Although that plays a large part, Muslim Southeast Asia has always been more China friendly than the rest. Even after Western propaganda regarding the Uyghurs.

In the survey itself, I think the more interesting shift is Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar edging closer or slightly surpassing the 50% mark.

Is this a Uyghurs attempt by ?

Yes.

Iran has been facing crippling sanctions from the USA that is equivalent to that of Cuba.

We should be especially careful with narratives from Western media (Human Rights Watch) and Western-allied media (Al-Jazeera).

I did a quick read of the HRW report, which cites numerous Iranian Human Rights NGOs based in the USA, with one of them, on their wikipedia page even saying it was funded by the US Department Of State.

So much benefit of doubt is given to these Western aligned NGOs but not a single shred is given to an imperialized nation that is perhaps the only Islamic country on Earth to successfully and completely defeat Imperialism from it’s borders (except perhaps Algeria)?

Looking at the actual HRW report:

Immediately revoke all policies and repeal laws that legalize violations of the rights of Baha’is, including but not limited to:

• Article 12 of the Iranian Constitution

Oh Article 12 which states:

The official religion of Iran is Islam and the Twelver Ja’fari school [in usual al-Din and fiqh], and this principle will remain eternally immutable. Other Islamic schools, including the Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanbali, and Zaydi, are to be accorded full respect, and their followers are free to act in accordance with their own jurisprudence in performing their religious rites. These schools enjoy official status in matters pertaining to religious education, affairs of personal status (marriage, divorce, inheritance, and wills) and related litigation in courts of law. In regions of the country where Muslims following any one of these schools [fiqh] constitute the majority, local regulations, within the bounds of the jurisdiction of local councils, are to be in accordance with the respective school [fiqh], without infringing upon the rights of the followers of other schools.

So they basically want to reverse the popular revolution of the masses that overwhelmingly supported the Islamic revolution of 1979? Perhaps now we know what the geopolitical aims that this false narrative of persecutions and oppression is hoping to entail?

By the way here’s Article 13 and 14 of the constitution:

Article 13: Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians are the only recognized religious minorities, who, within the limits of the law, are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies, and to act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education.

Article 14: In accordance with the sacred verse; (“God does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with those who have not fought against you because of your religion and who have not expelled you from your homes” [60:8]), the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights. This principle applies to all who refrain from engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

foreigners are moving in.

Was this made in the 1500s

Just read an article that talks about imperialism, neo-colonialism, coloniality, decoloniality and feminism that was funded by the NED.

We believe in collective movements and are interested in further observing the growing connectivity within and without the region, especially in the last few years: from Thailand to Myanmar and Hong Kong, as seen in the Milk Tea Alliance and pro-democracy movements. These show us the power of the people, who are constantly building political solidarity for a common goal. Our shared past (i.e. colonialism) still shapes our shared present struggle for an inclusive democracy.

Anti-imperialism in form but imperialism in substance.

So the collaborator oligarchs that are conducting genocide in West Papua had the audacity to ask the Western mining conglomerate Freeport to invest in downstream industries and they are complaining.

Freeport warns copper export ban could cost Indonesia $2 billion in lost revenue

Classic

Thanks for sharing

I made a comment in a Hexbear news megathread about this here. Although it’s mainly just referring to news articles.

The nature of the situation will not mirror that of Ukraine fortunately, however there are other risks involved.

I have now read 2 articles advocating for “security engagements” with the West for both Malaysia and Indonesia.

I suspect this entire facade is ultimately for this exact purpose. ASEAN has it’s faults but what the West wants to currently do is undermine ASEAN centrality (as much as they claim otherwise).

The escalation ultimately led by US-led monopoly capital, wants to break apart the long-standing neutrality and non-alignment that ASEAN was built on, with their current “Indo-Pacific Strategy” basically being the classic divide and conquer. They are using the Phillipines as their age-old pawn as not only an attack on China but also a threat on other major non-aligned states in the SCS, specifically Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Let us remind ourselves that this escalation is happening right when the ASEAN-China code of conduct negotiations has been finalising (news article in the aforementioned comment). The last thing the imperialists want is a truly free and independent Southeast Asia.

