Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.
Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.
Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.
Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.
Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he's met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.
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.
I really don't understand this whole obsession with the word conflict. Calling it a conflict doesn't mean it's not a genocide. Calling it a war doesn't mean it's not a genocide. These are not exclusive or opposed categories. There are clearly two sides in conflict with each other.
because it isnt a "conflict" my whole life ive been pushing back on this and anyone who is willing to call it "israel" instead of the zionist entity legitimizes the existence of the entity itself. Its a settler colonial project, built on ethnic cleansing and genocide and wholly illegitimate.
i know im preaching to the choir on this site but the language we use is incredibly important. Its like why we call it IOF and not IDF, for the same reason we say the Temporary Zionist Entity instead of "Israel", the same reason we say the Zionist Genocide of the Palestinian people and not "Israel-Palestine Conflict."
Its about reframing the conversation with our narrative. It can seem insignificant, but its important to delegimize the entity's existence first and foremost in the language we use. The same way zionists refuse to acknowledge Palestinians as a real people or Palestine as the land they are occupying. Words have power
If you saw a grown man beating a toddler to death would you call that a "conflict"?
The JFK-bullet conflict
what bullet? i thought his head just kinda... you know
Its no surprise but those vile in-human bastards unironically do shit like this. *straight out of the horse's mouth as well (btselem)
Depends. Do I work for the New York Times? Then yes.
Hey mate there's no need for this. I'm not accusing OP of being some zionist or trying to start shit, sorry if I wasn't clear enough about this.
I agree, there is a "conflict" and a "war" because the people who are being genocided are fighting back against their rabid murderers with the help of 1 ally out of 195 countries, Yemen.
The point here is that we center the genocide that pissrael is committing against the people of Palestine. Something that our governments and mass media don't want. I agree that its not a lot, but its the least we could do, it would also make any zionists who visit this website seethe as well.
It sends a very clear message about where we stand. Because the nature of the conflict between the two sides (the entire western world v.s. *the innocent people of Palestine and Yemen) is that one side ideally wants every single person on the other side to die a slow, torturous death while the other side just wants to live in peace.
To re-iterate I'm not accusing OP of being a zionist or anything, just saying it would be good to center the genocide that our countries are complicit in.
Expecting words to mean things is just a level of caring that makes me uncomfortable.
Calling for political and moral clarity in the midst of a clear cut imperialist campaign of extermination and occupation is not an "obsession". It's incredibly disturbing and revealing that you and at least 9 other users in this mega believe so.
There's no lack of clarity on the subject in this thread. Using the word "conflict" sometimes in no way undermines our ability to call it out as a colonial genocide. What is the nature of the conflict? Colonial occupation and genocide supported by history's most violent empire. If we only ever called it a conflict in order to obscure the nature of what's happening, I'd agree. We should critique the way imperialist media does exactly that.
But it's not not a conflict, and using that term to refer to the whole situation concisely amongst ourselves - knowing how we as anti-imperialist communists actually analysis - in no way gets in the way of how we discuss it. There is no single term that can describe it without leaving some potential ambiguity or missing important details. Call it a genocide, but it's not just a genocide. Call it an occupation, but it's not just an occupation. Banning the word "conflict" doesn't help us at all in communicating amongst ourselves.
Nobody said anything about banning. You said we were being "obsessed" and I took issue with it.
That's fair, I'm not trying to demean comrades and I apologize for that phrasing. I'm referring to the general trend on the word conflict (and war) that extends much beyond Hexbear.
But people are literally saying "it's not a conflict" and "it's not a war", and that obscures more than it illuminates.
War is just politics with bloodshed after all. It is unquestionably a war, but then again, my definition of war is looser than most people.
For example, a riot is essentially insurrectionary warfare where the insurgents are horribly outgunned and outorganized relative to COIN forces. But COIN very much considers riots to be within the framework of insurgency that COIN has to put down. You might not think a riot is anything close to war, but the people who crush riots and write manuals and train others on how to crush riots do. People need to start reading COIN manuals that the pigs and military periodically make public.
Hamas, PIJ, PFLP, and other Palestinian militants are all insurgents doing standard insurgent things while the IOF are mostly using COIN tactics with varying degrees of success. Since Hamas/PIJ/PFLP aren't conventional militaries while the IOF is, we can say that this war is an asymmetric war.
"This is a genocide, not a conflict" is just designed to arouse pity among the listener, but it's not very useful for analysis. All wars of annihilation are genocides after all from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the Japanese colonization of China to the US invasion of Korea and so on. Hamas et al are fighting as well as they're doing now because they learn from previous wars of annihilation, in particular Korea, so they can fight well against the current war of annihilation wrought by the Zionist entity.
And lest we forget, Hamas et al are the vanguard of the Palestinian national liberation struggle. How is this national liberation struggle not a war of sovereignty and dignity, a war of decolonialization where the colonized reassert their humanity and overthrows the colonizer order through armed organized struggle (ie war)?