Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net gets another win unfortunately. China's got too much riding on their export driven economy, and though they can take some pain it can't go on forever. Their current leadership believes it's better to just continue placating the United States and benefit from the system rather than the long term pain of configuring away from that momentarily beneficial system.
it's not that long term and they, for the moment, have population largely on side to take the pain. Next time they will eat more shit, and more shit, and then from europe and then they will be forced to sell their ports and investments to nice gentleman from blackrock.
i legit don't get what they are getting from this deal as described, they get eda restrictions on xiaomi, no tech opens up to buy. That's leaving aside that american porkies (dollar general or some shit) claim they would get same import prices by offseting prices (chinese workers getting paid less) and shifting production to other countries, like at that point you are not developing production, you are helping your counterparty at price to you
I am currently writing something up about China’s price wars and how that relates to the global economy, but since the news dropped, I might as well just make a quick comment: it is in China’s interest to see the US inflation going down.
One of the major reasons (but certainly not the only one) is that Fed’s Powell has stubbornly refused to lower the key rate of the Federal Reserve until the inflation in the US has gone down. That means the local (provincial and municipal) governments in China continue to be squeezed by huge amount of debt they have taken out over the past decade for infrastructure building, and it also adds to the systemic instability of the financial institutions that have made those loans (if you have been paying attention to Chinese news, the largest banks in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have recently been exposed for corruption scandals and the heads of all the largest banks are being prosecuted for frauds. the entire system has rotten to the core, to say the least).
This is why if the tariffs and export restrictions are causing higher inflation in the US, it would be even harder for the local governments in China to pay off their debt, and that squeezes the ability of the local governments to run public services, pay wages etc. Since there is no debt cancellation mechanism in China, and the State Council’s policy from November 2024 was very clear in that it was to allow the local governments to “borrow cheaper to pay off their expensive, outstanding debt” (by raising the debt ceiling by 6 trillion yuan), this strategy requires the Fed to lower its key rate, so Chinese banks can follow in response.
Ironically, this together with the deflation made the Chinese economy even more dependent on the export sector, since they have not been able to stimulate domestic demand, which is another huge topic in itself. As I’ve said before I don’t think this is a coincidence. It is in fact an imperial strategy of the US empire.
A lot of the anti-imperialist pro-BRICS bloggers focus solely on the trade aspect and don’t understand the complexity of China’s economy well enough to understand that both US and China need one another. Until China decides that it wants to give up its net exporter status (the IMF “export led growth” model) and creates an alternative demand within China to absorb the global export surplus, it will have to play the rules set by the neoliberals.
All the talks we’ve seen on the anti-dollar spaces like Petrodollar, China dumping its trillion dollars of US debt (like how lol?), bond yields, China issuing its own dollar-denominated bonds, gold/crypto etc. are all distractions. The only way to kill the dollar is if the world doesn’t want to export their goods to the US anymore, and this cannot happen if everyone still wants to play the “export led growth” game since demand cannot magically appear on its own. Somebody has to step up and create the demand to take the place of the demand created by the huge US trade deficits.
EDIT: Also I don’t think the tariff war with China was even aimed at China. If you look at China’s trade data this month, something very interesting has happened:
As both export and import with the US have declined, China’s export to the EU has increased by 6.4% yoy and its import from the EU has decreased by 7.3% yoy!
That means Chinese exporters are channeling their goods to Europe, which will of course lead to a mercantilist fight where the European industries will now have to fight against cheap (and perhaps even superior) Chinese goods coming into their countries.
Meanwhile, China has reduced its import from the EU (likely because of the consumption slump and that China has been able to replace many products that once they could only obtain from the EU, like high end cars), and this will put pressure on the European exporters as they lose their income.
All of this is causing the EU to become even more desperate to secure a deal with Trump, since the European exporters are being squeezed to death by both the US tariffs and cheap imports from China. They will have to give Trump some really good deal, hoping to offset some of their losses. I suspect this is the true goal of the tariff war with China.
but it's very easy to cancel debt, it can be done in one week if so desired, it just speaks to lib brains inside china on monetary policy. you have 1000 rmb bonds? congratulations you now have 1000000 (or whatever their value) rmbs, spend them wisely. Lowering key rate is also not one sided dollar affair, they can lower them by fiat and put capital controls/sell dollars internally
U.S. demand has been to eliminate or the very least reduce the trade deficit, but getting rid of the deficit means EU will not be able to sell as much of its goods.
