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:
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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...
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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%.
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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
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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Article
I guess the Left-Wing Pro-Military SocDems won against the Right-Wing SocDems.
One thing that always seemed odd to me about Suriname politics is that almost every party is nominally some variety of SocDem, and they have like a dozen of them.
Yeah, thats a bit like Dominican Republic. All three main parties are social democrat, but the Modern Revolutionary Party is the Right-Wing SocDem party, the People's Force/Popular Force is the Left-Wing SocDem Party, and the Dominican Liberation Party is the old SocDem party with both Left and Right factions inside it.
In Suriname's case Progressive Reform Party is basically a right-wing liberal SocDem, Pro-USA party. And the National Democratic Party being the left-wing SocDem, more Pro-China/Anti-USA party.
I know Suriname was basically kicked out by the dutch due to fiscal reasons, but what its like currently?
Suriname and Guyana basically get zero media attention by other South American countries, except when Venezuela decides to annex the underdeveloped Essequibo region. Suriname basically only developed his costal region, they have some good soccer players (some of whom played on the Netherlands national team), and Brazil, Cuba and the Netherlands gives them weapons and trains their soldiers.
They also have some border conflict with Guyana, and Suriname really doesn't seem to like Guyana at all because of this. I think recently Suriname closed it's own embassy in Guyana bc of some conflict over the murder of a girl. They were ruled by a Pro-China/Pink Tide goverment which was led by the former left-wing military dictator of Suriname, Desi Bouterse. But after he lost the 2020 election the country begun taking loans from the IMF and there was some civil unrest due to how poorly the right-wing socdem goverment have been handling the economy.
What does pro military mean in this context? There have been plenty of left wing military coups. If the military leaders are left wing then being pro military is fine.
The National Democratic Party is a party created by former members and supporters of the left-wing military government of Suriname (1980 - 1988, 1990 - 1992). The military took control in a violent coup in 1980, when they overthrew the liberal government of Johan Ferrier (who had been governor of the colony for many years), and the junta quickly established ties with Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, Grenada.
Then, the United States and the Netherlands started to pressure Desi Bouterse (the de facto leader of Suriname, much like in Panama, which was also a left-wing military regime, in which civilians assumed the role of president, but the real heads of state were military), and there was an internal conflict between the government and some guerrillas that lasted until 1992.
Desi Bouterse tried to return to power through a military coup in 1990, but it lasted only one year and he fled the country. He was finally able to return to power democratically in 2010, until he lost the 2020 elections and again the opposition decided to prosecute him because of US accusations that he had links with drug trafficking. And he died in 2024.