You are right that as Southeast Asians we must reject all forms of US imperialism, and this meaningless agitation does not help nor is the interest of the masses.

Eh even if that was his intention, trashing Singapore is more of an insult to the West than Asia.

Still fine in my book.

Singaporeans/Malaysians/Indonesians always have fights online about certain dishes being from their country.

But the Singaporean version is definitely the worst version for every dish so let’s just go with yes.

Finally, a GOOD opinion by a western-based Asian comedian.

In his Instagram Story, Chieng wrote: “This is apropos of nothing but it’s a mistake to listen to any Singaporean about current affairs other than Mr Lee Kuan Yew.”

The Johor-born continued: “They are just a country of small island Karens with main character syndrome who literally think they have all the answers despite having zero perspective on the world.”

To soften the blow, Chieng concluded his remarks by giving a nod to a particular Singaporean dish: “Great chilli crab though.”

Even giving LKY credit is a stretch but I’ll allow it.

MELAKA TO HOST CELEBRATION OF 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF MALAYSIA-CHINA DIPLOMATIC TIES

MELAKA, March 25 (Bernama) - Melaka will serve as the host for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Malaysia-China diplomatic relations established since 1974, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Ab Rauf Yusoh.

He said he had sent a letter to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim earlier to seek the Federal Government’s approval for Melaka to be selected as the host for the celebration, considering that the state had established relations with the Great Wall country over 600 years ago.

“That’s why I proposed to the Prime Minister to hold the 50th anniversary celebration of Malaysia-China diplomatic relations in Melaka and it has been generally agreed upon, and we have received a letter from the Foreign Ministry to propose the celebration events,” he told Bernama.

Earlier, Ab Rauf had received a courtesy call from Bernama chairman Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai at his office in Seri Negeri here today. Commenting further, Ab Rauf said Melaka is very famous among Chinese tourists as it is depicted in the history books of the country during the five visits of Admiral Cheng Ho to the state.

"The history books of China (studied from elementary school to university) show Admiral Cheng Ho’s [Zheng He] route to Southeast Asia, he came to Melaka five times, that’s why any Chinese leader who comes to Malaysia must set foot in Melaka.

“There are Chinese leaders who come to Malaysia, they take sand from Melaka and put it in a bottle, they take it back… (that’s) how they appreciate the history between Melaka and China that began 600 years ago,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wong said Bernama is committed to supporting all efforts undertaken by the Melaka state government in the tourism sector including the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Malaysia-China diplomatic ties, Visit Melaka Year 2024 (VMY2024), World Tourism Day, and the World Tourism Conference 2025 which will also be held in Melaka.

"I asked some Chinese tourists on Jonker Street (in Melaka) last night and they said they are more familiar with Melaka than Kuala Lumpur.

“For them, Melaka is a historical and very important city and in conjunction with the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Malaysia-China diplomatic relations, many events will be organised, so we assure that Bernama and other media will support the state of Melaka,” he said.

Malaysia established diplomatic relations with China officially on May 31, 1974, thereby becoming the first ASEAN country to extend a hand of friendship to Beijing.

Melaka is the city in which the Straits of Malacca gets its name from. Malacca is simply the old latinised spelling for it.

China did not only interact with Islam in Central Asia, it had a a varied and influential history in Southeast Asia as part of the maritime Silk Road. Some scholars even argue that Chinese traders helped spread Islam in Southeast Asia.

I have something in the pipeline that will hopefully be finished closer to the anniversary. It will cover Malaysia-China relations over the past hundreds of years - the good and the bad, the complexities and contradictions that I hope will give readers an appreciation of SEA history and politics. I also hope it will give a brief respite to the rampant Islamophobia and Sinophobia present in Western circles.

Kind of funny that there are those in West that still cling onto the notion that Chinese production is inferior while over here people say if you want shit done you call China lol

Nationalisation might be one of their few good proposed policies along with land reform.

And that’s all that is needed. A complete reformation of the relations of production will have a profound effect in elevating the productive forces.

Your critique on the manifesto seems lazy because most bourgeois democracies and their parties over-inflate and exaggerate in their manifestoes. Doesn’t say much about their class character.

Many things can happen when a large mass movement built on consensus is in charge.

