Thank you to @[email protected] for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @[email protected] has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
[LONG EFFORTPOST]
Hello liberals, I will give my balance on
's Argentina and how things are as of right now, November 2024. But my talk will not be about the cringe ass ancap, I will talk about Peronism and their role as opposition.
As some of you might recall, milei's violent rethoric against "public" education (and I put public on quotes because I have another definition of what is public and what isn't) triggered a nation-wide response from universities as many of them were occupied by the students. Mine was among the first to do so, not unlikely considering it is an historic hotbed for left wing militacy, even though today it's not as good as it used to be.
Anyways, the movement gained traction but, as with many things, the lack of coordination and some... sabotage from within slowly but surely eroded it. It was to be expected, some universities are not really politicized because of course people who study complex mathematics don't have time to read Marx or something, and others have either shit soccdem or peronist leadership and fighting is not for them. My university ended up abandoning the occupation after like 20 days or so, we fought heavily to keep it running but at the end of the day we had to leave it. During the last assemblies, our struggle was directly against peronists and their party structure, who began to attempt to dissolve the movement to "take the fight elsewhere", in accordance with their general policies.
But nothing is really a failure, no matter how bad it looks. There's always experiences to draw upon and lessons to learn. Our lesson is that you just can't trust peronist-aligned groups, no matter how "radical" they may seem, because they have non-revolutionary agendas and are NOT anti-capitalist, they're just reformists who want to play nice and with some rules. The student's leadership in our university is ideologically aliged with the authorities, all are peronists. Then, a professor in one assembly said "There is fear among the authorities that this kind of assemblies might go out of control and become truly democratic and truly horizontal, some people are indeed fighting not for the common good but for their comfort positions". And he, in just a few sentences, described peronism and how they view the struggle against milei.
There has been a very alarming lack of action from the main confederation of unions, the CGT. They are the ones who say "Okay, general strike" and there will be a general strike, their level of reach and organization is unmatched. Unfortunately, the leadership of the CGT and of the many unions that form it are either all peronists or something else, few if any are leftist. The fact they haven't called for strikes in nearly one year of suicidal policies by milei is indeed alarming, it's especially bad considering the CGT has been active and calling for strikes EVEN against former peronist governments. They're nothing but a rotten group of decadent old white men who weaponized class struggle and left it at the mercy of a grotesque bureaucracy.
So if you don't see much action it's because peronism has an interest to cut a deal and keep people away from doing dangerous commie things. They don't want spontaneous organisation by workers where they take matters into their own hands. After all, peronism is anti-communist despite what some confused folks of the Communist Party think, "United Front" my fucking dick and balls lmfao, losers. I believe that peronism understand milei as a temporary anomaly, that things will "go back to normal" once he expires, they're old fashioned politicians who think the new kind of "outsiders" are short lived. Well, the normalcy we once knew is dead, even more when the latest capitalist crisis cycles are getting worse and worse.
They do want to go out to the streets, but only on their terms. Meanwhile they're trying to craft Cristina Fernández de Kirchner back to a presentable leader, as she just assumed control of the Justicialist Party (main peronist electoral party), but she is responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place. Then, once society reaches a point of near collapse, that's when they'll mobilize and cut a deal with the milei government for some sort of "peaceful transition", maybe in the midst of heavy repression like it happened during the December 2001 Riots. Peronism after all is Capital's safe bet when it comes to "social peace".
Therefore, to me it becomes evident that there must be a concentrated effort to organize the working class OUTSIDE the influence of peronism. It's a job that will take years, or maybe not, who knows. The Trots have been doing that fairly well, if anything since the 2000's they've been consistently growing and taking more spaces than before. And while Trots have a shitton of problems, their general stance is a million times better than peronist "we'll give you a better salary XD" policies that reproduce capitalism. Still, agitation becomes necessary and desirable.
Things will continue to decay, milei might "accelerate" the economy for the midterms but that'll make it crash later down the line. I think our goal as leftists is to convince those who felt betrayed by peronism and who hate neoliberalism to join the ranks of Socialism, and I can tell you slowly but surely more people are feeling just like that.
Thank you very much, comrade.
It's very interesting to me how Trotskyism is forming the most coherent left-wing opposition in Argentina - I struggle to name any other countries where that's the case. There are Trot parties through the imperial core but they aren't even remote threats to power in virtually every case.
