this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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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.


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[–] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 23 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Satellite imagery is pretty much useless here, as is Israeli testimony, so I really don't think there's anything to be said one way or another about Hezbollah's current state. Both optimists and pessimists are on equal ground.

My impression is that they're reconsolidating and regrouping after their losses, getting their post-Syria-collapse supply lines solidified, making sure their devices don't have bombs in them, etc - but they can't just take the next five years out to do this or whatever or 2.4 million people will be dead, and Lebanon will be bombed all the while. There's a time limit here.

For the record, I strongly doubt that their missile stockpiles are massively depleted, and I take no stock in reports that Israel has actually meaningfully destroyed their missile arsenals because every single claim that they have ever made that such and such group are "defeated" or "disarmed" or "out of power" is immediately contradicted by facts on the ground (e.g. after 600 days, they've probably said Hamas has been defeated dozens of times, and yet it is still absolutely functioning and killing Israeli soldiers to this very day and the US and Israel are still trying to engage in ceasefires with them, which is odd for a group that they claim doesn't have power anymore).

I have been trying to find information in regards to the current states of Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Iraq, etc, but such analysis is becoming annoyingly scarce. I'm not even talking "good news" or "bad news", I'd be perfectly willing to accept well-researched analysis from (obviously non-Western) experts that concluded that the current stage of Resistance is over and Israel has temporarily won - but there's just not really anything from anybody I know of that goes into this aspect at all. The focus is on the civilian aspect, which is 100% understandable because it's so horrifying and getting ever more important as Israel continues to starve and bomb them. It just means that finding information about what the forces in opposition to Israel are currently doing (even in a general sense) is now almost impossible.

Like, does that "joint command room" thing between the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Iraq, and Iran still exist, post-Sinwar and post-Nasrallah? Is there still a regional coordination where Yemen is continuing to apply pressure while Hezbollah is recovering, or are Yemen's actions now more-or-less isolated from the rest of the Resistance (though they could absolutely still be quite effective!)? Does the Resistance have an overarching plan for future actions against Israel, or are we in the licking-wounds stage? I've found no answers to these questions in the last few months. Though I haven't "lost hope" or anything, because my analysis has been guided by Marxism, dia-mat, anti-colonial theory and conflicts such as Vietnam, Algeria, and previous stages of anti-Israel war like 2006 Lebanon, not mere optimism.

What I will say is that, historically, it's enormously difficult to defeat national resistance groups; really the only way to do it is to just kill literally everybody, which the European colonial powers couldn't really do because they needed the population for labor, but Israel is trying to do by e.g. replacing Palestinian workers with others from abroad so that every single Palestinian in the country can be killed/displaced without the resulting economic collapse, and it might work if Hezbollah, Iraq, and Iran continue to hibernate. But that same total-civilian-destruction won't really be achievable for Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. Given Western imperial decay is inevitable, there is literally no physical method by which Israel could achieve a permanent victory in the region - even nuclear war would result in their own destruction vis-a-vis a full-scale Iranian conventional response with thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of missiles aimed at every power station, desalination plant, military base, and port in Israel. What this conflict is about is "how many people will Israel be allowed to murder before they collapse," and I had hoped that it would be less than a million, but now I'm less sure.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

but Israel is trying to do by e.g. replacing Palestinian workers with others from abroad so that every single Palestinian in the country can be killed/displaced without the resulting economic collapse

While I don’t doubt Israel is genuinely wanting to do this, I think in reality it will not be possible. There are first the logistical challenges of it. To make it work would likely cost significantly more, and capitalism can’t really abide by that. But just as important… Israel is an incredibly racist society. They may hate Arabs and Palestinians but how will they react when the government tries to bring in half a million Indians to do the work Palestinians were doing? I would argue on some level Israeli society accepts Palestinian workers because they see it as putting them “in their place”. But having non-white guest workers, in some way I can see that being potentially even more explosive.

[–] Boise_Idaho@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean, that's how most settler colonies try to resolve their fundamental contradiction. There's a tension between providing the final solution to the Indigenous question and using the Indigenous population as slave labor, so past settler colonies resolved this contradiction through Black slaves. This way, the Indigenous can be ethnically cleansed while the free labor is provided by Black slaves.

[–] Sinisterium@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

The import of enslaved africans caused a thousand different issues, The Hysteria post-Haiti's independence, the whole civil war and the lead up to it, the Haiti emigrations vs Liberia, The New South. it took until the 1910s for the usa to even begin thinking about integrating black americans as part of the state.

[–] KnownUnknownKnower@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago

Idk about the war room but they are still in contact as of yesterday

Iran Hosts Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Reaffirms Backing for Gaza

Iranian adviser Ali Akbar Velayati met with Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials in Tehran, reaffirming Iran’s support for Palestinian resistance and calling “Israel’s” recent defeat in Gaza “irreparable.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives praised Iran’s backing, vowing continued resistance against Israeli efforts to displace Palestinians.

https://t.me/alakhbar_english/21983