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.
https://x.com/Zigmanfreud/status/1942426170823201065
What even is the premise of the show?
I was only familiar with their shortform content, like reels on instagram or youtube shorts, but I guess they make an actual podcast too. The shortform content regularly gets a 1m plus views, so I think it’s pretty popular among lib-left (and left) zoomers and milennials
The shortform stuff is mostly comedy and jokes. Two people on the subway, one person gives their take (often a semi-ironic/absurd but defensible thing), the host agrees or disagrees, and the guest explains/justifies it. They talk into Metro cards like they’re mics. It’s entertaining stuff imo, a bit sloppish but not a total void.
Imagine Kamala trying to explain in 1-3 minutes why bacon is a spice in an attempt to show that she is funny and relatable
this dude is so full of himself.
ya dude, the interview on the show(?) that literally no one has ever heard of outside of the freshmen Barnard dorms, the dnc had to make sure that that interview didn’t see the light of day.
Yeah, sometimes it’s funny, but mostly it is an ignorant New Yorker interviewing celebrities who, also either being or mostly residing in NY, are also incredibly ignorant of things outside of NY.
Like I saw one person confidently state that Mobile, Alabama is a ‘small town’, when it is nearly 200,000 people. It has been genuinely over a decade since I lived in a city of over 100,000 people, and I know the difference between those and ‘small towns’.
her take was bacon as a spice, which says something about how she feels about Americans
I mean…
At least 50,000 dollars was spent on focus groups in the DC area with the most off putting cretins on the planet to generate the opinion “bacon is a spice” which amounts to a tepid pop culture joke from 2011.
DNC is so behind on meme culture they are just now catching up to the narwhal bacons at midnight and epic meal time
BACON STRIPS x32
That was one thing that the host specifically mentioned, but if it was just that one thing, they would just cut it out. But they pulled the entire interview.
That is why Kamala didn’t go on Rogan. What would she say in an one hour open format interview? How she likes Joe Biden? And the DNC couldn’t kill that interview, Rogan would just publish it.
I wonder what the rest of her takes were…
“The worst thing about Donald Trump’s policies is they weren’t effective enough”
I could totally see that. Especially if she joined while she was doing that pivot to the right, talking about his immigration policies were too weak and he’d be too easy on Iran or whatever lol.