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.
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.
Things aren't going so well for Tel Aviv... Now even a US Republican congresswoman has called Gaza a genocide: https://www.rt.com/news/622173-republican-congresswoman-gaza-genocide/
OMG she is a frank anti semite and there is nothing new here
She is also against child sex abuse i.e. she is QAnon
Learn to tell the difference between conspiracy and reality don't get suckered in just because someone is using language that appeals to you.
This is still important information though. It shows that the US government is probably realising that they can't control the narrative anymore, so like any good fascist regime, they'll go for the anti-semitic explanation rather than admit that they were the ones supporting this.
I expect the media narrative to follow suit and to start talking about how the US was "tricked" by Israel into supporting them, it'll be yet another "always stumbling US empire" thing.
More to the left than Bernie on this issue lol
It's Marjorie Taylor Greene though, the same woman who actually believes that the government controls the weather and that jewish space lasers exist, amongst other things. Not exactly an intellectual. She is more from the "isolationist" camp of the Republican party who have increasingly been sidelined by Trump, in the wake of the Israel/US-Iran war. Other more senior isolationist figures like Gabbard, Witkoff, and Hegseth to an extent, have also been sidelined at the moment.
MTG is a Christian Zionist, so it is quite surprising that she has come out and criticized Tel Aviv like this.
There is branch of Christian Zionism that basically says "we are the true jews askhually", Mormonism was founded on it, british israeliteism another.
Evangelicals like her also think that the global Jewish population needs to drop to 144,000 (who survive by converting to Christianity), so I think she may just be part of the inevitable overt anti-semitic shift once philo-semitism no longer serves their purposes
The fuck’s happening? The sudden switch up is creeping me out
Getting just slightly ahead of the massive death toll about to happen due to starvation.
Yes. Even Pol Pot managed to kill "only" 25% of Cambodia's population, Israel has killed 20% of Gazans RIGHT NOW, and the famine will drive it up even higher.
The death toll is and will be immense given the current level of famine.
Also, some of it has to do with "America first" nonsense. I say nonsense because, for Republicans, it only applies to straight cis whites.
Note that even though there is some dissent, the U.S. establishment position is still pro-famine, otherwise Israel wouldn't be doing it.
There are a number of reasons why some US conservatives and non-leftists are turning on Tel Aviv.
The nature of the genocide in Gaza is so obvious and appalling that even some US conservatives are getting disgusted with it.
The USA is literally bankrupt and a growing number of US taxpayers do not want to subsidize this BS anymore.
USA is a declining power and can not afford to continue endlessly antagonizing the entire Muslim world by militantly supporting Tel Aviv's genocidal and expansionist agenda.
That's their narrative true, but I hate the taxpayer narrative. It puts "taxpayers" above workers and people in general. You can see right wing scum on Twitter saying only "taxpayers" should have right to vote.
The amount of taxes you pay doesn't mean anything. Not all revenue is equal. A dollar of consumption tax will have more negative impact on demand than a dollar of wealth tax. So, a millionaires taxes are less valuable than the taxes paid by lower income workers.
You are contributing to Israel's genocide if you work to obtain Dollars and consume goods and services with Dollars directly or indirectly, not by taxes you pay. So, even the undocumented migrants are unfortunately "paying for" the genocide even if they pay no taxes.
Even if China stopped all trade and flows to Israel, it'll still be indirectly funding it by creating demand for the Dollar with its exports.