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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
Another one who gets cancelled
tbf that one has been cancelled by commies since the 90s or even the 80s, he's never really liked us and we've never liked him
still better than bolsonaro obviously... i'd much rather have my university falling into pieces than outright closing its doors
In 1989, he got the support of the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Brazil, and in the second round basically everyone on the left supported him. The Brazilian Communist Party was under the control of pro-Gorbachev people who, in the future, changed the party's name and even supported the 2016 coup.
In 2002 he did receive the support of basically every leftist party in Brazil with exception of the trotskyists and the rival socdem party that I believe was the Vargas party, which is like Brazilian Peronism.
Now personally, I don't know Lula da Silva in Real-Life but he did say this about communists:
And once he called Bolsonaro or someone else a stalinist but then he corrected himself and change it to nazist or something like that, lol.
I've said before that socdems like Lula is capistalism giving something to the workers to stop them overthrowing the system. Now, Lula does a very good job giving people support and social programs, much better than any Democratic president, but it's not real change. But rhe communists have one good thing they can count on in Lula's government, which is that he's not going to do like the SPD and hunt down communists. I believe he even said that it's good for people to put pressure on the government and congress to act.
By the way, I don't know how popular his minister of economy is, but I don't think he's that popular. He could win a presidential election simply because the right is so bad at winning presidential elections without cheating. I saw something on Twitter about the Brazilian Senate ending re-election and returning to the old system, which is similar to the Mexican/Paraguayan system of one term, but with 5 years to govern. And I also thought that Lula's real successor was that Boulos guy.
he did, and yet he was from the PT wing that was competing against the more socialist wing. and lula's discourse has always been more radical than his actions, even today
the socialist party had an ok program, but pcdob was already a joke tbh, despite their program
it's funny, but while we like to say words have meaning, they seemly don't when it comes to brazilian political parties
that is not surprising, is it? he was pitted against collor. second rounds are an entirely different story
the actual leftish choice in 1989 was brizola (who correctly said, in the 90s, that lula and FHC were in the same place politically, except one came from below and the other, from above), not lula, but sadly he fell 1 or 2 points short of going to the second round. that one was an actual socdem, actually willing to do reforms with the people behind him, unlike lula, who was more in the realm of "ya'll be quiet and let me do my thing"
he did! and then he turned his back on us, starting with the "letter to the brazilian people" which was written precisely to tell the market he wasn't going to mess with the system, and then getting his first big win in government: a right-leaning pension reform, which would fuck over so many workers that some people in the party still decided to vote against it (resulting in their highly publicized expulsion and later founding of psol)
in the 80s he also called brazilian communists "know-it-alls" who didn't really understand reality (basically usual socdem discourse: "it would be so cool, but unfortunately it wouldn't work in practice")
we really shouldn't be paying too much attention to lula's words tbh, except for stuff like defending palestine where words actually have an effect
only because we are not a threat. in the 2013 protests, where the anarchists and autonomists in general were very present, just before the right wing took the whole thing over, haddad and dilma went haywire on people. they actually supported our fash police beating them up and "bringing order", instead of using that opportunity to enact reforms. even in 2022, just after lula was elected, i saw people from the party saying leftists who decided to protest during this government were "NGO-funded, fifth column troublemakers" who should be put in their place by the police. when push comes to shove, the PT has always turned to the bourgeois order than to workers and students - which isn't even socdem behavior, just straight up liberalism
don't you feel like haddad has been more impactful than lula? which is pretty sad, because his impact is actually bad - there are reasons why he's complimented by so many bankers, none of them are good
boulos does look like lula 2.0
edit: btw, my dad was a mayor from the PT once (still in the party, just not running for seats anymore - at least that i know of) and he's as close to an american senior democrat as i can think of, which admittedly might make me more cynical than average about the party