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.
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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.
❌continue trading with entity over piddling (for china) amounts, while doing solidarity embargo would help them with their own fucking etim separatists training in syria
china's trade with israel isn't about the amount, but what is being traded
for one, that shithole has been trading western military tech with china for ages. and then when the US first started blocking china's access to semiconductors, israel managed to circumvent those restrictions to the point of over half their exports to china being semiconductors - and that continued until biden's bill in 2022 (when it dropped massively), but china obviously knows the importance of recovering access to that
meanwhile, the only real impact that some kind of embargo would have on israel is more american assistance, absolutely pointless
if you wanna make a mostly symbolic gesture that comes with a very real material loss just because it would make you feel better, be my guest. the cpc didn't get all the way here by doing that kinda shit though, and thankfully they still seem aware of this
called solidarity, yeah. well vietnam is even more disgraceful, but whatever.
they buy scientific equipment and shit, while selling everything.
it's not solidarity if it has 0 impact lol. it's no different than saying bad words to israel, and china is already doing that so who cares
buying scientific equipment is a large part of how china became what they are. why should they change the strategy now? in fact, even as an outsider from the 3rd world, it would be deeply undialectical of me to want china to do that. their rise is objectively the greatest threat to western hegemony. that hegemony, in turn, is the greatest impediment to revolutionary and independence movements all over. any action that brought short-term relief but made long-term success less likely would just be a bad decision, for china and for me
reality doesn't move linearly, and right now the contradictions are working in china's favor. for them, the correct action is inaction, and i'm glad they're not diverging from that
now, my country, on the other hand, could do more - despite being far less rich than china, because it's not about money. and it's unfortunate we ain't doing shit, but you can't expect much from lula and his shitlib lackeys
Would you change your tune if China's embargo also allowed South Africa to ban their coal trade which is key for the economy and IDF operations?
Do you think this campaign would be successful is they managed to stop the coal but China keeps trading them everything else?
If people weren't so invested into making excuses they would instead consider the opportunities such Chinese leadership could provide to the resistance but nah.
Chinese leadership in the embargo could give these campaigns more political power to push for embargoes in most other countries too. This could have been one of the paths of global resistance against Israel. Even if ultimately it failed it would still force our enemies to actualy have to try and counter it.
colombia was by far israel's largest source of coal, accounting for more than half their imports. when petro shut that off, i was among those who celebrated
months later, what changed? nothing
as a side point, it's also bizarre to me that people mention the sanctions against apartheid in south africa as proof that such a thing works. because they always fail to notice that, while jamaica started the whole thing, it was really america and their allies that did it. i feel pretty safe saying it would have never worked if the west hadn't joined the action
show me an example, just a single one, of sanctions actually working against a western country or one of their allies and i'll gladly change my mind. i'm not kidding, i'll start advocating for more action from china right away; it would be a fucking relief as it's far easier to do that from an emotional standpoint. as it stands, it makes absolutely no sense to me
You did not get the point.
Both China and South Africa are both key BRICS members.
Both China and South Africa are regional powers. China is obviously a global superpower.
Colombia is not a global leader, they're not a regional leader, in fact they're incredibly insignificant country with an incredibly insignificant economy. If you wanted to argue why would nobody take fucking Colombia's leadership its because Colombia offers nothing to anyone else.
China however had leverage with both Israel, the US, the EU and every other country in the region.
Coordinated effort from both of them could have been a lynchpin of a global resistance even by liberal standards .All of this was happening during the court cases and the UN meetings, they could have added pressure to this issue by adding the embargo. That was an opportunity that was missed.
However, I can concede your point, then why if Colombia could afford to be so principled and selfless China could not?
Like seriously, do you not understand how incredibly dumb you look by trying to make it look like China couldn't afford an embargo but backwater impoverished Colombia could? The global #1 economic industrial superpower couldn't imagine going 5 minutes without some garbage Israeli imports? Or the great CPC master plan includes something so precious that backwater Colombia can`t fucking understand?
