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.
@LoveWitch@hexbear.net
Regarding the Russia-China lunar base, it’s just another way for Russia to continue to work on its cool projects through Chinese investment, given that Russia is running out of its money for its space program.
One example is the Zeus TEM, a nuclear propulsion space tug that will enable deep space exploration limited by current chemical rockets. A lot of the work associated with this project has already begun and it would be a waste to discontinue.
This has been in the talks for quite some time now.
From Vedomosti, April 2023:
Borisov: Russia to Use Nuclear Tugboat in Joint Project with China
In other words, it’s a win-win cooperation between Russia and China - Russia gets to extend the life of its cutting edge projects using Chinese money, while China also gets access to Russian technology in return.
The lunar base itself may or may not happen, but at least there is a common future goal that promotes and facilitates cooperation between the institutions of both countries.
I'm down for moon bases made of moon bricks. Why haul a bunch of plastic and steel to the moon when you could make an igloo
Igloonar Base
Wasn't expecting Russia to drop the Moon DLC. Guess we'll eventually need extra gravity to move that extra water in the sea
It's not just the space program, a lot of technologically advanced Russian projects are currently on hold or in limbo and looking for external sources of funding or co operation. However, China only co operates on civilian projects, not military ones. So Russia is currently looking elsewhere with regards to military projects.
The S-500 air defence system is one of the biggest. Currently the only deployed S-500 battery is not the S-500 that was promised, and instead it's a rebadged S-300V4, using all the same missiles as the S-300V4 with some upgrades in larger rocket boosters, resulting in extremely large missiles, larger than even the S-300V4 missiles already designated "9M82M Giant" by NATO. The kinetic hit to kill interceptors with an altitude ceiling of 200km that the S-500 was supposed to use do not exist yet, so that's why we only have this one S-500 battery in service that's not actually an S-500 and more of a PR stunt renaming an S-300V4, production is halted until they can get the funding to build the actual S-500 system. Current candidates for funding and joint development for the S-500 are India and Turkey.
On the topic, do you know anything about China's S-300V analogue, the HQ-18, or HQ-26 or HQ-29? I've heard it being referred to by all three names, but all I can find online is one CGI illustration of a S-300V inspired system, and one photo of it in transit, I post them below this paragraph. That's it. I know that China has the HQ-19, their equivalent of THAAD, but I haven't heard much about the S-300V equivalent.
The Su-57 5th generation stealth fighter is another project stuck in limbo, the Su-57s that have currently been deployed don't have the actual new Su-57 engines yet, so the Russian Air Force does not want to accept more Su-57s with the old engines as they feel it's a waste of money. So some export orders in the meantime would be nice, to keep production lines open until the new engines are ready. It looks like Algeria will pick up the tab here.
And that's not mentioning what's supposed to be the Russia's F-35 fighter jet analogue, the Su-75 Checkmate, that might never even enter active service. Would be a large capability gap versus NATO. There's a reason why China is getting their J-35s program into active service now. Or the T-14 Armata tank, though I think Russia should absolutely cancel the T-14 as tanks in general need a rethink due to drones.