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.
People probably dont like it but i doubt its a scandal. Its just the status quo. As long as China or any country for that matter has normal diplomatic and trade relations with Israel their ambassadors there will meet with Israeli officials and ministers and post some vague "productive meeting" tweet on social media. China of course should take much harsher stances on Israel but this isnt surprising or some shift in the, bland 2 state position yes, China holds.
China has reduced military coopration and sales to Israel to practicaly zero compared to the early 2010s and has reduced investment in Israel by like >50% over the last 5-6 years but beyond that they predictably wont lead any economic or diplomatic effort or coercion against Israel. Both because its actualy near useless so long as the US and EU rabidly support Israel and Arab powers don’t get off their ass to do anything but mostly because of "non interference" foreign policy brainworms. Even if we assume China attempts to completely cut trade or even sanction Israel (which they should but obviously wont) i wonder what it would actualy accomplish. Israel itself doesn’t care what anyone else thinks so long as the US and EU support it and the US and EU will just do the opposite of whatever they think China is doing. The US and EU would pour whatever billions needed for Israel to absorb whatever economic harm from that and then most Chinese goods will be re-routed through a third party countries, either neighbouring arab countries that will do fuck all to join such an effort or bought and resold to Israel by the west. Israel aint that big and with the west fully bankrolling it and full access to global trade and western financial system they any unilateral chinese attempt at trade war against Israel wont amount to much. Supporting Israel is a drop in the bucket for the west economicaly and that wont change if they had to ramp this up a bit. It would be just symbolic from China's side. It would still be cool and good if they did it but anything short than full on nuclear economic warfare against eveyone involved, joined earnestly by other regional and world actors, wouldnt stop the Holocaust. Im not saying thats China's calculus and thats the reason they dont take aggresive economic actions against Israel, far from it. Im just wondering what would happen even if they were willing given the current geopolical realities
People here are talking as if 80% of the Zionist entity's economy is reliant on China. At the end of the day, the Zionist entity is just an extension of the US. It's not a normal country that is subject to normal pressures a country would face. The US will simply foot the bill (or force their vassals to foot the bill) for whatever economic void that a potential Chinese economic sanction would cause.
What sustains the Zionist entity is weapons and the vast majority of weapons shipped to the Zionist entity is from the West, with the West even using sheepdipped "mercenaries" to murder Palestinians. China trading regular consumer goods and investing in infrastructure isn't the same at all. But once the Zionist entity has no more access to Western weapons, it is toast. The question then becomes:
The actions would have to militarily and economically cost the US to the point where it has to drop the Zionist entity since we're well past the point of questioning whether the US sees the political costs as meaningful (it does not).
For military costs, you have direct military costs in the sense of Ansarallah attacking US ships, but there's also the intensification of current military fronts and opening of new military fronts. Quite simply, if the US is fighting too many wars at once, there will be triaging since it's geopolitically wiser to invest your resources in a few fronts that you can win versus spreading out your investments and losing them all. The IOF is an exceptionally incompetent and cowardly military, so the US has to spend more relative to other vassal militaries. I suppose there's also the case of domestic unrest that would require a military response. In the very unlikely possibility of violent domestic unrest in the US that's fueled by the US's support of the Zionist entity, triaging might lead to the US cutting support for the sake of restoring domestic stability.
For economic costs, I don't mean how many trillions of dollars of arms the US spends on the Zionist entity. I mean more like the Axis of Resistance targeting oil refineries in the Gulf states and destroying the economic wealth of the entire WANA region. There's also cutting access to crucial resources for the US. And the elephant in the room is of course China which has the means of waging direct economic warfare with the US.
For the US to drop the Zionist entity, I think these need to happen simultaneously:
The Axis of Resistance broadens the front and begin targeting comprador regimes. Perhaps Iran needs to directly wage kinetic warfare with the US. This will militarily and economically cost the US.
Russia intensifies the Ukrainian front, with Putin larping as the Putler carricature that liberal media portray him as. This will militarily cost the US.
China wages economic warfare against the US and do all the dedollarization stuff that Shipwreck chastises China for not doing. This will economically cost the US.
This is, of course, what a precursor for WWIII would look like. But perhaps people are just in denial about WWIII not happening and the bandaid should just be pulled off.