Image is of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia and the fastest sinking city in the world. A new capital is being built elsewhere in Indonesia.


I was going to make Indonesia the COTW anyway (unless something really massive happened somewhere else) due to the elections that might really designate the end of an era in Indonesian politics. Michael Roberts wrote up a big piece on Indonesia about a week ago, one day before the election began, so a lot of this information is coming from him.


Indonesia has been ruled by President Joko Widodo for 10 years, but is now barred from a third term constitutionally. Under his presidency, the Indonesian economy has seen fairly good GDP growth overall - about 5% per year, or an average of 4% per capita - and is broadly popular with the electorate. The biggest problems are the common ones, such as a lack of jobs and a high cost of living. Widodo's successors have naturally promised more jobs and an economic plan that clearly draws at least some inspiration from China's rise from the periphery to the heights of the world economy and manufacturing, but this seems pretty unlikely for Indonesia because, well, Indonesia is ruled by capitalist bourgeoisie parties and China is not. Indonesia's main gigs are palm oil, nickel ore, and oil, with internal manufacturing of these primary commodities only slowly growing and reliant on foreign labour.

Indonesia has a rather big employment problem. On the face of it, things don't seem bad, with an unemployment rate of only 5% - but this is only because it counts anybody who works even a couple hours per week. 60% of the workers in Indonesia are in the informal sector, with no real labour rights, sick pay, or guaranteed wages. And half of the ~8 million unemployed are young people. Indonesia is the sixth most unequal country on the planet, with at least 36% of the population in poverty, and the four richest men own as much as the bottom 100 million. This was a natural consequence of the policies of the dictator Suharto, who came to power in a coup overthrowing the communist nationalist leader Sukarno and killing one million communists, a period covered by Bevin's The Jakarta Method. At a fundamental level, not that much has changed since Suharto, and the country seems doomed to a path of slowing economic growth and massive amounts of environmental degradation under a plundering elite who will presumably fly off to New Zealand with the rest of them once the seas swallow the country, unless a communist movement can be rebuilt from ashes and can learn the lessons of 1965-66.

Though results have yet to be officially announced, it seems that 72-year-old Prabowo Subianto is overwhelmingly likely to have handily won the election. Once banned from the United States for human rights violations - a truly phenomenal feat - he has been the Minister of Defense since 2019, was an army lieutenant under Suharto and was his son-in-law. While this is obviously a particularly bad outcome, none of the other candidates seemed likely to fundamentally alter the trajectory of Indonesia, so the game was rigged from the start.


The Country of the Week is Indonesia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • JosephinaSteel [they/them]
    ·
    9 months ago

    ECA statement on the 2 years of imperialis war in Ukraine: http://www.eurcomact.org/m-article/ECA-STATEMENT-Two-Years-Since-the-Imperialist-War-in-Ukraine-The-Experience-and-Conclusions-of-the-Communists/

    Competition within the imperialist system is escalating and contradictions are deepening. The attempts by the USA, the EU and their allies to impose their own interests on the international arena, against capitalist Russia and the countries supporting it, have been going on for years. In the last two years this has expressed itself in the form of an imperialist war in Ukraine. The increasing competition is for the raw material and energy resources, geostrategical footings and transport routes in the region.

    From the very first day of the war, the Russian leadership has justified its military intervention in Ukraine on the grounds that the above-mentioned expansion threatens Russia's security. Regardless of whether this threat is founded or not, it cannot be used as a justification for the violation of the existing borders and new bloodshed of the peoples. The discussions initiated to dispute the existing borders mainly aim to generate pretexts that legitimise imperialist aggression and must be rejected. Moreover, our parties have to remember that “security purposes” have been applied for years by the USA, the EU and NATO as a justification for bloody operations in countless countries, for interventions and occupations in the territories under the sovereignty of those countries.

    The protagonists of the war are not the peoples of the two countries but their capitalist classes. Presenting the war as a war between Ukraine and Russia obscures the real actors of the war and makes it difficult to understand its class character. The ongoing war is being waged between the Russian capitalist class and its allies on the one hand, the Ukrainian capitalist class, the USA, the EU and NATO on the other hand.

    One of the most important elements showing the class character of this war is anti-communism, which is being intentionally raised in the region. The activities of the fascist forces in Ukraine and their crimes against humanity, bans and persecution towards communists continue. The Russian leadership, on the other hand, distorts scientific and historical facts in order to justify its strategic plans, and confronts Russia's socialist past with false and distorted claims concerning Lenin, Stalin and the policies of the Soviet Union. Our Parties will continue to fight creatively against the anti- communist hysteria fuelled by all the actors in the war, to increase solidarity with Ukrainian and Russian communists and not allow the legacy of socialism to be defiled.

    Moreover, our parties, which are at the forefront of the struggle against foreign bases and the sending of troops and military equipment abroad, call upon the workers, who see the contradictions expressed within the imperialist blocs and organizations, to show no trust in proclamations that a “multipolar world” will supposedly stop this or any other imperialist war and will lead to a peaceful world, without the overthrow of the capitalist system, which is the cause of imperialist wars.

    Our parties emphasize that the real choice is not between the so-called poles within the imperialist system but between the working people and the capitalist class. They remind us that the struggle of the working class can be strengthened with an independent line, far from all bourgeois and imperialist plans, and that the peoples, through their struggle, must oppose imperialist wars.

    This is our call. We do not make an abstract call for peace, which is not clear to whom it is addressed and which serves to exonerate the capitalist class and the actors within the imperialist system. For a real sense of peace, we call for a struggle against NATO, the EU and all kinds of imperialist organizations and alliances that continue to fuel the war, we point to the need to expose the class character of capitalist alliances, and we declare that we will stand in solidarity with the working class movement and communists in these countries.

    We continue the struggle for the withdrawal of foreign troops and the closure of bases in other countries, especially those of the USA, starting with our own countries. We act with the task of preventing our countries from being part of and implementing imperialist plans and of withdrawing them from imperialist unions such as NATO and the EU, with the peoples masters in their own land.

    In the face of this war, which has a tendency to generalise, we declare once again that we will continue to be the voice of the working peoples' demands for peace, social justice and socialism maintaining a steadfast front against nationalism, racism, fascism, and militarism.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Just so everyone knows ECA is a European chauvinist group that formed just a few months ago after they split from Greek Communist Party’s INITIATIVE (communist coalition in Europe) due to their “support of Putin’s war in Ukraine” causing it to dissolve.

      It’s a libshit ultra group doing libshit ultra stuff, splitting communism and unable to hold to an anti-imperialist revolutionary defeatist position. This shit is so boring, shut up about Putler already

      • JosephinaSteel [they/them]
        ·
        9 months ago

        INITIATIVE was dissolved because member parties agreed that it was nolonger capable of functioning and fighting for its stated goals. Before the dissolution in addition to the ideological differences most initiave meetings were plagued by inactivity and many members put minimal ammount of effort toward initiave.

        ECA was formed as a replacement for the failed INITIATIVE with intention to fix the issues and form a more uniform Marxist-Leninist front. Within the short time that it has existed ECA meeting have been significately more active and it has been working more strongly to help its parties reach better and more revolutionary lines.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
          ·
          9 months ago

          member parties agreed that it was nolonger capable of functioning and fighting for its stated goals.

          Yes half of them were chauvinists who couldn’t hold to an anti-imperialist revolutionary defeatist line so they mucked up the works until it all broke down, then split. Trot bullshit