Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.
Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the “Three”, alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.
Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump’s appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump’s high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China’s existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.
Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they’re supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
The drones in Belgium are back, yet again. This time above an airport, nuclear power plant, and nuclear research centre. Belgium requested aid as they’ve failed to shoot down the drones. Members of the German army were sent to assist in taking them down.
Just wtf is going on? This isnt like the NJ “drone” flap where its mostly just videos of obvious planes and helicopters. Airspace is being heavily disrupted by drones that can’t be jammed by current means that evade pursuers while running for the border when confronted. Belgium is taking it pretty seriously.
Common explanations so far:
Aliens
Russia
China
The US
Aliens I’ll leave to you to decide on.
Russia isnt amazingly likely. If they had drones this good they’d be using them. Putin already directly denied it, for whatever that’s worth.
China isnt impossible, but the drones are believed to be pretty damn advanced. If China had it, they wouldn’t be using it to disrupt airports and scare Euros. They’d be keeping it close to their chests.
The angle on the US is that these are basically here to extort protection money. If they can’t even stop a bunch of drones, clearly they need to buy more weapon systems from America. I’m leaning toward this being unlikely for the same reason as China, but also the entire American government is 12 now and that’s a 12 year olds idea of a good plan.
The interesting claim in the UFO communities(oh hell yeah we’re going there) is that they’ve been following nukes. The earlier locations, like Lakenheath, are places where the US keeps their bombs. Similarly, its believed they have nukes in Belgium too.
This further attaches to the UFOs and nukes connection, which is interesting to read about. Just take it with a grain of salt. (Take aaaaall of this with a grain of salt, obviously)
The drones don’t need to be aliens to possibly be surveying nukes. That’s also something that China probably already did, because knowing where the nukes are is important.
The final possibility is that its all made up. The US isnt going for protection money, Belgium is just inventing this to justify increased military spending. I don’t think this is likely either because they can just increase military spending and no one really cares.
Has America finally exported Birds to the old world?
That makes sense.
Once again I have to remind everyone here that there is zero evidence for these claims. They have still shown us neither videos nor photos of these mysterious and elusive alleged drones.
And whenever there actually were drones it turned out they were being flown by some kids or amateur hobbyists.
It makes absolutely zero sense to try and pin this on Russia, let alone on China. This shit is completely pointless other than for the EU warmongers to create an atmosphere of tension and fear to justify more militarization, more cuts to social spending, and more billions of Euros to the arms industry.
There is so much hysteria and paranoia in Europe nowadays thanks to the mainstream media feeding us 24/7 propaganda stories of this sort and all sorts of absurd fearmongering about Russia that it would’t surprise me if people actually started to hallucinate drones.
I’d guess it’s probably Russia. They’re the world leader in such “gray zone” tactics and one should not underestimate them, they’ve had the head start on everyone and are quite Innovative here. Most European militaries haven’t focused on counter UAS in the same way that the US has, and Ukraine have done, and Russia is trying to do now with Ukrainian drone attacks increasing. There’s also different classes of UAS, that require different strategies for intercepting or neutralising. A quadcopter drone or winged unmanned aircraft weighing less than 10kg is very different from a Geran-2/Shahed 136, which is different to an MQ-9 Reaper.
I usually don’t comment on Chinese military stuff (because reasons) but it’s undeniable that Chinese drone tech is already far ahead of anyone at this point. Russia may have a head start but China’s industrial prowess together with their advanced AI and computer vision stuff is no joke.
China probably learned all the lessons from just watching how Russia and Ukraine fight it out without even being in the war. Remember both sides also used a lot of Chinese drones and surely they have accumulated vast amount of data points from the drone usage in action.
And China can and already does outproduce everyone, not just in drones, but in all aspects of military equipments, in just the last 2-3 years. If China truly wants to ramp up its weapons production, nobody would be able to compete with it.