Image (source here) is of a section of the Yarlung Zangbo river, which forms the deepest canyon on the planet.
The idea of doing any sort of general preamble for China is a little absurd given how ubiquitous they are in economics and politics, so I'm just going to hop right in to a recent news item of interest: China is working on the construction of an enormous new hydropower project in Tibet (@[email protected] had brought this up just before the last news mega ended).
This project (consisting of, I believe, five dams) will be overall three times larger than the Three Gorges Dam, will cost $167 billion, and will supply 70 GW (by itself more power than several significant countries generate). There are, of course, meaningful concerns regarding concerning environmental damage, but helping to avert catastrophic climate change seems worth it. The news coming out of the clean energy sector of China has getting only more encouraging over the last few years, even as the fully neoliberalized Europe and America descend into climate skepticism and refuse to adequately fund projects that could avert the worst of climate change.
Geopolitically, given recent India-China tensions (for example, sending Pakistan the equipment to shoot down Indian jets, as well as run-of-the-mill border tensions) one expects India to not receive the news very well, as the river upon which the dam is being constructed proceeds to flow into Arunachal Pradesh. But from what I understand of the Indian hydrological situation (which is, admittedly, not much), I don't think enough of the water in India comes from the river for China to hypothetically cause any kind of water shortages in India - the monsoons seem to supply plenty of freshwater all by themselves. Nonetheless, as with all Chinese news, wild fearmongering abounds.
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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.
Armenia to cede control of Zangezur Corridor to US: Report
Nikol Pashinyan is the biggest fucking cuck in the history of mankind
My heart breaks for the future of the Armenian people under this fucking imbecile.
It's amazing. Azerbaijan fucked the Armenians over Nagorno Karabakh, apparently the parliament has had some shit for wanting to join or not join the EU, and they are still bending over to the West by rejecting russian aid.
Damn, that's a pretty big deal
And a lot of it is happening because of the recent rift in relations between Russia and Azerbaijan, which started with Russia shooting down an Azerbaijani civilian airliner on Christmas last year and issuing a non apology. Then the person in the Russian military in charge of the Pantsir S1 system that shot down the airliner sent a hand written note to the investigation team confessing it, then there was mutual police raids in Azerbaijan and Russia, and how the leader of Azerbaijan is publicly supporting Ukraine, and the Azerbaijani embassy in Ukraine got bombed. As far as geopolitical own goals go, this is a big one. Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia were never great, but now Azerbaijan has abandoned all pretenses and is fully in the pro western camp.
If Russia and Azerbaijan are fighting, why is Armenia pivoting to the west? Isn't this their chance to retake the disputed territory with Russian help?
Russia ain't helping lol
The US has many more pokers to put in the fire they've built around Russia and for that matter in the way of China's B&R. This is just the start of a grab for central Asia to further box in and isolate Russia, to do the same with Iran (and ultimately bring that state down), and to use this access plus hegemony over the middle east to have a complete land blockade over any possible path for the Chinese belt and road through to Africa and Europe (save through Russia but given the furthest east EU members are the most deranged anti-Russia fascists they'll hold the line in blocking entry from there). That locked down the US and NATO navies and air forces need only hold strategic transit points in global waterways to effectively blockade China. Diego Garcia, control of the Suez via regional proxies and the US fleet nearby and zionist regime support, seizing control of Panama, locking Greenland and the arctic states into a NATO alliance so they can block northernly routes. This is setting up a chessboard for the showdown which will not be confined to the SCS but leave China the option of fighting a world war against a well entrenched, well resourced, established logistics having, force multipliers via many vassal states NATO led by the US or being relegated to being an east Asian regional power at best while the west locks the rest of the world in with it and its markets. That's the plan. I don't see the small actors doing anything but acquiescing to the US saber-rattling and China isn't going to act until it's forced to.
You mean literally the only thing china actually intends to do?
the USSR was a highly sophisticated economy with enormous resources that was effectively blockaded, the concept is sound. But all China needs to do is play a little dirty and they can undermine basically all the US-aligned pawns they'd need to make it a reality. You'd need a battalion and a handshake with Russia to coup any of the Central Asian republics, leveraging Chinese investments and infrastructure in the way "China is imperialist" people say will create more holes.
Also having Russia on-side, if they can cooperate is a massive difference from USSR encirclement
I mean I agree with the premise that the differences make the project DOA but we're well past the point that the western leaders consider the consequences for the public (& business) to outweigh the necessity for confrontation. It's going to happen barring economic collapse or political revolution in the US