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.
This is an embarrassing strike on Russia, but it bears remembering that propellor based strategic bombers are nearly obsolete weapons of war.
Their only use in this war is a stand-off distance launching of cruise missiles.
These are nuclear deterrent platforms, which are frankly always oversold in importance. Russian nuclear deterrence is not significantly impacted as long as their nuclear submarines exist.
Destroying an artillery factory would have more impact on the actual war. However, the Ukranians exist a proxy meant to damage Russia, not actually win the war as it is. Thus flashy strikes like this one.
Of which Russia have launched thousands, if not tens of thousands in the entire war. Stand off missile strikes have played a large role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, were the biggest part of the Pakistan-India conflict, and currently serve as deterrence in the Iran-US/Israel conflict. Stand off missile strikes important. Reducing your opponents ability to carry out these attacks is not a flashy strike, it's taking out a key capability of the opponent. The Tu-95 and Tu-160 are the only Russian aircraft that can launch Kh-101 cruise missiles, no other platform can. This was a key part of the de electrification countervalue strike campaign Russia waged late last year. Which is why we see these attacks take place. Iran tried to take out Israel's Nevatim Airbase. Pakistan tried to hit India's BrahMos storage facilities. Ukraine striking Kh-101 missile storage and now bombers. A large part of a potential NATO-Russia conflict would revolve around tit for tat stand-off strikes.
If Russia and NATO go to war, we're all going to die regardless of their individual capabilities.
Not necessarily, we could see a tit for tat conventional counterforce (against military targets) stand off exchange between NATO and Russia without nuclear weapons being involved, similar to what we saw between India and Pakistan, but over a longer period of time. We had a tit for tat counterforce stand off strike exchange between Iran and Israel, which consisted of two rounds of strikes by each side, first in April and then October, last year. No nuclear weapons involved. We are currently in a countervalue (against civilian targets) strike exchange between Yemen and Israel, no nuclear weapons. And then India and Pakistan, two nuclear armed countries getting in a back and forth counterforce strike exchange for a few days, before the "world police" in the USA stepped in. Article 5 is not an automatic guaranteed retaliation mechanism, and there are differences between declared policy and employable/actionable policy in deterrence and compellence. Nuclear deterrence has a good track record, nuclear compellence has a poor track record.
If you think this all sounds crazy and we should stop shooting missiles and drones at each other before someone does end up pushing the nuclear button, I agree. But this is where we are right now.