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.
Well, I understand your perspective. It is a problem in the sense that it’s dragging down economic growth. However, for many people like me, who have lived nothing but the most utter and unfettered laissez-fair and austerity throughout their entire lives (I’m an almost 30 year-old Spaniard), the thought of a government acknowledging a problem, and at least taking half-correct measures like “tightening the belt” of party expenditure and loosening monetary policy, on top of continued growth of GDP, salaries and no inflation, is even hard to imagine.
I understand that, to you, many of those problems look unacceptable, and I too believe there are better solutions such as serious state intervention through “guaranteed jobs” policy, but being used to 25% of youth unemployment, to ever-shrinking purchase power, and the constant degradation of the welfare state, the Chinese state policy looks like a dream.
Appreciate your perspective. I don’t disagree that the Chinese leadership is a lot more competent than the many Western governments, especially when it comes to macro policy adjustments (though there are many long-standing corruption problems that have festered deep inside the bureaucracy in spite of 10 years of anti-corruption campaign).
However, the major contention here is whether socialism can be achieved through neoliberal principles, which is exactly what China is practicing right now.
There is no economic constraint in China today other than a blind belief in neoliberalism that says the government cannot institute full employment program, raise the wages of the people, provide welfare and healthcare etc. especially to the 600 million people (mostly rural population) who received the short end of the stick with the reform and opening up. Now that the economy is going into downturn, it is the rural population and the Tier 3/4 and below cities that will bear the most burden as the country prioritizes recovery in the Tier 1/2 cities. So, remember this every time you hear that “China has alleviated millions out of poverty”, because that came from a very specific phase of economic development in the 2000s-2010s.
This is not to say Deng’s reform era is not useful. The USSR needed the NEP to stabilize its post-revolution economy, but you also cannot possibly believe that the USSR could have emerged as a socialist superpower had Stalin not transitioned away from the NEP into the Five-Year Plan in 1929?
What I am saying here is that China’s neoliberal phase was already over 10 years ago and the time to transition is not a few years from now, not even today, it should have been yesterday.
In my view, China really lost the golden opportunity to transition its economy in the mid-2010s, when the economic trajectory was still very much in the upswing. The government’s attitude to curbing property prices was half-hearted to begin with (because it was delivering the big GDP numbers), and so the situation was allowed to go out of control. The vibes back in 2017-2019 were completely different than they are today, when nobody had to worry about unemployment. You have to see it to believe it.
What you’re seeing in China today is really the outcome of an ongoing over-investment phase that should have stopped 10 years ago, back in the mid-2010s. This is why you’re seeing such dissonance in China today - on the one hand, great infrastructure, on the other, unemployment and wage stagnation. Because the local governments have taken out so much debt for the infrastructure building that with the current deflation, it has become very difficult to service. As a result, the local governments delay wages and payments, and has begun to institute austerity (or at least raising prices of public services).
I know Westerners cannot comprehend what over-investment in infrastructure means. It looks very shiny with the latest model of high speed rails and the most advanced urban technologies. But remember that these all require constant maintenance, which costs money and effort (and therefore, labor and resource allocation), and as the government subsidies become less and less during an economic downturn, as we are experiencing today, the upkeep of these infrastructure is placing a lot of financial strain on the local governments. In fact, the central government has already denied new cities from building subway systems since 2021 (we have 54 cities with subways so far) because the over-investment strategy to drive GDP numbers was already seeing diminishing returns. The quality of service and the state of maintenance will only degrade if the local governments cannot improve their financial situation.
On the other hand, if the country had begun its transition towards domestic consumption a decade ago, you would still see the infrastructure building AND the job opportunities and continued growth today. That’s the point I have been trying to drive across.
Finally, nobody could have foreseen the COVID pandemic. I am not conspiratorially minded, but let’s just say that the US got really really lucky with COVID when it comes to China’s economy. The whole investment gambit could have possibly worked for a few more years, but COVID really put a fast deceleration brake on China’s economy abruptly and with export-driven and investment-driven growth fading, the deep inequalities that had been obfuscated due to the prior fast growing periods have now started to manifest themselves in the form of low domestic consumption. Exactly what China needed today to save itself. Ironic, huh?
I would agree that China’s current economic policies are not necessarily intended to achieve socialism. I believe it’s because geopolitical concerns come first and foremost. What good is socialism if it is suffocated in the cradle by external forces?
China needs to guarantee the security of the state before they can even begin to think of a serious economic transition. Looking at it through that lens, I think China’s policies make sense.
Why does the US struggle to keep up with China’s military buildup? Partially due to their consumption-focused economy.
If I’m being charitable and to China and the CPC I am, this would be in my mind a big concern. The moment the west is economically decoupled from you is the moment they can afford to do ANYTHING. From yes sanctions and blockades and conflicts to prevent you from selling to other markets like Europe, MENA, Africa, Latin/South America, Asian vassals, etc that strangle you and isolate you from the world like the USSR to truly violent and desperate acts like using nuclear weapons because there are no economic concerns. I think there may be those in the CPC who view the US with incredible concern as a deranged, violent maniac that only isn’t attacking them viciously on multiple fronts because of their intertwined dependency. So the thinking goes you can’t transition to socialism YET because doing that will scare off the capitalists, result in de-coupling, re-shoring (not necessarily to US but India for example) and result in a conflict. Better to bide your strength as long as you can and when the moment comes be as strong as you can be with people, industry, tech as advanced and built as you can reasonably make it so you hit the ground on the new cold war conflict running.
The problem with this type of thinking and planning of course is you risk having types who constantly make excuses for why now is not the right time even when it is, who resist change because they’re risk averse or genuinely liberal thinking and enjoy all this private enterprise and capitalist market economy mode. So you have a risk of not striking at the ideal time and of rot setting in as well as of course the cost born by the Chinese people in situations of economic decline where rather than going the state planning route harder to alleviate that you believe they just have to endure it for the sake of “the plan”. I am hopeful that China is just waiting until 2030 as their plans state and at that point having accumulated as much as they can in the interim and remaining as entangled with the west as they can economically they’ll begin to change things around. But it’s a real danger. It’s playing with fire because it gives liberal-roaders, revisionists and opportunists opportunities to put a socialist sounding logical spin on their desires to keep things free market. And as others note deeper in this thread there’s a real risk they can push for delays if economic stagnation occurs and they can say “we need more time to build up, just another 10 years, just let us clear this stagnation, we need to open up more” and that can lead to even worse things like the kind of decay and rot that claimed the USSR. They need very steady hands at the very top for the next 5 years at least.
There’s a real risk of hesitancy because of how the US has set up dominoes to strangle the B&R for example so I hope 2030 is set in stone as far as possible because by then China’s military will be reasonably modernized, enough to likely stand up to the US very effectively, a lot of tech will have caught up, independence on semi-conductors could be a reality, etc.