this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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Bulletins and International News Discussion from February 2nd to February 8th, 2026 - The European Satrapies Are Revolting
(hexbear.net)
Get it? "Revolting" is a double entendre! Anyway...
As the Trump administration continues to accelerate the flagrant disregard of "international law", we have seen various European leaders flock to China (alongside Canada), seeking deals. Some trips have been more successful than others - for example, Macron's was fairly dire despite his lavish reception by Xi Jinping, but Starmer's resulted in some actual deals and tariff reductions. The intent of this wave of diplomacy with China is clear: leverage.
Nobody should be fooled into thinking this revolt immediately benefits the developing world, of course. While a relative weakening of the US compared to Europe is progressive in a limited sense (insofar as the US is the locus of imperialism), every indication shows that, when it matters, the European consensus remains aligned in most respects with the US, such as with them and the Zionist entity against Iran, against national sovereignty in Africa (e.g. ECOWAS), as well as in Latin America (either in support or not sufficiently opposing American designs there against Cuba and Venezuela, to name but two countries). It is also unclear how long such a divide will last - perhaps Trump leaving office in 2028 and a slightly less bellicose leader in power will result in many cancelled deals with China.
Despite the very shaky initial steps over the past couple years, Europe still has many miles it must traverse to achieve sovereignty, let alone socialism. For now, it will cheer on the sanctions against millions of vulnerable people and incoming bombing of Iran and Hezbollah, though perhaps it will also share a degree of the economic/military retaliation.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
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I still think gold is undervalued, China put a stop to leveraged trading, but I think it'll still rally. Maybe gold isn't undervalued, but in comparison to the USD, I think it will "rise" just because the USD is losing value so quickly.
My only worry is that the house always wins, if these brokerages can't afford to pay out all the contracts from options and futures, they'll try everything they can to make sure they don't have to pay out. What better way to do that than to release your coffers, flooding the market with gold, making the price plummet, and then slowly buy it all back over the course of multiple years
There's a very large gold lobby in the United States and elsewhere, cranking out blogposts, celebrity documentaries and online influencers, all dedicated to scamming the retail buyer out of cash. The winners, as always, are institutional traders with insider information.
Which is just the thing, wether gold is 'undervalued' or not is immaterial. The gold lobby used central bank purchases with a larger dollar collapse narrative to sell gold to retail investors. Those retail investors were the ones driving up the price of gold due to their critical mass, not the central banks, not China and not industry.
I'm not sure that's the case. The retail goldbug has existed for a long time, at least 20 years through the GFC. I'm sure they've piled on in larger volume, but there has also been a fair amount of central bank buying in the last few years, especially China and Poland.
I am firmly in the nothing ever happens camp, de-dollarization will not happen via gold hoarding but by countries altogether refusing to export to the U.S. (beyond 'balancing' the trade), sanctions of sorts. That won't happen unless there is an ideologically aligned states willing to do it or if there is an alternative power willing to supply their currency.
My read of the situation is that most developing countries (except China) will work harder to maintain exports and capital flows from the U.S. in order to sustain imports from China/Gulf and other exporters.
I am not saying gold price won't go up further, I don't know the future. But I can say, while central banks have large balance sheets, they too will get squeamish when more and more of whatever currency they buy Gold with (usually USD, not much liquidity for gold outside USD) is needed as the price goes up. And once the stock of USD (in form of reserves) is exhausted, then what? The Central Bank is stuck holding massive amounts of gold. Will they give this gold to other countries so they can use it to import from the country? I do not think so. Will they give it to the public? Then the public will be holding hoards of gold. If they do decide to sell, they are selling for local currency.
I think the hoarding gold for sanctions (sanctions can be considered kind of a voluntary default on debt by the US) risk is somewhat valid. But that again has the problem, your flows (capital, remittances, trade flows) are currently aligned with the U.S. directly or indirectly.
My point is de-dollarization is a trade and capital flow problem than 'hoards of Treasuries' problem.
One way would be purely local currency arrangements, let's take India and China. China says 'I will accept Indian Rupee (INR) at 90 for 1 CNY up to say, 835 Billion CNY' (that's how much India imported from China mostly by obtaining Dollars from elsewhere in 2025). Now, India can take Rupees it can freely issue and give to China, the PBOC or whatever Gov entity will hold INR. There you go, no need for India to obtain Dollars from elsewhere.
But why would China do that if it can’t spend the rupees anywhere other than India? It would have to convert them to dollars or other currency to be of any use, which means having to find a buyer for them and being vulnerable to fluctuations in the value of rupees
The same question can be asked about Treasuries and USD assets too and yea it's valid, it's a fiscal transfer.
The excuse made is "USD is highly liquid unlike INR or NGN etc", sure but that doesn't change the fact that you are giving the US real resources in exchange for its own financial claims.
Unfortunately, everyone places first world currencies above third world ones.