Image is of Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro walking together at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2022, sourced from this article.
Ordinarily, I avoid straying into the American domestic situation, but the government shutdown appears to be continuing into increasingly harmful territory. If the situation is not resolved, soon tens of millions of Americans will lose food assistance, and already millions of federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay. To those not in the know, this situation has essentially stemmed from the Democrats refusing to sign off on the Republicans’ plan to substantially shrink Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which would eventually result in tens of millions losing healthcare coverage and tens if not hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
To be clear, though, the Democrats have not exactly been paragons of healthcare: they not only oppose plans to make affordable healthcare a right (in defiance of wide popular opinion), but also do their part to maximize suffering. Biden’s policies during the pandemic ensured at least one million people died, and millions of children lost public healthcare coverage. We may never know the true toll, as the US decided that simply ceasing to report on a problem means that the problem no longer exists.
In other news, over the last couple weeks, the US has expanded their hostility against Venezuela by also including Colombia in their ire, and particularly the left-leaning leader, Petro. Both countries are now experiencing major economic and covert pressure by the US to try and cause regime change. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela and is conducting a military training operation with Trinidad and Tobago, which Venezuela has warned may be the prelude to the long-awaited attack.
Additionally, the US is attempting to combat Chinese geopolitical interest in central America and the Caribbean by carrying out digital attacks and launching pressure campaigns against Chinese and pro-Chinese countries and organizations. Given China’s enormous economic weight, if central America were to break all ties with China, it would be a catastrophe for them; such decisions would only be made by outright compradors, and the resulting economic problems would make their reigns unpopular and, hopefully, brief.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Denmark’s Housing Crisis: Capitalist Realism Grinds Construction Of Public Housing To A Halt
A perfect storm of rigid fiscal rules, a real-estate bubble, and weakly enforced planning laws has brought the construction of public housing in Denmark to a virtual standstill. The resulting crisis has left hundreds of thousands of families languishing on waiting lists for public housing, even as a boom in expensive, privately-owned speculative housing reshapes the skyline of the largest cities, allowing parasitic corporate landlords to leech exploitative rents from residents.
Read more ...
The building of non-profit public housing in the Nordic hermit kingdom has plummeted, falling from 7,000 units annually just five years ago to a projected 2,800 this year. The core of the problem is a statutory spending cap set by the central government mandating a maximum cost per square meter for new public housing. The stated purpose is to keep rents in public housing low but with construction costs and land prices soaring, housing associations find it impossible to build within this financial straitjacket.
“The biggest obstacle to building more public housing is that the so-called maximum amount has not been raised to match the massive increase in inflation and rising prices for land and building materials,” said Jens Elmelund, Managing Director of KAB, Copenhagen’s largest housing association to the media Arbejderen. He described the situation as a de facto construction stop.
The crisis is exacerbated by rigid neoliberal rules banning municipalities from selling public land at a discount to housing associations to ensure adequate housing for citizens. A directive from the central government mandates that municipalities must sell land at the highest market price, citing a requirement for “economically responsible management.” This forces non-profit builders to compete with deep-pocketed private developers.
Since 2015, Danish municipalities have had the power to require that up to 25 percent of new private developments be reserved for public housing. In practice, the policy has failed. Enforcement is weak, and local authorities have no power to demand that public and private units be built simultaneously.
A 2024 housing report from the City of Copenhagen found that the required public housing was completed or underway in only 26 of 44 new local development plans. In nine of the 44 projects, “no public housing has been realized nor are there any current plans for it.”
Private developers routinely secure permits by pledging to build public housing, only to construct the lucrative private units first. The construction of public housing units is then postponed, often indefinitely, with designated plots being left empty. The City of Copenhagen has requested that the central government grant municipalities the power to enforce simultaneous construction of public and for-profit housing, a request that has so far been refused.
Public housing in Denmark is built, owned, and operated by democratic, non-profit housing associations. With strictly cost-based rents, economy of scale and no profit motive, the model is significantly more efficient than the private rental market. Data shows average rents in modern public housing are 28 percent lower than on the for-profit rental market.
This demand for public housing is staggering. In Copenhagen KAB alone has 200,000 households on its waiting list. In Aarhus, the list has 95,000, and on the island of Funen, 60,000 households are waiting for public housing. In some cases, individual public housing units have waiting lists stretching into the thousands.
The crisis is further compounded by the Social Democrat-led right-wing regime’s openly racist “ghetto laws”, targeting public housing areas in large cities with ethnically diverse residents and some of the cheapest rents, the so-called “ghettos”. Through large renovations, forced sales to private real-estate speculants and demolition of housing blocks, authorities are seeking to drive up rents in these areas, targeted by explicitly racial criteria, in an attempt to make the demographic makeup whiter and richer.
The political response to the public housing crisis has been marked by inaction. The Social Democrat-led right-wing regime, has promised a comprehensive public housing policy proposal “soon,” a promise first made when it took power in a bloodless transition in 2022. As lord mayor of Copenhagen Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, the current head of the Social Democrat-controlled Ministry Of Social Affairs and Housing, argued for raising the spending cap. Today, she warns that doing so might drive up rents. “When you raise the spending cap to get more public housing, you are simultaneously passing some of the costs on to tenants. And that is something I am of course worried about,” she said recently to state media TV2 Metropol.
Andersen’s concerns are not unfounded. New public housing, though cheaper than private for-profit units, is already far from affordable for many and just raising the spending cap would only worsen that problem. Any lasting solution would require confronting the country’s decades-long adherence to neoliberal market orthodoxy. It appears highly unlikely that the regime is willing to do this.
In Copenhagen Social Democratic candidate for the upcoming local elections Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, fighting to defend her party’s century-long stranglehold on the lord mayoralty against challenges from the pro-democratic opposition, is now campaigning on a platform of raising the spending cap. The pro-democracy opposition accuse her of repackaging proposals she herself ignored as housing minister. “It is a copy of the proposals we have been pushing for,” said Line Barfod, a councilor for the moderate pro-democratic Red-Green Alliance, in a statement to state media TV2 in which she accused Rosenkrantz-Theil of having “sabotaged” efforts to expand public housing when she had the authority to act.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Party in Copenhagen appears to inhabit an alternative reality. “We basically think there are too many rental apartments,” said councilor Jens-Kristian Lütken to state media TV2 Metropol as he argued for prioritising owner-occupied housing in local planning instead.
The consequences of the mismanagement of the housing crisis are stark. Public housing provides homes for the workers—nurses, teachers, service workers, elder care providers—who keep the city functioning. Without renewed investment metropolitan areas could soon become inaccessible to the very workforce that sustains them.
With the political establishment unwilling to confront its own market orthodoxy, the homes not being built today will be missing for decades to come, leaving Denmark’s cities increasingly uninhabitable for those who make their wheels turn.
Sources:
This person needs the wall
I wish it was just one person.
hmm… wait aren’t those lockstep?
You’re supposed to sell the land to profit-seeking ghouls, not to non-profit housing associations.
Maybe they should send more money for oil & weapons to the US and cooperate more eagerly with whatever war the US is planning next, have they tried to do that?