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.
I'm a bit surprised China would sell to Egypt - isn't Egypt solidly in the Western camp wrt military funding and the Israel project? Selling them advanced anti-air seems like they might as well just put it on display for American arms manufacturers in Virginia
China even sold weapons to Morocco and Saudi Arabia, they don't care, if you have the money they'll sell you
I’m not going to comment on the national security aspect nor am I qualified to do so, but from an economic perspective it makes sense if you understand what’s going on in China’s economy these days.
I’m not going to repeat many things I already said but surely you know that government finances aren’t doing so well since Covid, tax revenues actually decreased the last financial year and since China adheres to IMF guidelines, it is afraid of running large deficits and has to find ways to make up for the budgetary gap.
With consumption remaining dampened and failed to drive up corporate profits and return of investments (i.e. failing to drive wage growth for workers), and the expensive outstanding interest and debt servicing for many corporations and local governments, turning toward militarization helps alleviate two critical problems at the same time:
It is not a coincidence that I also noticed an increase in military recruitment ads in China. In fact, this is not even particular to China. The world is turning towards militarization as the global economic instability is amplified further under Trump’s erratic policies. The US, Europe and many other countries are also investing heavily into militarization.
The world is heading back to the 1930s once more with intense militarization that increases the risk of a global conflict, if not another world war. Lenin already commented on this a hundred years ago as soon as WWI ended.
I mean, this needs to happen if China is serious about dethroning the US or even just fending itself against US machinations. All anti-imperialist and counter-hegemonic countries need to militarize themselves (and nuke up if able) for the coming storm. The US will not give up the throne without a fight.
No disagreement there. We’re seeing precious resources being funneled into boosting defenses instead of creating robust safety nets for the society that improves living standards.
The empire does what it does best at creating chaos and regional instability, which amplifies the risk of a war and putting everyone involved under intense pressure, and the fallout of which will create new opportunities for multinational capital to harvest. If this is the strategic goal of the empire, it appears to be working.
Do you think the government might see military recruitment as one solution to drive down youth unemployment? Down here we don't even hide the fact that the military is a mass jobs programme, and in the US its the same thing.
I suppose I will beat a dead horse with the point I feel I repeat too often… when I read Torkil Laussen state that the principal contradiction today is between neoliberalism and sovereignty, I was skeptical. I thought the global north/south divide was more critical. But I stand corrected, I think Laussen is correct. Neoliberalism may be the dominant side of that contradiction right now, but it seems that this contradiction is also resolving itself far quicker than I had expected. Neoliberalism is dead, it’s only a matter of time before it is replaced. At the moment, as you said, it seems like we’re going back to the 1930s and that style of inwardness. But the world is dialectical, and what emerges out of this contradiction will no doubt be something entirely different.
And it’s interesting to me with Trump’s tariffs, while it certainly appears to be the act of a singular person, I feel this actually is yet another example of “men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please”. I don’t think 20 or even 10 years ago, Trump would have been able to get away with it. But he can now, not necessarily because congress is weak, but because material conditions have eroded the neoliberal grip on the world. Throwing up tariffs is a natural result of neoliberalism weakening. If not Trump, some other president would be instituting some form of increased tariffs or other inward-facing measures.
The systems China is comfortable selling to countries like Egypt or some Gulf Country in the future are systems they have domestic evolutions or replacements of, different and superior to a significant enough degree. Inferior to stuff the US has probably as well. As such they most likely judge whatever info america can obdain as non vital to their security and not some advantage for the americans. You cant avoid selling stuff to countries who do close buisness with the US MIC either way, that isnt a deal breaker even for Russia's relatively modern system exports.
I don’t think Egypt as being in the western camp so much as walking a tightrope.
This sale helped Chinese soft power as much as its defense industry
Russia also sold their most advanced air defence system at the time, the S-300VM/V4, to Egypt from 2014-2017. An S-300V4 battery is more expensive than S-400, over double the price if I remember correctly. The S-300V and S-300P systems are completely different systems, despite sharing a similar name.
The only foreign operators of the S-300V4/VM are Egypt and Venezuela. Ukraine operates the S-300V1 variant from Soviet era stockpiles. China has their own version, known as HQ-18 or HQ-29, though HQ-29 could be a different system.
Can not gain much intelligence. Principle of operation for S-300 is known already to all. Specific detail of radar and missile could be learned but not simply from looking. Must reverse engineer with Egypt knowing. Then will only learn this information for export radar and export missile.