Image is a map of the Western Sahara, sourced from this article in the Middle East Eye. Much of the information in the preamble also came from there, as well as this article.
November 6th marked the 50th anniversary of Morocco, under King Hassan II, beginning the invasion and occupation of much of the territory of the Western Sahara. Today, approximately 80% of the territory of the Western Sahara is controlled by Morocco, with the Polisario Front - the government of the Sahrawis - controlling the rest, hugging the border of Mauritania. Between them lies one of the longest walls and one of the largest minefields on the planet, of which construction began in the 1980s.
The legitimacy of Morocco’s control over the Western Sahara is one of those long-lasting diplomatic issues which ultimately doesn’t seem to matter very much in terms of on-the-ground realities, and reveals the eternal uselessness of the United Nations especially in regard to actually helping oppressed people. Up until about 2020, the US and certain other Western countries did not formally recognize Morocco as having sovereignty over the whole territory, but in terms of providing genuine opposition to Morocco, it seems that Algeria is the major player in the region. While American, European, and Moroccan corporations exploit the fisheries and phosphate minerals of the region, protected by their minefields (and claims of merely advancing the cause of renewable energy development, AKA greenwashing), Algeria provides what aid they can to support the displaced Sahrawi people, many of whom have been forced to live in refugee camps.
On October 31st, the US put forward a resolution in the UN Security Council which was adopted (Russia and China abstained) and provided major support to Morocco, urging the Polisario Front to adopt the 2007 “autonomy plan”, which would, despite its name, be synonymous with an end to their independence movement. Such a plan was met with much jubilation in Morocco, with King Mohammed VI remarking "From now on, there will be a before and an after October 31, 2025.” Such a date was also the catalyst for the PF intensifying their guerilla struggle against Morocco, as legal avenues for autonomy and basic human rights are running out as the imperialists grow more desperate.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does this lend credence to the lib battle cry that Russia is on the verge of collapse?
I mean, it’s not going to be worse than the 2014 sanctions. But the opportunity to revive the economy is now lost, and things aren’t going to get better until the so-called BRICS figure out among themselves how they want to move forward from the status quo.
The fact that both Russia (literally at war with NATO and the collective West) and China (literally under continuous sanctions from the US) continue to be obsessed with “replenishing the budget” just demonstrates the ideological victory of neoliberalism. Even the countries that want to decouple from Western imperialism find themselves unable to abandon neoclassical theories that sustain the global neoliberal free trade regime.
Until BRICS has decided that they want to create an entirely new economic doctrine and a new trade, financial and monetary system that opposes neoliberalism, they will continue to have to play by Washington’s rules. If it is just multi-polar neoliberalism, then nothing will change. Workers will still be exploited, rich countries will continue to extract from the poor countries, depriving them of economic sovereignty, international financial capital will continue to control the global supply chain in the guise of IMF bailouts and financial takeovers, and the probability of a world war rises as they cannot resolve the increasing contradictions of capitalism.
Finally, if you look at the central banks accumulating gold in recent months, is it not proof that nobody has a clue (or could not come to a consensus) on how to build a new international financial system to displace the dollar regime? So they turn to hoarding gold, hoping to offset the depreciating value of the dollar that they have accumulated over the years by running the IMF-advised trade surplus strategy, as Trump now insists on reducing the US trade deficits. After three years of intense debate, there is still no consensus. We need to see a theoretical and an institutional breakthrough here.
Based on my very limited understanding of economics it means one of two things.
So you got a system in a feedback loop right?
Two inputs: unemployment rate and inflation rate
One output: stable economy that can find and hold prices
Two knobs you can twiddle: central bank interest rates and federal tax rates
So taking assumption Russia is in fact not fucked then they got four choices:
and then monitor output for desired result, tweak again and check results
Actually five choices 5) do nothing
Actually six choices 6) revolution-grab both corners of the table cloth and rip the entire thanksgiving dinner on to the floor and start over. Turkey gravy cranberry sauce macaroni and cheese rolls pumpkin pie relish tray green bean casserole all of it onto the floor and start over like the Bolsheviks did.
Many more knobs can be twiddled, though.
You focused on monetary policy: taxes amount to destroying currency, but the opposite of money destruction is money creation, primarily through deficit and, less desirably, through bond interests. So, as much as you can tweak taxes, you can also tweak deficit: hiring more public workers, spending money in infrastructure, rising wages of existing public workers, rising pensions, increasing expenditure in healthcare and education… Those are some of the main ways to stimulate the economy through deficit.
Outside monetary policy: inflation is simply defined as the sustained and general increase of prices over time. What can you do against inflation? Lower the prices, either through subsidy (deficit, e.g. giving people money to buy housing) or through price caps (e.g. rent caps or directly fixing prices of certain goods and services).
The Russian industry faces many challenges, some of the biggest ones being sanctions (increased difficulty or cost in access to inputs from abroad, and decrease in possibility or price in outputs to abroad) and decreased unemployment rates due to mobilization and emigration since the war (lowest unemployment rates since the Soviet era, driving wages high according to Marx’s idea of the reserve army of labor, which lowers profits).