Image is of Trudeau and Trump together at Mar-a-Lago in November 2024. Source is here.
The Liberals, headed by Trudeau, have not been doing so hot lately. Polls have been rather poor, showing the party far behind the Conservatives, and the Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (an outspoken apologist for Ukrainian Nazis) resigned recently, with more MPs following her lead. Trump's return to power has shaken the Canadian establishment due to his threats to impose massive tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which will have substantial economic consequences given that Canada sends most of its exports to the US, compounding the economic malaise that has affected most of the world over the last few years.
With all this bad news, there are rumors and reports that Trudeau will soon resign, ending his nine years of rule. His fall would be yet another casualty in the wave of incumbent parties falling across the imperial core, only to be replaced by more conservative parties that have very similar policies but wish to cast all blame and hardship onto minorities.
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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
We don’t have free healthcare in China, although state-owned enterprise employees usually get decent benefits.
Incidentally, there was a netizen debate about free healthcare just a few months ago sparked by a Beijing University professor (Li Ling) who proposed the implementation of free healthcare to all of China. The online reaction was sort of bifurcated, with detractors going with the usual arguments about how it’s inefficient, China has too many people, healthcare quality will fall, queues will be too long, and “if the government cannot even subsidize the 400 yuan needed to finance the healthcare coverage of each rural farmer, where is the government going to find the money to finance healthcare for the whole country?”
On the other hand, there used to be a very comprehensive healthcare system under Mao. Between the 1950s-70s, there was something called the rural cooperative medical system that provided healthcare coverage to >90% of rural villages, apparently highly praised by WHO and the World Bank for its innovation to provide maximum healthcare benefit at very low cost.
However, following the reform and opening up era in the 1980s, the marketization of the economy also meant that the income growth of rural farmers could not keep up with healthcare cost. Between 1990 and 1999, the income of rural farmers had increased by 2.2 times, but the average clinic visit fee and hospitalization cost had increased by 6.2 and 5.1 times, respectively. This eventually led to the disintegration of the rural cooperative healthcare system and I believe the coverage has already fell to <10% since, and had been replaced by a newer version that supposedly is more compatible with the liberalized economy but apparently has nowhere near the comprehensive coverage as it used to have (I need to study more about this in detail).
In general, the more I dive deep into China’s economic system (especially with an MMT lens), the weirder it gets. The purchasing power parity (PPP) of China has already exceeded the US, its industrial capacity is far beyond any country has built, and yet its per capita GDP is only a fraction of the US. That means the average Chinese labor have been producing output with value that is worth far higher than what they have been receiving with their depressed wages. It is not controversial at all to say that Chinese labor has simultaneously sustained the high income consumer lifestyles of Western countries and the economic development of their own country all these years.
Why would a country ever do that except for the true believer who has complete faith in the neoclassical economic theories.