Image is from this Washington Post article, which shows the Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand.
This preamble got much of its information from this article in ROAPE, and this article in People's World.
Countries in the imperial core have increasingly advocated for Green New Deals, whose primary goal is to re-attract manufacturing capability to somewhat counter deindustrialization, and then export some of this renewable energy generation to other countries to gain profit. Just as the initial wave of industrialization was built on massive resource exploitation of coal and iron and then oil, this wave is being built on exploiting metals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The DRC is one of the best case studies on the planet for understanding the new dynamic.
The DRC is, to your average Western country, a resource bonanza. It is the 11th largest country by land area, and contains lithium, copper, and cobalt in massive quantities, famously containing two thirds of the world's known cobalt supplies. The Western world and their institutions swarmed the DRC like piranhas, dismantling the Congo's sovereignty over its natural resources. China was not terribly involved in the privatisation process, but has stepped in to benefit from the West's work - Chinese corporations account for 40% of the production of major Congo cobalt projects (and 15 out of 19 cobalt mines), with Switzerland at 30% via Glencore, and Kazakhstan at 22%. The US, for whatever reason, withdrew from majority ownership of some projects in the mid-2010s, but is now anxious about China's position in the cobalt markets. Western countries in general have spent their time lately drawing up critical minerals strategies both to keep capitalism chugging along in their own countries, and attempt to weaken China, which invariably involves the Congo.
The Congo has attempted to resist imperialist encroachment. In 2018, the Kaliba administration asserted a new Mining Code which raised tax and royalty rates and increased state ownership in mining firms from 5% to 10%, and these changes were bitterly resisted by the West right to the end. Since 2019, under the Tshisekedi administration, the government established the state-owned EGC, which sought to take control over the processing and export of artisanal and small-scale cobalt production, which comprises 5-15% of cobalt production in the Congo. More recently, Tshisekedi is planning to move up the manufacturing chain - instead of merely mining cobalt, they want to refine it there and then make electric vehicle batteries and other such products with it, which would be an industry worth trillions of dollars. But so far, there hasn't been much movement away from having mining exports as the backbone of the economy, and it's doubtful that plans to just keep doing this until they get rich enough to build refineries and factories will work. The profits mostly go to Western countries and have failed to produce significant benefits for Congolese workers, nor resulted in the emergence of domestic industries so far. Reforms will help a little, but only a little, and they remain fundamentally constrained by the markets and the whims of the West.
Meanwhile, war and mass displacements have put immense stress on the country. There are 7.1 million displaced people in the DRC due to various conflicts and mass displacements - most recently, the war between the Congolese army and M23. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be displaced every few months, and across the whole country, over 26 million require humanitarian aid. 6 million people have died in the eastern DRC in the last three decades, with hundreds of armed groups, both domestic and foreign, battling for resources and territory.
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 the Democratic Republic of the Congo! 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!
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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.
Why go after student protests so hard? There must be a specific reason it's viewed as so threatening.`
American politicians get a shitload of Israeli money in general, so the public opinion turning against Israel is like the single worst thing that could happen for their campaign money.
Basically every left wing student protest has been validated by history, often not long after. It's like the #1 predictor of what libs will support in a few decades.
Is that because they were the protestors, or agreed with the protestors of their generation?
Both, but more the second simply due to numbers
The latter. See: All the libs saying "Why didn't you protest 'thing that was an issue when I was in college'?"
*US Money controlled by Israel
I think it was an overreaction. They thought they could nip this thing in the bud, they tried, and they fucked it up.
One month from now will mark the four year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, which sparked unprecedented civil unrest across the United States. This all happened in the context of an acute crisis (Coronavirus) and a presidential campaign ("the most important election of our lifetimes"). Once again, we have an acute crisis (genocide, and the prospect of a regional war) and a presidential campaign (the least important election of our lifetimes).
Zoomed out to a slightly longer durée, the U.S. Empire finds itself at a critical period in its battle for exclusive global hegemony. The clock is ticking as China continues to catch up and exceed US capabilities in many regards. The US is unable to compete with China without a fundamental rationalization of its political economy, but such a fundamental reorganization would undermine the power of our existing bourgeoisie, so it is out of the question.
Against the backdrop of this ticking clock, I think much of the imperial bureaucracy (and its surrounding ideology of American liberalism) perceives the Trump presidency as four precious years squandered. I don't think they can afford to waste four more. As much as Biden himself is a senile doddering old man, he is a very suitable vehicle for the Atlanticists. All of this is to say, I don't think they can abide another long hot summer with people chanting "Genocide Joe!" and thick clouds of CS gas in every major American city during an election year. It is existential to them, beyond simply getting to keep Israel as their pet settler colonial outpost next to the Suez.
