Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net 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 @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net 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.
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.
Tbh the examination problem is not getting better even after the educational ““reform””. (Knowing the Chinese Government, they don’t really have incentives to fix the problem)
The persistence in emphasizing on examination is stupid because it misses the deeper problems: job opportunities are not improving and inequality is still a problem.
China stopped publishing the official youth unemployment rate last year when it hit the record high and then they started publishing again with a new metric that excludes college students(use your own judgement on why). It was fluctuating between 13-21% between 2022-2023 and is now back at 17.6%.
You can compare the World Bank data estimate here I picked some countries, also here they use other official sources.
Is it that bad? but it is about on par with the worst EU countries(Italy, Sweden, Spain), generally higher than the EU average and generally far higher than Japan and Korea.
US is listed at 10% but fuck if US data is reliable at all. For what is worth its getting worse for some countries too UK is nearing COVID high, US is highest since 2021 etc.
Obviously Chinese economic growth, poverty reduction and wage growth are all far higher so its not to say that "oh Chinese youth are afraid of living in the slums" or something, at all. But I wouldn't be surprised if the COVID era effects still being felt.
Even if the tide rises all boats there is social anxiety from being afraid of being left behind or taking the back seat.
IMO understanding material conditions leads to things like crime is the most obvious thing surely, understanding why white cis male chuds do school shootings doesn't mean you approve it.
Chinese youths live in the shadow of the reform era. Their expectations is shaped by that era, their parent’s expectations for their children too. Their failure to reach that expectation is now turned onto a moral and personal failure because the whole country doesn’t understand the reform era was an exception in modern chinese history, not a feature
Tbh, the change in not putting student in the data can be explained by multiple reasons: the main one is that student are “in training” therefore not “seeking employment”. The other is to control the data for political reason. There is no shame really in doing that, most governments change definitions for their datas and most organizations have the conclusions they want to see in the sheet before gathering datas (for example insurance companies)
WTF are you on about? Failing an exam doesn't make someone go on a killing spree. Pro-tip: police statements are also frequently bullshit outside the US too.
Randomly massacring civilians is complete derangement, actually. It'd be one thing if he tried to kill his boss or the university president or whatever, this is totally different.
I swear, some of you would defend mass shootings if the shooter mentioned the proletariat in their manifesto
I don't defend his actions, i find the alleged motivation troubling due to the stuff described (if it's really happened to him, long working hours, non payment etc).
Fuckery of education i treat as self explanatory, when it got so bad the state has to ban too much tutoring. You don't need university degree to like assemble phones or work machines, yet this seems so unenviable people like mad try to get degree by all means necessary and do something else. This is bad
You're failing to understand east-asian culture and the absolute importance they place on studies/exams. There was a megathread a few months ago talking about the Chinese imperial exams system and how it's part of the culture of China to have social expectations on people to take difficult exams and to pass them. This probably has less to do with "getting higher grades to avoid low-paying jobs" and more to do with societal norms and expectations.
But its kinda samey logic, just from times long forgotten. Anyone can succeed in exams and become bureaucrat etc, thus exams are important.
I don't know how you can resolve this issue, even soviet union nearly immediately folded to engineers/white collar payscale being higher. But i do find it troubling that no one did
The test or exam as a concept (ie people gathering in a room to answer a standardized set of questions with proctors to prevent people from cheating) was invented by the Chinese. And it's not going away anytime soon.