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
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.
Something that has been bothering me for a while and I thought maybe someone here could shed some light on this: what’s the deal with the eXile gang (the War Nerds i.e. Mark Ames, John Dolan, as well as Yasha Levine and Matt Taibbi) and Eduard Limonov, the founder of the National Bolshevik Party (together with Aleksandr Dugin)?
Limonov not only published regular columns in the eXile (his only writings in English), but apparently they were close enough friends that he wrote the foreword of their book The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia in 2000, and the book materials were apparently also quite some source of controversy.
Limonov was imprisoned in 2001. Putin banned the National Bolshevik Party in 2007. The Russian government forced the eXile to close down in 2008. The last two seem to be connected. Is this why they hate Putin so much?
The beef with some members of the exiles, especially Mark Ames is that he used to prank call politicians and famous people in Russia and they were forced to leave eventually because he fucked with the wrong guy and the politician who got pranked send the security service on them.
As for Limonov, he is part of an art punk scene that makes edgy political statements based on the books I read when he was “booted out” of ussr (and the exiles people probably has some degree of association with him. Iirc his column was mostly about his life in NYC). The national bolshevik party started probably as something not tangible politically and the schism in the movement probably created offspring of people that are more politically motivated within all the political spectrum such as Dugin.
In some uncanny resemblance Limonov is kind of like the founding father of fascism Gabriel d’Annunzio, both are edgelord artists who during the turbulent year of the country tries to create some kind of Utopia: fiume for d’annunzio and Novorossiya for Limonov, fail to create any concrete projects, but the carcass got picked up by associate to grift their way into power: Marinetti who wrote the futurist manifesto later became a traditionalist and wrote the fascist manifesto and Dugin grift his way to become a political professor and propose his nutcase theory in the university level and (unlikely) state level.
Interesting. Would you mind sharing where this information come from?
Judging from wikipedia alone, it looks like what he was involved in was way beyond some edgy art project:
He was deeply involved in politics with far right figures like Zhirinovsky. The entire time period was a mess.
I have read 2 books from him: It’s Me, Eddie and Journal d’un raté (idk the title in French) and Emmanuel Carrère’s book called Limonov that gives a overall view on his career and beliefs (of the lack of). There used to be a video about Limonov on youtube made by some Russian Radlib, but i can’t no longer find it. As for the interaction with the Exile people, It’s multiple episodes of Radio WarNerd, Chapo Trap house and Trueanon when mark Ames are on them.
The connection with the Leader of LDRF Zhirinovsky, it’s probably because Limonov and it’s followers (mostly hooligans) are used as bodyguard or youth division for the party, but don’t quote me on that one. The politics of LDRF are mostly the political positions (especially between 90s-2000) with more populist flavour to it, some of the political positions were also picked up by United Russia to fired up popular support especially because of the trouble in the Caucasus after the dissolution of the USSR. Is the LDRF right wing? yeah obviously? are they serious about it? Idk there are probably some factions in the party that believes that shit but most of them seems to be grifting their way into power to boost their own business interest, at least in the higher stratas of the party.
As for the National Bolsheviks party, it’s mostly edgy teenagers who hates the west and foreigners but also like the nationalistics elements of the USSR. Letov was not really involved and got out earlier. Limonov eventually splitted and made his own party called Other Russia when the original party got banned. Dugin eventually grifted his way into the academia which is where he found some connections with some ‘‘powerful’’ people, but his ‘‘intellect’’ and ‘‘philosophy’’ were never really popular within the members of NBP (because they are hooligans and they don’t care/know who is Julius Evola). The only time I hear about Dugin before the Ukrainian War is some random terminally online philosophy communities of when the Chinese State TV did an interview with him about ‘‘Eurasianism’’ (the State TV also has the late wife of Lyndon Larouche time to time), no normal people in Russia really have heard of him.
Thanks for the info. This is very interesting.
There is a new episode of Radio War Nerd that just come up today. It talks about Navalny and Limonov if you are interested about it
https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/t687i-9b79d/War-Nerd-Radio-—-Subscriber-Feed-Podcast
They were edgy libertines who got sucked into the removed of 90’s Moscow. They loved Limonov’s writing and at the time the Nazbols just seemed edgy and absurdist. There were hints of them getting close to some powerful players in Russian politics too, who may have used them for political attacks on rivals. Ames even did a short stint with Russia Today after the eXile was shut down. I read them a lot in that period when I was an edgy libertarian teen and there was nothing ideologically leftist about them - there really still isn’t, except that they loathe the lies of empire and are deeply cynical about capitalism. It’s really more of a punk/journalistic ethos than anything ideological. Nazis seem like a big deal today, but ten or fifteen years ago they were a bad joke - I definitely don’t think the eXile people are closet right-wing extremists or anything (except for whatever happened with Taibbi). I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it came out that they were working with the Russian government as some kind of propaganda operation, maybe at arms length. They jumped on Patreon pretty early, which would be an easy way to launder support. On the other hand they’ve had a habit over the years of getting in public tiffs with well-connected professional journalists and the worst that’s come out of it was them attacking Ames over his RT work and stories in the eXiled about him sleeping with Russian teenagers. Maybe they just are what they appear to be.
Forgot to mention that they were spotlighting the Pussy Riot people before they were even Pussy Riot. I remember something about an orgy in a museum.
Thanks for the perspective, this is eye opening. It tracks with my own understanding that the nazbol ideology falls apart at the slightest scrutiny, when compared to capital F Fascism that meshes so well with liberal capitalism and actually served a purpose to allow capitalism to sustain itself. It is therefore not a surprise for me to find out that it all started out as some edgy joke.
what the fuck is that national bolshevik party shit?
Tldr: edgy art project turned into post soviet brain rot political project
THIS POST WAS MADE BY NAZBOL GANG