On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I've had to restart my program after somebody told me "Disregard all previous prompts."
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the... reforms... that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it's as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven't meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Pridnestrovie, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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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.
Article
Garbage PR meeting as expected, Brazil single handedly suggesting and then not just opposing but vetoing Venezuela, there is zero chance of Cuba joining now. This is completely expected though, but good on them for trying and shame on these garbage idiots.
All the worst criticisms of BRICS starting to show through, again as expected. Worthless clowns pay lip service to "multipolarity" but the lines are very clearly defined around their own capitalist interests.
Wait, what’s brazil reasoning for veto?
Despite the Lula fandom here its all about the Venezuela election stuff. Brazil "demanded" to see the votes and Venezuela rejected. Brazil has no right to demand anything but these clowns did it anyway.
Celso Amorin on the 21st
This is fucking garbage. This is exactly what the worst critics say and its tough to admit. Little capitalist garbage fuckers trying to draw their own little garden while paying lip service to multipolarity shit.
I will continue to blame China for themselves not having a clear position on clamping down on this shit.
Cuba may still join in the future, they made the "list" and Venezuela didn't. But if at the end of the day all it takes is the big capitalist shit down south to say "no" then what is the excuse? Lula is not a leftist is what Brazilian communists already know and repeat a lot so this is not unexpected realy but yeah its bad.
I don’t think the reason is as you’re stating.
Lula has been very keen on pushing a BRICS currency (which is currently not on the table as per the recent Russian proposal) but adding more countries into BRICS+ would mean exponentially increasing the complexity of calculating multi-lateral settlements between a dozen of currencies.
It is already difficult as it is with only the five founding countries (for example, Russia earned a whole bunch of Indian rupees by selling them oil after sanctions but couldn’t find a way to spend them, what to do?), adding a dozen more countries is going to make the endeavor straight up untenable.
Everyone is just going to end up collecting a bunch of different currencies they cannot spend and have no desire to accumulate, so what’s the way out? You still end up buying dollars with them (Russia cannot do that which means they’re stuck, but other countries still can!).
I think what is happening is that everyone is starting to realize that adding more countries into the BRICS+ bloc would end up strengthening the US financial system, not weakening it. This tracks with the news that BRICS has decided to suspend the admission of new members back in June.
Once again, constructing an alternative financial system is not trivial and is going to ask its participants to sacrifice a lot, and having too many member states into BRICS while you cannot promise everyone would get the same benefit would cause a lot of headaches down the road, if not end up dissolving the entire project. (Only the Europeans were stupid enough to do invent the euro, which the Global South should not and must not emulate!)
You should first understand Brazil is doing a 180 here. This financial talk can't be used here because certainly before the election issue Brazil/Lula was either very clueless about what you're talking about or they didn't care and wanted Venezuela to join. Either way we can't rationalize their rejection today with financial talk given they were about to be approved if the election thing didn't happen for example.
Next its very important to understand the state of Venezuelan economy as dictated almost entirely by oil production.
Current BRICS oil exporters top to bottom: Russia, SA, China, Iran, Brazil, Egypt.
Venezuela joining would add an irrelevant amount of GDP and would just slot them barely ahead of Egypt as an oil producer.
BRICS is already deeply related with OPEC and therefore already deeply tied to the USD. It makes no meaningful difference whether you add Venezuela or not. Russia alone produces over 10x more oil. Russia and SA together produce as much as China/Iran/UAE.
Even further context, here is the OECD BRICS(old) exports(billions) rank
China - 3.700B
Russia - 486B
India - 468B
SA - 147B
Venezuela 4.3B
South Africa exports over 30X more than Venezuela. We can't possibly seriously suggest adding Venezuela is a step too far here. Venezuela got literaly one of the lowest exports per capita in the world(OEC) Within this context Venezuela is sadly irrelevant to the world economy and is not a real justification imo. Their economy is shit and irrelevant, they produce literaly nothing and barely sustain themselves(they have a trade deficit actualy).
They are instead making a new list of future members. Cuba was accepted but Brazil vetoed Venezuela and Nicaragua. They're eating their cake and having it if I go by your reasoning, there is no point making a list of future members if you're truly not going to add new members.
The current impression is every continent's major player gets to call their shot. China says what they want in Asia, Russia in ME, Brazil in SA and India in SEA. Though India is just content in being the resident contrarian.
