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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
The western left has learned zero lessons from AOCIA
I don't remember AOC or Bernie ever threatening to arrest Bibi
You can’t draw comparisons between two politicians unless they promise the exact same thing
AOC didn’t threaten to arrest Bibi because the average American didn’t give a shit about Gaza 7 years ago. She also wasn’t running for Mayor of New York.
AOC has a safe seat and isn't running for election, so Zohran has far less incentive to make that declaration than AOC, and yet he did
You cannot sit there claiming the man is an opportunist after he does the most anti-opportunist thing imaginable, like promising to arrest America's number one allied head of state
You are the one who brought up AOC’s campaign promises but now we’re comparing Mamdani to post-election AOC for some reason? I guarantee you if AOC was getting her start now running for Mayor of New York she would promise the same.
It’s the same pattern: outsider radical comes in promising radical change, gets publicly railroaded by prominent DNC figures, gets stopped at every turn by whichever variant of the Parliamentarian is applicable, and becomes a DNC cog within 5 years.
Mamdani has far more incentive to promise radical policies than someone already in power, because he still needs to get elected. AOC promising to arrest Bibi, which she wouldn’t do anyway because that’s not something she can even technically do, would derail her promising DNC career, and she would also have to answer for why someone in power is promising things and then not doing them.
But he can’t be an opportunist because he promises things? Are you serious?
AOC has more incentive than Zohran to talk radical about Palestine and yet she doesn't and HE DOES, that's why I brought her up
It's almost like we have to look at their policies and their support and in AOC's case lack of support for socialism to distinguish them from each other. Zohran's policies are not the policies of a centrist in hiding; rent freeze, defunding the cops, state supermarkets, PRO-PALESTINE, in what universe are these the promises of opportunists, this shit pisses off the rich in ways screaming about free healthcare does not
Imao the incentive after winning the primary is in the opposite direction, if the secret goal is to suck to power
According to your calculations Zohran should be backtracking on his policies and yet he hasn't budged on anything, so what now, are you gonna claim there isn't massive pressure for him to backtrack right now?
If she was a centrist sure, which is WHY she's isn't doing it, but if she was a socialist it would skyrocket her popularity and enegerize the progressive base as Zohran has proved, but again she's won't and yet Mamdani will, your thesis is bust
It's almost like the crucial emphasis is on WHAT "THINGS" he's promising
Let me ask you this, in your worldview if the "real deal" ever did show up how the fuck would you be able to distinguish them from a fake, cause apparently your ideology doesn't seem to have a mechanism to distinguish actual socialists from fakes
Did anyone that calls themselves a communist actually ever believe AOC was further left than socdem liberal? I don't feel like anyone ever did.
Yes this forum was full of AOC supporters, as was the subreddit that spawned it. Just like the Iraq War, they all admit it's a mistake years later in retrospect but won't admit they supported her with the exact same enthusiasm, logic and rhetoric as they do Mamdani. It was the "DSA" and it was "harm reduction" and it was "a foot in the door" and it was "expanding the Overton window" et al.
This forum was 80% AOC content on the front page back in 2021 lol.
It was really only after the Ukraine war started that, I’d like to think driven by the news mega, that people started to pay attention to international news, that there is actually a world outside of America.
Even then, there were many that regurgitated Western/NATO propaganda about Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the war and I remember some of us here having to fight those comments time and time again. It took until September 2022 (six months after the war started) that the broader Western left changed their tune to the slightly better “actually we shouldn’t be funding NATO war machines” take.
I remember the whole "revolutionary defeatism" and "russia is an akshually tsarist empire and smol bean uwukraine needs our help!". Memory holing isnt just done by libs, we have that in spades a plenty.
Hell liberal zionism was even something that persisted until the last two years here on "our side".
So many people here fell for that fake "feminist" protests in Iran.
We’re currrently in the cope stage where people insist that a radlib politician is actually a secret communist.
Excited for two years from now when we reach the backpedaling stage (part 1) and everyone feverishly insists they never said he was going to do anything, and three years from now for the backpedaling stage (part 2) where everyone insists they had criticized him from the beginning.
And five years from now, we’ll get not-AOC #3, and go through the cycle again.
