Image is of Bolivian President Luis Arce (center, with glasses) face-to-face with General Zuñiga (in camouflage) during the coup attempt.
On the 26th of June, while Hexbear was in an 8-hour hibernation, General Juan José Zuñiga marched 200 troops and some armored vehicles on the government palace in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Luis Arce. This is somewhat reminiscent of Jeanine Anez’s coup in November 2019 where she overthrew the socialist president Evo Morales, but while that coup was due to a colour revolution likely orchestrated by the United States and had at least a tiny amount of political/public legitimacy and “followed the rules” in a certain sense (as Morales was trying to abolish presidential term limits, which is only evil if a socialist is doing it), this was a much more naked attempted seizure of power by a military general.
This coup was quickly terminated without even a momentary transfer of power. Democracy was saved.
Despite being in the same party, Morales and Arce have increasingly been in opposition. Morales champions anti-imperialism, rights for indigneous people, and poverty reduction. This last one especially has been threatened by Arce, though it’s not entirely his fault, as the Bolivian economy is threatened by the same crisis affecting so many developing economies around the world right now - say it with me now - a lack of dollars and mounting debt. The US Federal Reserve is carrying out a bloody offensive against the world’s poor, and this has combined nastily with a rather uninspiring “post”-coronavirus economic recovery in Bolivia, as well as diminishing natural gas production (and thus less exports with which to earn dollars).
While the coup was ongoing, Morales banded behind the government. Afterwards, however, Morales expressed his skepticism about whether the coup was, in fact, genuine, calling for an independent investigation into it, and saying that Arce “disrespected the truth, deceived us, lied, not only to the Bolivian people but to the whole world." This is because General Zuñiga made a series of very interesting statements to his family and colleagues, saying that Arce had “betrayed” him, and saying that Arce had told him “‘The situation is very screwed up, very critical. It is necessary to prepare something to raise my popularity.'" This does check out on the surface level, at least: Arce has suffered increasing unpopularity as the economy has suffered.
Interestingly, Morales’ narrative has been supported by the anarchocapitalist leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, who is currently busy completely destroying his own country and stripping the copper out of the walls to give to American capitalists. Milei said that the coup attempt was “fraudulent”. Meanwhile, those inside MAS opposed to Morales’ accusations of a false coup have accused him of allying with the fascist right and becoming an instrument of imperialism.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Bolivia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
Rip Biden stonks
My poorly thought out conspiracy take on the election:
In 2019, Farage and the Brexit Party did not contest Tory seats, which protected the right wing vote and helped retain a Tory majority.
In this year’s election, Farage emerged late in the race and ran, bringing huge attention to Reform and destroying the Tory vote, thus leading to a Labour landslide. Curiously, Labour pulled their candidate in Clacton (Farage’s constituency) after he started to gain traction against Farage. In hindsight, did Keith make a deal with Farage to run for Reform in exchange for not directly contesting him? Getting fascists elected seems like a very on-brand thing for him to do.
Edit: the candidate that was running in Clacton doesn’t even seem to be a Corbyn guy, he’s following the Starmerite line on a “changed Labour Party”.
“What Keir has done is taken all the left out of the Labour Party,” billionaire businessman John Caudwell, previously a big Tory donor, told the BBC. “He’s come out with a brilliant set of values and principles and ways of growing Britain in complete alignment with my views as a commercial capitalist.”
The Labour Party highlighted his endorsement.
from https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/07/election-in-britain.html
Regarding elections in Iran today, let’s clear some things up for the hexies.
There is actually a massive difference between the candidates.
One candidate, Dr. Pezeshkian is a free market neoliberal whose inner circle has ties to the NED and wants to redollarize the economy and enable privatization of certain nationalized industries. He is partially campaigning on “lifting hijab law” and is largely supported by high-middle and upper classes as well as minority groups that have been heavily targeted by US/israel propaganda schemes.
The other candidate Dr Saeed Jalili has vowed to completely dedollarize the economy (USD still run the black market in Iran) and complete Iran’s economic and political “turn to the East” fulfilling its destined role in building multipolarity. He has vowed increased protections for workers, government regulation of financial markets, and prioritizing welfare of women (such as state funded daycare) which explains why he’s endorsed by every major labor union in Iran. He will be a continuation of the Raisi government which saw the largest economic growth ever for Iran and those benefits were reflected in the lower classes such as massively increasing minimum wage.
Pezeshkian will be a disaster for working class Iranians and slow down Iran’s contributions to developing multipolar world, so this election is actually quite important.
