SeventyTwoTrillion

The Country of the Week is Honduras!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Honduras.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

• What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
• What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
• Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
• Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
• What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
• Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

Our reading list doesn't yet have much on Honduras, so check out the regional books:

These books focus on general history:

• Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano (1971).
• The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig (1980).
• Power in the Isthmus: A Political History of Modern Central America by James Dunkerley (1988).
• Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice by Francesca Miller (1991).
• The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents by John Dinges (2004).
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann (2005).
• Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, And the Rise of the New Imperialism by Greg Grandin (2006).
• The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary by Erin Graff Zivin (2008).
• History of Modern Latin America: 1800 to the Present by Teresa Meade (2010).
• Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America by Benjamin Dangl (2010).
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles Mann (2011).
• Crisis and Contradiction: Marxist Perspectives on Latin America in the Global Political Economy by Jeffery R. Webber and Susan Spronk (2014).
• A Perfect Storm in the Amazon: Volume 1: The Conventional Economy and the Drivers of Change by Timothy J. Killeen (2022).

These books focus on left-wing movements:

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope by Tariq Ali (2006).
• Dispatches from Latin America: Experiments Against Neoliberalism by Vijay Prashad and Teo Ballvé (2006).
• What Is New and What Is Left of the Economic Policies of the New Left Governments of Latin America? by Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid and Igor Paunovic (2008).
• The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left by Emir Sader (2009).
• A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War by Gilbert M. Joseph and Greg Grandin (2010).
• The Distinguishing Features of Latin America's New Left in Power: The Chávez, Morales, and Correa Governments by Steve Ellner (2012).
• The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire by Jeffery R. Webber (2012).
• Latin America's Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century by Steve Ellner (2014).
• Interpreting the Internet: Feminist and Queer Counterpublics in Latin America by Elisabeth Friedman (2016).
• Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings by Steve Ellner (2019).
• The Last Day of Oppression, and the First Day of the Same: The Politics and Economics of the New Latin American Left by Jeffery R. Webber (2017).
• Twentieth-Century Latin American Revolutions by Marc Becker (2017).

Next thread here!

The mere possibility that I might one day have to tell my hypothetical future children that I voted for a leader who was actively and enthusiastically funding a genocide fills me with so much shame. If I was an American citizen and I voted for Biden, I would feel like a person in Nazi Germany who voted for Hitler. Certainly not voting for either Sunak nor Starmer over here

sorry for the semi-late response, been a little distracted over the last few days, but:

holy shit

Thanks to the reforms to the Russian constitution made in 2020, he could even attempt another reelection in 2030.

hell yeah, voting for Putin's brain in a jar

their analysis is wrong over and over again. even the military stuff

doomerism only takes you so far, absolutely

I only learned about him via early Hexbear and went along with the good-natured jokes about him and thought he was perhaps just a rather idiosyncratic communist thinker, but now it appears that his entire goddamn shtick is producing the worst take possible in response to geopolitical events. It's genuinely puzzling how he even can't accidentally give a good take nowadays, from what little I pay attention to him. No idea what happened to him or if this was always how he was going to act in response to present events; would love the input of somebody who paid more attention to him.

#Tradle #743 2/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle

The Country of the Week is Russia!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Russia.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

• What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
• What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
• Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
• Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
• What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
• Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

Here's some books on Russia/USSR on our reading list:

These books focus on general history and politics:

• Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism by Samir Amin (2016).

These books focus on history and politics prior to the Russian Revolution:

• The Development of Capitalism in Russia by Vladimir Lenin (1899).

These books focus on the Russian Revolution:

• 10 Days That Shook The World by John Reed (1919).
• History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky (1930).
• Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–1918 by S. A. Smith (1983).
• October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville (2017).
• The Russian Revolution: A View from the Third World by Walter Rodney (2018).

These books focus on the Soviet Union:

• Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm by Caroline Humphrey (1983).
• Human Rights in the Soviet Union: Including Comparisons with the USA by Albert Syzmanski (1984).
• Molotov Remembers: Inside Kremlin Politics by Felix Chuev (1993).
• The Soviet Century by Moshe Lewin (2003).
• The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 by R. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft (2004).
• Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union by Francine Hirsch (2005).
• A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev by Vladislav Zubok (2007). Anti-Stalin, Anti-Khruschev, and anti-Gorbachev, so a real Everyone Here Sucks dude.
• Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo (2008).
• Inside Lenin’s Government: Ideology, Power and Practice in the Early Soviet State by Lara Douds (2018).

These books focus on the fall of the Soviet Union:

• Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism by Harpal Brar (1992).
• Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat: Factors Contributing to the Dismantling of the Socialist State in the Soviet Union by Bahman Azad (2000).
• Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny (2004).
• Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok (2021). Same context as above.

These books focus on post-Soviet Russia:

• Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War by Tony Wood (2018).

These books focus on indigenous history and politics:

• Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North by Yuri Slezkine (1994).
• When the North was Red: Aboriginal Education In Soviet Siberia by Alice L. Bartels and Dennis Bartels (1995).
• Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth (2019).

Next thread here.

From the reading list:

• Ireland Her Own: An Outline History of the Irish Struggle for National Freedom and Independence by T. A. Jackson (1946).
• The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein by Brendan O’Brien (1995).

There might be better books though (and if anybody knows any, please recommend them!)

This is just how incompetent Putler is, he can't even be a dictator right