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
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.
And now for some comic relief:
Fraudster made £550,000 selling fake 'Scottish-grown tea'
Prosecutors said he created the "CV of a fantasist" - claiming among other things that he was a multi-millionaire, a polymer scientist, a former bomb disposal expert and had invented the "bag for life".
He also claimed to have developed a "special biodegradable polymer" that would make the tea plants grow in half the usual time. The court was told it looked like a black bin liner.
The far-right Freedom Party, FPÖ was excluded from government despite its election victory, with the center-right ÖVP (20%), center-left SPÖ (20%), and liberal NEOS (9%) instead forming an unusual three-party coalition. The governing parties have lost ground since the election, while the Greens (9%) and Communists (4%) gained slightly as opposition voices.
The FPÖ's rise reflects voter dissatisfaction with the current coalition, which has struggled to please anyone. By sidelining the election winner, the government inadvertently strengthened the far-right's appeal. Meanwhile, the stability of NEOS and modest gains for smaller parties suggest fragmentation rather than a decisive shift. With the next election not until 2029, Austria's political landscape appears increasingly polarized between a weakening centrist bloc and a growing protest vote on the far right.
So basically the same thing everywhere. The center cannot hold.
The KPÖ is doing great, this only elevates the failure of Die Linke/BSW to follow their strategy.
What is their strategy exactly? I remember reading a jacobin interview with a KPO guy saying they looked at the alentejo region in portugal, where the communist party holds some local governments, as an example of what they themselves do, so I assume it's basically competent local management along with plenty of ties with voluntary associations, except the KPO leads Graz which is the second largest city in Austria.
They're also lightly represented in 2 regional parliaments (which I think shows regionalization, something that it's been discussed in portugal for decades would benefit leftists since it's easier to get a leg in), so I assume they're strategy is basically leveraging satisfaction with their performance in local government, as well as the lack of a far-left in austria, into national parliament?
Either way they need to hit the 4% treshold to make it in, so they'd need 2% more than last year when they were also polling at 4% and got 2%.
Canada is looking to join major European military buildup
Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled he hopes Canada will be able to sign on to a major European defence rearmament plan by July 1, a step toward reducing the country's dependency on the United States for weapons and munitions.
Remember when people wanted canada to join the eu?
Wang Yi attends signing of convention establishing global mediation body in Hong Kong – CGTN
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday attended the signing ceremony of the Convention on the Establishment of the International Organization for Mediation in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Very good article/piece on the Pakistan-India conflict that took place earlier this month.
Highly recommend reading this if you're wondering what happened during the four to five days of war/conflict. It's a good overview of the timeline of events, lines up with most previous reporting and observations, well sourced and cited. I just finished reading the entire thing.
The article doesn't come to this conclusion, but it's a clear sign that RFK/his staff are using AI to write reports.
The Guardian: RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ report found to contain citations to nonexistent studies
The 73-page “Make America healthy again” report – which was commissioned by the Trump administration to examine the causes of chronic illness...includes references to seven studies that appear to be entirely invented, and others that the researchers say have been mischaracterized.
One paper was claimed to show that talking therapy was as effective as psychiatric medication, but the statistician Joanne McKenzie said this was impossible, as “we did not include psychotherapy” in the review.
The sleep researcher Mariana G Figueiro also said her study was mischaracterized, with the report incorrectly stating it involved children rather than college students, and citing the wrong journal entirely.
There isn't a likely cause for a report to contain these types of errors unless an LLM was used to write it.
Grok based public health policy
Maybe this is why Altman and his pals are hyping AI as omnitient and dangerous…. It’s like a super-Wikipedia. A font of all knowledge. The most perfect tool to control public knowledge.
the funny thing about wikipedia is that it has a small army of state sponsored posters and even that can be dwarfed by the overwhelming commitment of one nationalist constantly editting obscure history pages and mischaracterizing academic sources
AI on the other hand has a small army of underpaid moderators who take psychic damage for a living trying to make sure ChatGPT doesn't tap into the yankee zeitgeist and starts using slurs. plus the very recent episode of grok being used in such a stupid, hamfisted way that it started simulating calls for help against elon musk's desire to make it go against its 'be truthful' directive and spread the lie of white genocide
as far as propaganda tools go it has a lot of potential but i'm not sure the powers that be know how to employ it just yet. propaganda on the internet so far has been mostly about astroturfing and crowdsourced anger. now you have bots talking to bots and LLMs telling people to eat rocks for the mineral content
the real danger comes from the fact that AI will allow people to rationalize whatever they want. grandpas share and talk about obviously fake videos all day on their social media because it confirms their political biases. as soon as AI oligarchs learn to be at least as subtle as a PragerU video, we are doomed
Does anyone know any good books about geopolitics, recent history, political currents etc. in the middle east?
