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.
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I wont comment on the topic again , i already did twice and since whatever we wrote goes past each other its no use. Im just gonna point out that what you say can also be used to dismiss the analysis you write on the same basis. Some people wanna feed on copium, some on dooming. "credulous people" exist in both directions. The fact that there hasnt been a single Chinese foreign, monetary or developmental choice in the last 1+ years that you have reacted to and written about positively here and that there hasnt been a single US foreign or monetary policy move that you didnt cover as a correct chess move for the empire strains some of your credibility as an objective analyst of these developments through marxist lense, no matter how detailed your analysis or knowledge background is.
On a foundemental level simply because the ratio of good move / bad move for these countries cant remotely correspond to what your coverage is just based on a look around the world today, the two countries and their recent (and not so) history. Also off the to of my head the fact that you have jumped to the chance to doom post the momment you see the most obvious anti-china garbage stories like their submarines sinking (did it twice actualy, the latest one has been predictably once again proven an overexaggerated nothing recently) , using anti-china YT thumbnail level stats for some of your dooming (100 trillion vaccant buildings in china! Chinese EVs make no profit in China!) or reddit analysis for a potential Sino-American conflict (US can checkmate china by strangling Chinese sea trade roots ) doesnt exactly paint you as an non biased unemotional observer bringing some hard reality check to multipolarists and China hopium posters, it shows how easily you can edge towards the opposite side.
Please talk about his argument, not just the fact that he doesn't always see dengism in a positive light. The simple fact here is that the Chinese are building ports not just to get africa to buy stuff from them, but to also build up their bourgeoisie so they buy stuff from China. China is a socialist in one country nation, it doesn't really care if the global south maintains liberalism.
I actualy already answered a previous comment they made on this topic and i already made my own post in this post about the topic. Thats why i started this comment saying that since we already talked past each other on this subject im gonna make a more general observation
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This is the most barebones positive thing that you can say about China. So much so that its barely a "positive" thing to say rather than just an observation of reality that has leaves room for personal interpretation,opinions and analysis. Its a concrete reality so undisputable in most aspects its a view held even by most anti-china leftists, liberal comentators and increasingly so mainstream media. Its also not a description or reaction to current geopolitical and monetary events and choices by the Chinese state but a general observation of the material and bureocratical ourcomes that have culminated from how the Chinese system was set up and operated over decades. Doesnt really contradict anything my comment said
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Overall, I agree with shipwreck's analysis, but it's tempered by these things:
The US will not lose its seat in the throne without a war. Yes, I don't think China is optimizing its fiscal policy for the sake of weakening the US, but if China actually did, the US would almost certainly push towards a hot war against China. US foreign policy operates under Thucydides Trap and if it gets to the point where the US is about to lose the throne, they will either pursue or threaten to pursue a hot war as either a last ditch effort to hold on the throne or to say that if the US can't have the throne, neither can China. So the question is not whether Chinese economists are neoliberal but rather whether the party and people are willing to bear the cost of direct military confrontation. If they're not willing to, then they will continue the status quo. It literally doesn't matter if every single Chinese economist has their brains replaced by clones of Michael Hudson's brains.
Shipwreck vastly underestimates the internal contradictions within the US which permeates throughout US society. I suspect this is because they weren't raised in Burgerland. In their analysis, they even admitted that China's more timid moves has good short term and medium term benefits but questionable/bad long term prospects. But I don't think it's good analysis to leave it at that because if the US lacks the means (and it absolutely does lack the means) to resolve those internal contradictions, then whatever roosters that should come home to roost in China will never come because the US will suffer even more from those unresolved internal contradictions. You can even see this happening with Trump. Shipwreck has more or less been right about the economic dimension of the war in Ukraine, but with regards to how Biden is some 5d chess grandmaster, it's not so much that Shipwreck is wrong but more that Biden will not be in office forever and his subsequent successors (ie Trump) might not and most likely will not have the same talent in 5d chess as Biden. I think Trump's second administration is going to challenge much of what Shipwreck has said because if Trump's administration wind up sabotaging what Biden's administration has carefully build, then the the bloomers could just say that China purposely didn't rock the boat because they knew Trump would fuck it up for them.
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net has spoken favourably about Chinese dedollarization efforts before, in 2022 or so. I don't recall the details but xiaohongshu isn't just all gas no brakes.
So he has spoken favorably about things that happened before he started commenting on current developments but never about any contemporary development or move at the point of commentary. And that favorable coverage of past moves is pretty much never on its own but is actualy only brought up in the context of their current doomer negative coverage to as to comperatively highlight and support his current negative coverage.
Saying "Back then i actualy thought this and they were doing the good thing but i was naive and they libed up now" doesnt negate my description that there hasnt been a single Chinese foreign, monetary or developmental choice that happened while they have been an active commentator on this sub that they didnt react negatively and that there hasnt been a single US foreign or monetary policy move that they didnt cover as a correct chess move for the empire. It actualy enhances it
the problem is that his talking points havent changed in the past 3 or 4 years but he deletes all his posts so you cant actually cross reference for yourself. in brief,
you can go look up geikei's recent good faith attempts to engage (you actually cant because the responses are deleted), either the talking points are side stepped or they get bogged down in a gish gallop rehash of of the above three points. i recall i made a conscious decision to reduce engagement with xhs right after he first started this bidenomics bit after federation and already he didn't bother backing up his points with anything substantial (softballed him with some stuff about resource swapping and i got basically point 1 in essay format)
in any case, i still don't think his points, esp wrt the chinese strategy, hold any water as it's been established that roosevelt's vision for the marshall plan failed, and as hudson himself has pointed out, america's postwar military adventurisms were a response to the failure of the marshall plan. for china to do something like this would be a fantastically nihilistic interpretation of history particularly as the chinese are at a similar point industrially to the postwar US (major exception being that the war of capitalist transition is only just beginning for us)
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Always appreciate the critical effort posts even if I don't agree all the time. You say that the liberal faction of the CCP has won out and is thus throttling the dollar. Has there been a political shift in policy or change in personal to indicate this change towards redollarization as a strategy? Assuming and you are correct, can it really be ascertained if this is a change in strategic policy or a temporary tactical move anticipating some type of hemorrhage. Thus the shoring up of actual productive assets in Yuan while unloading its liabilities in speculative markets (US dollar debt) onto the global south (which is wrong, but could be leverage in a real moment of cleavage from the dollar)...? Perhaps a bit multi dimensional chess but China seems to be taking a very measured approach to dedollarization and I certainly wouldn't see them temporarily slowing that down as being out of their ballywick, if that's what they deem necessary in their estimation to achieve their ultimate goal. Of course none of us really know what that is
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This is precisely what I feared and you put it way better than I could have.