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 care more about what he actualy does than campaign promises or speeches, way too many people are more invested into making the correct call than just seeing the consequences. Specialy the shitty self-defeating arguments against the western left, the same old cliche some people love to use as if it justifies or explains anything.
Miss me with this hypocritical garbage when literaly not a single BRICS country actualy stands up to Israel or worse China and others actively collaborate with them, where exactly is this grandiose global south left that stands up against Israel? In principle they exist and perform very nice gestures, yet have achieved zero actual efficacy or power to do anything. Sounds familiar?
This site is built on top of fucking Xi emotes, the same guy who also literaly shakes hands with Biden and Kissinger but Zohran should be hanged for a speech because he is no longer saying kill all the zionists in one speech because its "the western left" that sucks or is "desperate". Principled anti-zionists should be burning BRICS flags along with US and EU flags but nah.
I do wish he wouldn't fumble his PR too but IMO what matters is what people do not what they say, this should be the first lesson anyone should have learned from these almost 2 year genocide. The legitimately worrisome things he already did like hiring that one Dem advisor into his campaign a couple weeks ago, that is the sort of bad action that matters right now not silly speeches.
It’s different though. BRICS is not actively involved in the genocide, but the US does.
While it would have been very good for them to intervene and I believe China should have done so, there is no obligation for them to risk sacrificing their own economy, placing billions of their own population’s wellbeing in jeopardy for the sake of 2 million Gazan Palestinians. China’s economy is not doing so well right now, you know, as they’re still very much stuck to the neoliberal model and cannot decouple from the US.
It’s just the political reality of the world since the fall of the USSR. Everyone is out for their own now. BRICS is a charade and people keep pretending like it’s the new USSR.
Great way to alienate your potential allies when China is the only country that can stand up to the US today.
There isn't any sort of relevant legal obligation that is seriously enforced, but it is silly to claim that the PRC doesn't owe the rest of the Global South action against NATO, considering the PRC's actions to support NATO's colonial hold over the rest of the world, as well as the fact that decolonisation should happen (in the 'moral' sense of 'should').
If we’re being honest, no country other than China has been the greatest supporter of the dollar hegemony, and China has certainly reaped the most benefit from the neoliberal status quo, with the two countries running huge trade imbalances mostly benefiting from the arrangement. Even the American working class suffered because of the de-industrialization, as only their bourgeois ruling elites gained the most from the neoliberal free trade order.
The concentration of industrial capacity into China allowed the US empire to expand its imperialist claws into the rest of the Global South countries, who have been robbed of their productive forces as global industrial base was concentrated into a single country, and thus rendered their economies susceptible to foreign capital influx and the subsequent takeover and privatization of their public assets by US finance capital.
If you ask me, I do agree that China has a duty to redistribute its own productive capacity to the rest of the Global South. However, this is not the world we live in. I simply do not see China caring that much about the world when a rapproachment with the US is still the preferred solution (which is what they’re doing right now). You would have thought that China has learned the lessons in Ukraine just a few years earlier, but time has proven that’s not the case here.
China and BRICS are not the USSR. It has no ideological component behind it. It’s mostly business transactions.
Are you Palestinian? Yemeni? Iranian? Are you family members being killed by Zionism? You speak with a lot of conviction about something you don't seem to know much about. I don't think people on the internet with no stakes in what's going on should purport to be the representatives of other people's movements. Stay on the sidelines where you belong, cheering on democratic US mayoral candidates
Just another BynarsAreOk post to make it be about China somehow.
I really can't get over "China bad but let mamdani cook"
So the actual communists supporting Palestine, Iran, Yemen, Cuba, Venezuela, and more are evil zionists but the verdict is still out on DSA member democrat? How do demsocs and ultras end up agreeing with the US state department about which countries are bad AND how to effectively change things within the imperial core.
"China bad, US bourgeois electoralism good" - Marxists apparently
Western leftists are basically touch-starved but instead of it being touch it is any whiff of domestic socialist politics. They're desperate for anything vaguely in their lane and get parasocial real fast.
I try not to say anything at the risk of coming across too sectarian, but I'm glad someone else noticed this. Dude sounds like he'd be more at home on Db0 or one of other lib-leftist instances.
BynarsAreOk is a contrarian first and foremost. They would probably start whining about anarkiddies being Western chauvinists falling for CIA color revolutions if they were actually on Db0. The extent in which half of their comment history is about China is contrarianism because Hexbear is aggressively pro-China. If Hexbear was as aggressively pro-Russia as it were pro-China, BynarsAreOk's comment history would be filled with whining about how Putin spits on the grave of Lenin or how the RF completely rides on the coattails of the SU instead of whining about Xi and the CPC. Notice that BynarsAreOk does whine about Putin spitting on the grave of Lenin and the RF completely riding on the coattails of the SU, but it's not to the extent of their China whining since Hexbear isn't really aggressively pro-Russia or really pro-Russia at all.
Does explain a lot. I hope they're quite young, to be an adult and to behave like that is more sad than anything else. I don't know why someone would participate in a community if their only goal is to go "Umm acktually" at everything everyone else says.
I can understand why BRICS nations other than China don't want to completely sanction and stop recognizing Israel given they could be sanctioned by the U.S. for the same. But China cannot be sanctioned, they have more more leverage.