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.
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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.
I had asked this question in askchapo a while ago but a recent comment here from @refolde@hexbear.net reminded me to ask again: Has there at any point in history been a positive turn in a public figure? The closest I can find is Emperor Puyi who was forced to rehabilitate. Has anyone suddenly gained a conscience and stopped doing evil stuff? You know, like a based version of St. Paul?
Like a right-wing politician/figure turn into a leftist? I think the most recent one is Manuel Zelaya from Honduras:
Pretty sure Father Hélder Câmara (Known for the phrase: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.") started out as a member of the far-right pro-nazi Intergralist group. Later in life, he openly protected the communists and was part of the religious opposition to the military dictatorship, declaring himself a Catholic socialist with sympathies for the Marxists. He also believed that the apparitions of Fatima did not prophesy the end of the Soviet Union or China, but that the leadership of both countries would abandon their anti-religious policies and allow religion to exist within the communist program.
Theres a Dutch politician that used to be far-right and islamophobic, and after actually studying and talking with muslims (pretty sure he wanted to debate them and "destroy with facts and logic") and then he actually learned that Islam is just some normal religion and converted into it.
Nice, good recent example.
I believe Hugo Chavez became more ideologically left throughout his tenure, especially after the coup attempt.
Right, but that's kinda the same as Castro. What started as a liberal national liberation movement took on a socialist character as a reaction to imperialist sabotage.
I’m not sure how much of Fidel at least (I know a lot less about Chavez) was just him hiding his power level until the American reaction gave him a mandate to go ahead with more openly ML stuff. I mean Fidel was “not” a communist prior to taking power, but Raul and Che very much were already so, you know?
Chávez was already left-wing before he was president, he just became more radical after the 2002 coup (which lasted 2 days, lol) and the high-ranking generals who took part in the coup were amnestied by the right-wing Supreme Court. And then there was the whole plebiscitary coup of 2004 and the Paro Nacional (an attempt by right-wing unions to overthrow the government through a general strike, which resulted in the government taking control of the entire oil sector).
Chávez already had left-wing views from a young age, but it was the protests and massacres of the late 1980s that led him and his friends to left-wing politics. In 1992, he took part in the coup attempt to arrest and remove the neoliberal president and install a socdem in his place. I believe that Chávez was elected as a socdem, and some right-wing people in the army supported him because they thought he would bring back the military dictatorship. The former right-wing dictator Pérez Jiménez was even invited to Chávez's inauguration ceremony.
Chandragupta Maurya abdicated and spent his remaining years as a Jainist monk
Ashoka might be another example, but we don't really know the timeline and we don't have much information: "Such descriptions of Ashoka as an evil person before his conversion to Buddhism appear to be a fabrication of the Buddhist authors, who attempted to present the change that Buddhism brought to him as a miracle. In an attempt to dramatise this change, such legends exaggerate Ashoka's past wickedness and his piousness after the conversion."
Chairman Daou
People brought him up in my thread and I think he probably counts but he was just a Hillary campaign staffer. I meant people with significant political power. Still though, gotta give respect to the chairman
Hey he also had a moderately popular club song!
I recall a prince from Thailand or Cambodia or one of the countries near that region who became a communist revolutionary
Prince Souphanouvong from Laos?