Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
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
If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
An organization with founding members who hate eachother, no ideological cohesion, accepting members with no real conditions, even members that hate eachother has no concret plan to oppose their perceived "common enemy".
This is the same as when in late USSR, the monarchists, fascists, communist, national liberals and Orthodox zealot stormed the Russian white House to depose Yeltsin and not knowing what to do after they managed to get in.
The absence of Xi Jinping is probably an reorientation of China's strategy from ''BRICS'' to make a stronger trading bloc with the ASEAN countries
I wonder if a BRICS 2 will work better with lessons learned form the first one. Like League of Nations to UN, or Articles of Confederation to Constitution.
BRICS needs to propose a new economic framework beyond multipolar neoliberalism, and only then could we take them seriously.
They’ve had three years to come together and draft something together, and yet in the end it seems that Russia is the only country who is interested in forging a new path. The very modest Kazan proposal last year really shows how much BRICS has squandered the golden opportunity (changes not seen in a hundred years) afforded by the Biden administration.
100%. I wonder if they were too loose with which states could join? And also the goal was too vague. They need member states ideologically committed to an alternate economic framework from the get go, instead of just a vague framework for trade deals. I'd like to think Russia could probably spearhead something new with the most tariffed countries or the ones who have pissed off the US the most recently, so like Iran, Yemen, North Korea, South Africa since they started that ICJ case, Cuba, those 3 AES in Africa, Vietnam, Venezuela, uh... Maybe Mexico since they seem pretty based recently.
I know they're poorer and less of the population than current BRICS, but that doesn't seem to have been super helpful for getting anything done and avoiding the financial domination of the US. Instead, maybe if they go into it with that goal from the get-go, work on it immediately with more ideological and committed anti-imperialist states, they could. China and Brazil joining would be great goals but only if they seemed interested in a move away from SWIFT and the dollar and could commit to through Presidential elections and such.