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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
An interesting part of lurking so many fash spaces on telegram means getting exposed to some of their thinking on current topics. An interest take I’m seeing in more than one place, including ops that are being carried out on reddit and other spaces is the belief among some of these fash that Mamdani is less dangerous than Hasan and that they think that by pushing Mamdani while smearing Hasan they can push his would-be audience in a softer direction and shrink his influence in the left in the longterm. Their thinking is that by having Mamdani as a thought-leader of a softer left they can push out Hasan into the same kind of fringe Empanada occupies.
I’ve never watched Hasan and don’t pay attention to him.
That said, the entire dog collar thing is so obviously an psyop that I wanted to scream. Liberals gleefully participating in that falsehood because it hurts a political rival is the kind of bullshit that continually hands victories to MAGA.
There’s a nazi on a forum i’m in who keeps teasing me with Hasan this hasan that. I have zero idea who that guy is
The only hasan i know is from the sample from that techno track called hashish ou opium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTL6dSlqOec&list=RDjTL6dSlqOec&start_radio=1
I dont get streaming im too old for this shit
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Israel is paying influencers to talk about the shock thing as if it were true. Very interesting.
I’m sorry,but thinking HASAN is this big, imposing ultra radical force on the left is hilarious to me
I don’t mind him,and I tune in every once in a while,but he’s no revolutionary,not by a long shot
I think there’s space to argue that he’s braver than Zohran though, he’s not afraid of taking unpopular positions and fighting them until they become popular. He pretty openly supports Hamas which is not something I can see from someone like Zohran, same for the way he actively defends “tankies”, which effectively means that he doesn’t act as a buffer against people moving further left than he himself is currently. Zohran on the other hand has actively condemned socialist leaders and projects in the world that are the most threatened by the US, something Hasan absolutely never would do.
What these people on the right want is to use Zohran to create a buffer. To make him “the adult”. To effectively make it so that Zohran’s politics are the furthest left acceptable position and that everything to the left of him is childish or extreme.
That’s what they’re working to achieve.
including going to bat for the nazi troop guy and saying that basic anti-imperialism is “terminally online”
True. But he’s also defended North Korea when no one else on the left in the mainstream has. He also said American deserved 9/11. These are true statements that I’ve heard no one else on the left, that a normie would recognize, say. He says Russia is bad or whatever, but I’m pretty sure he has still said the Ukraine war as imperialist and aggressive by NATO, which is extremely still unpopular to say, even among the “left” in the US.
deleted by creator
He does move a lot of people towards more coherent socialist politics though. The right correctly recognizes his propaganda value for the left.
Lmao because that worked so well with everything else. Weeks of “collargate” being pushed and every other “viral” clip, only for Hasan to be surrounded by crowds of press and cheers when walking out. Shows just how terminally online all this stuff is.
“The world is becoming increasingly online” is true, but apparently not enough because the smear campaigns would have been a lot more effective otherwise. Truth is most people online casually browse and don’t even bother interacting with the content, whether it’s commenting or even liking the post they just saw.
ngl that sounds like kind of a desperate position to take in this moment.
It’s a realist one. They can’t change the situation but they can look for what they can achieve within it. They want Zohran to be the furthest left people move, the adult in the room against the rest of the left.
the smartest people. People never want more once they had a taste of something. No sire please, one bite of cake is enough for humble old me, I wouldn’t want to impose on your generosity!
I guess if they were smart, they wouldn’t be fash…
??? Was Hasan on the ballot
spoiler
I know he wasnt just acting ignorant
The main thing I’m seeing is a split over Fuentes getting invited on Tucker Carlson and the conspiratorial right (Cadence Owens). Whoever is paying Carlson and Owens is certainly getting their money’s worth.