Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.
Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the "Three", alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.
Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump's appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump's high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China's existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.
Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they're supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Not particularly news but whatever, been wandering around China for the past week and it's been very interesting. Far more military propoganda than last time I was here a few years ago. This old ~70 year old Chinese woman next to me on the plane watched a two hour documentary on the Chinese navy. Ads on the metro remind people not to post pictures on social media if they include military movements in them. Tons of recruitment posters everywhere. One of my friends took me to the most enormous subway station I've ever seen in Shenzhen that was 90% empty space and she's convinced it was built as a bomb shelter first and station second. Feels like a society gearing up for war. Hope it doesn't come to that but glad it feels like the CPC is more than ready for it if it does.
On a lighter note people now wear historical dress walking around and it's delightful. Such colorful outfits are so cool. And Alipay added an option to use foreign credit cards which is amazing, life here without Wechat and Alipay is actually impossible. Insane that these are private companies and not state run services but alas, such is the Chinese way. Also I regret to inform you that without a VPN Hexbear seems blocked, so I guess we've been deemed liberals.
They've read our electoral effortposts and struggle sessions.
Tagline
Youth unemployment is like 17% right now (and this is after readjusting the metric), amidst economic downturn, militarization is inevitable, not just in China but across Europe and the US as well.
Unless they listen to what I say and run up the deficit to sustain full employment and raise domestic consumption, this is simply the outcome of tightening export (the revenue is still up because of other countries are still absorbing China’s surplus goods, but everyone knows it’s coming down eventually), plunging investment and sluggish consumption. The only place left the central government has control over is the military/defense sector, where they can pour heavy investment into.
We’re going to see an overproduction of military equipments across the world over the next few years. It’s scary times because those surplus war machines will have to be eliminated somehow.
And yes the CCTV Military channel has pushing war propaganda on my feed over the past few months lol.
The RSF in Sudan already got their hands on Chinese made FK-2000 SHORAD (similar to the Russian Pantsir/SA-22 in concept) from the UAE, and shot down a cargo plane operating for the SAF. So yeah as arms proliferate, it's going to be impossible to control who gets what. Azov in Ukraine probably has better counter UAS/drone capabilities than most European armies, for another example.
Yeah this is like the nightmare version of your concept of getting China to increase its domestic consumption, pouring investments into death machines and not universal healthcare. I was attempting to explain modern monetary theory to my friends in Shenzhen and I felt insane lol
I think the hexbear blocking might be due to federation and or the name being attached to a crypto shitcoin which are illegal in China.
I think if a Chinese hexbear user in the mainland really wanted to they're could be a process made for being unblocked.
Love to hear that they're dprkifying and not treating war as a impossibility. Similar to how Venezuela is gearing up to defend themselves.
VPNs seem to be pretty easy to get ahold of there tbh
yeah Ben Norton has suggested thinking of the great firewall as effectively a tariff on foreign internet companies, not so much shutting them out but adding enough friction that domestic companies are better able to leverage network effects
Extremely easy. The main reason why most Chinese people don’t do that is that their English language skill is very limited, and this is the case even for most people with higher education. The Chinese people you see on the internet/social media who speak relatively good English almost certainly have experience with living overseas, if not permanently outside of China.
Plus, there are more than enough content to consume within Chinese internet anyway. I don’t even watch Youtube these days anymore, too much Western propaganda. I’ve been consuming Chinese propaganda recently instead lol.
I can’t imagine anybody being able to choose between B站 and youtube and picking youtube
If it was trivial for me, a foreigner with extraordinarily limited Chinese, to figure it out I can't imagine it's anything more than a formality for anybody in China who wants one.
Just wanted to tag on to the other comments confirming that yes, it was quite easy to access a VPN in China when I was there in September. I already set one up before I arrived for Hexbear, but wanted to stream some stuff that was still blocked so I bought a Surfshark subscription without any problems.
Wow, that's actually terrifying. A big war would be baaad for me as an American, and it looks like it's coming. Hopefully the military leadership here is smart enough to back down and the political leadership can take it on the chin and make peace quickly after they're defeated in the West Pacific. I really don't want my home town getting burned down by drone swarms.
A big war would probably be bad for most living things on earth tbh
Even if China had the desire (which frankly they do not) to launch attacks on the American mainland, they have no logistical ability to do so outside of ballistic missiles. The Pacific ocean is vast, and China doesn't have any island bases.
They could arm the everglade maoists
the moistest of maoists
They can just attach a million drones to balloons and send them over in waves to overwhelm our air defenses. I don't think long range strikes against the US mainland would be that difficult for China if they had a little time, resources, and motivation. If the US stays in the war after getting pushed out of the West Pacific I could see them needing a credible capability to strike targets in the US as a means of encouraging a negotiated end to the conflict. If it drags on longer they'll just build a thousand ship fleet and take whatever they need. This is kind of a repeat of Japan and the US, but in reverse. China has overwhelming superiority in manpower and industry so it's really just a question of how far things have to go before the US gives up and whether nuclear weapons are used this time.
