Or perhaps the end of the beginning, if you're a little more pessimistic.
Image is from this Bloomberg article, from which I also gathered some of the information used in the preamble.
While Trump was off in the Middle East in an incompetent attempt to solve a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis, China has been doing something much more productive.
Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, had a summit with CELAC (a community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries). There, he promised investment, various declarations of friendship, and visa-free entry for 30 days for citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Lula signed over 30 agreements with China. Colombia is joining the New Development Bank and hopes to gain the money for a 120-kilometer railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as an alternative route to the Panama Canal. Even Argentina, ruled by arch-libertarian and arch-dipshit (but I repeat myself) Milei, was uncharacteristically polite with China as he secured a currency swap renewal to shore up their international reserves.
It wouldn't really be correct to say that Latin America is "siding with China over the US" - leaders in the region will continue to make many deals with America for the foreseeable future, and even Trump's bizarre economic strongman routine won't make them break off economic and diplomatic relations. What's significant here is that despite increasing American pressure for those leaders to break off all ties with China, few appear to be listening - and given that China is perhaps the most important economy on the planet right now, that is a very predictable outcome.
As the current American empire takes actions to try and avoid their doom, those very actions only guarantee it. As Latin America grows ever more interconnected with China and continues to develop, America will grow ever more panicked and demanding, and this feedback loop will - eventually - result in the death of the Monroe Doctrine.
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.
Because this is not about Israel primarily, its mostly about relations with the US. Just talking about China here, lets go by steps.
First if you recall in 2022 for brief moment there was this "Chinese peace plan" which was just some sort of policy paper the Chinese threw around. Even that little misunderstanding was unacceptable for the US but most importantly China realized any action during the Ukraine war, action favorable towards Russia specifically would be seen as anti-western and face retaliation so that was abandoned(even though it was literaly nothing worthwhile) and China has stayed our of saying anything about Ukraine since then.
Further back recall how China tried so desperately to restore relations during the Huawei exec stuff and the Trump trade war. China has always wanted to be on good terms with the US. This is incrinsingly difficult. That 2022 lesson culminated with the Pelosi incident. China talked big about consequences and eat an egg to the face. They're not actualy ready nor willing to fight the US period.
But to continue, none of these recent bad experiences, from the Huawei exec(2021), to COVID racism(2020+), HK riots and international ONG intervention(2019), Xinjiang/Uyghur and literaly CIA funding ETIM terrorists inside China(that famous US general admitting this is from around 2015 or so IIRC ).
None of this was enough to convince them that a good relation with the US is impossible.
So when Oct 7th 2023 China already learned both from Pelosi/Ukraine that Chinese "protagonism" in the international stage will face real backlash.
Therefore they adjusted, remember they flip flopped their Foreign minister Wang Yi/Qin Qang. I don't think there was anything beyond the official reasons but its hard not to speculate. Maybe that was one attempt to change course, but that was also exactly the period the Biden team doubled their efforts with the Chinese EV/batteries stuff and it worked really well for the US as China ultimately conceded i.e they've now turned to mainstream fiscal policy to boost spending because "everyone"(read:mainstream neoliberal economics) agrees China got too much industry. In short you could even say recent experience showed to them their foreign policy wasn't "working" to appease the US.
So again, Oct 7th happens and China is now committed to being just a voice at the UN because they believe this is the most they can do without consequences. It is not just about Israel, its about the extremely consistent Chinese commitment to the current "rules" based order. During the first Trump term they were saying the same thing, how "populism" is bad and we must have a stable global community etc.
Our perception of change came from the brief moments of Chinese frustration and pro-China activism, specialy with Xinjiang stuff since ~2018 and also their apparent strong support Russia in 2022, that maybe now we're ready and willing to fight the western consensus. That was just wrong.
As it turned out the support for Russia is just rethoric too. US sanctions successfully stop Chinese banks from doing business in Russia etc, The most we can say is the sanctions were not 100% effective, but they were at least impactful enough. You can definitely be sure if Russia wasn't the USSR's corpse laying around with 2000 nukes NATO would already be fighting in Ukraine imo and all we would see is more US bad talk.