This should be an ideological battle, surprisingly even Putin accepted Brazil's stance despite Russian relations with Cuba and Venezuela. Its clear where the lines are drawn.
lula really fell off since the late 80s
Tbh, as I think brics is useless until they get payment system online, it’s just shady for now
But sudden heel turn, really gotta get that amerikka pat on the back, huh.
Still think uae being there is more of a bad thingy (in shadiness/west vassalage, lots of countries in there do bad stuff)
To be honest it seems more about Brazilian self interest, BR media reports it more over Lula/Brazil losing face to Venezuela than anything else.
Obviously the US just points and laughs at a distance with a happy smug face but it is the sad reality, there are bigger root causes i.e again Lula is a sucdem at very best and his government is completely in bed with the "normal" modern neoliberal policies(Haddad is only missing a swastika or something at this point otherwise he is doing everything he can to show he is the worst). The difference between PT and the right is just on the level of unhinged support for extreme right discourse and very basic Lula's own affinity towards maintaining some social welfare. Otherwise its welcome to neoliberal hell and enjoy your stay, I'm sorry nothing can be done because otherwise PT/Lula can't govern is the excuse.
Despite what happened post-Chavez, given Lula is not a communist this is irrelevant to them. Brazil got no ideological reason to support Venezuela unconditionally so they obviously will not.
The reality though even Brazilian interests would be better off using Venezuela in BRICS as an anti-US pawn(to be brutaly honest) but no, its amateur hour what is realy important is Lula must not lose face to the "dictator". God damn it for someone that was literaly in jail but still kneels and begs on the altar of the global "rules based" order shit while also at the same time making discourse over multipolarity. sigh.
I mean if we do vibes base analysis (and considering I was unaware they’ve blocked venezuela, I’m ideal
subject), that’s local lord shit, like smolbean from south amerikka gotta show loyalty to local lord to pass to local lords assembly club. What’s weird is, I thought lula understood that problems in venezuela aren’t exactly good for him either, just buy oil on downlow like india does, christ.
Lula is one of the good succdems. But even then "Wer hat uns verraten?" still applies.
Some liberal media outlets said it was because of the Venezuelan elections. But some leftist said it was because there are local elections happening in Brazil now, and Lula doesn't want to give ammo to the far-right against his candidates (yeah, it's a dumb motive). Also, I heard something about this not even being the actual list, but like a pre-list (which would mean they can add or remove countries from there I guess, except for the ones that already joined), but I can't confirm that.
I think Nicaragua was also vetoed, but mostly because Daniel Ortega got angry at Brazil, because Brazil was helping the Vatican negociate a deal with Nicaragua to release some right-wing catholic priests, and then after the Brazilian Diplomat didn't go to a meeting during a holiday in Nicaragua, Ortega kicked him out and Brazil broke relations. Which seems really random, and I remember Lula saying that was very weird, I couldn't find any info on what actually happened but who knows.
I doubt local elections would give one single shit about not vetoing something at local un club.
Maybe brazil really trying to cosplay big brother again, huh
They would, the media is always at the socdems throat if they don't pretend to give a shit if Maduro did something the US didn't like. The biggest city in Brazil, the media kept attacking Lula's candidate saying that he supported a "dictator", to which he said he wanted to be the mayor of Sao Paulo, and not Caracas. They are still angry that Lula's party recognized Maduro's reelection. This is mostly all just the right virtue signaling that they care abour "democracy" when they literally attempted a coup in 2023, and Liberals always want to compare Lula to Bolsonaro, saying that Bolsonaro supported Saudi Arabia, and Lula supports ebil Vuvuzela, so they are the same.
Maybe the US should consider joining BRICS+ too, anyone regardless of ideology or foreign relation can join afterall
Could an individual state apply for BRICS+?
I really hope Cuba will get some tailwind from somewhere soon. Lots of people internationally talks about supporting Cuba and condemns the illegal and unprovoked American blockade but few has the capability to actually make a positive material difference and even fewer has the will to stick their neck out for Cuba and risk drawing the ire of the evil empire.
Things look really bleak for Cuba at the moment and it is hard not to feel doomerish at times. They really don't deserve all the shit they're getting. They could be a happy, prosperous place and a source of inspiration for the rest of the world if they were allowed to engage in trade like everyone else.