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.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/from-global-anti-imperialism-to-the-dandelion-fighters-chinas-solidarity-with-palestine-from-1950-to-2024/
This is a good long form article describing the relationship of the Chinese state to Israel/palestine since 1949. It describes the early optimism of maybe Israel not being a tool of the west until the mid 50s, the strident Maoist position of international revolution, the much softer and hands off dengist approach, and the contradiction between investment in Israel and china's foreign policy rhetoric in the xi years. Towards the end there is more discussion of Israeli PR in China since 2023.
Damn good article. It makes me sad that the answer to the contradictions between China's conservative policy towards Israel and their historic support of Palestinian liberation is basically, "hopefully the youth will be more radical and return China to its Maoist routes", considering how urgent the need to stop the genocide is. How democratic is China? What are the odds the wishes of the youth turn into actual policy changes? I also wonder how we can spread BDS as a concept in China.
Still a great article and summary of the history of China-Palestine relations.
Good article. As an additional point, it is also strategically prudent for China to let the regional conflicts elsewhere distract the empire against itself.
When people meme about China “do nothing and win”, it must also include that China will literally do nothing in response to these regional conflicts except for playing both sides and increase the sales of Chinese businesses (see the Russia-Ukraine conflict for the most recent prominent example).
I think you’ll have a faster way of provoking a response out of China if Israel somehow boycotts Chinese companies and fucks with their profit margins (like the recent incident of Brazil investigating BYD treatment of its construction workers, which China responded in kind by investigating and halting Brazilian beef import), and Israel has so far been very astute when it comes to not pissing off China.
What are you even talking about. How is Israel distracting the US from China when Xi went to San Francisco to meet Biden on November 15th 2023, literaly less than 45 days into the genocide. When Yellen and Blinken went to China to order them to shut up and fix their industry or else in the following months etc.
The empire can actualy look at 2 places at once, in fact there has not been a single moment of the past 8 years(since Trump 1) where the US hasn't been focused on China, before in Xinjiang etc and now the trade "war".
Like how can you read this article and come out with "and yes its strategicaly beneficial for China to let the genocide continue" when completely the opposite of what the article concluded, like wtf.
Please control+f "contradiction" in that article, I can't imagine someone bashing this point harder than this person tried.
They make this point a few times, there is no "strategic victory" for China when your position is unsustainable.
lol people have been predicting “China collapse” for decades and yet China continues to surprise and slap them in the face.
If there is one country that can successfully fuse socialism with neoliberalism, it’s going to be China. I’m not saying it will certainly succeed but do not underestimate China’s ability of making “contradictions” work in its favor.
Besides, you forget that China allied with the US to destroy the USSR in just two decades after the US literally killed half a million People’s Volunteer Army during the Korean War and threatened to nuke Beijing. I’m not so sure about China’s foreign policy being unsustainable if you see how successfully it has been able to navigate among world’s superpowers starting from a nation in deep poverty.
Just because I say an article is good doesn’t mean I agree with every single one of the author’s points.
Ok so just we're clear. As the genocide continues and if eventually it is successful, given China`s active role in supporting Israel throughout you don't actualy believe this should be a catalyst for a change of modern Chinese FP policy? This was the writer's main point about Chinese contradictions in their FP and their relation with the US and Israel. China's "diplomacy for economic interest" is impossible if the US will just attack and destroy your "trading partners".
If you can't understand this then god you're truly beyond hopeless.
I think this is needless hostility toward a comrade, which is not only shitty for him but also bad for the dynamics of the forum. Hostility creates a tense atmosphere, which makes people defensive, which can lead to further hostility, in a feedback loop that can spread through the community.
XHS is a comrade, not some random who wandered in, and neither of you said anything blatantly reactionary. There’s no reason you can’t disagree in a respectful way. With everything going on, most of us are already not in the best headspace, and it’s hard to deescalate by text, so we need to be proactive about forum health.
Are you seriously suggesting that Israel and Palestine are more important trading partners for China than the US?
The entire point of the rare earth export restriction from China is to let the US know that it cannot survive without China, and that they both cannot live without each other.
If China truly wants to punish the US and decouple, it could just… stop selling stuff to the US? Why waste all the efforts into negotiation with the US when it could be forging a new economic bloc with the rest of the world?
Well, turns out China has benefited so much from dollar hegemony that it is already addicted to it. The whole rare earth card was to tell the US to stop walking away from their marriage.
Oh I understand, I simply question the “China’s foreign policy position is unsustainable” notion as an objective statement, given what we’ve seen with its foreign policy history over the past few decades.