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:

  • 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…

  • 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%.

  • 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

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.

  • Boise_Idaho [null/void, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    Things aren’t looking good in Cuba:
    https://xcancel.com/bellybeastcuba/status/1929158797173371202

    Cuba’s population has declined nearly 13% from 2020 through 2024, according to recently released data by the island’s National Statistics and Information Office (ONEI). In 2024, the population was 9.7 million, 1.4 million less than in 2020.

    Cuba has been going through its largest emigration wave in history, as people flee a deepening economic crisis fueled by U.S. sanctions. The U.S. is by far the largest recipient of Cuban immigrants. Unofficial reports have put Cuba’s population loss at even higher numbers.

    The long-term damage of the emigration crisis can be catastrophic for the island, since thousands of young people, and particularly young professionals, are part of the wave.

    Cuba’s education, health and scientific sectors are facing personnel shortages. It is even more alarming considering Cuba’s aging patterns, to which low birth rates also contribute. Cuba’s around 71,358 births in 2024 are the country’s lowest in 65 years.

    ONEI’s report points out that more than 25% of the population is over 60 years old, making Cuba one of the fastest-aging countries in Latin America.

    • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      33·
      3 days ago

      “The birthrates are declining” and “the population pyramid is aging” are weird ways of saying “women are highly educated” and “life expectancy keeps rocking” though. No doubt there’s economic turmoil, but these two factors are good results of social policy that are expected in humane systems.

      • Sinisterium@hexbear.netEnglish
        13·
        3 days ago

        This isnt build into stone, before 2014 east german educated women had a higher fertility rate than uneducated east german women and west german women.

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          8·
          3 days ago

          True, it’s more of a correlation, society changes those things a lot. For example central-Asian republics in the USSR, despite having similar educational achievement to the majority Slavic ones, had significantly higher fertility rates. But no doubt education plays a massive role.

      • WrongOnTheInternet [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        16·
        3 days ago

        women are highly educated

        This is a pretty simplistic analysis and I think it’s pretty crap because it lets capitalism and men off the hook, as well as sorta suggesting that the reason uneducated women have higher birth rates is because they’re stupid (instead of education being a proxy measure, although not a great one, of reproductive autonomy)

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          22·
          3 days ago

          lets capitalism and men off the hook, as well as sorta suggesting that the reason uneducated women have higher birth rates is because they’re stupid

          Lack of education isn’t stupidity, they’re two very distinct things. I’m not calling uneducated women stupid, I’m saying that uneducated women = oppressed women. This doesn’t blame women or let men/the system out of the hook IMO, it just shows the patriarchy keeps women uneducated and oppressed and uses them as child-making, unpaid house labourers. The blame is not on women for not being educated, the blame is on the system for not allowing them to get educated.