Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
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.
view the rest of the comments
news
Welcome to c/news! Please read the Hexbear Code of Conduct and remember... we're all comrades here.
Rules:
-- PLEASE KEEP POST TITLES INFORMATIVE --
-- Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed. --
-- All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. --
-- If you are citing a twitter post as news please include not just the twitter.com in your links but also nitter.net (or another Nitter instance). There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ or archive them as you would any other reactionary source using e.g. https://archive.today/ . Twitter screenshots still need to be sourced or they will be removed --
-- Mass tagging comm moderators across multiple posts like a broken markov chain bot will result in a comm ban--
-- Repeated consecutive posting of reactionary sources, fake news, misleading / outdated news, false alarms over ghoul deaths, and/or shitposts will result in a comm ban.--
-- Neglecting to use content warnings or NSFW when dealing with disturbing content will be removed until in compliance. Users who are consecutively reported due to failing to use content warnings or NSFW tags when commenting on or posting disturbing content will result in the user being banned. --
-- Using April 1st as an excuse to post fake headlines, like the resurrection of Kissinger while he is still fortunately dead, will result in the poster being thrown in the gamer gulag and be sentenced to play and beat trashy mobile games like 'Raid: Shadow Legends' in order to be rehabilitated back into general society. --
As an outside observer, it sorta feels like after the useless "no more kings" protests that achieved absolutely nothing, and months of similar movements, combined with sporadic and more effective violent resistance being seen in some areas, that a large mass of people are getting very radicalised and seeing things clearly around what's going to need to happen to stop ICE. Every thread about it on /r/news seems to be dominated by liberals openly stating that violent resistance is necessary and good, and there's far less of the "you're giving them an excuse to crack down!!!" type shit flying around. This wasn't the case even a couple of months ago. The Democratic base is getting to the point where their calls for blood are making it into national news, to the horror of their leadership. Is this an accurate assessment?
Libs were saying Acab during the George Floyd uprisings until it turned into "defund the police" and then eventually just memory holed that whole situation . I could see a similar thing happening to ice
I certainly hope so. The "no kings" stuff was just a pressure release valve going off, to try and stop the people from demanding actual action, but if that isn't sufficient anymore we'll see them cracking down much harder on protests of any kind, making it clear that opposing the regime threatens your life, and a lot of these potentially radicalising liberals will just keep their heads down and their mouths shut. I would very much like to be proven wrong on that though.
Absent militant organising following a clear and politically coherent programme (I.e. a vanguard party) violent protests are still just a pressure release valve
I mean there's definitely going to be a radicalising effect by its very nature but I wouldnt put too much thought into reddit being any form of accurate barometer for liberal thirst for revolution
The stark difference in rhetoric (especially regarding Israel) from /r/worldnews and /r/news in spite of both subreddits being default subs (or formerly default?) really goes to show that you can completely ratfuck the system with the right mods
I don’t see a lot of violence happening by any side in the USA.
The social structures to promote a real resistance are simply gone, and have been eroded for decades. Without a real opposition the ice and their supporters will have nothing consistent to react against
I think there will be sporadic low key violence but nothing beyond a few individuals. And I think a lot Americans will be ashamed later as they just let these crimes happen, they will feel frustrated and become keyboard warriors.
Are you even looking? At all?
I don’t see dozens killed or wounded daily, due to political violence?
Well lemme tell you about this place called Gaza. And if a place overseas is too much for you, have you heard about the concentration camps on the US border? The prison system? Systemic police brutality? ICE raids? I dunno what to tell you other than open a news paper I guess
I was talking about the internal state of the USA and how it is not changing from its normal.
All the above what you said is true, but is not an increase of resistance from what is seen from years past.
Americans, as a group, cannot organize to resist; and this stops political violence from increasing
There was an armed ambush of ICE officers in Texas
Very rare, very ineffective. Just individualistic frustration that cannot deter groups of heavily armed, coordinated cops. Just one person who gets immediately domed or arrested with zero kills on their side doesn't lead to mass copycats and doesn't intimidate the other side into backing down or slowing down.
The realistic fact is they are using teams of at least 3, often up to a dozen heavily armed, trained people with the ability to call in back-up and who often are wearing some sort of body armor or have armored vehicles. To do real damage to groups like that the fact is it would require multiple coordinated assailants and the fact is the second you start talking about organizing for that kind of violence you're likely to get arrested or infiltrated by cops and then arrested. So I don't see that kind of coordinated violence arising frankly in the US given the conditions.
I think the most effective type of resistance we can expect given the conditions is not lethally violent but stridently resistant. Mass groups of rapid response protestors willing to hold the line and prevent them from fully carrying out raids or slow them down significantly and wearing them down in their job with tons of riot control type duty, people screaming at them, calling them fascists, child kidnappers, all the usual vigorous protest stuff, that kind of stuff and just making the job painful and not fun and not worth the travel benefits until morale starts sagging, people quitting, short staffing, half-hearted efforts to carry out their jobs, that type of thing.
Agreed with your analysis.
This is the necessary step to higher levels of militancy, too. The masses will not go from political inactivity to peaceful protest to armed revolutionary militias. They must advance through stages of struggle heightening in a dialectic with state repression. One of our key tasks as revolutionaries is to assist the masses at each of those steps, making their actions more coordinated and effective through our skills and organization while advancing a revolutionary line to keep them moving forward.
the most dangerous weapon a pig carries is their radio
Very rare though
Several of the liberals in my life are saying stuff I've never heard like some people are gonna have to get got.
Everyone loves to talk about how people need to get shot, nobody actually is prepared to help the people doing the shooting
But if someone does it, I think there's going to be a surprising amount of support for them. I suppose we've already seen that with Luigi, but it's interesting. In the very recent past, I think an overwhelming majority of the average liberal would criticize someone who relied on violence, but now... I'm not so sure.
It’s a single data point but radlib brother the other day said that the people in the Batista regime that Fidel and Che executed, absolutely got what they deserved. And “thugs like them”.
they actually dropped the "no more kings" slogan for the most pathetic reason imaginable lmao
What's the reason?
Probably didn't want to offend any European monarchs.
Not European. They stand in unwavering solidarity with Canada, which is a monarchy.
I've been seeing the same thing, even the local subreddit for my area which is very lib had a well upvoted comment suggesting PSL and organizing with people in an underground manner to counter ICE and Trump in general, on a post basically asking how to stop the nazis. And there were few suggestions to
I saw upvoted aside from some talking about midterms.