I am not saying the EFF is one either, but the critique you bring forward doesn’t showcase your points well.

Bringing back military conscription? For what?

It is answered in the quote you mentioned.

offering life skills and discipline.

Teaching the masses life skills is GOOD.

Military conscription (which in the cited quote doesn’t necessarily imply “conscription”) is not only about invading other countries or protecting sovereignty. That’s colonizer talk.

The army can help with a lot of people’s projects, mobilizing resources for the betterment of the country. Furthermore, most places that have conscription also have options to participate in other governmental bodies, like firefighting. It is not strictly just into the army.

Furthermore, all AES countries have mandatory military conscription.

The countries that do not have military conscription are often those tainted with liberal individualism, prioritising the rights of the “individual” rather than the service to the community especially wrt to Global South countries.

many of which have very little to do with Marxism.

May I get specific examples of which policies “are not relevant” to Marxism? And I want something that is unequivocally and undeniably for the empowerment of the comprador classes and Capital.

I want to type up a proper post that will refer to many books and articles detailing Indonesian history but I will be quite busy so I don’t think I’ll manage to finish it within this week’s COTW.

But as for now instead I wrote a quick retrospective that can be served as the “primer” for the eventual post (whenever I’ll finish it).

Many westerners has some knowledge of Southeast Asian history but it typically only focuses on Western actions in the region and it never goes deeper. “the Vietnam War”, “the Phillipines recolonisation” and “the 1965-66 Indonesian Genocide” gets mentioned but it never is discussed within the 3 millenia of Southeast Asian history but especially within the last 500 years of colonization.

This is especially true for the Islamicate in Southeast Asia.

Do Westerners even know the colonial origins of the exonym of the “Malay Archipelago”? What about the Islamic and Socialist internationalist movements that sweeped across the “Malay-Islamic” civilization that consists of modern-day Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia? - and how Phillipines relates to this wider “civilization”?

Do westerners even know the major maddhab that most Southeast Asians muslims follow? Do they even know anything about how Islam spread across a sub-continent as wide as Lisbon to Tehran? Can they even discuss one thing about the richest company in history - the Dutch East India company? Do they even know anything about the political economy of colonial-capitalism in Southeast Asia?

This lack of knowledge stems from two faults, the rampant Orientalism and chauvinism that has penetrated the subsconcious of Western observers and even many Southeast Asians today, but also the failures of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements in the region. Southeast Asian history to this day is being written by the oppressors. We can’t breathe nor think for ourselves.

Can you imagine that? 700 million people, with more than 1300 indigenous languages (accounting for more than 50% of all indigenous languages spoken in Asia), without any voice!

But as materialist dialectics informs us, things continue to evolve and change. Now, ASEAN is experiencing larger economic growth (relative and absolute) than Europe. Under imperial domination for 500 years (and counting) - and still growing faster. Decolonization is not over yet.

The transcription of the talk called Dialectics and Indonesian specificity at the time of imperialism’s agony - Humanity (Indonesia) captures this emotional essence quite well.

And in the other way, especially accounting for costs of living.

See my comment above.

Poland, Lithuania and Estonia in the same cathegory as Switzerland or Luxembourg is like the joke about man and dog having averagely three legs.

You are merely arguing against the presentation of the data on the map, not the methodology of the data or the conclusions made from the data.

PERCENTAGE OF THE NATIONAL POPULATION BELOW WORLD AVERAGE INCOME OR CONSUMPTION

In this image found in the article I sourced the map from, it is made perfectly clear that Poland, with a population of 15% earning below the world average, is obviously vastly different than that of Switzerland of around 2%. In other words, proportionally, there are 7.5x more people in Poland that live with wages below the world average.

It is purely arbitrary that the author made the cutting off point for the legend 20%, when it could easily be in 10%, which would seperate Poland and Lithuania (but not Estonia) from Switzerland. The author could also have based it on quartile ranges (which would defeat the nature of this analysis).

It doesn’t consider the subsistence farmers

I am unsure how this helps your argument.

If anything this all further reinforces the nature of unequal exchange and imperialism.

There are rarely any “true” full-time subsistence farmers in the Global South, for example, during periods of drought, or after seasonal harvests, - subsistance farming doesn’t guarantee full-time job security nor does it entail that (for example) the farmer is able to pay for school or healthcare for the farmer or their family.

and people who obtain resources without the market.

