Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan
Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan
Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.
What a clusterfuck of an election.
Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.
It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.
This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.
Your Monday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Thursday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Sundary briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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 Pakistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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.
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Continuing a discussion from the last thread: May I just say that critical support is ok? Stalin wasn't perfect either but god damn I'd take Stalin over every world leader alive today. A Galloway + Corbyn alliance might be the best thing that ever happened to the UK; and I don't mean the kind of 'harm reduction' of voting for Biden where there is literally a zero percent chance of anything changing. Corbyn and Galloway, despite their issues, are legitimately pro-Palestine, pro-unions, pro-worker, anti-war with Russia. Corbyn in particular is extremely progressive on LGBTQ+ issues; he could push Galloway on that. Yes we have a lot of work ahead of us pushing them in the right direction but they're almost there. If Galloway was completely immovable on green energy/trans rights, I don't think he'd be offering Corbyn to lead his party; the 2017/9 manifesto was extremely pro green energy and LGBTQ+ rights.
Right-opportunism and tailism on my hexbear? It's more common than you think
If Galloway was completely immovable on green energy/trans rights, I don't think he'd be offering Corbyn to lead his party
Stalin would've had them both shot. Your thoughts on that?
And Stalin had the power of an entire state behind him. We don't work with ideals, we work with the material conditions we've got. Currently, we have a restless but weak and under organized working class under constant siege of triumphant capital for 30 years. Something other than a boot on the face of humanity would be nice for a change tbh
Something other than a boot on the face of humanity would be nice for a change tbh
Yes, but your folly is thinking that social democrats, right-opportunists, and revisionist pseudo-revolutionaries like Galloway and Corbyn can bring that about. This is a tremendous error and the western left will not mature until it realizes that we cannot compromise on our politics.
Did Marx compromise on the Gotha programme just because "something other than a boot" would be nice?
Ask yourself when Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin, Mao etc EVER compromised on their politics?
Please realize that ONLY a revolutionary ML/MLM vanguard party seizing power can remove that boot, anything other than that like these opportunist movements is just not going to fucking cut it, and is not worth our support.
Stalin would've had them both shot. Your thoughts on that?
feel like shit, just want him back
Stalin would've had them both shot. Your thoughts on that?
Wish he was here today
I don't. He was a product of his time - no doubt historically revolutionary, but committed many mistakes and held onto many backwardisms of his own time. I don't want Stalin back, I want to build a genuinely revolutionary vanguard party that can cultivate modern day Stalins. But hey do you
you should learn to take a joke a little better
Shut up, goofball.
If Corbyn and Galloway grew up in the USSR while Stalin was around then they'd be MLs, so this hypothetical question is just silly.
Right, just like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, famous MLs who were born in the 1930s in the USSR right? Anyway, I don't understand the point you're trying to make and I think you've missed mine.
What I'm saying is that it's nonsensical to say you support Stalin in one breath and then say we should support Corbyn/Galloway in the next breath. The former was an genuinely principled revolutionary, while the latter are socdems, revisionists, opportunists etc who Stalin would have had liquidated if they were in the party. Even before the Bolsheviks had state power there were other revisionist, non-Marxist left parties and trade unions etc that existed who the Bolsheviks had frayed relationships with at best and hostility with at worst, but over the course of the 1920's-1930's these other parties were gradually removed from any power they held and placed in the dustbin of history.
So, if we genuinely support Stalin and his legacy, the lesson to learn is that we must maintain our principles. We must advance the positions of the masses instead of giving into reactionary tailism. Our energy should be focused on constructing the genuinely revolutionary vanguard party. In general, other opportunist parties aren't worth our time, and will not get us any closer to socialism (at worst they will delay us). Now to be more specific, its definitely important for the revolutionary movement to draw into the struggle, work with, and build relations with leftist mass organizations, including ones that may not be specifically Marxist or hold principled positions, but that's not what we're talking about here.
No I get your point but our fantasy about the UK having a revolutionary vanguard is impossible. Even if you had the grassroots resources, the British people don't want it. Frankly the West is a lost cause for revolution and the focus of western leftists should be on generating instability for imperialist powers so that China et al. can take over. I think Corbyn and Galloway could create a lot of instability in the imperialist core.
My brother in Christ, the "west is a lost cause for revolution" exactly BECAUSE of sentiments and takes like this! You actually posted this seriously thinking that it wasn't anything other than counterrevolutionary drivel (that, again, Stalin would've 100% had you liquidated for stating back in the day -- have you thought about why you admire people who would have branded you as enemies and destroyed you, are you into radical politics because you are a masochist?). The lack of self awareness and idealism is just too much. I'm going to block you and move on from this convo, I hope you are not actually involved in any orgs while holding onto these anti-people and frankly dangerous ideas. Better yet, feel free to state what orgs you are involved in so any of our UK comrades who are serious with their love the people and are dedicated in wanting to serve them can avoid them.
although i agree that it is possible for a western revolution to happen, i think the only real opportunity is for when the empire collapses. especially for the US. These countries need to lose their pride and their economic strength for the majority to go all in.
although i do realize that doesn't discount the fact that any decently organized party with grassroots support could take power if the dice is rolled correctly. I'm mostly just posing an idea and seeing if you agree
Ah yes, the only reason there hasn't been a revolution in the UK is because I wasn't enthusiastic enough about it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with being in the heart of the imperialist core with repressive laws backed by the police with machine guns, secret services, the military... Forget all that, I should have just joined one of the 10 shit 'revolutionary' parties here with like 5 members each.
If you had read Stalin who you keep banging on about you'd know he said revolution occurs in the weakest link in the chain of imperialism. The UK is far from the weakest link in the chain of global imperialism. Marx similarly critiqued the Paris commune, saying it happened to soon.
But no, it's all my fault because I'm too pessimistic.
the "west is a lost cause for revolution" exactly BECAUSE of sentiments and takes like this!
This is delusional.
Stalin would've 100% had you liquidated
This is "communism killed a bajillion people!" propaganda you are proudly repeating. I'm embarrassed for you.
Stalin spoke positively about imperfect worker parties in other countries, including the USA and UK in his speeches.
Based and Dialecticaly materialist pilled
If either of them were potent organizing forces maybe. But they aren't and that's what's missing from the left in the UK.
It's also why people think things like what you're suggesting. There's a vacuum and nobody to seize it, usually because they're stuck in some Trot party or mentality, which is usually opportunism.
The work of building socialist power starts with education and low-level organizing that these other groups are unwilling to do. If there's anyone to chase after, it's young people that are 100% ready for what we have to say but will sooner run into a transphobic "communist" or toxic Trot than a competent communist.
Don't let someone like Galloway take your potential supporters. Win them yourself through your own org.
I mostly see Galloway as a leftist Trump. Even that "little Rishi Sunak" remark he made reminded me of Trump calling Rubio "little Rubio." He's going to be really really funny as he owns the even-more-insufferable-than-the-US British press and all the Blarites are going to have their brains turn to mush from Galloway derangement syndrome, but as an actual movement? I suppose it remains to be seen, but I think it's incredibly naive to think Galloway would somehow be swayed from transphobia by Corbyn. If anything, it would most likely be Corbyn who would compromise since Corbyn is a complete pushover and Terf Island is Terf Island.
Critical support for Galloway calling out the Zionist political class and media apparatus for supporting genocide, but that should pretty much be it. I don't even think he's anti-anti-China since I don't see him talk about it, which makes me think he would pivot towards Sinophobia if it's politically expedient.
I get you.
Permanently Deleted
There's no other hope ):