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.
It seems like inflation is pretty bad in Russia
Russia's inflation is so bad that potatoes cost 64% more than they did at the start of the year - Business Insider, November 12th 2024
Maybe because interest rates doesn't reduce inflation and can have the opposite effect.
Its so stupid that interest rates is the only thing against inflation liberals can imagine. How about the Government buys all the potatoes and sells it a price that's socially desirable. The Government can also accumulate excess potatoes and offload it during shortages, I'm not sure about Russia but it is a thing in some countries.
US Government does it with oil and it kinda works, not as well as it would because oil corps have an oligopoly and have price setting power.
The liberal argument against that would be the shortage of potatoes would manifest as empty stores instead of higher prices and that is true. People may also over consume.
But there is another way, have a fixed quantity of potatoes sold at discounted rates. Rest at higher rate or maybe market rates.
Modern Russia is so capitalist-brained. Not just interest rates but I have seen videos of kulaks destroying produce.
I think something that made bourgeois political-economy more coherent for me was understanding that, in the eyes of the neoliberal/modern capitalist class, the only real, legitimate form of economic planning is debt. Modifying the terms and conditions of debt, such as interest, are the only way in which they view intervention in the economy as legitimate— any deviation from that is seen as an abrogation of their principles, which for a liberal means much less than a communist, but they still work largely with that constraint. Anything outside of that is temporary or a necessary evil that another faction might dispense with on a whim.
Imagine if you said American inflation was bad because the cost of cherries in march was 400% higher than it was in July.
Potatoes have around 1 year of shelf life so their value fluctuates depending on the time of year. If they have a bad season the price will rise regardless of inflation.
You're right that western mainstream media are framing the story in the worst light possible (the place I found the article claimed that the Russian economy has "collapsed") but I think there is some truth to it. I don't remember experiencing potato prices to fluctuate that much over the year and it's not just potatoes. Butter has also seen a 27 point something inflation over the last year.
The west has seen heavy inflation on food as well but Russia is also hit pretty badly.
I'm not saying inflation isn't happening but the price of potatoes is almost completely divorced from that.
In [place I shouldn't say the name of for opsec ] a couple years ago a bad season potatoes sent the price $8 for a 2.5 kg bag when the year before they were $5. The year after all the farmers overplanted and the price dropped to $4.50. Last shop we paid $8 for 4kg.
It seems that potatoes' price is significantly higher in 2024 than in 2023, so that doesn't explain things.
The Central Bank works for the IMF, that’s it.
The more the government subsidizes the economy, the more the Central Bank raises the interest rate and artificially lowered the ruble exchange rate to prevent the government from helping the people. I didn’t make this up, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, Alexey Zabotkin, said this publicly last summer under the pretense of “curbing inflation”.
With a lower exchange rate, imports become more expensive, so inflation also goes up.
What is surprising is that consumer and corporate lending continue to go up in spite of the high interest rate, which suggests that the Central Bank’s monetary weapon to curb spending is not only ineffective, but will soon be reaching its limit (at 21% now).
We are reaching a point where the Central Bank is near to exhaust its arsenal that can influence the economy, but the damage is already done.
So is Putin too neolib to try and curb this? Or are the Russian bougies too influential for him to do it even if he wanted to?
Putin is just the president, like Xi (who likely has more power than the Russian president since it’s a communist party). They are mediators of various factions under them, and set the general direction of the country.
In my personal opinion, there has been a coup against the liberal faction in both Russia and China for the past two years, and both appeared to have failed.
We’ll have to wait and see if this is true or not, but it bears remembering that rooting out the liberals requires a Stalin-esque purge of the 1930s that was extremely brutal and will trigger a societal upheaval that, if not handled carefully, can easily spiral into mass emigration and economic collapse.
China has been on the rise economically so they’re not going to risk it, and as such will continue to be taken advantage by the US.
Russia, on the other hand, is extremely fragile at the moment and a massive upheaval, while necessary, is going to tear the fabric of the society apart.
Neither Putin nor Xi and their cliques have the will to do this. Liberalism is not something that you can just casually get rid of - it is a deeply entrenched ideology that needs to be violently uprooted. Even in the USSR, liberalism returned as soon as Stalin died in the 1950s, but at least they had a good run of a few decades that propelled the socialist state to a new height never seen before in the history of humanity.
What is supposed to be a non-liberal faction in Russia? This claim that there was a coup against them in Russia is extremely silly.
The nationalist faction (Glazyev et al.) vs the neoliberal faction (Kudrin/Siluanov/Nabiullina et al). Pulled the trigger too fast and now banished into the deep void.
It became apparent when no significant personnel change was announced after Putin won the election. The only key person from the nationalist faction that got “promoted” was Belousov (Deputy PM to Minister of Defense), which signifies the compromise made by the neoliberals that Putin is allowed to take control of the defense industry and spend whatever he needs to finish the job in Ukraine, but elsewhere the neoliberals will remain in firm control.
The only funny thing was Chubais did a self-exile but the rest of the neoliberals fought back and won.
I.e. liberals.
Also liberals, obviously.
There are no non-liberals (apart from, maybe, the CPRF, but I don't have much trust in them) in this scenario. Both factions - if they even exist in the manner that you describe - are liberal ones.
Why would one expect Putin to make significan personnel changes right after his previous two terms where he had 12 years to configure the relevant positions?
Also, not sure what evidence you can point to of such factions even existing.
Please define liberalism and neoliberalism in economic terms, otherwise I don’t know what you’re trying to say. I don’t think even you know what you’re trying to say. I’d suggest learning about Russian politics as a first step before talking about things you don’t understand.
Мне немного смешно от такого ответа.
I am going to note that you are either unwilling or unable to explain your confidence in said factions existing, and how the 'nationalist' faction, for an example of a member of which you choose a liberal, is not liberal.
I'm gonna go with "yes" alongside an additional caveat that trying to actively engaging with and interfering the economic games the bourgeois puppets play takes too much effort, costs too much time and power, and threatens them with immediate instability simply to rectify inflation isn't really worth it to them. Simply letting the bankers be, playing their game and lobbying them to not be so mean is most likely their best course of action in consideration to everything else the rusfed has on their plate currently
Dang
Potatoes:
$0.28 lb in moscow
$1.00 lb in Illinois
You have to also consider that the salaries are much lower in Russia.
Yeah. Purchasing power really messes with people because you think a euro is a euro but you go somewhere else and all the prices are different in unpredictable ways.
Is this a result of the sanctions or something else?
Its a result of a bad harvest and cherry picking data.
But these are potatoes not cherries!
Stalin paid the clouds to stop raining
Putin found Stalin's comically large spoon in a closet in the Kremlin and began eating all the potatoes in Russia.
Nah. He used the potatoes to trade for a million porn addicted DPRK troops to use in human wave attacks against ukriane.
i thought Russia and China were the absolute best at keeping inflation under control post 2020