Image from this article.
Assad has returned with full force to the regional diplomatic scene. The earthquake, followed by the Iran-Saudi peace deal, has shook the Middle East.
Ever since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, Saudi Arabia has closed its embassy in Damascus, but now the two countries are discussing the restoration of diplomatic ties. Various Gulf States have been in talks with Syrian officials and have visited the country, such as Jordan's foreign minister. Assad has been to Oman to meet with their leader. And Assad has recently gone to Moscow to meet Putin, agreeing that Russia is fighting "old Nazis" and "neo-Nazis" in Ukraine (Syria is one of the few countries, alongside Belarus and the DPRK for example, that are unabashedly pro-Russian and always votes alongside them in the UN).
All of this poses a profound problem for America in the region, as they're slowly being squeezed out. Two roads lay before them - escalation, or retreat. While a dignified retreat might be the pertinent thing to do, the Biden administration seems desperate to cause and escalate conflicts everywhere they can. Their base in Syria was attacked on March 23rd, prompting retaliation strikes against Syria. And Russia looks like it's ready for America's next moves, as Russian aircraft frequently fly over the US military base at At Tanf.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
March 27th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 28th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 29th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
March 31st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
April 1st's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
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Marxism technically being in the Chinese curriculum is irrelevant, can any of you really unironically say you paid much attention in like civics class or whatever? It's the same in China. Marxism's presence in the political consciousness of the Chinese youth is vastly overstated on this site which is understandable, but still inaccurate.
Ah, but just because most Americans don't pay attention to civics class doesn't mean it didn't work its magic by sowing its seeds. Most Americans wouldn't be able to tell you what each article of the constitution is for, but they 100% internalize American exceptionalism, part of which is taught in their civics class. That's where the "we are the world's oldest democracy," "the founding fathers are gods among men," "the war for independence was fought because of taxes," and other lies come from.
At least for Vietnam, Luna Oi initially thought the Marxism classes she took during college were completely boring and she largely blew them off, even to the point of briefly identifying as a liberal instead. But it was when she started dealing with the online Western left that she had a lot of "Jesus Christ, this shit is so obvious, how do you not understand basic shit" moments. And she has come full circle, going from thinking those Marxist classes were boring as fuck to dedicating thousands of hours to translating one of those boring books from Vietnamese into English. This makes me think that either those boring Marxism classes were a lot more effective than she thought in molding her thoughts or Vietnamese society is completely oriented towards socialist values so that even someone who consciously rejects socialism would still subconsciously internalize socialist values.
It would be interesting to see to what extend Chinese civics class sown seeds in Chinese students' head.
I suppose I can see that, just that when people post stats or articles about how popular Marxism is with the younger Chinese generations I don't think an accurate picture is being provided as to their political climate. Also American propaganda is an order of magnitude more effective at indoctrinating people than Chinese propaganda is, especially considering most Chinese citizens at some point or another still consume Liberal propaganda, even if by proxy due to cultural hegemony.
Yes? And while civics or government classes are one thing, even people who didn't pay attention and can't name their senators or whatever tend to parrot the basic talking points of what could be considered liberal theory since they've been indoctrinated through all forms of media and institutions from birth.
so the way i view this is that media, pop culture etc... does much more heavy lifting in the promotion of liberalism in the US than any sort of indoctrination in school as a kid. there are proportionally more chinese liberals than their are american communists and a large part of that is that american media is still consumed en masse in china. the opposite isn't true for china, which simply doesn't have the cultural hegemony and narrative control that the us does.
regardless i suppose you're correct in that a chinese citizen could probably name the basic points of marxism but i don't think it's accurate to say that the average chinese citizen is as comitted to communism ideologically as an american is to liberalism.
Yeah those are pretty much my thoughts as well, I agree with you on that.
I just want to say I really appreciate your response and insights. Even if it's a little depressing to hear that a decent understanding of Marxism is pretty lacking over there broadly (especially regarding party members), what you said about the youth interest getting renewed and increasing is even kind of uplifting. Either way, count me among the grateful people here who would like to hear as much as you're willing to talk about with respect to these kinds of things.
I wonder if that is singificantly different based on geographical location. I'd expect the party to be closer to working class in the rural and poorer provinces where officials are required to listen more closely to the requests and necessities of the people than say the big T1-2 cities. I don't think the modern city life in China is too different than in the west at least when it comes to political engagement.
Also I think there is a fundamental difference compared to the west is that if the western working class "doesn't care" about Marxism in the west then 95% of the reason is because they actively hate it due to bias and propaganda. Meanwhile in China, but specifically the industrial/modern city areas maybe its because as you said they can't afford to care about Marxism i.e too tired and not enough engagement from the party in the first place.
Besides class, it's heavily dependent on province as well and even regions within a province, especially for provinces like Guangdong. Besides Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet being different from "proper" China, there's also a north/south divide within "proper" China. My impression is that south China is more "capitalisty" than north China, for lack of a better term. This has roots in history. Paper currency was first introduced in Sichuan, and there's speculation that had the Mongol conquest of Southern Song not taken place, capitalism would've been first developed in Southern Song (or another successive Chinese dynasty that incorporated southern provinces) instead of Europe. The treaty ports (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen) were all located in the south as well.
More recent history also points to this trend. Mao was exacerbated that the southern provinces Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi wasn't conducting land reform fast enough, and he purged most of the cadre from Guangdong because they didn't want to fully liquidate the landlords and conduct land reform even after being warned. There's a reason why Deng had a southern tour in order to garner support for reforms and opening-up and not a northern tour. Today, the most liberal part of "proper" China is Shanghai, a southern city. And of course, Taiwan and Hong Kong are very much part of southern China in terms of culture.
And as a final point, the Chinese diaspora has traditionally been from southern China as well, principally Fujian and Guangdong. Chinese American food like fried rice and wonton soup is basically bastardized Cantonese (Guangdong) food. I think this has ramifications as well in being a source of anti-communism from outside to China since the Chinese diaspora still maintains familial ties with the Mainland. And I'm not just talking about Chinese Americans or Chinese Anglo settler-colonials. Your average Chinese diaspora from Singapore or Malaysia is super anti-communist as well. DPA is super biased against China to the point of being a completely useless source of information on par with some China watcher sexpat, which isn't that surprising since he's Chinese Singaporean.