Truth is rarely appreciated and celebrated.
lol we have 5D chess, hiding power levels, etc arguments and parasocial pretzel-twisting and gaslighting to defend the honor of a socdem “israel has the right to exist” politician, sheepdogging the pro-Palestine movement towards a liberal zionist position. Simultaneously championing him as a paragon of pro-Palestinianism while saying it doesn’t matter because he’s only running for mayor of New York. Guys he said he’s going to arrest Bibi, also who cares about foreign policy he’s only running for mayor! Transparent bad faith rhetoric. Literally going “yeah he said that but it was actually a top secret dogwhistle designed to get zionists to argue against human rights thereby collapsing zionism globally”. At first I laughed it off as bad faith BS but now I’m struggling with the realization that it’s a sincerely held belief.
Someone give me a nobel prize because I’ve successfully time travelled back to 2018.
You know despite making so much fun about the "trump is fighting the deepstate and will release the epstein list!!" q-anon/maga, some have not a too dissimilar mindset in the end.
Their delusional conspiracy theories, our insightful dogwhistle interpretations
it wasnt just aoc back then, the original subreddit was founded on bernie memes. i remember it all. i would like to be proven wrong, but the western left are long time winners of the "fell for it again" award, ive never seen a more consistent and impressive streak. back then people were debating abt the "ugyhur genocide" before 2023...
i don't think he's a secret commie, i think he'll improve things somewhat and that's a damn sight better than the sex-pest grandparent killer, the pig, or the vigilante actual republican.
Verbatim “oh would Kamala crack down on protests as hard as Trump will” “would you rather have Adams or cuomo as mayor” this is just vote blue
so interesting that these radlibs don't notice their arguments are literally identical to the ones Democrats use while vote shaming the left. We are just "ultras" for insisting on principles.
kamala promised nothing positive. mamdani has positive reasons to support him for mayor not president. that's the difference you're ignoring.
Except the difference is she supported a genocide and he's threatened to arrest the perpetrator.
and now he is supporting the mass incarceration system and cop cartels by refusing to attack them and backpedaling on his previous correct stances to appease the center. How can we trust anything he says? When it's popular, he's a radical. Then later when he gets pushback from the center or right, he gives in immediately. Why believe anything he says?
He should have went off about how the NYPD is a massive bloated organization, and how America has the highest incarceration rate on Earth. Go on the offensive. The fact that he instead immediately defers to tacking to the center and backpedaling instead of going on the attack on an issue we are 100% correct on and have easy rhetorical victories within is a very very worrying sign. Usually opportunists don't start selling out until they are actually elected, guess he's getting a head start.
The worst part isn't even his opportunism and the fact he's going to become AOCIA 2.0. That's expected and priced in. It's that he drags a huge chunk of the western left along with him, apologizing for him and defending him. Just stop defending this shit. It's making you a worse person and corrupting your politics. Condemn it.
Also, he's a mayor. He's never going to arrest Bibi or any other powerful zionists. He doesn't have that power, it's not his jurisdiction, so it's easy to spout radical rhetoric when he will never have to back it up. Whereas he actually has power to struggle against the cop cartel that runs NYC, and there he shirks and gives in.
here you go again. you want him to say completely unelectable things just because they're objectively correct and throw a local election for no value.
every county supervisor or dog catcher who doesn't say "death to america" on their campaign page is a shitlib and shouldn't be supported.
fucking never speak on electoral politics again and stop paying attention to it if you're so unreasonable about it. you will never find a candidate to your standard.
Say you are a tailist and be done with it. The carceral state is not popular. We have the winning hand.
mamdani is left of the electorate, that's not tailism.
say it's a mayoral election and be done with it.
If only mayors had some sort of power over the police force. Alas…
you want him to run on an ultra position that would lose in every city at every time in history. crank shit.
Just call me a tankie already. It’s on the tip of your tongue
why would i say you support crushing a color revolution in hungary? we both want the NYPD to be (optionally, tried and) executed. the disagreement here is because you don't understand the difference between local politics and the revolution so you want a mayoral candidate to throw a campaign just to say fuck 12. persuading nobody of anything and leading to nothing.
do some self crit and stop reading about elections.
no i don't think she would have