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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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'm gonna be honest with you, I don't take anything that happens in Britain as a lesson of what not to do or to do, the country is a historical outlier
Corbyn had the advantage and let it slip from his fingers because he couldn't articulate a coherent brexit position and couldn't an obvious coup in his own party, that's incompetence
Not true at all. The same thing happened in Germany with the SPD and Die Linke. And I can assure its the same in other euro countries. In fact the UK should be very poignant to americans, culturally (and materially) its much closer than russia and china.
That's not what happened at all. Corbyn's Brexit position was hamstrung by party democracy. In his first election where he nearly beat May the policy was a simple "we will implement brexit but do it in the least damaging way to working people" and this was fine, almost won in fact. In his second election the policy of holding a second referendum was put forwards by none other than Keir Starmer, this policy is not something that Corbyn wanted but he was bound to implement it by the democracy within the party. His fence sitting surrounding what Labour would do became an issue of they didn't know what they would do because they didn't know what the result of second referendum would be and he did not know whether he himself would campaign for or against Brexit in a second referendum if they won the election (which they obviously didn't). This whole thing was designed to fuck the party, trigger a new leadership election where Starmer would try for leader.
Starmer had most of the party fooled. The extent of how much he lies and lies and lies only truly became visible after he was party leader. Yeah a lot of people didn't think he was a socialist but also didn't think he was worse than most tories.
I think the decline of the American empire will look very similar to the decline of the British empire, both in how it plays out and in what political landscape emerges. I argue frequently that we're still playing out the retraction of the British empire, many holdings are still to go independent or back to more obvious countries that should have them. I'm not really convinced that a coherent idea of what the country should be in the future can even occur until this historical retraction has played out in its entirety so that the people finally move on from the past identity as an "empire" and forwards into visions of what their future identity should be. I personally suspect that the retraction must fundamentally play out fully before this can occur.
Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said above, and frankly half of it is excuse making for Corbyn's terrible leadership and dogshit political instincts, if someone is fooled by Keir Stramer of all people then they're a dumbass and Corbyn was a naive dumbass
Corbyn's brexit plan should've been simple "I don't like it but I'll implement it and we'll tax the rich to pay for any damage" and then he should've booted out any party hack who opposed that plan as "anti-democratic" and let the opposition and media argue for why democracy is bad, but no he stood there with his mouth wide open and let it become a weapon against him
Do you think Gaza can wait for this retraction process?
Yeah I don't think anyone is going to argue with you over Corbyn being too nice and not hard enough. This is not something that was being said during his tenure though, nobody was calling for purges, the complaints that Corbyn didn't purge the right began after the right engaged in their purge. A lesson the entire British left had to learn the hard way I suppose. Everyone here has been entirely too naive, honestly nobody expected the liberals in the big tent alliance to be as ruthless as they have been.
This lesson led to the left making its own party. So in a sense electoralism has led us to a new party, and the successes and failures of this new party should lead to something else. What that is remains to be seen. Even if a socialist party wins in Britain... It's not possible for this party to change much with the monarchy and the house of lords in the way, the army is also never going to side with the people.
Of course not. But whether it can or can not wait does not change the material conditions as they are. Put it this way, is socialism likely in either the US or Britain in the next 10 years? No. Gaza may be unable to wait 10 years, we can't change that though. Of course I still try and do what I can though.