There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Palestine! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
China discussion
I wrote this as a reply on that chain over the Xi meeting US senators headline. It was already an extremely bad look imo, now its just comical the mistiming Josep Borrell to visit China
So I'll make my arguments here again replaying to @Frank@hexbear.net since at least its worthwhile news and I think he made good points too, its worth talking about..
I even made all of these points in the past so I know these points are extremely convincing, but I wasn't aiming at such a broad take, the US senators visit is simply a mistimed rare L imo. I can't fathom what on earth the CPC was hoping to achieve here. We know the level of incompetence of the US political class, Xi literaly lectured Trudeau over his duplicity. I was under the impression he knows better than anyone too, we just had the whole Biden/Xi meeting that didn't happen too. I also understand the desire to maintain dialogue but ultimately what the US is doing here is the same thing they did in Ukraine i.e waste time while arming their ally for war, and we know because they literally admitted it(Merkel incident and others). Maybe I should give them credit but its hard to not take the CPC at face value here they really seem to think US politicians are capable of dialogue.
This also isn't happening in a vacuum either, it is a meeting happening barely 14 months after the Pelosi/Taiwan affair. How does one reasonably explain flip flopping from "this [politician] committed the greatest affront to Chinese national interests in the last 3 decades" to "we will meet with your [politicians] actually as a treat". I understand previous meetings in the context of the sanctions and a Ukraine peace deal, but this is what? "Billateral ties?"
My hope is to not just do naive criticism, I understand entirely there is a huge difference between what China can effectively actually do vs what I wish they would do. I also completely understand why Israel/Palestine is not anywhere close to a "red line" for China.
But now that I think more about it, its dangerous that China wants to have its cake and eat it. They moved to transform BRICS into this anti-imperialist bloc. Extremely cool, good and based. Uncritical support. But now that you decided to put yourself as a geopolitical player, you can't turn around and be picking and choosing your battles cynically, "oh we can support A but not B, too bad you're out of luck I guess".
It is also important to note some of nations(Iran, Egypt, Saudi and UAE) currently involved/adjacent to this are now BRICS members. This is far closer to Chinese interests than it was previously.
Global times Oct 10, 2023: China, Saudi Arabia launch joint naval special operations exercise There is literally no point in doing this if China wasn't open to the possibility of a global conflict.
China may be on the other side of the world, but their current allies/partners are not. If China refuses to take a more strongly defined stance towards these regional conflicts then the prospects of BRICS as anything remotely effective against western imperialism look grim.
On pragmatism, it is undeniable China "lost" out over the Pelosi fiasco about "red lines". Yes nothing happened and pragmatism won the day, humanity can have a sigh of relief. Of course I too prefer to not have war, but China set up a red line and the US called the bluff successfully. This is precisely what I mean by "the only solution is confrontation" not because it is our(communists) choice but the path the US continues to take against all reason. The only difference is Russia as problematic as they are with their own BS "red lines", they did actually declare war, in the Pelosi/Taiwan case, well pragmatism for now.
Finally cold calculating pragmatism isn't always the point either, the global south already talks about "climate justice" and people here are talking about decolonization based on the justice for Palestine/injustices of Israel, I mean I can't wait until the year is 2045 when vast amounts of the global south are completely uninhabitable.
This is my most biggest fear, we are doing nothing, everyone just casually hopes for common sense to prevail(those that care, others don't even give a shit), pragmatism will win the day we hope and dream. Meanwhile, war after war, crimes, injustices, inaction. Nazism is back. We don't time have until 2100, we don't have time until China is completely communist, we may not even last to 2050. I hate to say it, if we don't fight soon there may as well be nothing left to fight over.
I appreciate I may be more alarmist then others at these points but in the end if I could have even just one take, I think Xi meeting US politicians right now is an extremely bad look, callous even. I am not happy and I'm comfortable calling this a very rare CPC L. I accept it was probably an unfortunate coincidence, but nevertheless I hate it.
We'll see what comes of the Borrell meeting too, I have no expectations whatsoever but maybe something something.
KSA and UAE are probably anti-intervention and China doesn't want to break BRICS. It's a really awkward situation and China doesn't have as much freedom to move as they need.
There's probably some arm twisting of BRICS members going on in the background, but it's not anything that we will hear about.
No they did not. There has always been only three red lines with regard to how the PRC will handle the ROC:
Formal declaration of a Republic of Taiwan.
Formal recognition of Two Chinas (ie Republic of East China).
