Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.
In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women's sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.
Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries "unfortunate". A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a "broad-based government". Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven't (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.
The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya's debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to "help" Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.
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 Kenya! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
Go on
The left critique of UBI was essentially that, if you just give people a bunch of money, and there are no restrictions on businesses from price gouging (be that through price restrictions, windfall taxes, etc), then businesses will raise their prices as much as they can get away with in order to maximize profits. Furthermore, price inflation would be greatest among products with the lowest price elasticity of demand (like real estate) and in industries that are highly concentrated.
I was looking at the thread from yesterday about real estate investors jacking up rents and reading some of the newer comments, and it kind of dawned on me that what happened with COVID (and is now happening the real estate market) and the ensuring recovery policies and results are the things that yang gang and other neoliberals swore up and down "wasn't how economics works" lol.
I'd bet that well over 50% of SSI benefits ultimately go to landlords, especially since benefits are significantly reduced ($300, I think) if you live with family.
there isn't an actual shortage of housing (it really depends on where you live) but there WAS a shortage of stuff due to supply chain issues when the gov still cared about covid. not equivalent.
during 2020 the US gov massively increased money supply. there was no UBI at all. some emergency relief funds for people does not equal UBI. it was more of a business and finance bailout than anything else.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT
Government programs to float household finances in the economy such that it results in a higher personal savings rate are functionally the same as an official UBI program.
Landlords and businesses will just raise costs and eat up the government money immediately, so handouts as UBI just effectively become handouts for landlords that drive cost of living up.
My critique of UBI is takes a far longer view, that it’s a bandaid to placate worker unrest during automation and as soon as possible UBI will get stripped back. After all, why feed a bunch of useless non-productive mouths? From the perspective of the bourgeoise it doesn’t make sense. Much better to let them all starve and they can no longer strike or form unions or do any work stoppages because automation has been sufficiently kickstarted
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they're only afraid of that until they have their gated and drone protected automated factory cities. then they'll cut the UBI
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they need peons to buy things, silly
no they don't, they can easily just simulate fake demand by destroying surplus. Then they can just subsidize that with the infinite fiat money trick. pay the UBI to themselves for destroying their own surplus instead of giving it out to the undeserving useless wretches. Cut out the middle-man
i mean this is feasible as far as techbro delusions would like it to be so but there's a catch-22 without suddenly mass-culling all the poors: you need administration and state control so they don't break in and kill you. and the people are where you get all your administrators, police, and still-needed labor. you need more of them than can be taken from the billionaire class, besides, billionaires don't want to do any of that.
It's Americans. They're going to roll over and show you their soft bellies while you hollow them out like a tauntaun.
the rest of the world exists
this is a very silly thread
The rest of the world isn't going to implement UBI, it's an idea too stupid to happen anywhere but here.
It’s literally how farming in the US currently works, tons of subsidies to destroy surplus to keep prices at a certain level. You just take that existing model and crank it up to 11.
You will always have your willing agents of the bourgeois state and lackeys. Why are you saying “they would need control of the government” as if that’s a crazy thing? They already have it and will increasingly secure their grip. Plenty of would be compradors ready to sell out for a spot inside the walls instead of outside
they can't get rid of the surplus population that provides the lackeys!
Also more to the point of the capitalist mode of production, you cannot accumulate surplus value if you destroy all the labour.
Edit- not to say the point of capitalism is surplus value. It's moreso profit. But the point still stands.
Sure they can, it doesn’t take that many people to administer things at that point in their vertically integrated fiefdoms. They can cull 90%+ of the population if they want to once they have sufficiently automated
I've been building this future world in my head that's I've thought about turning into a book/short story, and I am of a pretty similar mind. However, my best guess is that they are going to tie getting full benefits (or any benefits) to being sterilized. The rich get to keep having kids (also probably religious groups like Mormons will keep having kids) and the lower classes will be slowly exterminated through economic coercion.
more likely they simply have a number of things disqualify you from UBI and continue to expand that list. much like the privilage of voting in the U.S. or access to state assistance.
drug charge? no UBI. political dissidence? no UBI felony? everything's a felony now so no UBI
LGBTQAI? it's now a mental illness so no UBI
This is how I see it happening too. If anything, having a UBI simplify and unify multiple systems of social welfare will make it easier to means test a single system. More efficient austerity measures. Although on the flip side, it would be easier to build public dissent because people are more likely to show up when everyone's impacted. The current strategy of just fucking over a section of the population is more ideal in a divide and conquer strategy.
you can't just raise prices for no reason (usually). businesses are in competition with each other. as an example, McDonald's is suffering now as it raised prices for greed reasons and people are eating less of it and more of stuff that isn't overpriced fast food. inflation IS and was absolutely terrible starting from around 2020 and that was a result of 1. supply chain issues causing people to raise prices 2. monetary expansion
collusion to raise prices leading to greater profits only works if there's very very limited supply of a certain good like maybe if you live in SF and they aren't building any more houses. your issue there would be with 1. limited supply of housing obviously 2. tech ppl pricing you out with their 500k+ salaries 3. fiat being infinite so line (house prices) essentially always goes up 4. UBI would be absolutely last if it were an actual thing.
the covid supply chain issues caused businesses to collectively raise prices and they aren't coming down without some deflationary event
you are really saying this after we just witnessed massive spikes in rents as soon as we got checks?
There are landlord pricing apps that effectively create an algorithmically driven landlord cartel. These systems are already in place. They just aren’t a formal cooperation.
It's definitely not collusion if you launder the collusion through
AIalgorithms!