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.
Not really accurate to conflate Al Quaeda with ISIS tbh, the extremists now governing Syria have been at war with ISIS for many years and their Islamism is substantially different. It’s not the 90s or 2000s anymore, and there’s a long and contentious history between AQ and IS in many different regions, including Syria.
These camps have been a timebomb since they were set up though, that’s true. It’s a sword of damocles hanging over the country, with the US ultimately in control of whether it falls or not. Their interest is in keeping Syria divided, weak, and unable to confront aggression.
I believe in the case of Syria the conflation is accurate, many of the former leadership of Syrian ISIS were absorbed by the Al Qaeda affiliates after the fall of Raqqa, and it’s no coincidence the “former” second-in-command of Syrian ISIS worked his way back up to command; these people are fundamentally mercenaries first and foremost, old beefs didn’t prevent thousands of homeless ISIS fighters from Iraq and Raqqa province finding a new home in northwest Syria
The “war” between Al Qaeda and ISIS remnants post-Raqqa is just factional infighting as a result of hurt feelings by the ISIS bandits who were left behind by the mass retreat to Idlib
Al Jolani was literally an ISIS commander. The overlap in personnel is massive.
Sure. And Trotsky was a Bolshevik commander, so Trotskyites must be great lovers of the USSR, right? Makes sense.
The Jolani and Al Qaeda defender has logged on
dawg go fuck yourself
you first chauvinist scum
I was wondering why this comment was so stupid, and then I realized it’s the same person who was earlier shitting on the Axis of Resistance. The Syria understander has arrived to talk like a 2016 bernie bro about the based Kurdish compradors and moderate rebels TM
Pot calling the kettle black here, you do nothing but post uncritical, uninformed bullshit in these threads, and have done so forever. Your understanding of the topics you try to discuss is repeatedly proven wrong and yet this never seems to stop you from carrying on. What’s going wrong?
3 month user and ban evader.
I was correct about the Kurds being compradors who assisted ISIS and Al Qaeda and Israel. You were wrong. Yet you wont shut the fuck up
Saying that “the Kurds” “assisted ISIS” is a fucking vile thing to say. Thousands of Kurdish people were killed by ISIS, and many died fighting it. Why are you talking about an entire ethnic group in terms like this??? tf?
ISIS commander now controls the country, partially thanks to their complicity in assisting American and Zionist forces. It’s their fault that ISIS controls the country now, they could have simply allied with Hezbollah, Iran, Russia and not stole oil to sell to Israel. Your “based marxists” are my genocidal fascist enablers.
The Kurds went and signed an agreement to merge back with the state only after Assad’s government was toppled. Meaning they prefer the fascist pro-Israel ISIS run government over the pro-Palestine secular government. It happened during the peak of the alawite massacres too, just a sprinkling of chauvinist scum on top.
I guess you aren’t aware that Israelis refer to the Syrian Kurds as “our allies up north” when discussing their plans of Greater Israel and where to push to.
“It’s the Kurds’ fault that America started the Afghan Jihad to fuck the Soviets over, invaded Iraq and destabilised the entire region, which allowed ISIS to grow into a major insurgency and take advantage of the US-backed revolution in Syria”
what the hell is wrong with you? the Kurds are responsible for ISIS?
the SDF and YPG never even attacked SAA forces??? seriously, did a Kurdish guy sleep with your wife or something?
No they just stole their oil and wheat for a decade and gave it to Israel, and denied the state of resources and territory it needed to reconstitute. Funny how you Rojava-lovers never ever ever respond to this criticism. You simply can’t.
Guess where the American airstrikes that hit Axis of Resistance reinforcements as they flooded into Syria to attempt to prevent the toppling of Assad came from? That’s right, SDF controlled territory. The American Al Tanf base Al Qaeda/ISIS personnel were being trained, armed and sent out on missions for years. The Kurdish controlled ISIS prisons would randomly release a bunch at several periods, who went on to attack and harass SAA at crucial times.
You really fucking think this shit would have went down like it did if Americans didn’t have a massive presence in Syria to push it over? You are so short-sighted and simple that you really are mistaking the left hand of the man beating you as the good guy because it’s holding you down, and the right fist doing the punching as the bad one. ISIS and the SDF are two sides of the same coin, American presence in Syria to bleed it white.
The US empire stole their oil. You cannot blame an occupied people in a wartorn region for having their resources stolen by the largest military power on earth. Here’s one for you: Why do you keep referring to “the Kurds” when the SDF includes a large contingent of Arab tribal forces, who often work much more closely with the US military than the YPG/YPJ?
Here’s another. If any kind of collaboration with the US empire, in any way, is a black mark on the record of a political entity, then why do you support Assad’s government which readily joined the US-led coalition in the First Gulf War and helped destroy that country? Iran wanted Assad to make a deal with the SDF to unify the majority of the country, yet the SAR dragged its feet and Assad fucked off out of the country without even a fight. And yet you embarrass yourself bending over backwards to try and blame the Kurds, again, an ethnic group and not a political entity with a state, for this?