Image is of Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro walking together at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2022, sourced from this article.
Ordinarily, I avoid straying into the American domestic situation, but the government shutdown appears to be continuing into increasingly harmful territory. If the situation is not resolved, soon tens of millions of Americans will lose food assistance, and already millions of federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay. To those not in the know, this situation has essentially stemmed from the Democrats refusing to sign off on the Republicans’ plan to substantially shrink Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which would eventually result in tens of millions losing healthcare coverage and tens if not hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
To be clear, though, the Democrats have not exactly been paragons of healthcare: they not only oppose plans to make affordable healthcare a right (in defiance of wide popular opinion), but also do their part to maximize suffering. Biden’s policies during the pandemic ensured at least one million people died, and millions of children lost public healthcare coverage. We may never know the true toll, as the US decided that simply ceasing to report on a problem means that the problem no longer exists.
In other news, over the last couple weeks, the US has expanded their hostility against Venezuela by also including Colombia in their ire, and particularly the left-leaning leader, Petro. Both countries are now experiencing major economic and covert pressure by the US to try and cause regime change. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela and is conducting a military training operation with Trinidad and Tobago, which Venezuela has warned may be the prelude to the long-awaited attack.
Additionally, the US is attempting to combat Chinese geopolitical interest in central America and the Caribbean by carrying out digital attacks and launching pressure campaigns against Chinese and pro-Chinese countries and organizations. Given China’s enormous economic weight, if central America were to break all ties with China, it would be a catastrophe for them; such decisions would only be made by outright compradors, and the resulting economic problems would make their reigns unpopular and, hopefully, brief.
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.
From reading the first half of this, it seems to be a think piece written from the interests of telecom companies: which misses the forest for the trees. The primary goal of the sanctions on Huawei was to eliminate their global market share on the smartphone market and thus remove them from the market and remove their primary source of revenue, to prevent them from overtaking Apple. This has largely succeeded without the need for export controls or harsher measures proposed by the article, and was done by banning Huawei from using Google play services/Google play Store, excluding them from the Android ecosystem in that respect, before Huawei had the time to build their own ecosystem. I’ll explain more:
To understand this, we must look at Huawei smartphones pre 2019. These were Android devices (running Huawei’s own version of Android called EMUI) that used Huawei’s own silicon/system on a chip(SoC) called Kirin. They were highly innovative and would offer better performance and specifications than the competition (in Apple and Samsung) for cheaper prices. For instance, Huawei made the first mainstream smartphone with a multi camera setup on the back, the P9. Such a feature is ubiquitous on smartphones today. Me and my friends had some of these Huawei phones, they were great. They even offered free bootloader unlocking.
As a result, the market reflected this and Huawei’s global market share grew and grew. Huawei were making better products than the competition, and their market share reflected this. Capitalism as intended, right? However, this presented a threat to Apple. Huawei was making quality devices, with their own SoC, their own version of Android, and were set to explode on the global scene. Huawei then started talking about moving away from Android onto their own operating system globally, and prototyping it (I tested it on an unlocked device, it was very good). It all came to a head in 2019 when Huawei, for the first time, overtook Apple in terms of global market share for an extended period. This time, more stable than previous blips. If this trend were to continue, Huawei would be the king of the global smartphone market, Apple would be dethroned, and China would be in control of the global smartphone market, with Huawei smartphones running their own operating system (with backwards compatibility with Android Apps through emulation!!!), their own SoCs, and their own ecosystem. Very different to Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi (until now).
This inflection point, Huawei overtaking Apple in terms of global market share, forced the US to act (from their perspective). What the US did, unfortunately, was very smart. The sanctions effectively banned Huawei from doing business with Google, which meant that Huawei Android phones couldn’t use Google Play Services. No Google account, no Play Store (main Android app Store), no Gmail, no Google maps. Huawei was effectively banned from the Android ecosystem. By acting quickly, before Huawei had time to roll out their own OS and build their own ecosystem, the US crushed Huawei’s global market share, which has not recovered. In effect, Huawei lost what they had built over a decade on the smartphone market, in months. No one wanted to buy an Android phone essentially locked out of Android. (I know Google sucks and alternatives exist, I’m talking about mainstream users here).
Now where does that leave us today? Apple is the global leader in smartphone market share and sales, even ahead of Samsung. Apple is set to make over $400 billion in revenue this year, and made $394 billion last year. Huawei, according to this article, had a revenue of $124 billion last year. A difference of $270 billion over a single year. Without the sanctions, this could have well been the reverse, with Huawei making $400 billion in revenue this year, and Apple relegated to mainly the US market in effect. Huawei has done what they planned to do, built their own ecosystem, on smartphones with their own OS and their own SoCs. But because of the actions taken by the US, this is not the world leading ecosystem and product it was built to be, relegated to the Chinese market and various “enclaves” across the world where Huawei still sells well. Again, without the sanctions, we could be living in the opposite world, with Huawei being the world leader and Apple relegated to the USA and enclaves. That was a very real possibility and we were on course for such a scenario.
Now this article is very correct in it’s points on the telecom industry. But, I’m sure that the US will take this trade. It’s not ideal from the US perspective by any means and the US would prefer to be world leader in every market. But, given the choice, I’m sure that the US will take Apple having $400 billion in annual revenue, in exchange for their telecoms companies losing $33 billion in sales over a period of 3-4 years to China. That’s a trade they’d take any day. Apple takes priority here because the global market for smartphones is so big, and the USA moved to protect Apple. From Huawei’s perspective, they’ve lost out on being the market leader in smartphones, losing out on a potential $270 billion extra revenue annually, for the consolation prize of $33 billion in telecoms equipment sales over 3-4 years.
The new question is what will happen to Xiaomi? They have a substantial global market share, and have made their first flagship SoC this year. Before that, they were using SoCs from companies like Qualcomm. If Xiaomi continues on this course, will they face the same sanctions as Huawei?
Thank you comrade, I appreciate your insights on this
I wish we lived in the world with Huawei as the leading smartphone manufacturer instead of Apple. Would’ve been pretty cool.
I expect networking standards to diverge, to block other nations from selling equipment in others. I think we see this already happening with phone modems. The internet will split again.
Phone modems have always had regional differences in standards as far as I’m aware, it’s part of why Samsung smartphones sold in the US used a different SoC to those on the global market. Samsung phones in the US use Qualcomm, and on the global market they used Samsung’s in house Exynos. However that’s starting to change, with both universal Exynos and Qualcomm releases.
But a future split in other areas is still very possible.
I haven’t read the piece but Huawei also makes network equipment not just handsets so the sanctions affected both regular consumers and telcos themselves
Yeah, and the sanctions largely failed in the telecommunications industry, and the article makes a very good point there. But the sanctions were far more effective in regards to smartphones and tablets.
And they can’t buy 5g chips from Qualcomm because of the sanctions.