Fair point, I agree that if China had the motivation then yes they could do that no problem, I just can't imagine a war with the US dragging on to that extent. Let's hope it doesn't get there!
Are you sure you dont want to take a book Meemaw, how will you entertain yourself on the plane?
oh dont worry deary I have a PLAN
It was honestly wild. She was locked in, too, pausing when she got up and stuff. This was the documentary if you wanna watch https://youtu.be/pw24KOY4wHg
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Well yeah. You have a drugs community with people who encourage using narcotics, need more be said? Your party line on sex work is similarly against their party line. You get into constant "struggle sessions" over the most ridiculous shit. Admins caught being secret zionists. In other words deeply unserious even if it is a welcome relief and refuge for those trapped in the west.
Hexbear isn't banned in China for anything on Hexbear, the entire of lemmy is. China just blocks all social media platforms that aren't domestic as and when it discovers them. There is no getting around this without being a domestic platform.
We aren't a political party before anyone gets it twisted.
We have a drugs community? That encourages people to take narcotics where does this come from?
As in being a SWERF is unpopular here and China has social conservative brainworms that its still working out?
0/10
srs? I missed that
No, and it’s not true. Someone expressed misgivings about the optics around a burning star of david flag and instead of simply saying “I think you’re wrong about this”, some people with apparently zero chill decided to slander this person as a Zionist.
You can say an admin is wrong or has poor judgment but frankly I consider calling anyone a Zionist is an incredibly serious charge and it really rubbed me the wrong way the way it got thrown around over a fucking emoji
Flag burning imagery of Israel was held as sacrilege because of an imaginary optics that we burned anyway considering the front page of the site has "Moscow time"
The mod that originally stalled adding it changed her position entirely, other users and mods not so much.
You can still have liberal Zionist brainworms and think you're protecting people when you're really just out of touch with your userbase.
I was called a Nazi for thinking Israel’s flag should be treated the same as all other dogs of empire on this site, so clearly some saw it as more than an emoji. We saw dedicated Arab anti imperialists ran off this site for “antisemitism” while a user who called
a “holocaust emoji” never had a single post removed.
Yeah OP’s comment “they were just smol bean posters expressing concern but got dogpiled” is the most disingenuous lying bad faith bullshit I’ve ever seen posted on this site. “Expressing misgivings” is doing so much heavy lifting it needs back surgery. Literally the exact opposite of reality. I can’t comprehend the privilege it takes to write that it was “just an emoji”.
Months later and nothing’s changed, we still have POC users being tone-policed by crackers because being too uppity “rubs them the wrong way”. And in particular, Arab users being lectured on what is and isn’t Zionism.
But sure, the problem is those people being “zero chill” when it comes to cracker feelings, which are obviously considered by far the most important thing.
Really reminds me of American crackers getting mad when they get called settlers, which is what they are.
Verbatim. Absurd to see the narrative picked up so easily so the white userbase of this website can be comforted thinking there are 0 Zionist tendencies among the mod team and that anyone saying there was an issue that was never addressed is actually being too mean
thanks for clarifying, I like to think I would have noticed something that rose to that charge
See the other comments, there absolutely were people displaying acceptance of Zionists ideological points and that was the argument. The emoji was just the example that made it come up
This is a misreading and a mischaracterizing analysis. From the beginning, everyone who was upset at Zionist tendencies talked about how the emoji was an EXAMPLE of the ways the Zionist arguments that were behind many choices and treatment of the site.
There were people saying that it was a "holocaust emoji", which explicitly accepts the lie that Israel has anything to so with the Holocaust. And claims that cannot count how many times it was stared in the thread that "the emoji is just an example" and people are still acting like that was it. In general, it's people making the Zionist argument as described in this article
I agree that calling someone a Zionist is a strong claim that shouldn't be used lightly. That's why I said many times that there were zionist claims being accepted instead. these are comrades who really needed to confront that they were still dealing with brainworms. That is different than being ontologically evil, but deflecting to 'its just an emoji' helps nobody.
Hate to break it to you but China does not give a fuck about Hexbear, especially not about years old drama that our own members are barely cognisant about
News mega is not the place for meta discussions or struggle sessions about meta discussions
Best damn news I've heard in months, that is the self-confidence and vigilance AES states need to withstand American imperialism
Yeah with the American left calling them dictators, AES pretty much have to rely on themselves alone for security
There is the massive underground bunker/command centre China is building 40km from Beijing. Apparently it's over 10 times the size of the Pentagon.
Only credit cards or also debit cards? That would be very useful to know.
It seems like any VISA or Mastercard will work. I can try my debit card tomorrow and see.
My foreign debit card (VISA) works with both (edit: Alipay and WeChat).