Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela
Bulletins and News Discussion from July 29th to August 4th, 2024 - Haters Stay Mad(uro) - COTW: Venezuela
Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.
Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.
Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.
Thank you to @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.
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 Venezuela! 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!
The RSS feed is here.
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.
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Treat Panic index $VIX is above 25. May be an interesting weeks ahead.
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I think all of your conclusions are 100% correct, but I don’t believe Biden is the puppet master at the center of all this. I have seen this mental degeneration in two of my grandparents, and both had passed away within a year or so of these symptoms. I don’t think he’s all there most of the time.
I just think there is a larger apparatus in place. The Fed does have some political independence. Not as much as liberals claim, but it doesn’t matter. The top people at the Treasury, State Dept, CIA, and even the Fed to an extent may very well be replaced even if Kamala Harris wins. What they all do over the next few months will be interesting to say the least.
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He is simply no longer able to put on a human mask as well as he could in the past, and thus exposing his core as a person
100%, this is what I saw in those same grandparents as well (for example, using incredibly racist language that they had previously held back to be polite).
yea its really funny because the same business media was previously complaining about the labor market being 'too tight'.
I don't really understand monetary policy, so could I ask for a further clarification;
When you say the US deficit is mainly comprised of interest payments you mean these payments out of the Treasury to (presumably American) bondholders are what is propping up demand in the economy and a reduction in any payments would cause a resulting slowdown in demand and therefore a recession if cut? Unless the government invested money through fiscal policy to cover the gap (lol).
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Of course, most of those interest payment went to the top 1-10% - the rich people. But at 8% deficit to GDP (and about half of that came from interest payment), even if we are talking about trickling down, that is still enough to keep the economy limping along without going into recession. A highly regressive policy, but the economy is still not crashing yet.
Come on dude, with all due respect, this is nonsense. You're unironicaly suggesting trickle down is not only real but the Fed can't lower rates otherwise the country breaks down?
Like even at face value why are you conflating US interest payments to rich individuals with "the private sector". Most corporations take on debt and are struggling to even be profitable, you should know there is already a permanent 5-15% group of zombie corporations in the US(not profitable and can only survive by taking or paying debt perpetualy).
Instead of a conspiracy there are other simpler reasons why the Fed doesn't lower rates, the most obvious one is monetary policy is nonsense, it is like faith healers and placebo. Inflation came down after COVID through '20-22 not because of interest rates but because the supply bottle necks eased up after the lockdown for example.
Now it is clear it doesn't work because the Fed interest rate goals to bring inflation down is head up against the greedflation from most corporations that raised prices and have no plans to lower them back again. These corps realized mainstream econ is BS and they can definitely get away with squeezing consumers because turns out elasticity and all that is nonsense, people are not "rational" and in fact some things are indispensable(or considered so) that people will endure almost whatever price for it e.g healthcare inflation in the US has been massive when the mainstream econ should say people would just go eat shit and die without insurance lol.
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I went looking through your comments to see if you had any comments on corporate debt and distressed debt exchanges, since I think you are the only other person on here who might know anything about them, but I wanted to comment on this.
Traditionally, the Fed is only half of the equation, and Congress is supposed to be the other half. A lot of the theory that neoliberals use to govern monetary policy happened at a time when Congress was willing to raise taxes and spending when necessary. A lot of inflationary pressures over the last two years should have been dealt with through increased tax pressures on corporations and high earners. However, because of the "more recent" reality of Congress, the Fed is basically on its own in new territory where the old rules don't necessarily work, because their Congressional counterparts aren't interested in making them work.
fuck it im raising my gambling 'savings'.
Yeah but you see, a recession will lead to lowered interest rates and therefore more job creation. Buy the dip.