It's certainly interesting. I know they maintain discussions with other trots parties around the world, like in Brasil, France, Germany and some small groups in the US and even South Korea, but none are even remotely as big or as important as the ones in Argentina. Sometimes they arrenge for visits to share experiences. For example, a group of US Trots came to Argentina to speak with the main Trot party, the PTS, and ended up being invited to a number of protests which they described as "something completely different to what we have in the US". They brought back to their country some of their experiences, including having a distinguished group of militants who are specialized in first aid to assist those in need during protests, especially if it's being repressed. I like that they have this internationalist perspective as well, they have their own kind of 4th International going on right now.
They also became heavily involved in local conflicts regarding ownership of factories, like when PepsiCo wanted to lay off a shitton of workers from their factory and leave, the Trots organized with the workers and ended up taking and occupying the factory. Other factories were occupied by the workers with asistance from the Trots and they still operate to this day as coops, pretty cool. Such experiences are shared with militants from other countries as well. I like them when they do shit like that, it turns out we can get shit done after all. If they could just stop talking about Trotsky for a minute.... lmao
The Trotskyists were part of the Workers' Party in Brazil until the 1990s (most of the leftists, except the Trabalhistas, who are Brazilian Peronists with presidents Vargas and Goulart, and the radical governor of Rio, Leonel Brizola, in Perón's place, and some communists, were part of the Workers' Party), when they were expelled due to internal fights and I think Lula really doesn't like Trotskyism (in his biography, he said that most of them were boring).
The United Socialist Workers Party follows Nahuel Moreno's thinking and seems to be the most popular Trotskyist party in Brazil, which doesn't mean anything because they never elected anyone, and some people left the party to create the more popular Socialism and Freedom Party, which had an internal dispute between pro-Lula/pro-China and critics of Lula and China, and the pro-Lula faction seemed to have won and elected around 15 members of congress in 2022.
The only other Trotkist party (More like a Nazbol party that think Lula is the second Lenin) is the Workers' Cause Party, which is probably best known in the West for openly celebrating the Taliban's victory as a “workers' victory”. They were also expelled from the Workers' Party, but it seems they are big fans of the Workers' Party and Lula to this day. They complain about Woke, defend Trump, but also claim that Lula is an ultra-nationalist who will turn Brazil into the Second China. They also like Putin and Xi, are very fond of Neymar and claim that FIFA has an imperialist agenda against Neymar. When Brazil vetoed Venezuela from BRICS, they claimed that Maduro was jealous of Lula and that Venezuela wanted to spread US imperialism in Brazil because Venezuela sells oil to the US and the EU (a really strange take).
I'll have to ask which Trot parties the PTS is in talks with from Brasil, because I know they have some dialogue going on.
That reminds me of an insanely obscure Trot party from Italy that declared support for ISIS because it's "anti imperialist" and is involved in a direct struggle against the US
Trotskyism is quite popular in Latin America, but sometimes they mix with local politics and it can become quite weird, almost like a Hearts of Iron shitpost but in real life.
i'm confused by this paragraph. do you mean that the CGT leadership are peronists while the CGT membership are real leftists, and that therefore the leadership haven't called for strikes while the membership have been calling for strikes?
this is pretty much word for what what democratic party elites said about trump in 2016 lol. history really do be rhyming
Death to America
The CGT's leadership, and the leadership of pretty much all of it's unions, are all peronist. The membership, however, varies from union to union. It is mostly peronist but there are leftists here and there. Some unions and ridiculously big, like for example FAECYS, which is the union for all employees related to pretty much any commercial activity, so for example if you're an employee in a store, you're in that union by default. I was a member of that union for like 5 years. That creates a very diverse ideological composition within the union. The leadership, in general, is horrendous. We're talking about a heavily centralized, personalist and bureaucratic unions whose main general secretaries have been in their posts for like three decades lmao, access to positions of power within them is almost out of reach for the common union member, if you fuck around too much you might get a bullet to your head even.
Portions of the memberships have been calling for the CGT to "wake up and call for a general strike", so there is friction between leadership and membership althrought it hasn't matured into anything yet. Unfortunately, many of the union's actions depend on the will of the leadership due to the insane centralization and bureaucracy. Other unions became independent, some are still Peronists but operate outside the CGT's influence and some are leftist, which are slowly growing.
Yep, I like to draw a lot of parallels between Peronism and the Democrats both as a party (even though Peronism has different parties) and as a movement (and to some extent with Labour in the UK). They're there to squash any kind of leftist movement from appearing and evolving. They're old-fashioned politicians as well, too used to traditional political mechanisms, thinking people like Trump or milei can be defeated by just doing politics and negotiating, or making the common people feel bad about milei because he yells at people. Peronism is a bit different though because they used to take arms against old military governments, so they know a thing or two about being entrenched in a bitter fight for power.
More like faeces amirite