In reality the overwhelming majority of Iranians do support the revolution even if they have dissatisfaction with their government and their living situation under a genocidal embargo enforced by US imperialism. (See below citation)
Dr. Pezeshkian is pretty much a step backwards for the country but he’s allowed to run because Iran is a real democracy. Despite leading the previous snap election, Dr Pezeshkian only received support of 16% of the Iranian nation which is interestingly similar to the amount who have supported anti-government riots in previous years.
Therefore one of the reasons why voter participation has been emphasized is because the leadership of the revolution recognizes that the more regular people who participate the less likely it is that the liberal wins.
Addendum: the defeat of Qalibaf by Jalili in the first round reflects the major disagreements inside the Principlist faction. One of the major ones being economic policies. Qalibaf was promoting more free-market (rightist) economic policy whereas Jalili is more pro-worker and anti-privatization. Dr. Jalili winning the first round against Qalibaf is actually a great victory for regular working people in Iran provided that he is able to win today.
Watching UK election coverage and wondering who on earth came up with such a backwards system. The parties share of seats compared to their vote share, makes no sense at all. As much as I hate Farage, his party got 14% of the vote, but they only got 4 seats out of 650. How is that possible? Labour got less votes now than they did with Corbyn, yet now they achieve a landslide victory. How? The UK’s version of first past the post has to be one of the most out of date backwards electoral systems in existence. Coming from South Africa where we have proportional representation and one vote = one vote, the UK seems like an undemocratic island. And these are the people that criticize Russia and China, and the global south in general, for being “undemocratic”.
Everybody who’s something in the EU as d NATO is throwing tantrums over Orban going to Moscow. Apparently you can’t talk about peace “on Putin’s terms as long as Putin is attacking Ukraine”. The mainstream media are writing “neutral independent analysis” of the visit, claiming it “allows Putin to look like he is for peace”.
Western diplomacy strikes again, we will only talk to those who surrender uncobditionally beforehand. Orban might be a piece of shit but maintaining diplomatic relations with your enemies ought to be considered basic statecraft, not treason against everything good and holy.
According to Ukraine, Russia is losing an average of 1200 men a day in human wave attacks. Also according to Ukraine, Putler is shidding out of his doodoo ass. Neither statement could be independently verified.
Annual survey of the Amerikan cultural apparatus and it’s efficacy
Malaysia is the only country where a majority express a favorable opinion of Russia, with nearly six-in-ten Malaysians saying this. Opinion is more mixed in other middle-income countries: Roughly half hold a favorable view of Russia in Bangladesh, Peru, Thailand and Tunisia. In some middle-income countries, however, about a quarter of respondents or more do not offer an opinion.
…
The rise in favorable views of Russia is less pronounced in other countries, including Germany, Mexico and South Korea. In each, the share of adults with a positive opinion has increased by 5 points since last year. The share holding a positive view has also grown in Malaysia and Singapore, where we last surveyed in 2022, immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yeah I do not recall reading or encountering even one local Anti-Russian piece.
At most it would be the Singaporean foreign minister posturing about “smol bean” Ukraine standing up against the “larger oppressor”.
The youth support anti-imperialism and pluripolarity
Don’t mind me just posting the head of the german police union saying very normal things
“Antisemites for the most part have two faces in germany, an islamic one and a radical left one.”
Wes “the gravedigger of nhs” streeting nearly ate shit
Can’t believe that the Tories won again 😔
Current Seat distribution of the UK election (only 5 seats left to count)
Labour get a supermajority but it doesnt almost eliminate the tories like some polls predicted (my beatifull 0 seat tory poll
)Labour has lost four seats to pro-Gaza independent candidates and been run close by several others, as the impact of the Middle East crisis dented an otherwise jubilant night for Keir Starmer’s party.
Jonathan Ashworth, the party’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, was one of the highest profile political casualties of the rise in support for pro-Palestinian candidates in urban areas with high Muslim populations.
Ashworth lost his Leicester South seat to the independent Shockat Adam, who said: “This is for Gaza,” after winning by just under 1,000 votes.
Jeremy Corbyn re-elected in Islington North after expulsion from Labour
In his victory speech, Corbyn said he had fought a “positive campaign”. The political system must produce answers for social problems, he said, adding that demonising asylum seekers was not the answer. He said he was proud of his constituency for standing up for a “kinder, gentler, more inclusive politics”.
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Sir Keith has delivered a whopping 1.7% higher vote share for Labour than they got in 2019, when Sir Keith intentionally sabotaged Corbyn with his “People’s Vote” maneuver, and 6% less than Corbyn in 2017.
