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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The bulletins site is 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.
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”.
Canada is the same. Trudeau campaigned on changing it to something more sane but went back on it. These idiots always believe that they’re starting a thousand year Reich where they are forever popular, so when parties have massive majorities they don’t use them to change anything. Then it’s always a shock when the tide turns and they get rinsed.
It’s worth mentioning that the reason Trudeau went back on the promise to change the system is because while the multiparty committee they struck to suggest a new system suggested actual proportional representation, system the Liberals wanted was a ranked ballot FPTP, which would have led to even more lopsided false majorities like this one.
These systems are all bullshit, but it bears repeating that Trudeau had no intention of switching to a more sane system, only to switching to a system that would be even more favorable to his own party as the milquetoast “center-left” option. The moment he found out that the committee made the recommendation to switch to a genuinely more representative system, he just went “lol no” and kept on governing because it turns out that campaign promises still don’t matter.
Lmao what? Canada moment
My framing is obviously biased against Trudeau, but even the most charitable reading of the facts looks really bad. The Trudeau campaign promised, verbatim, that the election would be “the last held under first past the post.” It was that explicit. The Liberals were then elected to a (somewhat unexpected) majority, meaning they had full authority to make changes to the system, or at the very least to put the question to a referendum. They assembled an all-party committee (including the minuscule Green Party) to form a recommendation on what system to use, and, after a perfectly reasonable and fulsome consultation process, they eventually came back with some version of mixed-member proportional representation. Trudeau then claimed there wasn’t enough consensus and abandoned the issue.
The “lack of consensus” was ostensibly about the exact type of proportional system to use, but an overwhelming majority of all stakeholders involved (party representatives, citizens, experts asked to advise, etc.) preferred some version of proportional representation. If we lived in a democracy, it would already be policy by now.
At the time I was Big Mad about that because I thought that proportional representation would have given a better chance of leftist policy being enacted. Since then I’ve kind of calmed down on it because I don’t think it would have made any material difference. The problem is liberal democracy itself, not the specific configuration thereof, and so at the end of the day it’s just one more example of the failure of liberal democracy, rather than a truly substantial missed opportunity.
Trudeau’s government did deliver on properly legalizing recreational cannabis, though. That’s something.
Don’t forget the most fun part, when Trudeau’s government formed a committee to evaluate voting systems, the recommendations were for some type of mixed member proportional. So naturally he said either you all agree on ranked ballot of fuck u.
it’s like somebody was challenged to come up with the least democratic system possible that could still just barely qualify as a democracy on the slightest technicality, which makes it even more entertaining to watch the “WE MUST DEFEND DEMOCRACY FROM THE TYRANTS OF THE WORLD” people rave on the media.
even by the very strange standards of western liberals, I genuinely believe that Russia is a more democratic country than the UK.
The whole system is just so alien to me as someone that voted in the South African elections. If I lived in a country with first past the post, I probably would not vote because of the large chance my vote would not count. Meanwhile in South Africa I can vote for a tiny political party that I feel best represents my views, and so long as they get a few ten thousand votes nationwide, they get a seat in parliament, and even a government minister or deputy minister post if they come to an agreement with the governing party or governing coalition. It’s not the greatest system and has many flaws as does any bourgeois democracy, but compared to first past the post, proportional representation seems so much better.
They left the same system in India and it’s pretty much the same result. Party with 30% votes has 240 seats and party with 20% votes has 100 seats.
Yeah … “Largest democracy in the world”, in which one vote does not equal one vote.
And the worst part is they’ll use this to justify why FPTP is good.
landed gentry brainpan is a sight of wonders
As so many other things in Angloid society the FPTP system is an anachronism that has been allowed to continue for far too long. The system arose at a time before modern communication, a unified national discourse and political parties existed, it was just the rich and important men of each locality who decided which of them should go to represent the community.
In many other places the FPTP system disappeared as mass media and organisations made it obsolete. By a struck of coincidence the shift away from FPTP often happened to coincide with emerging labour parties gaining traction and threatened to take the spot as one of the two large factions.
That shift never happened in the UK, for whatever reason. Maybe the British bourgeoisie found other ways to keep the threat of Labour at bay.
Since then the continued existence of this archaic system has moved reactionaries to invent all sorts of after the fact justifications for why it is good, like how it is important to represent each piece of land, how it is important to have a “local MP” or (this one is especially loved by authoritarian libs) how FPTP discourages “extremism” and promotes reasonable centrism.
Not all FPTP systems are bad though, the Soviet system of elections, one of the most democratic system of government, can be seen as a form of FPTP. It has some major differences from western FPTP systems though, class differences are eliminated, if they exist, political parties operate much more constructively than their western counterparts, representatives can be recalled and they are from the community.