Sorry if it's not appropriate to ask here, please remove if necessary
Our comrade LargePenis wrote an excellent effort post on modern Shia identity:
2 recommendations.
The guy from the dig did a 19 episode series interviewing historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti on middle east radicalism in the 20th century (leading into the 21st), which ranges from socialism to arab nationalism, it's called Thawra which means revolution or revolt.
There's also a book I recently read called The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East by a bourgeois historian but nevertheless I found it informative. The main thesis of the author is that what shaped the middle east was rivalry between arab, turk and persian polities which form ultra-sunni, sunni, and shia blocs respectively. The first half is mostly about historical islamic polities and the sunni-shia split, then the second half is a general overview of each middle eastern country basically
Thanks, will check them out!
Tbh the thesis of the book sounds pretty idealist and reductive to me, even if the overview and history might be solid. I was mostly asking for a lib friend and don't know if they will be able to put things into context properly. As @[email protected] said, there's so much more to each country. Like if before the Iranian revolution the roles were flipped and much of the Arab world was anti-imperialist while Iran had a puppet regime, how does that fit in? Are these sectarian differences or just fleeting political alliances? What are the materialist forces? Are those kinds of questions considered?
if before the Iranian revolution the roles were flipped and much of the Arab world was anti-imperialist while Iran had a puppet regime, how does that fit in
Then there would still be a rivalry between the arab-aligned and persian-aligned polities probably, but it probably wouldn't be ultra-sunni vs shia anymore and the arab bloc would probably not be centered around Saudi Arabia.
Are these sectarian differences or just fleeting political alliances? What are the materialist forces? Are those kinds of questions considered?
I don't remember completly but the point of the book is to deflate the explanation that sectarian differences in islam are the cause of everything by going through the historical make-up of the region country by country up to modern day and the development of 3 different civilizational histories and cultures that the 3 big players draw from.
tariq ali has kinda concise articles in nlr (he has books, but i have not read them). the currents seems too wild to unite in single book, egypt is very different from lebanon and very different from saudis yet again. different colonial histories, different material opportunism in 20th century by them
Thank you, I'll take a look!
Anti Stalin though
also try to block more of buildings/background (if it's yours that is)
Appreciate it,but I already posted that angle multiple times,so cats out of the bag on that one
Never too late to start being cautious or say it’s from your local chat 
Btw, did the election thingy gone alright, seems like nothing happened (and fash guy retired?)
Triumphing for the oppressed Palestinian people and their Mujahideen, and in rejection of the crime of genocide perpetrated by the Zionist enemy against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a military operation targeting Lod Airport, Israeli named Ben Gurion Airport, in the occupied area of Yaffa, using a hypersonic ballistic missile. The operation successfully achieved its goal, thanks to allah, forcing millions of occupying Zionists to flee to shelters and halting air traffic at the airport.
The Yemeni Armed Forces assure all our faithful and struggling Yemeni people that, with Allah's help, they will continue to fulfill their religious, moral, and humanitarian duty toward our people in Palestine until the aggression against them stops and the siege is lifted.
They will also, with trust in Allah, confront every Israeli aggression against our country with further supportive operations for the oppressed Palestinian people, including the continued ban on Israeli air traffic to and from Lod Airport.
Sana'a, Dhu al-Hijjah 2, 1446 AH May 29, 2025 AD
Issued by the Yemeni Armed Forces
Infinite support for the heroic people of Yemen
https://masarbadil.org/en/2025/05/5860/
"Rodriguez’s operation not only revealed the limits of liberal discourse; it also restored the value of direct action as a mobilizing and agitational tool, placing everyone before their responsibilities. The broad popular response to this operation, particularly among youth and within Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities, reveals that popular sentiment remains aligned with armed struggle and a revolutionary position on Palestine. The battle being waged by the Palestinian people is not confined to the West Bank and Gaza, but extends and expands globally within the framework of revolutionary struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and reactionary and fascist regimes"
A Collapsing Mountain has Buried the Village of Blatten. The River Lonza is currently making a new Lake to the north of the Landslide until he has found its Course , ruining the few houses that the Landslide didnt touch. No Injuries.
Edit: Update : one person is missing it seems. + Video of the village 5 months ago + Video of the landslide
Update 2 : The Next Mountain slide will come down soon and its will be even larger
i think the landslide was triggered by the glacier collapsing 
yep. and apperantly we are not done .. mountain is still losing rocks and 2 other rock formations might fall - as well as the Landslide is now daming the river & creating a new lake.
I wonder if its related to that disappearing lake in south tyrol.
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