Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.
Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.
Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.
Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.
Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he’s met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.
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.
What a banger this article from ForeignPolicy is: China Has Picked Its New Model Entrepreneurs. As they are a journal for the economic and political elites they have to provide facts and not juste baseless propaganda, but the neoliberal viewpoints is so funny seeing what they find horrible are things I would love form my government to do lmao.
Here are some choice quotes, but the article is worth reading in its entirety:
The private education industry needed to get gutted btw, Chinese schoolkids were staying up until midnight or later in private tutoring and then doing shitloads of extra self study afterwards (e.g. me LMAO). It is horrible for their mental and physical health. Now it still exists under the table but any reduction is good, but the root cause (hypercompetitive society where gaokao determines your life) still exists and needs to be mitigated.
This is very true, but the enforcement is nearly impossible because the system incentivizes people to excel academically by any means necessary.
Back in February, I wrote briefly about the new national policy to promote two-day weekends (双休) in schools (most high school students get 0.5-1 day off per month). In the beginning, a number of schools even welcomed the new policy and it looked as though the education system is finally being reformed. However, by May, not even three months in, it’s already regressed to the previous state and nobody follows the policy anymore.
This is not unique to China, to be clear. Before China, South Korea has for many years already implemented various designs to prevent such situation from happening. At one point, the South Korean government even randomly allocated students to schools that were not based on their zip codes/residential areas, to prevent the formation of “elite schools” in wealthy neighborhoods. Even that failed because in South Korea, getting into Samsung will literally change your life. For most people, working hard academically to get into top universities becomes your only shot at transforming your material conditions.
The system has already pre-determined that people will do anything necessary, even through illegal means, in order to gain access to that limited class mobility.
I know I’m pointing out something very obvious here and that the solution isn’t so easy, but it strikes me that the solution here is to make class mobility or other improvement in material conditions possible outside of this system. Trying to just stamp it out seems like it would be very ineffective.
The problem with China’s economy right now is the deflation, and the resulting poor job market.
Youth unemployment is high, and a lot of recent graduates (I’ve said this before, it’s very ironic that they are also the generation that received the best quality education/training to date) simply could not find jobs.
But yes, university degrees aren’t worth that much anymore. In China, everything is accelerated. While in the West, it could take an entire generation for such a disparity in attitude to form, in China, this is squeezed into a mere decade. More and more have gone into tangping (lying down) mode. One of my cousins already did lol.
If only there was some sort of domestic services based economic sector that is crying out for government delivered service provision
Anyway let’s kick hukou reform down the road because China couldn’t possibly provide Shanghai level services across the country
Yeah I know, this was a great thing to abolish, it’s just funny how the article paints it as something horrible lmao.
Awful take, the lockdowns saved millions of lives.
Evul cpu didnt want its populace to get brain damage and become mass disabled like the glorious west did
No you are wrong, have you thought about how lockdowns affected millionaire’s yacht savings?
A capitalist’s favorite buzzwords