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.
I’ve seen you say this a couple times, and it makes me wonder: why can’t the EU do the same tariffs/protectionism (which the US is doing right now) to prevent their green industries from being crushed? The Europeans seem to have expressed their willingness to suffer economically (Nordstream) to deal with a perceived military threat in Russia, so I’d think that their elites would be able to force the population to suffer the price increases that would come from placing higher tariffs on China (especially for the green energy industries you mentioned). The phrase “have to dump” makes it seem like Europeans have no choice in the matter even though they are the buyers here. They also seemed ideologically primed to accept any cost that would come from aggressive economic action against China, due to the anti-China hysteria that has been cultivated in the west for years.
Maybe it’s a similar situation as in the US, where tariffs were ostensibly to protect and promote local industry, but the country is too deindustrialized and overpaid for it to actually work.
They can and they have. There was a EU-China summit last week negotiating for a trade deal, which has apparently gone sour. The two-day summit was shortened to only one day with no obvious deal being announced.
Think about it this way: the EU realizes that it has to raise tariff to protect itself from Chinese goods, and obviously as part of the negotiation, China will demand them to lower that tariff. Since the EU cannot do so, they will have to face a reciprocal tariff from the Chinese side, and that means their exports will be more expensive in China and less buyers as a result (and let’s face it, Chinese consumers no longer fancy the branded European cars like they used to, both because local brands are doing it better and cheaper, and also because of the consumption slump where many more people are more careful with where they spend their money).
So, the EU has no choice but to turn to the US market to get their goods sold their, otherwise they would have to shut down part of their industries and lay off workers if nobody is going to buy their stuff, and this will lead to unemployment and recession. As a result, they have to give in to Trump’s demands.
This is simply the result of a global neoliberal trade order that, over the past 50 years, has designated the US as a net importer country (running ~$900 billion trade deficit last year) that is keeping the export industries of the rest of the world going. When the net importer country merely threatens to cut consumption, it will have far reaching consequences for many exporter economies. Of course, this also presents new opportunities for other countries to take advantage of a deal with Trump, where they have felt they were previously left out of, and the overall competition drives even more cutthroat competition among the peers.
And so, the world has to move towards more balanced trade (which requires another country or countries to step up and fill in the importer role), and this requires a new economic order that challenges the current neoliberal consensus (the IMF export-led growth model being pushed on the developing countries). Without addressing these underlying and fundamental root causes, what it will eventually devolve into is pure mercantilism and US finance capital harvesting the failing economies.
Having said that, I don’t think Trump is going to get his re-industrialization at all, despite making progress in cutting trade deficits. For one, there is no industrial policy from the US side, and what country that wants to re-industrialize doesn’t do that??
It seems more plausible that this is a financial warfare disguised as a trade war for US finance capitalism to expand. After all, Bessent is a finance guy. He was a core member of the Soros’s team responsible for the 1992 sterling crisis and the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
Yea, even poorly planned/implemented subsidies like the CHIPS Act is miles better than tariff protectionism.
Thanks for the long and detailed response!