Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.
To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.
As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:
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The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...
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The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
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Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.
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.
One side is demolishing WW2 memorials and directly participating in a genocide while the other is killing Nazis and supporting AES states.
Sure, Russia's motivations aren't pure, but their victory still benefits the cause of socialism.
It’s Cinaa don’t bother, they are still defending SDF in 2025. They are a social chauvinist you will not get them to understand revolutionary defeatism and their place in the world
Russia literally funds half of the hexbear approved anti-west states/organizations. North Korea a socialist government decided to militarily support russia. What are your (non-specific person) “credentials” for thinking yourselves to be “above” AES?
Like you can kiss countries like Cuba, Burkina Faso and even Iran to an extent goodbye should russia fall.
Keep in mind this is the sdf defender speaking,but I do agree long term at least Russia isn't an ally
doesn't feel fair to reduce my contributions on Syria to "SDF defending" when I am the only person I've seen in here even mention the Islamic Resistance Front and its activities over the past few months
I think it feels pretty fair, you support the enemy of the resistance and zionist proxies
you unironically think that Jihadism is a monolith and it's a sensible analysis to say that ISIS and HTS are exactly the same group, so I don't take your view on the matter particularly seriously and nobody else should
You also smeared unnamed resistance organizations as collaborators, than refused to name your sources
“I can find plenty of counter-examples of direct US collusion over the past decade with Iraqi groups that are supposed to be part of the "Axis of Resistance"”
I was speaking about the Iraqi PMUs in that instance, not just "unnamed resistance organisations", and that was evident from the context of the discussion. You make it sound like I was saying Hezbollah and Ansar Allah are working with the US state dept. That is a misrepresentation.
It is fairly easy to find information on Operation Inherent Resolve, part of which involved the US providing direct and indirect support to groups under the PMU umbrella as they fought ISIS on the ground for the Iraqi state (amongst many others). The PMUs were the most effective combat force in Iraq at this time and quite obviously benefitted from US airstrikes against ISIS. If you are not aware of that then you just don't know that much about the conflict, I'm sorry to say. There are few sources on this either way because a lot goes on there that doesn't get into traditional media, and these organisations aren't just going to do a press release stating that they're working with the Great Satan, for the same reasons that the US also doesn't say "we carried out strikes in support of these organisations" - it looks bad for both sides.
Hereis an article from 2014 detailing Iran's approval of co-operation with the US in the fight against ISIS. This is from the BBC, who obviously have an anti-Resistance bias, but given that this makes Iran look more reasonable (and especially given that the usual western line is that Iran is a repressive theocracy no different to ISIS, whereas this shows them siding against ISIS), it's likely to be based in truth.
Here is another article in which the US-based(!) director of the international relations office of the PMUs stated that they were ready to join an "all-inclusive" volunteer force against ISIS, i.e. collaboration with all factions including US-backed ones. Again, there was nothing wrong with this move. It was the right move at the time, because ISIS are a genocidal organisation that threatens everyone in the region.
Can you stop replying with this to everything I post in the news thread now? It's really reddit-y behaviour, and you're just demonstrating that you know fuck all about the politics and history of the region. It's not a "smear" to acknowledge that reality is more complex than black-and-white. It's not a smear against the USSR to say that they benefitted from US support during WW2 either, so long as you're not saying that was the primary factor in the Red Army's victory.
As opposed to the person who posted a whole separate post in the mega thread complaining about another user. Clown
can't handle the truth huh? ^^
@Z_Poster365 you should check this out too <3
Ukraine is a national socialist state for sure, but assuming that the genocide you're referring to is the Palestinian genocide, Russia is pretty much as culpable and has been a long term ally of shitrael. There are nazi batallions in both armies too, though Russia's have a lot less influence over the political echelon for sure
tbh i just hope for whatever will end the war the soonest, and curse my own government for directly sabotaging the peace agreement that could have been reached in 2022. The longer this all goes on the closer we get to a nuclear exchange. and every day that this goes on, hundreds of people lose their sons and fathers.
I am deliberately lumping Ukraine in with "The West". Russia does not support Israel in the same way as that group. No weapons, no political cover, and no lip service. In fact, Russia is more aligned with the Resistance: Iran, and formerly Syria.