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.
Not sure if anyone has posted this yet
https://english.news.cn/20250708/44b55cf84c4a42989c6b58fda8fe5b99/c.html
BEIJING, July 8 (Xinhua) – China has always taken a prudent, responsible approach to military exports and is willing to share the achievements of its equipment development with friendly countries, a Chinese defense spokesperson said on Tuesday. Jiang Bin, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense, made the remarks when commenting on recent reports that several countries are in discussions with China regarding weapon procurement plans that include China’s J-10 fighter jet.
If the “several countries” here does not include Iran then what the fuck are we even doing, folks. I assume after their fantastic performance during the brief Pakistan-India war everybody even remotely outside the NATO-sphere is looking at the J-10, but I have to imagine Iran is priority number one.
Unless they’d be willing to give like 100+ then idk if they’re worth sending. Iran doesnt just need a cheap fighter jet, it needs enough to replace its own forces AND have military relevance against Israel.
it would be nice, but it’ll take at least a while to train Iranian pilots for this anyway, right? maybe if the war doesn’t come back for a year or two it could work?
There have been unconfirmed (as far as I know) reports that Iran is purchasing Chinese AA hardware, if they’re true Iran’s gotta be on the list for some jets
HQ-9Bs are supposedly being delivered. But I actually don’t think J-10s are sufficient against Israel due to the lack of stealth. You can kind of make up for it by also buying AWACS planes and using the j-10s as networked missile trucks only, but they will have very little in the way of defensive countermeasures compared to a J-35. Also, unless Iran builds more (expensive) reinforced hangars their new planes will be hit by standoff weapons and made useless before they can take to the air.
HQ-9B survivability is also an issue, Iran had very similar systems in the S-300PMU2 batteries (the HQ-9 is a direct descendant of this system), and the fire control radars were likely taken out in Israel’s April and October 2024 attacks by air launched ballistic missiles. To defend against these threats, you need interceptor missiles specifically designed to intercept ballistic missiles, the HQ-9Bs will need to be protected by systems that offer that, or have that capability themselves. I haven’t seen a single image online of the HQ-9 systems with the kind of interceptors you’d ideally need for that threat. What Iran would need from China is a Patriot PAC 3 MSE (used in Patriot and MEADS) or 9M96E2 (used in the S-400 and S-350) class kinetic interceptor, which China has in an unmanned HQ system, for now called the land based HQ-26 (different from the naval HQ-26). It looks like this, basically the Chinese equivalent to MEADS and the S-350.
Alternatively, a S-300V series, or HQ-18/HQ-29 for the suspected Chinese version, anti ballistic missile system is needed. These don’t use kinetic interceptors, but large area effect warheads and are designed with a specific focus on intercepting ballistic missiles. Israel has a similar system in this philosophy called Arrow 2.
If the HQ-9s aren’t protected by such a system or have the capability themselves, they might end up facing the same fate as the Iranian S-300PMU2s.