face value that they are trying to achieve progressive reforms, when in reality that is not even a concern for them
PSL heads you better be ready to rise to the moment
I know in my area they seem to be growing every week, which is interesting. But I heard they’re a lot less of a thing in not major cities.
Damn. It’s good we live in a democracy.
significant turning point (good) or (bad), it’s a nothing answer. of course it’s a turning point, mfer sanctioning half the world and dunking wto in dustbin of history
To them, it’s only violence if it’s against
deleted by creator
He’s still +74% among people who voted for him in '24; the echo chamber is still going strong.
Libs will ignore how faithful the adherents are
Hasan flashed a poll yesterday (too quick for me to jot down the source) that asked people if they preferred democrats like Schumer and Pelosi or Mamdani and AOC. The overall result was +3 for the progressive dems. That’s significant because IIRC it was a poll of all across the spectrum, and conventional wisdom says that the more centrists dems are preferred in that scenario because it includes a lot of conservatives.
How the dems could right the ship and achieve huge electoral successes is staring them in the face, and they refuse to acknowledge it.
(Of course, I am not saying progressive dem politicians are good, I am just highlighting that people are fed up with the status quo and the option of “let’s do more free markets, neoliberalism, and austerity is NOT popular at all. I think this highlights that there is an opening for us to develop class consciousness to a degree not seen before in recent memory).
Gen X holding us all down SMDH
they just got their free house - from their grandparents, the happiest day of any homeowner, which they can rent to future generation holding us down.
It’s because DOGE fucked with boomer’s social security.
Has me wondering if GenX is also as lead poisoned as boomers? They certainly have the sociopathic symptoms down, even if they lack the pigheaded lead-stare aggression common to boomers
As a (adult and thankfully NC with one of them) child of GenXers, I think it’s the lead, combined with seeing the height of US/western triumphalism and the “end of history” bullshit, and not having the constant devastation of 2008 onwards define their formative years (childhood all the way up to early adulthood).
Boomers are cursed, but at least then, I feel the lines were drawn, across the map, across class interests, maybe. Granted, I’m coming from an immigrant family (parents came over when I was 2), but my parents grew up seeing this triumphalism and perhaps the high-point of western whitewashing and erasure of history, and not the worst of the ongoing atrocities of just how the western order was made and sustained. On the other hand, even my paternal grandparents who are deeply religiously colonized know what it is like to have been a colonial subject. They know what it was like to face US-destabilization and massacres and abuses of their community and broader ethnic kin, and colonial “containment” wars with the US slaughtering millions of their neighbors. In these senses (I suspect also racially, etc) there was a understanding that was- not lost, but diminished, intentionally paved over with feel-good nonsense like as if all the horrors of the west never existed, or were in some distant past, as the west portrayed itself as the gatekeepers and origin of all social progress and development. And genX was raised seeing the worst of it.
Gen Xers seem to be the most entitled generation. Here, they are always up in arms about how everything is fucking up their parking spots
the actual leaded gasoline effects hit gen x the hardest, boomers were hit too but they were already past childhood
That’s genuinely terrifying, when those GenXers hit their golden years and their bones start to soften, the stored lead will begin to leech out of their bones and hit their nervous systems a second time
Is lead poisoning a congenital disorder? Perhaps they inherited it from their parents
Only if there’s severe exposure during pregnancy, lead can cross the placenta, but lead doesn’t just hang around all over the body, in most cases once it’s done its damage it binds with the calcium in the bones and accumulates there semi-harmlessly for most of that person’s life, until old age when the bones become porous and the lead is released a second time back into the rest of the body
Most GenXers probably weren’t poisoned during pregnancy (unless their boomer mother was exposed all the time) but instead during childhood
lol and this is with a good market, imagine how bad his numbers will get if stocks take a dive
“good” market