Of course, this isn't to say Trump is any kind of anti-imperialist. Simply that he is far too isolated from the bureaucracy to administrate such a sprawling mechanism with anything close to the same effectiveness. Trump is an incredibly vain and spiteful person. He cares about his personal image. He undermines and attacks people for petty personal reasons. He staffed his administration with comparatively petty, ill-equipped, unqualified, and self-serving people. Nothing like the people we see in the Biden administration. McKinsey mercenaries, and people like Antony Blinken, with his dead fish eyes, who will go up on stage and eat shit every single day, carry water for genocide, cry on cue for Nazis, rewrite history, and generally debase themselves every single day in service of empire.
All the most evil and powerful ghouls on Earth are alumni from those very schools. They are scared that the next generation of ghouls will be less ghoulish (unlikely, give them time to cook and most will grow out of it and become neoliberal shits because they will be making 6 figures). They also have a lot of power over the administrations since they make all the donations
Because a lot of these students are from extremely prestigious schools
These are the youth that the other youth, and many elders admire and respect the most
Because Zionism is frothing fascism? Everything about Israel and America's reaction since October shows that they're incapable of dealing with things strategically, and instead they overreact.
When you’re a boot every problem looks like a neck
Because about 50% of the conservative political movement in America is based around what happens on college campuses.
If you want to be pessimistic, the Rafah offensive rumors and plans of complete cleansing are true and the timing is too risky to allow protests going on in the middle of it. They believe they can control the entire narrative through the media or at least enough so that by the time real pressure comes Israel would have already finished the job and blue MAGA can come out and say "yeah well sorry about that, yeah maybe its bad but nothing fundamentally changed, TINA and either you vote for Biden or you're a fascist".
Its harder to do this if protests get out of hand before Israel finishes the job.
The idea perhaps was that by now Israel would be at war with Iran and they'd have complete support, since that didn't happen and there is no changing course ever perhaps its necessary to clamp down now, face the bad media rep now before it gets worse.
All just speculation of course.
They likely see any pro-palestinian sentiment as just clout chasing or a social contagion spread by tiktok and russian hackers, and fully expect the students to piss off and go away if cops harass them enough.
they literally killed some during vietnam, most people approved the killings. yeah.
My reasoning
https://hexbear.net/comment/4848541
Why is it a pseudo-feudal system? It's more like a neo-feudal system right? No pseudo about it if one class of people is nobility and another is prole with no class movement in-between and a fake system of governance that only maintains the nobility's power.
Semi-feudal would be more accurate I guess. Property relations, the relations between workers and capital and the nation state are still very much capitalistic in nature.
I don't see how there's anything feudal about it. The class relations are completely different. You're just equating the lack of class mobility with feudalism, which is not a defining feature. But this is irrelevant to the rest of your argument, and I don't disagree with it.
Yeah, peak feudalism involves the working class paying tax in kind, so a blacksmith would fashion a certain number of horseshoes and other equipment for their feudal lord, a wheelwright would craft a certain number of wheels for their feudal lord, a peasant would grow a certain number of crops for their feudal lord, and so on. The only way to own land was through inheritance, conquest, or the sovereign creating a title for you.
I don't think they're going after student protests hard in a relative sense, actually. Where else are there occupations happening right now? Cops show up within minutes of highway/bridge closures and are more than happy to mass arrest there too.
the elites should be purified to the ruling ideology, or they can get funny ideas when they get their state department job
Funding/donations from zionists and zionist aligned leadership
It’s to discipline the students. Biden would tell Abbott to unleash the hounds and shoot everyone as long as he can keep it quiet. Ultimately they don’t get punished and so they have nothing to worry about.
I really think both Dem and Republicans politics at this point is troll the left.
I honestly think it's just US society becoming more and more unhinged. These pigs pretty much jerk themselves raw over the thought of beating the shit out of students and whatever restraint they would otherwise have faced is weakening. I suspect part it has to do with the Zionist entity and the West in general having little credibility these days. As the soft power of them being the arbiters of democracyTM dissipates, there's little point in showing restraint, and the pigs' bloodlust to cave the skulls of spoiled bratty students overrides any tactical or strategic considerations.
The answer is very simple: Pro-Palestine, anti-apartheid, anti-settler colonialism protestors hold their beliefs much more strongly than the average American that “supports” Israel.
The crackdown is to galvanize more support on the pro-Israeli side by rousing those who don’t really care about Israel but do care about the “woke left” and shit like that
Interesting. A pretty good theory! That is precisely what it will do. The right may come around to increasing their support by extension of their desire to oppose anything the "woke" supports and doing it via big spectacles is a good tool to rouse them.
What the US Army is for Hard Power , the US Academia is for softpower ..now they are Critically threathend in their "Eltitst Fashist Identity" they gonna wield the "Elitist Faschist Identiy" to protect themselfs.
Before a fire goes out it burns the brightest.. or something..
Always has been a thing, even during pre-OWS protests I remember seeing obvious feds with earpieces and recording devices wandering around and the police pretty much teleporting onto the scene to antagonize/arrest students.