back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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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.
Weapons grade copium: EU to demand technology transfers from Chinese companies
China truly is a miracle. Reading this even 15 years ago would seem outlandish
the progress brings me hope. I am curious how long the press will read like this. IRL ppl don't really seem to care where knowledge or material is coming from as long as the price is decent and the quality is good. Also, anecdotally, certain niche industrial machines (way less common than anything related to cars or solar panels) that I'm familiar with are made by companies all over the world. However, Chinese manufacturers make machines that are identical (operationally and I can imagine materially) to machines made by American, Italian, German or Turkish companies for 1/10 or 1/5 the price. The barrier simply seems to be communication. Chinese companies' sales teams do reach out via email in English, however (I'm told) they don't seem to have a strong presence at trade shows. So many little things make it plain to see that everyone besides the bourgeoisie would have it better in a world that cooperated JDPON style
You can already see how the press tries to turn people against the so-called “origin” of a technology they don’t like (I put “origin” in quotes because innovations belong to the workers, not a place).
Just look at how the U.S. tried to turn people against tiktok and, to a lesser extent, Chinese EVs.
i'm not entirely certain about the general feeling of Chinese EVs other than I know for a fact that 1. we can't get them in the US for a variety of artificial reasons and 2. my city definitely could not currently support enough charging stations if even maybe 100,000 drivers switch to a cheap EV
LOL €1bn. Biden just throws around $10bn to random semiconductor companies like it is nothing, why would China export all those jobs and IP for basically nothing.
if CIA doesn't like the country, you call it a regime
the evil Tougher Trade regime
Europeans really can't comprehend that they aren't the center of the world anymore.
A quiet fear has taken root in my chest, what if......what if they fuckin comply? What if some western university incubated neo-classical egregore worms it's way through the leadership of the party and presses the goddamn GO button on this shit?
Who cares if they do. The advantage China has is the economy and scale and vertical intergration they have build in those sectors. There isnt actualy some super secret sauce there like what asml holds with lithography. Top EU universities ,physics, engineering and chemistry teams already now almost every development the chinese put into work for batteries and EVs. It would do fuck all to help the EUs industry actualy be competitive . Now and even more so in 10-20 years. Either eay the momment china does tech share with idk Brazil or Mexico when they open some plant there the west gets everything through industrial espionage as well
China is genuinely leading technological development in a few fields
More than a few. But that doesnt mean they cracked some big physics or engineering problem the EU scientists are in the dark about or that these sectors are taking advantage of inventions or breakthroughs the EU isnt aware about in a theoretical level. There are 100 small things (that arent exactly tech secrets) that manifest into a large competitive advantage through a 100 well oiled layers of state planning, "free market forces(blehhh...but yeah)", R&D, subsidies , investment, raw material access and refinement capacity, human capital capcity, supply chain logistics and intergration, AI intergration in manufacturing, automation etc. The EU, or the US for that matter, wouldnt be able to replicate this even if China put 100.000 EU engineers and scientists into forced training camps for years
Like the EU should be happy if it even exists in 10 years, the RnD sector has been under austerity in almost every country for a while now.
China simply outcompetes Europe now. There’s pretty much nothing to worry about. America handcuffed Europe to itself in order to facilitate complete economic and political subordinance, and as a result European industry no longer has the ability to even attempt what you are worried about. The power of capital in China has been thoroughly (though not completely) whipped into place and nowhere does it approach the power of the state itself.
I thought China stole all technology from Europe so why do they need their own technology?
lol EU thinks they're still a top dog for negotiations when they're at the lowest of the low.
meh i think it's a fair ask although i don't think they're in a position to demand such.
I agree, but the wording is so tiresome “regime”, “demand”. I also think the way it’s worded the article suggests that Chinese imports are higher polluting(?)
This could have easily been framed as cooperative and mutually beneficial
"We would help your crumbling industry but not with that attitude" -