Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn’t an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia’s oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that “align themselves with BRICS.” Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I’m not sure what exactly “alignment” means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It’s easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I’m cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it’ll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn’t impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
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.
Yeah China’s got a lot of problems that seem like they have really easy solutions if the party was just willing to move even just a little bit away from its current frame of mind regarding production and trade. Alas.
To be fair, it is very difficult to govern a country with 1.4 billion people, and many problems began their rot at the municipal/provincial level that were not adequately or incapably addressed by the central government. This is why there has been so much corruption scandals across all levels being exposed in recent years. Almost scary to see a never ending number of corruption cases, almost on a daily/weekly basis. A long-term consequence of post-Mao decentralization, which clearly needs to be reformed.
As an enjoyer of Chinese history, I cannot help but notice the recurring pattern across the dynasties: centralization of power led to inefficient bureaucracy and economic calcification, while decentralization led to a flourishing economy but also set in the rot of corruption with disastrous consequences down the road. A cyclical trend that has gone on for thousands of years as dynasties rose and fell. Sometimes I wonder if the Communist Party in China will also succumb to the same cyclical pattern that has so pervaded the entire history of our civilization? What does the future even look like? After all, the country is not even 80 years old - a mere blip along the 5,000-year civilizational history.
Dynasties come and go, but every subsequent dynasty inherits the lessons and memories of the previous dynasties going all the way back to the Shang for better or worse. Should the “Red dynasty” fall, whatever successor dynasty that eventually rises out of the ashes will simply inherit the memories of the Red dynasty along with every other past dynasties. They will begin their administration with a clear plan to avoid the mistakes that led to the fall of the Red dynasty like every other dynasty that believed it can escape the fate of the previous dynasty.
Yeah of course, it’s not easy feat, and by pretty much every metric the party has done an incredible job. Like I feel like if you had to rank the party’s governance of China, they’re up there with the Han or like the Tang under Taizong. I’ll be very interested to see how long the CPC can go without having some sort of like massive reogrganization/internal revolt. Like I guess you can count the Cultural Revolution sort of? But I want to see if the CPC ever gets its Wang Mang or Au Lushan moment, where it becomes like the Early CPC period and the Later CPC period.
I fucking hope not. Apparently post-rebellion census records implied a de-population of 36 million, suggesting that two-third of China’s population was wiped out over 8 years. That’s more people dead than the USSR lost during WWII.
Equally worse, it ended the openness and multicultural policies of the 8th century Prosperous Tang, and for nearly a thousand years, subsequent dynasties would turn inward until the Opium War in 1840 that pried China’s door open to foreigners again.