Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.
Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the "Three", alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.
Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump's appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump's high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China's existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.
Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they're supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.
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.
The Limits Of Neoliberal Imagination: Danish Regime Seeks To Solve Shortage Of Affordable Housing With Higher Rents
Denmark’s Social Democrat-led right-wing regime has unveiled a truly stunning solution to the nation’s acute shortage of affordable public housing: building more expensive housing.
Read more...
In recent years, the construction of public housing in the Nordic hermit kingdom has all but collapsed, plunging from 7,000 units annually to a projected 2,800 this year. The combination of a speculative housing bubble, soaring land prices, and rising construction costs has made it impossible for housing associations to operate within the government’s strict spending cap—a policy originally intended to keep rents low, but which now serves as an iron collar strangling the sector.
The regime's proposal, which arrives just two weeks before voters go to the polls in upcoming local elections, is clearly designed to stem a mounting crisis at the ballot box. The housing crisis is a central issue in the campaign, and polls suggest that it is a real possibility that the Social Democrats will lose their centuries-long stranglehold on Copenhagen's lord mayoralty.
Line Barfod, the pro-democracy Red-Green opposition party's candidate for lord mayor of Copenhagen, described the timing as "grotesque," accusing the government of having "sat on its hands for so long." She drew attention to the conspicuous irony that Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil, the current Social Democrat mayoral hopeful and former housing minister, failed to enact these very measures when she had the direct authority to do so.
At the heart of the regime’s plan is a temporary, ten-year relaxation of the cost cap for non-profit public housing projects. In high-cost cities like Copenhagen and Aarhus, the cap will be lifted by 20 percent, a move justified by Nicolai Wammen, head of the Social Democrat-controlled Ministry of Finance, as necessary to get projects moving. “The rules have been too strict,” he told state media, candidly acknowledging that the increases in construction costs will inevitably be passed on to tenants in the form of higher rents. “The alternative is that these homes are not built at all,” he insisted, painting the rent hikes as the only conceivable path forward.
Rosenkrantz-Theil echoed this economic fatalism, brushing off suggestions of providing truly affordable housing without raising rents as naïve and unrealistic. “When people say, ‘can’t you just?’ No, you can’t just,” she declared, dismissing any alternative as beyond the pale.
Yet, outside the suffocating confines of the regime’s capitalist realism, functioning alternatives demonstrably exist. The Vienna model, in operation for over a century, treats housing as a public welfare service rather than a commodity. Unlike social housing in Denmark, where all costs must ultimately be recuperated from tenants, and where the regime regularly raids the National Construction Fund, which tenants pay into to fund new construction and major renovations, to finance unrelated social policy initiatives, The Austrian capital directly subsidizes construction, levies a dedicated housing tax, and leases public land on long-term contracts to non-profit developers. This model enables 60% of Vienna’s residents to live in cost-controlled public accommodation, with rents that run nearly half those of Copenhagen’s, and even remains fully compliant with EU's strict state subsidy rules.
Meanwhile, pro-democracy opposition groups outside the political establishment, such as the Communist Party, offer practical, material solutions. Their platform includes mandating that at least 50 percent of all new developments be public housing, seizing vacant properties from deadbeat landlords, granting tenants the right to convert for-profit rentals into social housing, prohibiting the privatization of public land and improving financing schemes for public housing in order to drive down rents.
"Housing is a human right – not a commodity," said Hans Skou, a Communist Party candidate in Copenhagen. His proposals emphasize reclaiming control from property speculators and strengthening the ability of municipalities to build housing based on need, not profit.
Despite this, it is unlikely that the communists will have electricians success. Non-market ideas are systematically ignored by the mainstream press, creating a firewall that prevents these ideas from threatening the political elite.
Experts anticipate that the regime’s proposal could allow for the construction of up to 1,400 additional public homes annually in the largest cities. However, this marginal expansion comes at a steep price: rents for new Copenhagen units are expected to rise by as much as 10 percent, sending a typical modest family apartment from an already eye-watering DKK 12,000 per month to over DKK 13,000.
While the regime frames this as a necessary compromise to house the middle class, critics argue it abandons the principle of affordable housing for the poor and reinforces a system where the logic of the market is presented as the only possible reality. As the political elite celebrates itself for an unimaginative and insufficient bandaid solution, the hundreds of thousands mired on public housing waiting lists finds little solace or hope for change in Denmark’s stunted political imagination.
Sources:
I hate that the European pinnacle of public housing is considered to be fucking Vienna, when we have literal hundreds of millions of affordable housing units just east of the Berlin wall, built by the communists in Eastern Europe. Monthly rent in the USSR costed 3% of the monthly income by 1970. Housing is materially a non-issue, and it's only problematic because of fucking capitalism. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it
What the hell is the EU's strict subsidy rules? Do they have rules against helping people with housing?
This is part of the EU's actual purpose, which is enforcing neoliberalism.
They most certainly do. Under EU law you can't have state subsidies interfering with the free competition of the free market. That would make the invisible hand sad and stressful the profits from under the nose of poor little landlords. Public funding for public housing is only allowed for "social housing", ie. housing for special vulnerable demographics and not for the general population.
Austria had to get the EU commission to explicitly recognise public housing as a "service of general economic interest" in 2009, making it's non-profit housing programme legal.
So while your average euro ghoul will point to the first part and say "The EU says no!" when asked to fund housing, it really is just a bad excuse as the Austrian model has been legalised and nobody is stopping others from following in their footsteps.
Glad they found a way to get an exception. That's pretty dumb to prevent subsidies from interfering with the free market, though, even if countries can get exceptions from it. But that's neoliberalism for you.
They absolutely do. The EU is a deeply and fundamentally neoliberal institution that has written rules against anything that strays too close to socialism. Subsidies are highly restricted, free market is non-negotiable, privatization is constantly pushed for, nationalization is strongly suppressed, and economic planning is absolutely forbidden. This is baked into the foundation of the whole thing...imo it's unreformable.
Oh wow, the EU is even worse than I thought. I had always respected things like the privacy rules they make that tech comapanies have to abide by or forcing Apple to use the se chargers as everyone else.