SeventyTwoTrillion

Could the historic case of a trans sex worker end Malawi’s anti-LGBTIQ law?

Imprisoned in December 2021, Gonani, a 29-year-old Malawian trans woman, is currently serving an eight-year sentence at Chichiri men’s prison in Blantyre City for two counts of “false pretence” – for presenting as a woman – and one count of “unnatural offence” – both crimes under the country’s colonial era penal law.

In February 2022, with the help of Nyasa rainbow Alliance (NRA), a Malawian LGBTIQ organisation, Gonani filed an appeal in the High Court to challenge the constitutionality of Section 153 of this law pertaining to “unnatural offences”, a British colonial legal term for sodomy or homosexual sex.

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This is the first time the “unnatural offence” law – Malawi’s only anti-homosexuality legislation – has been legally challenged on its constitutionality, making Gonani’s case a significant one in the fight for LGBTIQ rights.

Unlike other countries such as Ghana, Uganda and Kenya, there haven’t been efforts by the Malawian parliament to introduce new anti-gay laws, though a group of Malawian MPs did visit the Ugandan parliament in July where they praised its Anti-Homosexuality law passed this year.

Speaking to openDemocracy, Ousman Kennedy, a lawyer with NRA, said the organisation’s support for Gonani’s case was driven by the belief that: “[A] law that criminalises same sex relations between two consenting adults in private serves no useful purpose other than fueling the harassment and discrimination of LGBTI persons in Malawi.”

George Hopkins Kachimanga, executive director of the LGBTIQ-focused Social Justice Foundation, told openDemocracy homosexuality being criminalised in Malawi has made queer advocacy difficult.

Oil-reliant Azerbaijan chosen to host Cop29 climate talks

Because of conflict in the region, the group took much longer than usual to come to a decision. On Thursday, Armenia dropped its opposition to Azerbaijan’s bid as part of peace talks between the two.

Russia blocked any European Union member from hosting, which scuppered a Bulgarian bid. Serbia, Moldova and Armenia were also in contention.

Azerbaijan gets two-thirds of its revenue from oil and gas, one of the highest percentages in the world and more than the Cop28 host – the United Arab Emirates.

Very funny, honestly. The sooner that these global institutions pull their masks off, the sooner the reality that reform is impossible will sink in for everybody.

The government, as in the state, is just the tool of the bourgeoisie as a class, as per Lenin's description of the concept. Of course they're going to support reactionary structures, that's what keeps them in power.

Trust me, I know that you want a magic bullet solution to this whole thing. "Oh, the problem with the Left is just that they haven't considered X as part of their strategy!" It doesn't work. The only thing that works is the hard work of engendering class consciousness among the population. This has been THE central problem for left-wing movements in the imperial core for literally a century. Groups have tried the whole "Alright, we'll be homophobic, we'll be racist, if we just get white male workers to vote us into power and support us, and then we can do communism and improve conditions for everybody" thing. It never works. The party inevitably becomes corrupted by those same reactionary impulses.

It's also not human nature, falling in doomer resignation about "Oh, humans are just cruel and selfish and tribal!" and giving up and playing video games all day also isn't the answer - if it was, then no socialist revolution could have possibly worked, and they demonstrably have. It's all part of how workers in the imperial core are conditioned by their relatively higher position above workers in the periphery and semi-periphery, as well as bourgeois propaganda that reinforces (but does not fundamentally create) fear that their meagre position in the imperial core will be taken away by minority groups, and they'll have to live like a Pakistani textile worker. It all destroys class consciousness.

I think this not only wrong but also ahistorical. Some left-wing groups from decades ago failed because they did not have enough support for fellow marginalized people. Organizations that bring in a wide coalition of oppressed people do better than those that maintain some level of racism and homophobia and sexism, etc etc, in order to try and appease what they perceive as a broadly reactionary working class. It's actually quite funny, because this argument fails in its own internal reasoning: we must throw entire groups under the bus - which are, by the very nature of being ostracized, more likely to be anti-capitalist - in order to attempt to appease reactionaries who probably aren't going to vote or support us anyway. If you follow this argument to its logical conclusion, following the most reactionary worker's demands, you will inevitably end up as pro-capitalist, racist, sexist, transphobic, etc etc, and at that point... what are you even doing? You're just Reactionary Party #243143. No, but we're actually gonna do communism when we take power, I swear! With our party whose candidates are mostly white reactionaries, because everybody else has been... purged from the... oh. Oh no.

I think that this view is a common one among people on the liberal-to-left pipeline, which you appear to be on. It's a byproduct of a liberal understanding of the world, and the media does its part in constantly reinforcing the idea that left-wing ideas are fundamentally unpopular among wide swathes of the population, who are ignorant, stupid, sexist racists, and so there must be compromise if you are to succeed.

Summoning Salt music

...and then, after the two speedrunners at the top of the leaderboard - Russia and China - took a short break, five new runners decided to enter the race to see who could collapse US global hegemony the fastest. Palestine brought new strategies to the field, such as extensive tunnel networks, regional non-state military power alliances, and inexpensive mass-produced weaponry. Meanwhile, Venezuela threatened a war in a rainforest, which the United States has a -33% combat bonus inside as proven by Vietnam. Last but not least, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso discovered an obscure technique from decades ago called federation, and though this takes a long time to execute, it pays off later on in the speedrun...

The weekly update is here on the website.

The Country of the Week is Canada!

As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Canada, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

The previous country was Laos.

This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

General Theory:

• Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
• Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
• Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
• World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.

Canada:

• Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.

Chile:

• 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
• Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

Lebanon:

• A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.

United States:

• Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.

Venezuela:

• Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.

Next thread here.

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#Tradle #645 1/6
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I hate it when I lose my large adult prince, my very special boy

"We should be controlling our sector from 4km away, so we can kill a few hundred Russian soldiers before they get to our infantry, and we only take a few wounded," he told the newspaper, adding: "But without ammunition, we can't."

"Yeah, usually we can just gun the Russian human waves down as the Russian commander sends thousands of unarmed soldiers running at our positions, but they've done this so many times now that we're out of ammunition. Yeah, an unfortunate situation, I know. The battlefield in front of us probably has about 50,000 Russian skeletons in it, but you know how it is."

Really? They're still doing this? This was tiresome by month 6. Now we have to endure this "actually this major L is a W if you really think about it" propaganda all over again, for every single fucking conflict for the next few decades. Oh my god, by the end of this I'm gonna be the goddamn kid at the end of The Jaunt short story.

The military won't really be threatened by this directly, that's what Hamas and Hezbollah are for. Really what this is doing is putting pressure on Israeli capitalists. They obviously don't have any love for Palestinians or Arabs in general and are totally fine with the war, but if profits are threatened it adds another vector of pressure on the bourgeois state. No single factor like this will bring down Israel, but a pack of hyenas can kill a sick lion.

Yemen's Ansarullah has announced that they will now attack all ships travelling to Israel if they try to enter Bab Al-Mandab.

Previously, they only attacked ships belonging to Israelis.

...and up the escalation ladder we climb...