That is of statistical insignificance, unless you are going to argue that Capitalism and Imperialism (what you call the “market”) have not infilitrated atleast 5% of the world populace (400 million people). And if so - may I get a source? I must read about the 400 million people or more that escaped Capitalism!

Even if 80million people were not counted, 1% of the world population or the entire population of Germany, it would still not affect the conclusions made from the article and the map.

As described in the article:

To broaden the focus, we can apply the same reasoning, not only to the United States, but to the rich nations as a whole. We follow the World Bank’s classification of high-income countries:

The average national income per capita in high-income countries in 2021 is $55,225 per year (this and the following figures are in 2023 international dollars).
The total world population is 7.888 billion people.
Repaying the entire world’s population with the average income of the average citizen in high-income countries would require about $436 trillion per year.
However, the total national income of the entire world amounts to just $146 trillion annually.
If all the world’s annual income – eliminating the parasitic counterparts of labor: profit, rent, interest rates, etc. – was destined to simple reproduction, and thus distributed equally among the entire world population, it would be enough to cover barely one third of the average income of high-income countries: that is, about $18,510 per capita per year.

As long as the “proletariat” in the Global North earns more than their labour - earn more in return than their labour is entitled for - their material interests are in direct contradiction to the interests of the Global South masses.

Nor does it take into account cost of living.

It is using 2023 international dollars - so it does take into account cost of living, unless you are arguing that the World Bank’s “basket of goods” is flawed.

If you think about it, people who live “on less than a dollar per day” literally wouldn’t be able to live if they faced the same cost of living as people in western societies.

There is a difference between “living” and “surviving”.

The question we must ask ourselves is why is that? What makes their lives different from ours? What is considered essential, abundant or normal here that isn’t in the Global South?

To quote Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism by Communist Working Group and Arghiri Emmanuel.

The commodities which represent the reproduction costs of ther working class do more or less cost the same all over the world. generally speaking, the costs of maintaining a living as a Danish worker are the same in Denmark, Tanzania, Brazil or Hong Kong. The price for one kilo of wheat, one kilo of meat, one watch, or a transistor radio varies by 10, 20, 50 percent from country to country. However, the wages are 5, 10, 20 or 50, times higher in the imperialist countries.

Truthfully, that does not need to be quoted by I did anyways because the main point is that “living costs” is defined as the level needed for basic social reproduction. It does not entail short working hours, safe working conditions, the price of buying a meal at a restaurant, strong environmental regulations, the price of consumer goods or rent, etc.

The calculations in the main article explicitly mentions that it eliminated “the parasitic counterparts of labor: profit, rent, interest rates, etc.” by utilzing only data on production.

but the gap is exaggerated by the liberal worldview.

What is considered liberalism here?

It’s important to remember that a lot of this data is biased.

Yes but not necessarily for your own argument that the data is “exaggerated”.

The official data is given to the World Bank by member states, in which for Third World states, due to centuries of imperialist sabatoge, is unable to provide fully accurate statistics and often overrepresent organized workers. This means the disparity may even be larger in real life.

I recommend reading this article on the Labour Aristocracy and the book I quoted prior.

There has also been other extensive works on Imperialism in the late 20th and early 21st century that I think may help you understand the arguments being conveyed here.

PKK and Imperialism https://en.rnp-f.org/2015/03/24/pkk-and-imperialism/

ASEAN headline dump and some excerpts. Most are non-paywalled non-archived links.

05/02/2024 Thailand eyes pact with 4 neighbouring nations to push for Schengen visa waiver

10/02/2024 ASEAN, China to intensify South China Sea Code negotiations

09/02/2024 China warns Philippines against ‘playing with fire’ as Manila boosts military presence near Taiwan. Archive link

03/02/2024 US interfering hinders peaceful settlement of South China Sea issue: Philippine scholar

Another headline I am too lazy to make an excerpt for, 05/02/2024 GT Voice: US-led IPEF all talk, no real action, doomed to fail

Lemmygrad’s resident Worker’s Party of Belgium member might be able to explain @DankZedong@lemmygrad.ml