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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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.
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.