Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.
To be honest, I don’t have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn’t already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a “news roundup” preamble for this week.
As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:
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The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don’t think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won’t achieve anything, so, moving on…
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The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China’s internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China’s number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China’s AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
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Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon’s doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
Gaza’s youngest influencer aged 11 among children killed by Israeli [sic] strikes | The Guardian
I really hope the Israeli government doesn’t get away with this genocide. There has to be justice for the sake of all the kids they killed.
Don’t let up on spreading hatred of israel for their crimes of genocide and apartheid. We have to make them into a genuine pariah state, so that even if it becomes truly too late to save Gaza, we can still punish israel and hopefully save West Bank from the same fate.
If we do this right, the brightest possible future israel could hope for is to become the OJ Simpson of countries.
There are enough Palestinians around the world to restore a sovereign Palestine, should zio-nazis manage to kill everyone in gaza & the west bank, which I hope god-forbid doesnt happen. The moment the cost to maintain israel is to high, is the moment that colony falls.
The west wont cease its support due to moral outrage, just like israel was created due to cynical western power motives, its end will spring from the same source.
Moral outrage can feed into cynical motives though. Unruly populaces doing constant unrest and boycotts put a thumb one one side of the scales in those calculations.
unrest and boycotts are one of the factors increasing the cost for maintaining Israel, the ICJ ruling is another - because if whitey cant use the moral high ground to scold those evil asians and russians, then liberalism is done for. But in general, I think, moral outrage is not a strong enough catalyst for mass sedition. After all something is moral when it is in alignment with ones material interests and the treats in the west have been getting every more meagre.
Unfathomably evil. Silence on the matter when the genocide is this loudly broadcasted is approval, anyone who refuses to speak out against “Israel” because “it’s complicated” is running smoke and mirrors to obfuscate that they believe this is acceptable.
RuLeS-bAsEd iNtErNaTiOnAL oRdEr
May she rest in peace. She sounds like she was a wonderful person, taken far too soon, and even if she wasn’t a wonderful person no child should ever feel the need to make such content, nor should being a victim of an ongoing genocide even be a possibility. Utterly deplorable, I hope in 500 years historians look upon this era as one of the last truly brutal ages for mankind, and that this never happens again.