The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump’s gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
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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 USA screeching about the great firewall for decades in light of this is so funny.
One day Americans will find principles beyond might is right, but not today.
America won’t find principles but one day the principles will find America
I’m guessing the reasons for the great firewall are pretty complex
You’d think Xi would welcome the highly educated Chinese people to see all the shit burning in America and how our big tech leaders encompass everything in opposition to the values which led to China’s historic growth.
Though I’m also sure the general gov disapproves of grotesque displays of wealth, unmitigated “freedom” to do whatever the hell you want if it benefits the US status quo and an overall “dumbing down” of the populace with no guardrails on mass consumption.
The liberalization period already introduced a lot of this into the economy, especially in cities with high market relations with the west. This ideology is sadly already very common.
Its mostly just protectionism so that china can develop internet systems independent of the west.
Not really, it is mainly to create a closed economic ecosystem to create parallel tech product that can compete with the west. You can say that there are national security reason for the great firewall, but I’m never that convinced since you can bypass it with VPN and the firewall didn’t stop people from organizing against the government if they are motivated enough.
I think there are good reasons to believe the national security reasons if you think back to 2008-2009. The Sanlu baby formula scandal brewing while the Beijing Olympics was going on, which had led to a rise in mistrust of the government.
Then in 2009 Facebook refused to share details of the Xinjiang terrorists with the Chinese government.
These were the key events that led to Twitter, Facebook and Google being kicked out of China. The Chinese companies like Baidu got really lucky with all these events happening, and the government realized that they need to tighten the control of the narrative.
Also, 2008 was such a wild year, in between the Sichuan earthquake and the first Chinese astronaut in space, we had the Sanlu baby infant scandal that resulted in 300k sick infants and 50k hospitalizations while the Beijing Olympics was happening. Then in 2009, the Xinjiang riots and the global recession.
There were a lot of reasons for banning foreign social media apps given the events of the time. Knowing how poorly China (and the USSR/Russia) does propaganda, we would have certainly been defeated by US cultural imperialism.
Official Chinese propagandist:
Average Chinese netizen:
If you mean based internet comments, then yes.
But the superiority of US propaganda is nothing like that at all. You can freely criticize the government (see? we have free speech) in Hollywood movies which is something you cannot do in China, and they still managed to spin it as “yeah we make mistakes sometimes, we were too eager to do the right thing that we screwed up some random countries in the process, lots of people died, but we had good intentions! unlike evil authoritarian Russia and China, we were trying to do the right thing! And their people eat all that shit up.
You can have very well made TV series with profound social commentary on the failures of American capitalism (like The Wire) and people agree with that and still fully support the imperial project. You’d be hard pressed to have a Chinese TV show that is allowed to have social commentary that remotely approaches the level of The Wire. Zero chance anything like that will get through the censorship.
Social media is the vector through which color revolutions are developed and fed, while it might not have been the original reason for it the great firewall is an extremely effective block preventing the CIA from fueling liberal dissent in China.
edit: I just remembered that Russia has tested their own great firewall for surely the same reasons, although theirs is more of an emergency cutoff rather than an active firewall.