Just stop, it is inexcusable and incredibly dumb. Pro-China shit went from "smol bean China will just get nuked" to "hmmm acshualy they shouldn't do it because it wouldn't matter anyway". As I often say stop fucking larping.
i didn't say china couldn't "afford" an embargo, you brain damaged chimpanzee
i literally said it's not about money, and that my country should do more while china couldn't, and explained why. somehow you managed to miss that within that black hole of stupidity inside your head and made it all about money again, how can someone be that bad at reading
i mean, whatever, this is all fucking moot anyway. you're gonna keep crying, i'm gonna keep saying you shouldn't, china is gonna keep developing, iran is still gonna stop before mutual destruction, and the empire will keep doing its thing until enough of the structural needles have moved that it's unable to. wanna feel like something is being done, then go protest if you live in the empire, that actually has a higher chance of working than some deluded dream of global embargo lmao
I hear you, the problem for me personaly is that I suggested that way back in early last year, during the ICJ/ICC cases and most people here thought it was pretty much smol bean China moment, they actualy thought China couldn`t do anything because Israel would nuke them.
So there is little point repeating this since people already dismissed it back then. I guess sadly it is only now that China has literaly embraced the devil(that photo op with the ambassador) that people are radicalizing against China`s pacifism.
But to be sure, this was already something we all knew China could have done but didn`t.
Here back then I mentioned this Palestinians call for China to step up pressure on Israel as they seek an end to ‘collective punishment’ on Gazans
The replies back then were "China is a smol bean". The shift we see now is only because the genocide has become far more desperate honestly, its realy sad but people are still doing it.
There were many possible Chinese initiatives, they just picked none of them.
China welcomed Palestinian resistance members in that meeting in Beijing yeah? That was a big PR meeting for China to show "their support" while actively just being tied to the hip with the US and Israel. I would not expect Hamas to look at the Chinese in the eye and tell them "do something". On the contrary, they see China as their only possible big ally(outside the region).
IMO they're not a people in a position to point fingers at the only superpower that would welcome them. They understood and perhaps had the same one sided respect most of the global south does i.e China are the good guys because they`re not the US.
If any high profile Palestinian even start pointing fingers at their only ally then they'll truly have nobody else to turn. The fact we even got people back then to awkwardly admit China could be doing more should count for something.
However if you showed a Hamas resistance fighter family the Chinese embassador shaking hands with the Zionist entity how do you think they'd feel about China's support today? I don't think we need to see Palestinians go straight into burning Chinese flags in order to understand they definitely feel the resentment about the world that is watching the genocide, including China.
I agree few people in Gaza thought this would be the situation today, if they knew the current trajectory I also think they would have been far more vocal.
china is way more vulnerable, even today, than the ussr ever was. maybe because of all the news of their impressive rate of development and growth, or because of the "high tech" nature of their coastal cities, or because of how the other side of american propaganda has been propping them up (your enemy must be both weak and strong enough to be a credible threat etc), we have lost sight of their actual conditions. but they have absolutely no way of facing america head-on. we're talking about a country that, despite everything, still has half the per capita gdp of the 1980s ussr (in today's dollars); a country that relies on trade to get their iron needs (importing a whopping 80% of what they use), whereas the ussr was self-sufficient; a country that still relies on trade to attend to their energy needs, especially oil (why do you think this whole iran thing escalated this much out of nowhere? where does a large chunk of china's oil needs come through?), while the ussr was self-sufficient; a military that, despite all the development, is still less advanced than the soviets', relative to their time; and the list goes on and on
the ussr had all those advantages over current china, and yet they collapsed under imperialist pressure. china knows that, america knows that, and this is why we're seeing one side insisting on being quiet and the other doing their best to provoke them into making a mistake. one side needs time, the other can't allow them that (or else they will, indeed, finally lose), and this is what's going to explain every major geopolitical decision you'll be seeing for the next few decades
US puppet state by the way.
Why do you think China is getting chummy with Afghanistan? The quid pro quo is very obvious even if unstated: China will provide the infrastructure and training to a politically isolated impoverished state and in return, Afghanistan will liquidate any ETIM separatist trying to enter Xinjiang. And if they refuse to hold their end of the bargain, China can simply withdraw infrastructural support citing security as a convenient excuse.
i mean symbolic gestures are important, plus, frankly, i don't think afghanistan government will do anything or build anything or help with anything, most likely they want to solve hunger problem and chill.