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.
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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.
Part of the course. NATO & EU is the american version of the delian league with some corinth league flavor.
After all the us literally destroyed vital energy infrastructure of the largest economy of europe and then nothing happened. They are puppets through and through. One empire.
It is not entirely fair to say that Europe was mere puppets to the US, even though much of their imperialist streaks did align with the US interests and even benefited from the US being the hegemon. They did attempt to challenge the US numerous times, and were beaten back again and again. This would imply that the US is only winning because everyone is too stupid to challenge it.
The French did try to force the US into exchanging its hugely over-spent dollars they collected during the Vietnam War into gold in 1971, and Nixon simply said he’s not going to pay, and abruptly ended the Bretton Woods arrangement. Everyone thought the dollar would be worthless now that it’s not tied to gold, well, turns out it didn’t.
The US understood that denying Europe their energy sovereignty is key to making the Europeans cave, and this is very much reflected in the geopolitical conflicts that occurred over the past few decades.
When Saddam attempted to sell its oil in euro in the late 1990s, Iraq was “conveniently” invaded in 2003.
When the Germans attempted to build the Nord Stream pipeline to obtain cheap natural gas from Russia in 2011, the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine immediately erupted in 2013, creating instability and difficulties to the European economy.
This still did not deter Merkel, and a second Nord Stream line finally finished its construction in 2021 - guess what happened the next year?
The pattern recurs. If the EU does not have its monetary sovereignty and energy sovereignty, it cannot really do anything in realistic terms.
It’s also the same when I see people blaming Global South countries for not standing up to the US, and while it’s true the comprador class very much benefited from the US imperialism over the wellbeing of its own people, you have to ask the question of why couldn’t the left do anything in those countries? You are going against coups, economic sanctions and global institutions that deny you access to the global markets controlled by the US hegemon. Seeing what happened in countries like Libya and more recently Syria, and when the great economies (looking at you, China) refuse to do anything to alleviate the crisis in Gaza, most countries would rather keep the peace than to suffer the worse fate of mass poverty inflicted upon them.
I honestly do not think that Israel would be allowed what they’re doing in Gaza today if the USSR was still around.
Considering how much the SU has historically done to prop up the Zionist entity and how much they had to constantly combat weaponized accusations of "antisemitism" against Soviet Jews throughout its entire existence, I seriously doubt they would do much. It's the same reason why Iran isn't as hard as Azerbaijan as it should be (A quarter of Iran's population is Azerbaijanis).
If one looks at history instead of propping up an platonic ideal of Soviet foreign policy, most socialist countries outside of the DPRK didn't do much to Palestine in the end and the SU was no exception. The real alternate history timeline is if the UAR still existed and pan-Arabism hadn't been ideologically defeated. There would've been no genocide in Gaza because a UAR would immediately invade the Zionist entity through its Egyptian border.
With the ideological defeat of pan-Arabism and the failure of Marxism-Leninism to truly take root in WANA, there lacks a real sect-agnostic ideological alternative against a particular sect being elevated against all other sects. The real weakness of Hamas is that it's run by Sunni. The real weakness of Hezbollah and Ansarallah is that it's run by Shia. The real weakness of the IRI is that it's a Shia Islamic Republic.
Maybe I am coping but I also think that socialist movements across the Global South would not crumble like they are today if the USSR is still around.
The collapse of the Soviet union saw a massive influx of Jewish Soviet scientists into occupied Palestine that over doubled their number of PhD per capita. Most of them had to immediately enter workforce due to lack of universities in the colony. So basically they got put to work researching big agriculture and weapons of extermination.
If the USSR never fell then the entity would not be the technological RnD powerhouse that it is.
Source. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.248.4959.1070
That history has a clear cut-off point though
It's that bit from WTYP. The American government works on a series of checks and balances, those are the judicial branch, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the Soviet Union
what makes them seem like puppets is that they are enthusiastic partcipants in stuff like the maidan coup, like didnt merkel pretty much gleefully admit they were fucking over russia and that the minsk agreements were shams? why do this if russia is your only option to break away from the US?
In 2014, Merkel, and whoever the French president was at the time, made some compromise with Yanukovych and Putin, where they removed the parts of the EU association agreement that Russians objected to the most. One day later someone started shooting up the place and Yanukovych had to flee.
She, and again the French, later also did beg Putin to sign Minsk II.
Merkel gave an interview in 2022, where she was questioned why she did all this compromising, wasn't that like a mistake? Basically being accused (this happened lots at the time) of having been soft on the Russians. To which she replied (paraphrasing), it's always worth trying for peace and those Minsk agreements did buy Ukraine time now didn't they?
This isn't gleeful boasting, and more like a post-hoc defense of her actions. I mean why would she do the Nordstream if the plan was to go to war with Russia?
I do agree though the establishment is politically captured, some more than others, and many are true believers in US exceptionalism. I mean Merkel could have tried to stand up to the Americans and never did. They do their own little deals with the Russians, the US and Brits ignore and sabotage that, and they just go along with that without saying a peep.
Translation of relevant part of the interview (archive):
(emphasis mine)
ZEIT: Are you asking yourself whether the years of relative calm were also years of failures and whether you were not just a crisis manager, but in part the cause of crises?Merkel: [... something about climate change ...] Or let's look at my policy with regard to Russia and Ukraine. I have come to the conclusion that I made my decisions at the time in a way that is still comprehensible to me today. It was an attempt to prevent just such a war. The fact that this was not successful, does not mean that the attempts were therefore wrong.
ZEIT: But you can think it plausible how you acted in earlier circumstances, and still consider it wrong today, in view of the consequences.
Merkel: But that presupposes that you also say what exactly the alternatives were at the time. I thought the initiation of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, which was discussed in 2008, was wrong. The countries did not have the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully thought through, both with regard to Russia's actions against Georgia and Ukraine and with regard to NATO and its rules of engagement. And the 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.
It also used this time to become stronger, as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As we saw in the battle for Debaltseve (railroad town in Donbass, Donetsk Oblast, editor's note) at the beginning of 2015, Putin could have easily overrun it back then. And I very much doubt that the NATO states could have done as much back then as they do today to help Ukraine.
Europe is treating Russia like a gas station and they’re merely “doing Russia a favor” by purchasing energy from them: “If Russia couldn’t sell their oil and gas, then the Russian economy will COLLAPSE. Hence, Russia WILL fold.”
Surprise surprise Russia’s economy didn’t collapse when Europeans stopped buying their energy, and it turns out that Europe needs Russia more than the other way around lol.
pride goeth before the fall as they say, i suppose