After 15 months of genocide - and resistance to it - the Israeli regime realized that they could not win a military victory against Hamas, and were forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire in order to get their hostages returned.
With much of Syria under the control of Al-Qaeda, and an increasing level of covert infiltration into Lebanon, the crisis in the Middle East is not over, and we may still be in its beginning stages, as the center of hegemony continues its gradual shift away from the United States. Their navy, once considered the best in the world, is likely also not very happy about their ships and aircraft carriers being forced to retreat by Yemen, one of the poorest countries; and all eyes are on Iran, who has, over the last year and a half, demonstrated a newfound confidence and strength to directly strike Israel.
The recovery for Gaza will take, at a minimum, decades; it could indeed never fully recovery to even how it was before, considering it is not in Israel’s interests to see their concentration camps recover. But Hamas has proven to be steadfast and the tunnel network has proven its resilience, despite facing some of the most powerful conventional bombing in history. This shows that Palestine’s liberation is a when, not an if; and hopefully a much sooner “when” than expected before October 7th.
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.
The tariffs on MX/CA are going to be REALLY bad
Like, wouldn’t this kill neoliberalism in the US? At least severely weaken it? And it’ll fuck over workers everywhere
Hopefully Sheinbaum nationalizes any shuttered manufacturing plants, to minimize their losses somewhat
I like Michael Hudson’s suggestion that if tariffs are enacted, Mexico (and others) should stipulate that they are not making any more payments on dollar-denominated debt until the tariffs are lifted (under the reasonable pretext that the tariffs are preventing Mexico from earning enough dollars to pay the debt, a la what the US did to Germany in the interwar period).
The question is really to whom are the debts owed to. If it’s IMF then you’re still screwed - you either let IMF privatize your public utilities now, or you resist until recession destroys your economy then still have to let IMF to bail you out and let them privatize anyway.
Unless of course… if China can use its huge dollar reserves to pay back their debt, that’d go very differently. A very big if to be fair.
It’s a lose-lose situation.
You basically have two options here:
One, give Trump what he wants to negotiate the tariffs down, and this can even be negotiated in a way where both sides get to claim PR wins. You lose some, but you don’t lose all.
Two, resist US tariff aggression to the end. The US goes into inflation, their consumption goes down, your industries get destroyed, workers lose their jobs, recession, riots on the streets, rise in support for far right dictators (see Argentina’s Milei for reference), your government gets voted out/couped, IMF comes in to bail out your economy, the industries still got privatized in the end.
My whacky theory is that the goal of the Trump presidency is to move away from neoliberalism and usher in a new global economic paradigm. Some marxists like Samir Amin have said that globalised neoliberalism already died in the 2008/9 financial crash, and that world leaders in the imperial core tried to restore it, but failed. So now this is what we get.
Wen Tiejun recently made a video questioning whether the imperial collapse theory still holds true, and it’s an interesting take that critically looks at Amin’s theory. The bottom line is that if our theories cannot explain how the empire continues to stand (do we wait another ten years or a hundred years?), then either we are wrong or our theories still have substantial gaps to fill. I don’t necessarily agree with the take but I do believe that the left needs some introspection here.
In any case, the contradiction of US running persistent trade deficits and the fallout of deindustrialization leading to the deteriorating material conditions of the working class (which was initially embodied by the Sanders and Trump supporter base in 2015-2016, and has now consolidated into the Trump MAGA base) can no longer be denied or contained.
Jia Genliang’s thesis is that the contradiction has forced the US hand into switching its strategy, from running persistent trade deficits toward exporting the dollar in the form of foreign direct investments in order to save dollar hegemony. The ultimate goal of Trump’s tariffs is thus not a trade war nor an industrial war, but a financial war to get China to open up its capital markets.
And don’t think for a moment that this couldn’t happen: with Europe in austerity, the US printing trillions of deficits in 2023-2024, and China under unprecedented local government debt and property market crises and underwhelming consumption, the US might just find a way in.
We could see Wall Street going all in on China and shifting their assets into RMB. This could simultaneously boost China’s consumption and relieve their debt burden, slowing/stopping the deindustrialization in the US by reducing trade deficit, while at the same time keeping the dollar demand strong to maintain its hegemony.
We cannot deny capitalism’s infinite adaptability to turn every crisis into opportunity. And if the left wants to defeat capitalism, we have to stay one step ahead of it.
I think US asset prices are a massive time bomb right now. I think when that happens, a lot of the US’ shenanigans will come to light. Until then I think we are looking through the mirror darkly, so to speak.
We have seen that back in 2009. Lots of people lost their homes, jobs, everything. The financial sector got bailed out by Obama and they are running stronger than ever. The finance capitalists won’t be the ones that get punished, the people will bear the pain for them.
However, there is one thing that I couldn’t get my head around: the whole bitcoin reserve thing, which is completely antithetical to the dollar system as the pillar of US monetary imperialism.
I don’t know what Trump is trying to do with that, but it could pose a seriously threat and even undermine the dollar system completely if they’re not careful lol.
On the other hand, I could see the whole crypto thing being an offshore banking center to prop up the dollar (like what Michael Hudson said about it being the parallel of the US becoming the intermediary for international crime organizations to launder their drug money in the 1960s). Think about it: the US gains control over the international crime organizations simply by controlling the funnel where their money goes through. So it is entirely possible that the US wants to control all the shady entities/networks by turning itself into an intermediary for cryptocurrency, and using it to prop up the strength of the dollar.
Makes sense. At least in the US, the champions of neoliberalism both as an economic system and an ideology are the Democrats. Trump, among other things, represents a faction that’s trying to pivot to something else.
But who wants that? Musk, Thiel, and a few other oligarchs that either want a monopoly on the US market because China beat them, don’t sell physical goods, or want a different labor arrangement to low-wage workers? That can’t be a very large group of capitalists
Any company with offshore manufacturing or needs to import goods won’t be able to survive
its going to fuck up the US treatlers for sure
Why would they? Canadian tariffs will literally fuck canada, but wage differential is minimal between countries (if there is oil carve out, it would be covid-lite shocks in random places). Mexico is very debatable, with finished goods/fulfillment centers carve outs it could be so-so, cause here wage differential is too great to matter and infrastructure to import too built in (you won’t move your factory to save on tariffs, if it’s 2 % price of the finished good)