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.
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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.
It seems that this EU-US trade deal and the EU's unconditional surrender has sparked some discontent. Especially France doesn't seem to be happy about it, while Germany is getting a lot of blame. In the past we've talked about how the EU would start falling apart as soon as the national bourgeoisie of major European countries start seeing each other as a threat to their own interests, and I wonder if this is the start of that process.
The EU's problem is that they don't really have a choice in the matter, so a deal with the US was accepted. Europe doesn't produce the kind of high tech military technology that's becoming increasingly relevant on the battlefield, so they'll need to buy it from the USA. When Ukraine asks for more HIMADS (High to Medium Air Defense), they want US PATRIOT, not European SAMP/T, for instance. If Europe wants 5th generation stealth aircraft, the F-35 is currently the only one available for purchase in the western sphere of influence. If Europe wants exoatmospheric anti ballistic missile defence, the only options are US AEGIS or Israeli Arrow (made with a lot of US help). If Europe wants to pivot away from Russian energy (either voluntarily or forced because of Nordstream destruction, France losing neocolonies in Africa for nuclear fuel), the US is the most willing seller.
France can get upset all they want, but the failure of their industry to unite with Europe as a whole and failure to compete on the global market is a big part of why Europe has to accept such deals in the first place. How many SAMP/T batteries exist vs PATRIOT? Why is SAMP/T only a joint French-Italy project instead of incorporating more European states? Why did Dassault split away from the Eurofighter project to make the Rafale, and why is their FCAS project on the verge of falling apart, with multiple states that were supposed to collaborate on it now buying F-35s? France also lost their sphere of influence in West Africa.
Now the above paragraphs were comparing French and European domestic production to the United States, and one might say that's unfair, and I'd agree. But even if you compare Europe to Russia, the least powerful of the big three global powers (United States, China, Russia), Europe is still behind. How many SAMP/T systems exist vs S-400? Whatever one thinks of the status of the Su-57 project, it's still further ahead than anything Europe domestically has put out in the field of 5th generation stealth aircraft. Russia may also have more influence in West Africa than Europe.
Short of a complete strategic realignment and Europe forming an alliance with China and abandoning NATO and the EU project, signing a deal with the United States is the only option on the table.
Chinese J-10s shooting down Dassault Rafales recently in the India-Pakistan conflict also took quite a big hit on the French defense industry’s reputation. They have even less cards to play than they would have, say, 5 years ago.
Yeah, the Rafale is ultimately a 4th generation aircraft. It may be a very good 4.5/4+++ generation aircraft, but ultimately still a 4th generation aircraft. There are many competitors in this regard, from the Su-35, to the F-15EX, to the Eurofighter Typhoon for heavy fighters, and the J-10, Gripen, F-16V in the light fighter category. Self protection systems/electronic countermeasures/towed decoys cannot replace stealth and 5th generation capabilities. In fact, stealth greatly enhances how effective all of the above is. If your radar cross section is smaller, the effective range of electronic countermeasures/jamming can be a lot higher, as the radar signature you're trying to obscure is a lot smaller.
As for the India-Pakistan conflict, a lot of that was due to poor mission planning/intelligence on Pakistani capabilities, and overconfidence on the first strike, where India thought they could just launch a limited attack on Pakistani territory without engaging Pakistani ground based air defence and limited engagements with Pakistani fighter aircraft. That was obviously not the case, Pakistan engaged India with all of their capabilities, and India lost 4-5 aircraft. On the second Indian attack, India hit all their targets without losing a single aircraft, and Pakistan was unable to intercept the Indian aircraft and shot down very few incoming Indian stand off munitions. So once India took Pakistan's actual capabilities into account, they were able to carry out strikes with little to no consequences, and the Pakistani retaliatory strikes did little damage. So Pakistan won the battle but lost the war, I would say.
France also voted against a european army (where they would essentially get control over the germany army mind you) in the 1950s. TBF that army was supposed to be under the NATO, so essentially the us. But the french are not really blameless when it comes to derailing any pan-european attempts and putting their interests first.
Yeah french Prime Minister declared war on von der leyen. Would be funny if, for once, the French used its intelligence agency for good
I think Europe will remain unified but just become more fascist tbh.
If Europe really commits to fascism, they will not remain unified. There will be another war within Europe (this will get to count as WWIII, since only land wars between European imperialists are "world" wars)
Its likely that the EU will declare war on russia before they fall apart.
No way. Fascists want some Führer that is unshackled by democratic checks and balances to do what they imagine needs to be done to deal with the enemies of the nation. There is no European nation except in the minds of a couple of weirdos, so they'll just identify each other as the enemy.