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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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.
Tried to explain socialism to a smart but startlingly ignorant us military person today. They thought socialism was when the federal governments military procurement has an entrenched and inefficient bureaucracy. I tried, i really did, but they had some weird libertarian "i want freedom and meritocracy" thing going while also being shockingly politically ignorant. : p
The hardest people i've found to educate are the "but government is bad" type of libertarians who will actively learn everything I give them but still somehow get hung up on "government bad we need small government". Been working on one for a while trying to find a way to break it but I am failing. They can give you a full marxist breakdown of capitalism though.
I want to say the missing component is an understanding of class and class struggle but my encounters with "big gubment bad" lolbertarians, regardless of how sharp they can be either boils down to what you said or in one case a theocratic nut job who straight up believes in a spiritual plane of existence that's impacting the material world.
For the former I tend to have a bit more success pulling Parenti bits on our taxes being used to fund the empire while the profits of empire go straight into the pockets of the bourgeois and generally try to walk a fine line of explaining shit in their own lingo and avoiding vulgarizing marxist-leninist theory.
The latter however I more or less gave up on doing anything other than having pleasant discussions on the few avenues our respective ideologies meet - being hating the ukronazis, shitting on the corpse-emperor, and complaining about our jobs. - and keeping my mouth generally shut whenever he goes off the deep end on demonic forces trying to stop Trump or, classically like it is with everyone in his demographic, gender issues.
That's the fella who calls be the 'okay commie" and calls the democrats Maoists instead of Communists out of polite respect to me.
The thing is that I can't explain capitalism without the two classes, one being property owners and the other being salaried. So they have an understanding of class from that. They know what class they are.
The issue is that the "but government bad" part overrides their brain at the exact moment that this forces them to start considering their interests.
I was trying to explain that "government bad" is largely due to the government being captured by the boug and being a tool they use to extract profits while externalizing the costs of their empire, and that a socialist government would have different material incentives, but I odn't think it landed.
Yeah it gets too complex for one conversation. They have barely taken in the last bit of information you gave them and they it's hard to land with this. I tried "government is just like a gun, it matters who is wielding it and for what interests" but that was still too complex.
Damn if even the good guy / bad guy with a gun dichotomy's too complex then you're in a situation that's a tough nut to crack.
You try the "who's gonna build and maintain the roads or make sure your diabetes pills aren't just sugar pills" bit on them? If they can't get past the rugged individualist mindset to get they live in a society then frankly I think they're at the point where experiencing material reality will Trump their idealized visions thatre detached from reality.
Businesses are just governments. That's my favorite way to trip people like this up. Anything they complain about governments doing, businesses also do.
That would have worked on me when I was a libertarian.
Interesting one, I'll give it a try next time.
To add to this, Richard Wolff talks about this subject a lot actually. The libertarian thought says that we should run governments like a business, but businesses fail CONSTANTLY and need massive injections of capital FROM governments in order to survive. So the idea that they are more effective or efficient than a centrally controlled body is laughable.
Libertarian counterpoint: If businesses are governments, and government is just a business, then a government is basically a monopoly which is too big to fail. So a small government with each function operated by the market allows each function to fail independently or be voted out with your wallet.
So these are the counterpoints:
Counter-counterpoints:
If it makes you feel better this is a huge improvement since maybe 10-15 years ago.
Yeah it is and one of my hopes is that simply teaching people the function of capitalism will independently lead them towards the left based on figuring out the only way to resolve the contradiction.
Unfortunately the well-meaning young ones often see managing the contradiction as better. You have to give them further information to lead them to it requiring complete destruction because they don't independently make the connection that managing capitalism in a socdem way can only exist with a threat of revolution as incentive.
The question "what is capitalism?" is the thing that everyone needs to learn first and foremost though. Without being able to accurately answer this anyone's view of the world is entirely created by media and vibes.
Wooooooord i kept trying to find ways to get around this person's "what i value is freedom and meritocracy" thing but i think i failed.
Hmmmm that is one of the things he kept saying actually. I might bring it back to businesses not being free or meritocratic at all... Someone else here said "businesses are just governments" and I think that might be the strongest way to break through.
"Freedom" in the US discourse is an unfathomable, mystical idea. It doesn't mean your freedom to actually do any particular thing...like go to a doctor without facing bankruptcy.
Try explaining the difference between positive and negative freedoms to the wrong person and you risk being burned at the stake.
Muh Freedom™ to own slaves.
I think you can actually just Lenin your way out of that one. Freedom, as the American Civic Religion describes it, is just political power. The people are free when the people have political power, because only power is real and everything else is an illusion. Then you can explain that the inevitable reality of class struggle is that the ruling class will use its political power to suppress the working class, i.e. take away its freedoms. This is true regardless of the size of the government. Therefore, for a transformative change to happen in society, the structure in which those classes relate to one another has to change, there has to be a new arrangement where workers seize political power to actually be liberated.
In my experience, people just hate paperwork and bureaucracy. The brainwashing comes from thinking a large conglomerate isn't itself a bureaucracy. Spending three hours on the phone because Verizon double-charged your phone bill is as much a form of bureaucratic inefficiency as spending three hours at the DMV.
The absolutely byzantine clusterfuck that is the US healthcare system is far more filled with bureaucratic bullshit than a nationalized healthcare system. Even if it were somehow cheaper (it's not), the bureaucratic nightmare alone should dissuade people.
I think that weirdly enough this line of thinking can often lead people to fascism. Large, organized, multicultural, heterogenous societies are complex and hard to administrate, so wouldn't it be nice if we had a strongman in power who could deal with society's problems (which can easily be the undesirables)? The fear of bureaucracy leads people away from pro-social thought, preferring to deliberately atomize society. Maybe it's something deeper than bureaucracy.
Sometimes it helps to a anarchist. I tend to just agree with them that government is bad, and then proceed to help them understand what government actually is. It breaks their brains, but tends to do so a little further along and in ways that confuse rather than anger them.
Sounds about right. They give those guys guns and missiles and stuff so they have to propagandize them the most
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