Image is of a solar park in Cuba, donated last year by China, sourced from this article.
To be honest, I don’t have much to say about ongoing geopolitical events that hasn’t already been said in previous threads (e.g. with India/Pakistan, Trump/Putin, and of course occupied Palestine), so this is more of a “news roundup” preamble for this week.
As we all know, the US (and the imperial core generally) has only three permitted international actions: sanctions, color revolution, and war. None of these have been going well lately, but sanctions are in particularly dire straits right now. Three examples from the last week or so:
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The EU is on its 17th sanctions package, apparently, which is surprising, as I thought they were on their 76th or something. It apparently targets Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, but I don’t think anybody actually gives a shit because we all know it won’t achieve anything, so, moving on…
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The head of Nvidia (as well as many others) have come out and said that the US chip export controls on China have failed, remarking that China’s internal motivations to develop alternatives are strong and proceeding rapidly, especially as China’s number of skilled scientists is only growing. Nvidia has said that they had a 95% share of China’s AI chip market in 2020 or so, but now they only have 50%.
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Lastly, an interesting one: Iran has received its first set of railway shipment of solar panels from China, and there is hope for accelerating shipments of even more products. Myself and many others have predicted a decoupling of Iran from the West and towards China and Russia (especially if any Western-built product could have Israeli devices implanted into them, such as with the pager terrorist attack on Lebanon’s doctors), and having a strong link with China will be a necessary step for Iran and their allies to continue their offensives against Israel.
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
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.
Ok, trade war’s back on, and there will apparently be much civil unrest in China.
This guy is such a classic end-of-empire leader.
“orange man tweeted something about China”
Throwback to this article which was very insightful when it was published a few months back.
The MAGA Effect on US-China Relations: Strategic Ambiguity on Steroids
Six months before Trump was elected president, Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that led Project 2025 – a sort of road map for Trump 2.0 – had actually recommended a policy of deliberate ambiguity toward China to determine the tempo, tenor, and contours of Sino-U.S. competition in the coming years.
A bipartisan think tank, Brookings, echoed that recommendation as Trump was forming his cabinet.
Regardless of whether the ambiguity is strategic or not, the very unpredictability of Trump’s approach – a barrage of explosive and often contradictory public statements, a rapid shift from threats and provocations to warm personal diplomacy – makes it exceedingly hard to forecast what he might ultimately do.
Some researchers have suggested that Trump’s seemingly irrational and volatile behaviour makes him an ideal conveyor of a U.S. policy based on the strategic ambiguity that gained much currency during the Nixon’s administration and was described as the Madman Theory. It dates back to at least 1517 when Niccolò Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that sometimes it is “a very wise thing to simulate madness.” The inklings of an idea that appeared in the work of Machiavelli eventually inspired a coterie of Harvard University scholars that included Henry Kissinger to ponder the limitations of rationality in grand strategy during the late 1950s and early 1960s – a rational U.S. president would seek to avoid a nuclear confrontation at all costs, but a “convincingly mad” one could credibly threaten large risks and therefore make the adversary blink first.
What is certain is that the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis China predates Trump’s presidency. In the last ten years, Washington’s attitude to China shifted dramatically. From viewing it as a partner in global governance to describing it as a strategic competitor, to labelling it a systemic rival that poses direct challenges to U.S. interests.
mr. china, seems like you’ll have to make your engine faster reuters
The resistance detonates a bomb on a force of what I believe are collaborators, although the text calls them “undercover,” I’m not sure if they’re actually Israeli.
Cw gore in the last 15 seconds, a guy gets his head blown off
“ Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades:
Scenes of targeting a number of musta’ribeen (undercover) of the occupation army east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Notes: 0:10 -
- The occupation army used a number of musta’ribeen in house clearing operations and in the search for tunnels and resistance fighters during the incursion into various areas of the Gaza Strip.
- The musta’ribeen worked alongside enemy soldiers on the ground in joint missions.
- The enemy assigned them several other tasks, including planting explosives and booby-trapping homes.
- The musta’ribeen move around in armored vehicles in the areas of incursion.
0:25 - The musta’ribeen monitor the area by orders of enemy forces. 0:32 - The musta’ribeen begin clearing the area under the protection of enemy aircraft. 01:46 - Detonating an explosive on the force of musta’ribeen during their clearing of a home before the entry of the IOF into the area.”
https://t.me/PalestineResist/77771
🚨 A security source in the resistance to Al-Jazeera:
“It became clear that the musta’ribeen force (undercover “israeli” unit) east of Rafah are agents for the occupation, tasked with sweeping, monitoring resistance fighters, and looting aid.
