Image is of protestors burning down the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s government offices in Kathmandu.

For more on the situation in Nepal, I recommend @[email protected]’s comment here.

Following a “anti-corruption” protest movement spurred by a social media ban (but with much deeper roots) in which dozens of protestors were killed by state forces, the government of KP Oli has been ousted, and an interim leader is currently in power as the country prepares for elections. Notably, events have been characterized as “Gen Z protests”, and this leader was decided (at least partially) by a Discord vote. When a non-western government rapidly falls, it’s wise to at least glance in the direction of the United States, and there are almost certainly elements of color revolution here. But, as always, it’s more complicated than simple regime change - Nepal is a deeply troubled economy even as developing countries go.

Vijay Prashad has offered his five theses as to why Nepal’s government fell that goes beyond non-specific terms like “corruption” or “color revolution”:

  1. Despite winning 75% of the seats in parliament in 2017, the various communist parties have failed to unify towards forming a common agenda and solving the problems of the people. When the nominally united communist party split in 2021, infighting and opportunism eventually brought on the rightist politicians we see today.

  2. The Nepalese economy is not successful. Disasters are slow to be ameliorated, education and healthcare is underfunded, and poverty is fairly rampant. There have been significant developments made by the communist parties, such as electrification programs and some poverty reduction, but it has been insufficient.

  3. The petty bourgeois usually come from oppressed Hindu castes, and are frustrated by the domination of upper castes, and so are inspired by India’s BJP. They essentially want a return to monarchy, under the guise of anti-corruption, and despite their relatively small numbers, are powerfully organized.

  4. Of the countries that aren’t tiny islands, Nepal has the highest per capita rate of work migration, due to insufficient employment in Nepal. The jobs that Nepalese citizens receive overseas range from unpleasant to unbearable in both labour and wages, and this has generated rightful suspicion that the government cares more about foreign direct investors than their own citizens overseas.

  5. The government of KP Oli was close to the United States, and India’s Modi has promoted the BJP in Nepal. Both countries have sought to exert influence over Nepal, though Prashad speculates that, if there is indeed a foreign mastermind at work, India is more likely to be the culprit behind these recent protests, in a gambit to use the chaos to promote/install a far right monarchist government.

I agree with Prashad that it seems unlikely that mere electoral changes will result in anything terribly productive, though whatever government emerges will inevitably hoist the banner of anti-corruption to try and legitimize themselves. We have seen the same breakdown of electoralism as a meaningful pathway to solve national problems all across the world, from the superpowers to the poorest states. Until a rupture occurs, greater surveillance, policing, and repression seems guaranteed.

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.

Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    43·
    10 days ago

    critical support to the US in its heroic effort to demilitarize its own navy https://archive.ph/LZBRI

    Navy, industry has ‘got to adjust’ to realities of shipyard worker pay: Service official

    Both the Navy and its contractors must ensure the workers building its ships receive “competitive” pay if the maritime industrial base is going to grow to an acceptable size for outfitting the future fleet, according to a Navy official.

    more

    “When the Navy goes and industry goes and [negotiates] contracts with the shipbuilders … we have got to ensure those folks who are pricing those components — of course, we want to be competitive — but we have got to reflect prices that can allow us to have the labor pool that we need for the long term,” said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity. The official also said that the nature of shipbuilding programs means cost is driven up by schedule delays. “Getting a workforce that is sustained, that is retained, that gets trained … and stays. That’s the best, cost model we can have … If that’s a short-term adjustment in what our labor rates look like and how they reflect against the service industry growth that’s happened in the nation, then we’ve got to adjust.”

    The issue of pay for shipyard workers — especially the kind of entry-level ones the service is anxious to see join the workforce in the coming decade — has been a pervasive problem for both the Pentagon and industry. As shipbuilding executives often put it, over the years, food service, retail and other industries have slowly increased their respective entry-level wages to be competitive, or even better, than the pay a first-year shipyard worker could expect. “People can go do far less difficult things for just about the same money from an entry wage standpoint,” Kari Wilkinson, an executive at HII, the United States’s largest military shipbuilder, told Breaking Defense last year. “I will say though that within a year-and-a-half to two years, you can double your salary as a shipbuilder.” Despite the promise of better pay in the future, the workforce attrition numbers speak for themselves. Brett Seidle, a senior Navy civilian, told lawmakers in March that “50 to 60 percent” of new industrial base workers, recruited through the Navy’s ongoing campaigns, quit within their first year on the job. “Those folks are coming, and then we’re attriting out way too quick,” he said at the time.

    HII, General Dynamics Electric Boat and senior Navy leadership have lobbied Congress and two different administrations to move forward with the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support plan that would, among other things, increase wages for various shipyard workers. That bill, colloquially known as SAWS, has appeared to stagnate on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of numerous lawmakers calling out the Navy for a “lack of transparency” on its funding requests. “It’s incredibly frustrating to know how important building a submarine [or] building a destroyer is, and to hear often that there’s a story of, ‘Well, I’ll go to Chick-Fil-A’ or ‘I’ll go to,’ you fill in the blank,” the official said. “We must overcome that as an enterprise.”

    I, uh, I’m not sure if I’m just tired but I have no idea what that last quote is even saying. I’ll go to, you fill in the blank? Huh? catgirl-huh