They get stability. Stability is prized over all else. I don't disagree with your analysis, if I were in Party leadership I'd make the move you're talking about, but I'm trying to explain it from the perspective of the CPC's leadership.
This type of thinking will lead to the destruction of China. They need to get their heads out of their asses
The Chinese economy is strong enough and its political situation stable enough that China’s not going to be “destroyed” lol. Japan miscalculated its move during the Plaza Accord and suffered greatly for it (contrary to popular narrative, Japan wasn’t stupid or being coerced into signing the Plaza Accord, they thought they could beat the US at its own game, but miscalculated greatly), but still that didn’t lead to the Japanese economy collapsing even with a 35-year run of zero growth.
If anything, if China plays its cards right, it is poised to retain its dominant partnership role with the US empire at the expense of the rest of the world (Europe in particular seems screwed no matter what). The declining US empire wants a reshuffle, potentially to decouple from China, and China can still convince the US that it is indispensable for the empire through its actions. Both countries need each other more than they’d like.
China can build the global supply chain for the US and let the US financial capital in as a compromise, and in return they get to keep the value of their $4.5 trillion dollar reserves and use them productively to finance its own internal development, and foreign capital can help save its slumping property and stock markets and help stimulate consumption growth. It’s a “win-win” cooperation depending on your perspective.
The unfortunate outcome, if this is indeed played out, is that we won’t be getting an alternative economic and financial system to the current IMF framework (China seems very insistent on defending free trade, even accusing the US of violating the sanctity of free market principles), and that means many of the Global South countries will likely become very vulnerable to be harvested by US finance capital if their economies fail due to reduced export demand or if cheap Chinese goods flood their markets because there is nowhere else for the goods to go.
At the end of the day, if you think about it, if the US confiscating $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves did not lead China to give up on the dollar, then Trump’s tariffs is even less likely to do it.
I haven’t read it myself, but Radhika Desai has done some interesting research on Japan IIRC. I believe the conclusion she came to was that even if the overall economy hasn’t done great, the working class in Japan has done disproportionately better than their wealthier counterparts. In other words, it’s been a good economy for the workers and middle class to an extent, and not great for the wealthiest.
China is at least 3.000 years old. It is not going to be destroyed by American trade policy one way or another, I can promise you that. It still benefits greatly from its role as global factory, and even if it is outplayed by the Americans it's not going to be destroyed or collapse or whatever.
I meant the PRC specifically, not China as a cultural entity, and I specifically said it would be destroyed by the short-sighted and risk-averse and reactive thinking of Chinese leadership. Not from American trade policy per se, but from continual endless capitulation to American demands and subservience to American monetary policy. Caving on one issue? Not going to destroy the PRC. Caving endlessly forever on everything? Yes it will. I'm surprised Chinese nationalists aren't more up in arms over the leadership embarrassing itself and chickening out of everything. TACO? More like XACO.
China is not capitulating, it is in fact making strong plays with all the cards it has. What you’re seeing is two countries with the world’s largest economies negotiating and positioning to maximize the bargains for themselves, and potentially setting the geopolitical stage for the coming era.
It only seems like China is “capitulating” because you’re expecting China to antagonize the Washington-led neoliberal consensus, when in fact China has shown no indication of wanting to abandon the very arrangement that has benefited both the US and themselves for the past few decades.
To be fair, I used to think that too but have come to accept that the Chinese leadership is simply not interested in forging an alternative.
Heck, even at the height of US-China trade war, literally just two weeks ago, the head of People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, held a meeting with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon discussing “issues including global economic and financial development, China-U.S. economic relations, and China’s macroeconomic policies”:
Like, can you imagine that? Can you imagine China’s central bank asking an American investment firm what is a good macroeconomic policy for China?
I still have a hard time believing that but it’s all true. Imagine Putin meeting the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Everyone here would have instantly called him out as a comprador lol.
All you are saying is that China already capitulated to the capitalists long ago.
i dunno, this only makes sense if they get asml restictions waved tbh. It's not even porky sensible, offsetting tariffs locally makes local business owners have even lower margins, 50 tariff is still destabilizing to them
like decoupling is visibly happening for a decade, clinging to it is bordering on absurd, when you have leverage for now to extract genius concession of no more new tariffs