Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine, though we will switch next week to a new country.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly (biweekly?) update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
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 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
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.
I kind of feel like China will of course do whatever it can to simmer down tensions and prevent the war from escalating to be a region-wide conflict because it has its own strategic interests in Middle Eastern stability. But if it were to blow up into essentially a multi-country hot conflict that the world might regard as WW3 or something, I’m actually not so sure they would send troops to fight other than like stationing troops at their Afghanistan border and some carriers out in the ocean. I think they would try to stay out of the conflict, and let the West throw itself at the Middle East as a means of like weakening/depleting. And maybe they would get dragged in if the US was like ok we’re officially going to send US troops to “defend Taiwan” or whatever, to intentionally get them into the war. Idk, I think if it actually pops off, we’re gonna have to temper our expectations of an Iran-Russia-China effort happening
China has no interest in getting involved with any of this, they value stability more than anything else. but if a wider war breaks out between Israel/US and Iran, Iran will 100% start blocking the Strait of Hormuz and have the Houthis bomb Saudi oil fields. oil prices would skyrocket, and that's not good for China either. I'm not really sure what they do in this scenario.
unless Saudi lines up on the right side, which looks less impossible today than it has ever looked, albeit still pretty impossible
I would expect the US to find an excuse to open up a China front no matter what China does
MBS is in an impossible situation, lord knows what he'll do. he desperately wants to normalize relations with Israel and he is a dog of the US, but there's actually a lot of pressure on him to do something about the Palestinian situation. and he knows if he chooses wrong, Saudi's getting bombed into oblivion by Iran.
The United States looks historically weak right now; that calculation is probably shifting by the hour
normalization is off the table for a decade or more at this point
They could align with the US in that scenario, wouldn’t be the first time. Though I imagine Iran would just let Chinese ships pass through before it came to that.
the scenes on hexbear if China sides with the US in WW3
Ngl I’d self harm I think
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Now I finally know how people felt during the sino-soviet split.
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Yeah I don't see why they'd ever give
another chance when the rulers of the empire have been so increasingly hostile to China
You joke but I'm pretty confident the CPC would be playing with fire on that one, unless it is a clear "one side evil" the more hardliners(you can call them even nationalists but less "communist") Chinese would very much question the Taiwan situation. For that to happen the US would need to give some very substantial concessions and there is extremely low chance of that ever happening.
Taiwan-China is now a political issue for both US parties, making strong concessions to China would go against years of propaganda they've invested so far and likely career suicide. If you look anything like pro-China there is no guarantee others wont use that as a political tool against you now.
From the Chinese perspective, the best possible place for them to have a showdown with the US navy is immediately off the coast of China which is why I think for the US the play would be to make Taiwan a Ukraine type situation rather than actually going to the wall over it.
It seems unlikely to me. Biden's admin has been as diplomatically incompetent with China as Israel is currently being with the entire world
If the past 2 world wars are an example, entering late and on the winning side is the move.
I would argue that you can't accurately evaluate any single geopolitical move the PRC has made post-Korean War without evaluating that move through the lens of whether it would speed up or impede reunification with Taiwan (the move to cross the Yalu River was done to protect is northern borders and help Korean comrades at the cost of quick reunification with Taiwan). For example, Reform and Opening Up greatly sped up reunification with Taiwan and made a nonviolent reunification viable because by opening up, the Mainland attracted Taiwanese businesses that set up shop in the Mainland. From the perspective of a Taiwanese business, the Mainland has a massive domestic market and a government that's more than happy to facilitate business as long as you don't say politically sensitive things like advocate for Taiwanese separatism or suck up hard to Uncle Sam. This is why the KMT, the status quo party, has a reputation of being "the business party." Most Taiwanese businesses prefer the status quo where they're not under the thumb of a communist party but cross straits relations haven't completely deteriorated and blocked access to the Mainland's lucrative market.
In terms of the conflict that's brewing in WANA, the PRC will most likely not act openly belligerent to any party and advocate for peace talks that nobody including itself takes seriously while covertly help Russia and Iran behind the scenes. This will (slightly) speed up reunification with Taiwan:
By advocating for peace and being the "adult in the room," the PRC makes the case to the Taiwanese people that they are better off as part of the PRC. This contrasts a peaceful PRC against a belligerent US that can't even save its vassals.
By helping Russia and Iran, the PRC contributes in undermining the US even if Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, et al are doing the heavy lifting. Obviously, as the US declines, it will be less able to defend its vassals and client states, which includes the unsinkable aircraft carrier known as the ROC.
I'm not sure #1 is that simple, China advocated for peace in Ukraine but only from a Russian perspective. The adult in the room approach would take a much more neutral/critical attitude towards Russia but in fact its the opposite, they're Russia's #1 ally right now.
China completely dismissed any claims about helping Russia pretty much in a "its not your business" sort of reply, their rhetoric is "China will be friends with Russia based on historical, ideological and material ties and we wont listen to anybody about it" as a direct response to any and all western criticism.
So I'm not sure Taiwanese will ever give much credibility to Chinese FP anyway if they hold a western view. In fact its much the same attitude they have towards Taiwan, "we will re-unite, this is a Chinese internal matter and nobody has the right to interfere in any way".
This is not necessarily true since China still hasn't rescinded their condemnation of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The condemnation is fairly lukewarm ("We respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine"), but it's still there. And it's pretty obvious why they would say that and how it would relate to Taiwan. There's an even more revealing statement in 2014: "We are against any nationality gaining independence through referendums." The Chinese official was 100% thinking about Taiwan and a potential DPP-led referendum. Overall, they walk a fine line between not openly supporting Russia's annexation because it hurts their prospects towards peaceful reunification with Taiwan and not pissing off Russia who sees Crimea as Russian territory.
Like I said, it marginally helps. The US fumbling in Ukraine and Israel and overall being weaker does far more to make reunification attractive, which is why I believe the PRC will covertly back Russia and Iran. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan, Taiwanese media was completely despondent. And it's obviously why. The million dollar question that every Taiwanese person had and Taiwanese media tried to cope with is "will the Americans abandon us like they abandoned the Afghans?" They're watching what's going on right now. As the seed of doubt grows more and more, there's going to be some powerful Taiwanese people who'll start to think, "fuck it, we need to cut a deal with the commies before they invade us and ship us all into a commie labor camp."
Wild card imo is DPRK, they could decide it’s finally time to liberate occupied Korea if the west gets bogged down in West Asia
paragliding over the 38th parallel with the homies
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they're going to be too busy making bank supplying rockets and artillery shells
South Korean military production capabilities are currently immense. The situation's different from how it was in the 70s.
I don't think DPRK has the capability to definitively win a war against SK without significant Chinese support, and Chinese support means WW3.