Image is from this Washington Post article, which shows the Shabara artisanal mine, where cobalt and copper are dug out by hand.
This preamble got much of its information from this article in ROAPE, and this article in People’s World.
Countries in the imperial core have increasingly advocated for Green New Deals, whose primary goal is to re-attract manufacturing capability to somewhat counter deindustrialization, and then export some of this renewable energy generation to other countries to gain profit. Just as the initial wave of industrialization was built on massive resource exploitation of coal and iron and then oil, this wave is being built on exploiting metals like lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The DRC is one of the best case studies on the planet for understanding the new dynamic.
The DRC is, to your average Western country, a resource bonanza. It is the 11th largest country by land area, and contains lithium, copper, and cobalt in massive quantities, famously containing two thirds of the world’s known cobalt supplies. The Western world and their institutions swarmed the DRC like piranhas, dismantling the Congo’s sovereignty over its natural resources. China was not terribly involved in the privatisation process, but has stepped in to benefit from the West’s work - Chinese corporations account for 40% of the production of major Congo cobalt projects (and 15 out of 19 cobalt mines), with Switzerland at 30% via Glencore, and Kazakhstan at 22%. The US, for whatever reason, withdrew from majority ownership of some projects in the mid-2010s, but is now anxious about China’s position in the cobalt markets. Western countries in general have spent their time lately drawing up critical minerals strategies both to keep capitalism chugging along in their own countries, and attempt to weaken China, which invariably involves the Congo.
The Congo has attempted to resist imperialist encroachment. In 2018, the Kaliba administration asserted a new Mining Code which raised tax and royalty rates and increased state ownership in mining firms from 5% to 10%, and these changes were bitterly resisted by the West right to the end. Since 2019, under the Tshisekedi administration, the government established the state-owned EGC, which sought to take control over the processing and export of artisanal and small-scale cobalt production, which comprises 5-15% of cobalt production in the Congo. More recently, Tshisekedi is planning to move up the manufacturing chain - instead of merely mining cobalt, they want to refine it there and then make electric vehicle batteries and other such products with it, which would be an industry worth trillions of dollars. But so far, there hasn’t been much movement away from having mining exports as the backbone of the economy, and it’s doubtful that plans to just keep doing this until they get rich enough to build refineries and factories will work. The profits mostly go to Western countries and have failed to produce significant benefits for Congolese workers, nor resulted in the emergence of domestic industries so far. Reforms will help a little, but only a little, and they remain fundamentally constrained by the markets and the whims of the West.
Meanwhile, war and mass displacements have put immense stress on the country. There are 7.1 million displaced people in the DRC due to various conflicts and mass displacements - most recently, the war between the Congolese army and M23. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be displaced every few months, and across the whole country, over 26 million require humanitarian aid. 6 million people have died in the eastern DRC in the last three decades, with hundreds of armed groups, both domestic and foreign, battling for resources and territory.
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 the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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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.
Can anyone explain materially the mechanism through which these US student protests will change US policy regarding the zionist entity and the drive of US-led capital to genocide Palestinians?
Last I have seen the US and in fact all western countries have been holding protests since October 8th but just this week the US government approved another 100 billion dollars for its fascist proxies in Asia.
I saw Dr. Sam Torabi’s tweet which is why I ask.
Portland State University protests just forced the university to pause accepting money from Boeing and to stop having a program with them for internship and training.
It’s BDS at a larger scale. The best we can hope for is making Israel into Apartheid South Africa, a pariah that is sanctioned and isolated and divested from.
I can reply more in a few days, but the Columbia protests are also linked with their new Tel Aviv campus launched in 2019 and their board members with links to lockheed martin,etc. It’s a very specific target and is putting huge pressure on them. The other protests are first and foremost solidarity protests but are also about confronting other links to Zionism or the genocide in their own contexts.
All this to say that there is national policy target of course, but the aim is the protests are targeting a local and winnable level. It’s demanding a university to stop making money on genocide which they can do tomorrow if they wanted
See this line makes no sense to me. A two state solution is would help preserve Israel long-term. Heightening tensions threaten to lead to collapse. It’s not actually in Israel’s interests to pursue this kind of conflict, it’s happening due to a particular set of internal political contradictions. I also don’t read US support for Israel as some Machiavellian imperial plot. It undermines imperial interests pretty heavily to be constantly pissing off the whole Arab world. It forces them to rely on illegitimate and therefore weak regimes and constantly engage directly in the region to stymie organized resistance. It’s really just zionist ideology driving this whole endeavor.
Yeah, if the americans were really acting strategically they absolutely would’ve drawn and enforced a red line quite some time ago, but they didn’t
And it wouldn’t be the first monumental strategic miscalculation they’ve made in recent times. The yankee ghouls of old were terrified of a china-russia-iran alliance and yet all the empire has done recently has continually pushed the three states together
How much of the “whole Arab world” can do damage to the west though? In terms of material gain, the gulf states providing oils and/or the ones that the US already occupies are most important, and it’s highly unlikely any of them will turn on the US on a scale that matters. But to me, that seems like all the more reason to support Israel. You can tell the government what to do, criticize them, get pissed off, etc. and it won’t really matter because if they cross enough lines, you can replace them with literally any other Israeli since they all love the US. You can’t exactly go and condemn Saudi Arabia for their crimes or else they’ll engineer an economic crisis with oil. Biden called SA a pariah state during his election and immediately pivoted and kissed the prince’s feet because he knows what’s at stake.
It may not stop Israel, but their actions may stop Israel’s presence on campuses. It also continues putting Palestine in the headlines because otherwise people will just assume it’s over. Liberals also continue to sweat with every protest because they know that those kids could influence the election.
They don’t change a thing and anyone who says otherwise is very optimistic. More power to to the hopeful, but good things don’t happen in America.
Any damage caused is easily bandaged
All of the US State power seems really worked up about them so i assume they work well…