Image is of the Preah Vihear Temple on the Cambodian border. Image sourced from the UNESCO World Heritage website.


Over the last few days, Thailand and Cambodia entered into a heightened stage of conflict due to a long-running border dispute. Like many problems on this planet, Europeans are ultimately to blame - specifically France. Certain sections of the border drawn up by France about a century ago were not fully agreed upon by both sides, with the ownership of some Khmer temples being the most visible points of disagreement.

Despite interventions in favor of Cambodia in the 1960s and later 2010s by the ICJ - one of the mainly mostly useless global institutions that liberals periodically disown - the border conflict has simmered at a generally low level. Of the two countries, Thailand is significantly more militarily and economically powerful.

Last Wednesday, a Thai soldier lost his leg by stepping on a landmine, prompting a rapid escalation between Cambodia and Thailand that has since resulted in dozens of deaths and tens of thousands displaced. Cambodia was willing to come to the negotiating table fairly quickly, but Thailand was more hesitant. International pressure on the two countries by Malaysia, China, and the United States eventually forced Thailand to the table, and they have recently agreed to an immediate ceasefire courtesy of ASEAN.

Notably, Trump refused to hold trade talks with either country until they agreed to peace, which suggests that he really wants a Nobel Peace Prize - which he seems a shoe-in for given that he’s met the two most important requirements that several Nobel Peace Prize recipients have needed to meet in the past, which are: 1) start at least one war, and 2) accelerate the genocide of millions of people as billions more people watch on. His policies vis-a-vis ICE creating a domestic terror regime only further increase his chances of winning the prize.


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.


  • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    19 days ago

    The most logical time for this to happen is when China is weakest and the US is strongest, which means ASAP.

    Not quite yet. US is low on weapons due to Ukraine and the zionist entity. Is currently building weapons production capacity in Europe and in Ukraine which will come online within the next ~2 years.

    So from that perspective the US is still arranging the chessboard while China’s own moves seem limited and aimed at delaying at most. Latest chessboard moves are trying to get India to openly break from the rest of BRICS and be a spoiler that chooses the west over Russia and the rest of BRICS which could absolutely succeed given the mentality of Indian leadership and their fash boot-licking followers (you know the weirdos who unprompted beg western reactionaries to notice them and stan anything the west does in exchange for a crumb of attention, a quick glance their direction validating them). So IMO the point the US forces it is when their weapons production capacity can keep up with China longer and when they’ve also finished reshoring/friendshoring a few critical things and built back up their stockpiles of rare earths for weapons production. So 2027-2028 probably.

    US is getting agitated to wind down the Ukraine war without a loss for the west which is unacceptable to Russia who requires that the west accede to terms that are clearly a loss for them. Hence the latest sanctions which they’ll be slapping on soon trying to pressure Russia into an agreement that lets them save face. Presumably they want a freeze of the conflict where Russia gets to keep the seceded oblasts they de jure (in their own country) already absorbed into Russia proper, Ukraine gets to keep some sort of fairly strong western military but without NATO membership, and the west gets to keep its pillaged privatized spoils of valuable Ukrainian minerals, farmland, and the cheap defense production capacity they’ve built and are building up even more in the far west of the country which can be used to supply the US arsenal in a war on China.

    But I agree the US can force China’s hand. Just have their DPP puppets announce formal declaration renouncing all claims to the mainland, announcing independence and announce their (US) plans to build a big military base there and say “we’re shipping in our nukes and latest radar and anti-missile systems in three months” and China will be basically forced to react.

    • coolusername [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      17 days ago

      Taiwan is way too rich to suicide like Ukraine did. Capitalists here control everything and they have too much to lose. TBH I don’t think China would invade even if Taiwan “announced independence” as they’re already independent. I seriously don’t see China starting a war just because Taiwan itself won’t admit to being a part of China even harder, which they aren’t. Lai’s last statement was something like Taiwan doesn’t need to announce independence because it’s already independent. If there’s formal independence, basically annulling the invader’s (KMT) claims, that would make China lose face. They really want to start a war over being insulted? Look at the current state. They say they own Taiwan, and keep adding “, China” to where Taiwan is named. That’s just LARPing.

      As of right now the CPC spends a lot of effort to undermine the gov, and do all sorts of marketing operations that aren’t having any effect.