Image (source here) is of a section of the Yarlung Zangbo river, which forms the deepest canyon on the planet.
The idea of doing any sort of general preamble for China is a little absurd given how ubiquitous they are in economics and politics, so I'm just going to hop right in to a recent news item of interest: China is working on the construction of an enormous new hydropower project in Tibet (@Metabola@hexbear.net had brought this up just before the last news mega ended).
This project (consisting of, I believe, five dams) will be overall three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam, will cost $167 billion, and will supply 70 GW (by itself more power than several significant countries generate). There are, of course, meaningful concerns regarding concerning environmental damage, but helping to avert catastrophic climate change seems worth it. The news coming out of the clean energy sector of China has getting only more encouraging over the last few years, even as the fully neoliberalized Europe and America descend into climate skepticism and refuse to adequately fund projects that could avert the worst of climate change.
Geopolitically, given recent India-China tensions (for example, sending Pakistan the equipment to shoot down Indian jets, as well as run-of-the-mill border tensions) one expects India to not receive the news very well, as the river upon which the dam is being constructed proceeds to flow into Arunachal Pradesh. But from what I understand of the Indian hydrological situation (which is, admittedly, not much), I don't think enough of the water in India comes from the river for China to hypothetically cause any kind of water shortages in India - the monsoons seem to supply plenty of freshwater all by themselves. Nonetheless, as with all Chinese news, wild fearmongering abounds.
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.
Situation continues to worsen in Burkina Faso https://x.com/WerbCharlie/status/1949527898387620017
I'm sure the CIA and Europeans have nothing to do with this...
Really hope they don't manage to pull a Jolani and take over any AES state.
I am sure france/us must support them in some way. Because they have been gaining territory in all three AES states faster than ever before.
Not really other than in the sense that this insurgency is a long term result of the chaos in Libya and subsequently Mali. AFRICOM doesn't really benefit from JNIM seizing control of a large swathe of the Sahel, neither do France's remaining satellites in West Africa. The fact is that JNIM is a politically intelligent and effective organisation that does a lot to ingratiate itself with local people. They have established social programs in the regions they hold. After decades of rural people being ignored and actively impoverished by the central govts, this is a powerful point of attraction, and Traore's attempts to reverse this trend are coming too late and too little (Mali and Niger's juntas aren't doing much at all).
I think that what would more likely happen is that the US gets directly involved in fighting the insurgencies alongside the AES, which have been more open to US co-operation than most realise (the anti-imperialist sentiment there is more anti-French specifically, finding the outright racism and outdated attitudes of the French harder to deal with). In a year or two I could see the insurgencies toppling a government and that precipitating a deal where the US supplies direct assistance in exchange for some concessions, maybe getting the Russians out of the region, maybe economic concessions. That's just my own view ofc.
I feared this possibility. The us did something similar to Gabon. Replacing french interests with their own, hell even zio-stronghold togo uses anti-imperalist talking points as a veil. It could be that Traoré might get replaced by someone within his own faction that might be more pro-us, claiming that the "russians" didnt help the situation.
Ironically the tensions between the sahelians and the more southern peoples were caused by lackluster french neocolonial regimes, bad agricultural policies and increasing desertification & population growth.
Are you familiar with the AES situation, somewhat personally through relatives in there, a friend so to speak?
Are these the French/US funded guys or is that the other isis offshoot?
JNIM is a merger of several groups including Al Quaeda, emerging out of the Mali conflict which itself was a result of the Libyan civil war in many ways. They don't get along with IS (who have a smaller but significant presence in the region) and fight with them at times. There's no western backing for JNIM and France was directly involved in fighting them until the coups of recent years. They're a frighteningly effective organisation, a proto-state spanning several countries. Reminiscent of ISIS in the early 2010s.
people suspect covert western funding i thought
Yeah this dismissiveness is understandable to not base our positions on conjecture, but I will stake my hedge that we find covert or "unintended" support reaching them. I only base this on the timing and focus of their recent attacks
Agreed. It should very much clear that organized groups like the Taliban, IS, Al-Shaabab (in Somalia and Mozambique) and now JNIM do have organic local support to be able to do what they did. Questioning if they get foreign help is not a dismissal of the agency of locals.
yeah, it's pretty much accepted that ISIS has been given some sort of help by the amerikkkans at the very least due to their strangely cooperative relationship with the entity, and this group displaying strange competence in a similar manner to them really makes me raise my eyebrows
I knew when tangerine tyrant went to the Sahel, it was for nefarious purposes.