Image is of a harbor in Tasiilak, Greenland.
NATO infighting? You love to see it, folks.
The latest incident of America’s satrapies becoming increasingly unhappy about their mandated kowtowing involves, of all places, Greenland. As I’m sure most people here are aware, Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark with a degree of geopolitical and economic importance - the former due to its proximity to Russia, and the latter due to the proven and potential reserves of minerals that could be mined there. It’s also been an odd fascination of Trump during his reign, now culminating in outright demands.
Trump has called for negotiations with Denmark to purchase Greenland, justifying this by stating that it would be safer from Russia and China under America’s protection. Apparently, Norway’s decision to not give him the Nobel Peace Prize further inflamed him (not that the Norweigan government decides who receives the prizes). He has also said that countries that do not allow him to make the decision - which not only includes Denmark, but also other European countries - will suffer increased tariffs by June, and that he has not ruled out a military solution.
This threat has led to much internal bickering inside the West, with European leaders stating they will not give in to Trump’s demands, and even sending small numbers of troops to Greenland. The most bizarre part of this whole affair is that the US already basically has total military access and control over Greenland anyway, and has since the 1950s, when they signed an agreement with Denmark. There are already several US military facilities on Greenland, and B-52 bombers have famously flown in the vicinity of the island (and crashed into it with nuclear bombs in tow, in fact). Therefore, this whole event - in line with his all-performance, little-results presidency so far - seems to be largely about the theatrics of forcing the Europeans to continue to submit to his whims. I would not be surprised if they ultimately do sign a very imbalanced deal, though - the current European leadership is bound too tightly to the US to put up even half-hearted resistance.
This is all simultaneously occurring alongside the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit to China in which longstanding sore spots in their bilateral relationship are being addressed, with China reducing tariffs on Canadian canola oilseeds, and Canada reducing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, as well as currency swaps between their central banks, among many other things. It seems no accident that Canada’s reconsideration of their relationship with China is occurring as Trump has made remarks about turning Canada into the next US state, as well as the demand for the renegotiation of the USMCA.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
I’m not understanding your point of view. There’s American imperialism, British imperialism, European (mostly Franco-German, with a bunch of junior partners) imperialism, Russian imperialism and so on. All are independent of each other. Imperialists sometimes team up with other imperialists, when they have common goals, and sometimes, they fight each other, when the objectives aren’t common.
What Russian imperialism?
This is a very suspicious both sides type of line to take.
Modern Russia is not really capable of much more than slapping and deterring the worst Hitlerite NATO-joining impulses of some of its slated for regime change neighbors like Georgia and the Ukraine invasion is admittedly a bit of a boondoggle that on its own should show you how much of a threat they are considering how long they’re taking to deal with an existential threat like that on their border. Yeah they’ve exerted some influence on countries around them. That’s not imperialism, that’s something that’s been going on pre-capitalism and doesn’t meet Lenin’s definition. Before the mid 2000s one could argue Russia was still too weak, too corrupt, too reeling from the 90s plundering by the west (when it had been victimized by imperialist powers) and before that they were part of the USSR from 1918 until the 90s came. And before that they got their asses handed to them by Japan doing imperialism against them. Sure there was some 1800s stuff but that’s too far removed to qualify for the state that is modern Russia given what it has been born out of and gone through.
Please avoid liberal thought-terminating ‘both Moscow and Washington’ type takes unless you can support them with evidence.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to pull this line on hexbear.net, but can you define imperialism?, thank you
V. I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky>
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3 of those are the same, deliberately sown together as one empire without a name to hide its nature, colloquially referred to as “the international community”, ruled by the international-bourgeoisie. This entity is splitting, but can not do so easily as it is totally entwined.
1 of them is independent of the others. The Russian national-bourgeoisie.
International-bourgeoisie? Russian national-bourgeoisie controlling the Russian state? Are you reading Lenin or Pepe Escobar?
Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, while correct in it’s time, will lead to incorrect conclusions if you apply it copy-and-paste to today’s geopolitical reality without accounting for massive shifts in how imperialism manifests itself. Which is understandable, he was writing over 100 years ago and the world has changed so dramatically in that time. I really don’t think even Lenin himself would disagree, if he were alive today (inshallah). In his time, imperialism was defined by various national capitalist powers of very roughly equal strength vying for control over resources, land, and people in the periphery. That rivalry no longer exists, imperialism has gone from a “flat” structure (capitalist powers fighting each other over imperialism) to a “vertical” structure (one capitalist power administering imperialism for the benefit of itself first and others second).
The paragraph right before his criteria for imperialism:
You’re going to have to write more than that as you haven’t actually said anything other than indicate your disagreement in quite possibly the most combative, bad faith and uncomradely way possible. Short, sound-bitey and snide without actually saying anything at all. I am open to disagreement and conversation about disagreement, I don’t see why you need to fight about it.
To give you a run down of what I see in the world today: The current imperialism in the world is administered by 1 country and its vassals (europe et al). Russia is an aspiring imperialist in opposition to this imperialist power, as such it arms and funds anti-imperialists around the world with the goal of dislodging the hegemon so it might one day inherit position as leader of imperialism. Because of this, Russia is essential to anti-imperialist activity but should not be viewed as a friend. Meanwhile China is a sincere communist power walking a tightrope of trying to survive in a world where it doesn’t have the material means to swap to a socialist economy (yet), so it generally walks a tightrope of controlling its national bourgeoisie and giving enough candy to the international bourgeoisie (leaders of imperialism) in order to give them a monetary interest to avoid war. This is set against a backdrop where several developing countries of the global south are picking sides (imperialism or anti-imperialism) as they are emerging as lower to middleish powers.
I would be interested in your take. The current western world did not exist in Lenin’s time. Things were quite different. Imperialism has advanced considerably since and the imperialist powers were intentionally merged post-ww2 by neoliberalism and through the later efforts of globalisation. Lenin’s analysis is correct for his time but does not include what has transpired since.
What Russian imperialism?