Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.
To be honest, I don't have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn't already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a "news roundup" preamble for this week.
As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:
-
The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia's shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don't think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won't achieve anything, so, moving on...
-
The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China's internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China's number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China's AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
-
Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon's doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.
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
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
(Zionist outlet)
Ryanair cancels 200,000 plane tickets to occupied Palestine after extending flight suspensions.
It's an effective strategy by Ansarallah; whether the missile is intercepted or not, I'd imagine it's still going to be an unacceptable risk to pretty much all airline companies. All they need to do is fire a missile there every week or so.
It depends on the airline, the operational risk they're prepared to take, and just how affected they are by delays caused by air raid sirens. Ryanair is a low cost airline that relies on quick turnarounds to make their business model work, having their planes circle the skies above Tel Aviv while the air raid sirens go off makes that infeasible, hence the extension to the cancellation of flights to Tel Aviv. Other airlines or groups can afford more flexibility in this regard, the low cost airlines are most affected, I think Wizz Air is one of the few low cost airlines to have resumed flights, I guess they're prepared to take the risk to exploit a gap in the market. This also leads to Israeli local airlines having a monopoly on these routes previously operated by low cost airlines, with elevated ticket prices. Most airlines still have cancelled their flights to Israel, but from the article OP posted:
Resumed flights to Tel Aviv:
Flight cancellations extended from June 8 to June 15:
Flight cancellations extended to July 31st:
Overall triggering the air raid sirens is an effective form of inflicting economic damage, but it requires the use of the most advanced missiles like Palestine-2 and Fattah-1 with exoatmospheric maneuvering, multiple Rezvan/Zulfiqar missiles (different from the Zulfiqar/Dezful/Qassem series, the Zulfiqar here is a Rezvan variant) have been launched and failed to trigger the air raid sirens as they got intercepted outside of Israeli airspace by Arrow 3, without any debris landing in Israel.
It also comes at an extremely high cost to Yemen, Sana'a International Airport is officially closed now after today's Israeli countervalue airstrikes and the loss of Yemenia Airlines leased Airbus A320-200 aircraft.
To understand why the airport is officially closed now and not after the previous airstrikes, we have to look at the structure of Yemenia's fleet. The previous Israeli airstrikes on Sana'a airport, took out three aircraft that were not in active use, but could be used, an Airbus A330-200, a Boeing 727, and what looks like an IL-76 transport aircraft, but the ID on the last one is unclear. ~~The A320 fleet was not damaged, despite initial reporting saying it was and many, including myself, mistook the A330 for an A320.~~
Correction: 2 A320s were also destroyed alongside the A330, the initial A320 fleet size was six, not four.
Yemenia operates four A320s, two that they own outright and purchased in 2011, and two that they lease and came to a lease agreement on in 2023. The leased aircraft fly out of Ansarallah/Houthi controlled Sana'a, the Yemenia owned aircraft operate out of the STC (UAE backed separatist group) controlled Aden. So after the previous Israeli airstrikes, Yemenia could keep operating out of Sana'a after the airport got hastily repaired, as the two aircraft carrying out flights from Sana'a were undamaged. Today however, one of those leased aircraft got destroyed by Israel in Sana'a. It's likely that the owner of the second leased aircraft has forbidden/grounded it from flying to Sana'a, fearing that would be destroyed as well. Thus, the airport cannot function unless Yemenia is prepared to send aircraft that they own to Sana'a, or work out new lease agreements for more planes with an owner prepared to risk their aircraft getting blown up by Israel.
The previous Sana'a International Airport reopening seemed more like a media stunt than anything else, with aircraft taking off from a hastily fixed runway (with the wreckage of destroyed aircraft visible in the background) and a makeshift terminal that looked like a local market. I didn't post about this reopening because I always feared that it would end this way, with Israel blowing up a recently used plane on the tarmac, given that this is a countervalue strike exchange and that's Israel's modus operandi at this point. I didn't want to be a downer or pessimist.
All this is to say that yes it's effective economic warfare by Ansarallah in Yemen against Israel, but it comes at the cost of committing to a countervalue strike exchange where the Israeli enemy can always inflict a high amount of damage.
Sorry for the infodump, this was supposed to be a short reply, believe it or not. But the information is needed to understand why the Sana'a airport is closed after today's airstrikes, but was reopened within a few days after the previous airstrikes.
I always appreciate the comprehensiveness of your posts. You are very knowledgeable.
Seconded
Increasing costs to maintain Israel. This includes companies too.
I think they or other analysts said as much about even the potential for attacks since it applies significant economic pressure
they should blow up all their passenger jets just like what israel did to them
Anyone/thing that includes Israel in Europe sets off the
Using the EBU definition of Europe