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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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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I think it’s a feeling of western complicity, although it’s way more explicit and consequential with Israel, people still balk when they learn how technology is supported by blood
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Like most western activism, 1) individualism 2) social media views/shares into money for whatever cause or organization 3) personal absolution through good works
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A vanguard to channel the desire to do something is necessary, before then people will weld pet causes together in a patchwork
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*modern systems of production and distribution of technology, sure
In my experience it's because the Western left is so weak and its groups so small that the only way to turn out large enough crowds and have any impact whatsoever is to work in coalition. This means you get several issues at every event, and representarives from those groups. "Free Palestine" may turn into "oppose US imperialism" because you want to work with the group of 12 people that support you and focus on Sudan and the 15 people that focus on the Philippines' Maoism and 6 people that focus on Tigray. Sometimes you end up cycling through different focuses and sometimes you deal with several at once. It's challenging to, for example, keep a given group whose focus is The Philippines to only do pro-Palestine events in coalition if nobody has their backs when it comes to doing actions about Marcos or US imperialism in the Philippines.
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A lot of the time the actions don't accomplish very much directly and amount to more meta goals like "raising awareness", recruitment, and seeing how well the coalition itself functions. Sometimes each group in a coalition has their own goal. Example: a group focused on The Philippines might be trying to get enough local buy-in and trust so that for their planned direct action 4 months later they will know who in other groups can be trusted, who is serious about opsec, what "level" of operations are appropriate for a given coalition member, etc.
But really it runs the full gamut. Sometimes there are direct actions that disrupt infrastructure, reactionary construction projects, a specific business or war profiteer, that kind of thing. They create real costs and intentionally provoke a reaction that they will then try to build on more. For example, the university encampments. Some of them have direct material demands and achieve them, others may have failed in that task but still provoked a reaction and have helped change sentiment. In many ways they have helped radicalize younger people that did not understand how hardliner administrations would respond to their seemingly reasonable request to not use university funds to back a genocide.
Yes although there were actually genocidal actions in both places. The US contributed heavily to that but they of course don't tell you that. They spin simplistic and hypocritical narratives for their own ends.
Oh yes there are a lot of liberal "single-issue" advocacy groups (usually backed by NGOs) that spread such horseshit.
This is actually very relevant to thr coalitions. Often, thr major goal of being in a coalition is just to share and promote your line on a topic. When your line is a good one, this is actually quite beneficial. You can marginalize anyone that would want to be in the coalition while spreading "both sides" bullshit on Palestine or exclude a group that focuses on anti-China false propaganda narratives. In fact, if you don't do that in these coalitions, they can end up being pretty naive.
For example, I have yet to see one of these coalitions that isn't knee-jerk anti-Russia. There may be coalition members that have better positions, but I've never seen one adopt a position that is more correct than, "of course we don't support Russia but the primary problem here is the United States". A large part of this is that there is no substantive local tie-in or call to action on that issue outside of Ukrainian refugees.
It is cool!
Think of these groups as the building blocks or crucible for more coherent political organization and action. They are going to fuck up and they are going to do good things and they are going to have drama and splits. But so long as they are growing and good parties/orgs are growing from these actions, we are making progress.
Can't wait to have a different problem: 4 different major socialist parties having a strategy fight.
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I know the UAE is funding the RSF in Sudan, so there's a connection between Palestine and Sudan in the sense that both wars can be traced back to the machinations of the Zionist entity, directly for Palestine and indirectly (Zionist entity -> UAE -> RSF) for Sudan.
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