The elements of the musta’ribeen force belong to the gang of the so-called Yasser Abu Shabab and are working with the occupation army inside Rafah.
We will deal with agents and others firmly, and we will consider them part of the occupation, no matter how much they hide under its protection.”
:sicko-jensen:
The company describes the G100 as China’s first domestically designed 6 nm GPU, marking a significant milestone in its effort to challenge established industry players. With the first silicon now operational, Lisuan is moving into driver development, software validation, and broader system integration testing. Although Lisuan has provided few formal specifications, rumors indicate that SMIC is fabbing the G100 die, currently the only Chinese foundry capable of producing a 6 nm node under US export restrictions.
And now for some comic relief:
Fraudster made £550,000 selling fake ‘Scottish-grown tea’
Prosecutors said he created the “CV of a fantasist” - claiming among other things that he was a multi-millionaire, a polymer scientist, a former bomb disposal expert and had invented the “bag for life”.
He also claimed to have developed a “special biodegradable polymer” that would make the tea plants grow in half the usual time. The court was told it looked like a black bin liner.
Canada is looking to join major European military buildup
Prime Minister Mark Carney signalled he hopes Canada will be able to sign on to a major European defence rearmament plan by July 1, a step toward reducing the country’s dependency on the United States for weapons and munitions.
Wang Yi attends signing of convention establishing global mediation body in Hong Kong – CGTN
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday attended the signing ceremony of the Convention on the Establishment of the International Organization for Mediation in China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Very good article/piece on the Pakistan-India conflict that took place earlier this month.
Highly recommend reading this if you’re wondering what happened during the four to five days of war/conflict. It’s a good overview of the timeline of events, lines up with most previous reporting and observations, well sourced and cited. I just finished reading the entire thing.
The article doesn’t come to this conclusion, but it’s a clear sign that RFK/his staff are using AI to write reports.
The Guardian: RFK Jr’s ‘Maha’ report found to contain citations to nonexistent studies
The 73-page “Make America healthy again” report – which was commissioned by the Trump administration to examine the causes of chronic illness…includes references to seven studies that appear to be entirely invented, and others that the researchers say have been mischaracterized.
One paper was claimed to show that talking therapy was as effective as psychiatric medication, but the statistician Joanne McKenzie said this was impossible, as “we did not include psychotherapy” in the review.
The sleep researcher Mariana G Figueiro also said her study was mischaracterized, with the report incorrectly stating it involved children rather than college students, and citing the wrong journal entirely.
There isn’t a likely cause for a report to contain these types of errors unless an LLM was used to write it.
Does anyone know any good books about geopolitics, recent history, political currents etc. in the middle east?
Sorry if it’s not appropriate to ask here, please remove if necessary
Triumphing for the oppressed Palestinian people and their Mujahideen, and in rejection of the crime of genocide perpetrated by the Zionist enemy against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a military operation targeting Lod Airport, Israeli named Ben Gurion Airport, in the occupied area of Yaffa, using a hypersonic ballistic missile. The operation successfully achieved its goal, thanks to allah, forcing millions of occupying Zionists to flee to shelters and halting air traffic at the airport.
The Yemeni Armed Forces assure all our faithful and struggling Yemeni people that, with Allah’s help, they will continue to fulfill their religious, moral, and humanitarian duty toward our people in Palestine until the aggression against them stops and the siege is lifted.
They will also, with trust in Allah, confront every Israeli aggression against our country with further supportive operations for the oppressed Palestinian people, including the continued ban on Israeli air traffic to and from Lod Airport.
Sana’a, Dhu al-Hijjah 2, 1446 AH May 29, 2025 AD
Issued by the Yemeni Armed Forces
https://masarbadil.org/en/2025/05/5860/
“Rodriguez’s operation not only revealed the limits of liberal discourse; it also restored the value of direct action as a mobilizing and agitational tool, placing everyone before their responsibilities. The broad popular response to this operation, particularly among youth and within Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities, reveals that popular sentiment remains aligned with armed struggle and a revolutionary position on Palestine. The battle being waged by the Palestinian people is not confined to the West Bank and Gaza, but extends and expands globally within the framework of revolutionary struggle against imperialism, Zionism, and reactionary and fascist regimes”