The ROC receiving nuclear weapons
When those red lines are crossed, the PRC will invade Taiwan and overthrow the ROC.
Everything else is at best black lines. And "nothing happened" is completely untrue. Or did we forget the massive escalation in military drills or the suspension of Taiwanese imports and Mainland exports. There's a reason why the DPP completely ate shit in the local elections that took place a few months after the visit.
What else do you expect the PRC to do exactly, shoot down the plane with Pelosi inside like all the loser netizens on Weibo were screaming? Performatively escort her jet with a bunch of fighter jets?
I mean, it would have been pretty funny for the few days before the nuclear exchanges start.
I'm sorry but you're almost trying to rewrite events here. The CPC literaly sent out their two carriers. PLA’s two aircraft carriers move out from homeports amid Pelosi’s alleged imminent Taiwan visit, satellite images and reports show
They also mobilized near the island.
This was before she landed. Just go back and look at the sort of articles Global times was pushing out China sternly warns Biden admin not to arrange Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, PLA 'will not sit idly by'
It goes on describing that the PLA was already drillling days earlier
Finaly they even talk about what they could have done against her!
The whole idea that this issue is just Chinese netizens on weibo or whatever is just wildly misinformed, even with the absolute lack of context we have as westerners it is extremely obvious the hawkish narrative also came directly from Chinese media and some parts of the government.
Ok lets recap for a bit. The US previously sent the USS Ronald Reagan with a full combat group. On the day of her visit Pelosis's plane was escorted by no less than 8 US figthers.
The US carried out a military operation, they prepared for days(the media reported the trip almost 2 weeks in advance). They achieved their goals successfully despite Chinese threats.
The actual Chinese actions before:
"There will be grave consequences"
"We will not sit idly by"
"The PLA is ready".
The actual reality of what they actualy did?
A blockade for less than a week that the US didn't even contest.
Playing the long game as China wants to do here only works when the game actually goes long enough.
Global Times isn't official Chinese state media. Yes, China watchers like to say "well aktually, every news media is controlled by the CCP and Global Times is a good gauge of what the regime actually thinks," but that is not so. Most of the military buildup winded up just being part of the drill that I mentioned earlier. And as a final point that I didn't mention earlier, the main reason why Chinese media was so saber-rattley was because the visit was only a day after 8/1, the founding of the PLA. Of course the national mood would be more militaristic.
At the end of the day, there's always a chance that the ROC military will either stand down or straight up coup any potential DPP administration that formally declares a Republic of Taiwan. The DPP knows this and even played off fears of "the KMT selling out Taiwan to China" in order to win seats in the 2020 presidential elections. These are the cards that are on the table. This is medium term possibility, and the PRC will not take any action that will jeopardize this possibility. And from the results of the 2022 local elections where the DPP got BTFO, I would say that the PRC not only played it, but played it well. The people of Taiwan have rejected Pelosi's visit and placed the blame of the visit squarely on the shoulders of the DPP.
I am on board, but this may be the ultimatum from China, or them feeling out how in disarray the House and Senate at the current moment. We'll see what the talks lead to. My guess is a whole lot of nothing.
Thank you for your post. I will think about what you said.
You are overlooking the possibility that the CPC is acting in the way the Palestinians asked them to act. We are all speculating here, but this is the same comment I made to someone else criticizing Xi calling for a two-state solution. The issue with that criticism is that both Hamas and Fatah also call for a two-state solution, and coming in and saying "Thanks for your input but you are wrong about the direction your country needs to go in," is just chauvinist. China stepping in significantly gives the NATO the excuse it is desperately looking for to escalate this conflict, and to say "Oh actually this isn't about Palestine, they are just Chinese puppet." Yes, they will say that anyways about Iran instead, but China stepping in will amplify that a lot more.
In terms of meeting with US official: I don't know what to tell you other than that's how diplomacy generally works. I think they should have had someone other than Xi meet with them, though.
I've argued this exact thing before, China was wise to build-up and bide their time when they were isolated and in a weak position. However, the situation has changed and is changing and China seems unable to adapt, instead trying to have its cake and eat it too as you said. They want to be one of the leaders of the new multipolar world order, but they also want to play it cautious and safe and not upset the old world order? I'm sorry China, you don't get to do both. Russia and Iran will be the leaders of the new world order if you don't get off your ass and help them, or they will get destroyed by the west while you sit around twirling your thumbs refusing to help. Hopefully behind the scenes China is much more involved than they appear, but goddamn it really seems like they just are too scared to move and it may doom us if they keep playing nice with the west.