Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran’s nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran’s government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
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.
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
China has been very adamant that they want to defend the neoliberal free trade order, and Trump is the one that wants to disrupt the status quo. This is why the rare earth card is being played - to persuade Trump that the US cannot live without China. Read all the official statements from the Chinese MFA. China’s position could not be more clear on this. As a matter of fact, Trump returned to the negotiating table right after this.
However, since China is intent on preserving the status quo and wants to stick to this route, China will also become very dependent on the US, and because of this, they are also inadvertently giving Trump a lot of power. For one, the property market price is falling again after spending an inordinate amount of wealth to prop up the failing sector.
Local governments that have taken out huge amount of loans over the past 15 years to build infrastructure, and whose revenues depend on the land price to rise, are once again finding themselves in deep trouble. The latest government audit report for 2024 that just came out last week (will write an effort post on this) showed that hidden debt has increased over the past year despite all efforts to help relieve their debt.
Combined with the deflationary spiral, paradoxically, the local governments now rely even more on exports since their main tax base are value-added tax and corporate income tax. If people in the country don’t want to buy stuff, then foreigners will have to make up for it.
What this means is that all of this is giving Trump a lot of power to dictate the terms: the interest rate and the tariffs both directly control China’s local governments’ tax revenues and their ability to pay off their debt.
As you can see, all of this is a policy choice. The Chinese leadership could have said they don’t want to stick to the neoliberal status quo, and by simply refusing to export to the US, Trump would have no power over them. But this is not their decision, as has been made clear, over and over again.
What you’re seeing are two countries attempting to maximizing their ends at the bargaining table, and they are both very good at playing the game. But make no mistake, this is not a divorce.
It’s really just wishcasting for an event that I know will never happen. Appreciate the insight though.
I will say, your analysis usually put China in a light of self-harm and poor foreign policy. Would you not think that policymakers are aware of the consequences you show here? Why, on your opinion, would they be taking steps that seem harmful to you? Cause I don’t think they would be so stupid to basically screw themselves over unknowingly.
How is this self-harm? China is poised to win big if it can convince the US to not go through the divorce. China’s export-led growth model has benefited greatly from dollar hegemony and intends to keep it so. The rare earth threat was a stern warning for the Americans that they couldn’t decouple just like that.
It is Europe and the Global South who will be harmed as the new global supply chain is being shaped under the US. If there is no alternative framework emerges, then we will, at best, see a multipolar neoliberalism. We’ve had three years to observe the changes in the world, and so far, there is no indication whatsoever that an alternative to neoliberalism is being formed (Russia did propose dedollarization back in 2022-2023 but that project is now as good as dead with China and the rest of the BRICS not being interested).
To put it in another way, we need to approach this from a Marxist perspective: let’s first examine what is the principal contradiction that is threatening American capitalism at this very moment?
Under the backdrop of trade union movements and anti-war/anti-government/civil rights protests at home and excessive spending on foreign wars abroad up to the 1970s, the key weaknesses of the Fordist-Keynesian model that had fostered a labor-capital class collaboration had been fully exposed under the stagflation following the oil crisis. Their failures gave way to the rise of neoliberalism, whose solution to the stagflation was to brutally crush the labor movement and various protests at home by exporting the American industrial base to the developing world. What, you’re asking for higher wages? We’ll let the cheap labor in the developing world to build our stuff, how about that?
With the US abandoning the Bretton Woods and turned the dollar into a free-floating fiat currency, it gained the ability to leverage its monetary hegemony to obtain “free lunch” all over the world, all to the benefit of the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) while its industrial base was being hollowed out.
When the 2008 global financial crisis hit, with millions unemployed and many more businesses closing down, what remained of the American manufacturing sector never recovered. Disillusionment and disenfranchisement of the system led to the rise of populism in the 2016 election cycle, in the form of Sanders’s progressive movement and Trump’s MAGA movement, with significant overlap between their support base. The contradictions caused by neoliberal finance capitalism and the long-term effect of deindustrialization have finally resulted in visible and increasingly obvious cracks in the American capitalist system.
In short, American capitalism has been attempting to “escape” from its own contradictions since the first Trump term. It is no coincidence that Trump launched the first trade war against China back in 2018. The goal is to ensure American hegemony while at the same time, handling its trade deficit problem that has caused so much discontent at home. The enemy of the US is not China, but the contradictions caused by its own system. Everything that happened since: including Biden’s Ukraine war to negate the vast consumption potential of Europe, and Trump’s global tariffs against the world, needs to be understood and viewed within such framework.