Over the last week, Sri Lanka has been hit by their worst national natural disaster since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Over 2 million people (about 10% of the population) were affected; the death toll is currently climbing past 600; nearly a hundred thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed, transport infrastructure is heavily damaged; industry has been damaged; and farmland has been flooded. The cost of damage so far looks to be about $7 billion, which is more than the combined budget spent on healthcare and education in Sri Lanka.
While there is plenty to say meteorologically about how this yet another concerning escalation as a result of climate change (Sri Lanka does experience cyclones, but they are usually significantly weaker than this), it’s important to note that such disasters are, to at least a certain extent, able to warned about and their impacts somewhat mitigated. However, this requires both access to early detection and warning equipment, and an economy in which development is widespread - in this case, particularly in the construction of drainage systems and regulated construction, which has not generally occurred.
The IMF, on its 17th program with Sri Lanka, is doing its utmost to prevent such an economy from developing, as they instead promote reductions in public investment. On top of this, the rebuilding effort for Sri Lanka is already being planned and funded, and such donors include, of course, many Sri Lankan oligarchs, who will rebuild the damaged portions of the country yet further according to their visions, while sidelining the working class.
Perhaps neoliberalism’s decay into its eventual death occurring concurrently into the gradual intensification of climate change and renewed wars signifies the rise of the era of disaster capitalism.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Thinking about my comment earlier today on how easily China could refinance SL’s remaining IMF debt. I got curious: could the PRC just eliminate the IMF in a single blow by paying off all of its debt?
Which countries owe the IMF the most money in 2025?
162 billion dollars in outstanding debt to the IMF. How’s it split up?
First, wow! Argentina is fucked beyond belief. Holy shit. What a goddamn disaster. There are some interesting observations, here, though. Other than Argentina and Ecuador (conveniently the US’s most pathetic running dogs in LatAm atm), Latin America has largely gotten out of the IMF trap. Asia looks pretty similar outside the three big ones shown. Instead, the real locus of imperial and colonialist suffering under the IMF (like under every other capitalist tool) is in Africa. There, IMF debt is spread far more evenly across far poorer countries, entrapping the entire continent in their fiscal schemes. China has already done a great deal to relieve the burdern of the IMF on Africa, but there’s so much more - from Africa’s perspective. From China’s perspective, though, this is nothing. Leave aside Argentina and Ukraine for the moment given their geopolitical alignment. We’ve seen the headlines bouncing around about China’s new $1tn trade surplus.
Now, I’m speaking directly to Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China. Xi and other esteemed comrades: for the low price of 10% of just this year’s trade surplus, you could unshackle Africa and the rest of the colonized world from endless debt peonage. The US is withdrawing from the world stage to focus its evil eye on Latin America, a position your intelligent planning, economic development, and trade dominance has forced them into without the imperialist devils able to fire a single shot against you. Xi, you speak often about party members always remembering the lofty goal of leading your people to true communism. And you understand, as a student of Lenin and Mao, the centrality of imperial finance capital and modern colonization in perpetuating capitalism and imposing underdevelopment. And, of course, you know full well the urgency of defeating global capitalism for the preservation of the planet and the thriving of all peoples in a shared future for all humanity. Material reality has long constrained the breadth of options available to you in directly resisting the imperialist system, and so you have carried out the long game of reform and opening up. Well done to all of you on your dedication, which is an inspiration to progressive people all over the world.
But now, new opportunities present themselves. You have recently achieved the incredible feet of $1,000,000,000,000 in trade surplus. What to do with all that cash, you’re asking yourselves? Well, were I in your position, I’d invest somewhere between 800,000,000,000 and 900,000,000,000 in improving the lives of your people as infrastructure, social welfare, and enforced reductions in working hours. That remainder? Kill the IMF. One fatal blow, toppling the system. No military interventions. No violating sovereignty. No interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. Just cut out the International MotherFuckers so the rest of the world can stand up next to you.
Comrades, thank you for you consideration of my proposal. Long live the Communist Party of China!
I have been saying since 2022 that China should use its $800 billion US treasuries to pay off Africa’s $800 billion external debt and flood them with yuan to kill the dollar.
I have since learned that it’s not going to happen because of what I posted here last time:
Wang Jian (王建) from China Society of Macroeconomic Research, who proposed the Great External Circulation strategy back in 1987 that was officially adopted by the central government, talked about this in an interview in the early 2000s:
In September 2020, months after China proposed the Dual Circulation Strategy (export balanced by domestic consumption), Wang Jian reasserted the importance of dollar hegemony in an interview:
Once you understand this, you will understand that China cannot and will not give up the dollar system, especially its hegemonic status. The status quo greatly benefited the Chinese economy and there is no reason to give up even when the US itself is threatening to end the arrangement, because China still has plenty of cards to play (e.g. rare earth export). The US will find itself unable to decouple from China.
This is also why when the US confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion foreign reserve at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Fed rate hike that caused dollar liquidity crisis in many Global South countries and spurred strong interest in many to leave the dollar regime, China has been the one that was and still is the most reluctant to abandon the US dollar. If China doesn’t want to, then nobody else can do anything about it. The Biden administration correctly gambled that China would not threaten the dollar hegemony during the rate hike in 2022.
First, can you send my comment up the ladder of the CPC? I think it’ll make a big difference.
Second, China has done a lot to lift the debt burden on Africa already. They aren’t opposed to dismantling the system. They just like to go sloooooooooooow and careful. Here’s some good info for anyone who’s interested. And some more about dedollarization.
That’s not a lot. Russia, a far smaller economy, forgave $23 billion of Africa’s debt in August 2022 alone, which is more than the entirety of African debt relieved by China since 2000.
I have also read that a few countries have turned around and borrow more from the IMF once their more favorable debt burden has been forgiven. The root of the problem is partly that these countries are full of self-serving politicians who will see the short term benefit of taking on toxic debt as a no-brainer, and accepting IMF loans and conditions is probably going to grant your compradors some (spurious) level of protection in exchange for fealty … and China won’t interfere or demand a change in behavior, because they don’t interfere in other countries internal affairs in general, at least openly
And to make things worse our 56 billion in debt translates into no material benefits for us, meaning no bridges, hospitals, schools and power plants were built using these loans.
This country has always lived off on debts, since pretty much the 1860s. At least back then these loans were used to improve productive capacities and had some returns, but these days we just take loans from the IMF for the sake of it, or we take loans to finance other loans that are reaching their deadlines.
Xi’s foot-focused onlyfans is propping up the chinese economic bubble
ill let him know
IMF debt is mostly just america’s puppet regimes - it seems we will once again see two worlds - the ailling dept empire of the us and the free world led by china.
I am not an economist but I don’t think the IMF would let them
What do you think they would do?
“very bad China no good money nation safe in IMF gnarled claw” type of reason