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.
There was some news a couple of days ago of China issuing 2 billion in USD denominated sovereign bonds that surprisingly was treated negatively or as some capitulation to the USD. I feel like this is quite different
I see this as creating a small triangular financing mechanism to help offload from the USD collectively with the central fulcrum being a facilitation of $ for ¥ swaps. The end result is global south nations pay down USD denominated liabilities & export resources to China earning RMB.
Simply put Gulf (and others) countries have too many dollars, China sells them these bonds, China uses these dollars to fund poor countries (investments, imports whatever), Poor countries use dollars to pay debt, Poor countries and gulf countries sell their natural resources to China in yuan then China sells its technology to these countries in yuan. Saudi flushes out $, China gains real resources, poor countries less poor, net negative for the volume of $ being outside of US borders. Meanwhile Chinese sovereign bond buyers are also using these bonds as collateral for Chinese tech & infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia and their respective home countries. For China it also represents a very slow conversion of excess USD and their own trade surpluses into physical commodities while creating demand for their own currency. These commodities will continue to rise in USD prices while falling in RMB prices. They will have to repay these bonds upon maturity eventualy but it will be with cheaper dollars as commodities reprice higher in tighter supply-constrained markets. So even in the long term there is another net loss of USD.
Another angle is that many coutries are facing double digit borrowing costs in USDs to rollover or service USD debts. China can stabilise these at rates almost identical to US Treasury rates , these bonds were issued at just 1 base point over UST! after all. Another net negative effect on dollar circulation and accumulation. It basicaly tries to flip the Dollar Milkshake Theory to its head. Could China have liquidated and used its UST reserves instead of this? Sure. But China actually values stability even for the hostile hegemon, so its maintaining/reducing its UST reserves slowly, whereas the needs of Global South for USD liquidity are becoming critical. This bridges that gap
There is something sickening about the way people jump at the chance to denigrate peripheral countries. Western sources suddenly regain all their credibility.
"Roasting" progressives & the mainstream press quickly turns into "very cool, Bloomberg is having a good day, I should repost this, it scans to me" and "AOC finally came to her senses". Well the latter has slowly crumbled but it was funny watching the Charlie Brown punt attempts from my armchair.
It reflects poorly on me but frankly I will enjoy watching the thread get more liberal as the topics move away from Israel and Ukraine. All that will be left are the kinds of people who pick each other apart over nothing. It was hard enough for people to get over the narratives of "Russian imperialism" and "anti-Zionist anti-semitism". Expect absolutely nothing from any Berniecrat-turned-JDPONer on any subject.
Really for most, faux third worldism is nothing more than a mask for disenchantment with the US public. Suddenly everyone believes the US is actually a democracy, fascism is popular with the underclass, and people are getting second jobs to "buy more treats", not to afford housing, driving, food, and other living expenses.
I try to use left sources whenever I can and I regularly use Michael' Roberts as he is the one that does the most accessible and frequent economic analysis on current events. We don't quote MSM very often for analysis but often just for the current event data or fact. MSM will lie and have a horrendous bias on reporting.
But if Reuters reports Chinese official data on unemployment or something quoting how is that a problem? Often MSM is the only source on other countries but as long as they're quoting official sources why do you care if its Reuters or AP?
If you're sitting here waiting for an explicitly Marxist professional/academic/journalist to tell you of news events then you'll post a comment a month maybe.
Here on the last week Russian food inflation where people were coping it was cherrypicking because it was MSM.
I was going to comment a much larger comment showing no actualy it is that bad. Here is readily available info from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on the current 2024 rising global food inflation.
The current Russia situation is reported by many official sources.
TASS
Rosstat latest data You can google translate yourself but the items are correct. Potatoes are 5% within a week you can reach the conclusion yourself. Картофель 104,68 - 167,43.
Yes the western MSM made a sensationalist headline.
No the reporting was indeed correct by all sources including the Russian government.
Some people want to do some extreme copium, yet if we said that Americans have to deal 10% food inflation in a year everyone would immediately agree its terrible and a doom scenario. Why is this not also true for neoliberal hellhole Russia?
The rest of my comment was going to be explaining why the Nabiullina/Russian CB is a piece of shit neoliberal in charge with no clue but it was too long as I'd have to explain why just mindlessly raising interest rates using shit phrases like "overheating" and "balanced growth" is just clown shit economic principles that will ruin the country. The neoliberal mainstream pursuit of a natural rate of employment, achieved through monetary policy is the key of what they're thinking and its bullshit.
I didn't write it in the end because it was turning into a lesson of Marxism vs neoliberal principles yet again.
But the exchange rate between USD and RMB is kept relatively tight.
I do not completely understand what financial gymnastics China is doing but they could just provide Gulf countries with 'free' Yuan to import from China with, given their large current surpluses.
This part makes sense, China can set whatever interest they want, its good to have lower interest rates but ultimately, foreign currency debt is just as dangerous, 'poor' countries won't find many buyers for their domestic currency debt sure, but China can always dispense the Yuans it wants, issue debt in Yuan and have it be paid back in domestic currencies (they already do that for some countries).
Ultimately, China is still caught up in the vortex of selfishness all the other countries are (west is on a whole another level, look at their attitude towards climate financing). They don't want to give too much for 'free'.
This is an article I read recently on BRICS, it talks about the financing.
comment from yesterday with link to tweet about how these transactions work
In other words, China is going to help the US build the supply chain in the Global South, expands the usage of dollar into Global South countries, and when the US next goes into recession and all these exporter economies are fucked, the Wall Street finance capitalists can easily come in and buy out all these supply chain assets built by China for cheap.
This actually solves the de-industrialization problem for the US, and they should really thank China for that.
I finally understand why Michael Hudson kept saying that China’s problems come from the fact that Vol. 3 is not taught in China. China has everything it can to solve all these fundamental problems by themselves, and yet they keep getting taken advantage by the US. This is the end result of having your knowledge of finance coming from Western economics theory, not from Marxism/MMT.
We need de-dollarization, not dollarization. That’s the only way the Global Majority can survive as the US empire continues to decline.
Idk dummy here but seems like they're trying long term towards decoupling commodities from the US $ to Yuan. While also, buying, repacking and selling US bonds to finance belt and road initiatives makes that initial investment in the infrastructure project dependent on US dollars, all subsequent transactions will not be in dollars. Seems pretty measured scaling back imo. The belt and road initiative is the last gasp of the post cold war globalization and ironically is being led by China (from a westiod perspective). It seems like they are minimizing risks by leaving the financial investments in dollars while the physical commodities transition more and more to Yuans
This is cool. I feel like this whole explanation is way over my head though lol.
china is becoming an alternative to the fed
can be seen as a roundabout way to pay off distressed countries' dollar denominated debt without flipping the table and straight giving away dollars