On December 4th, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and the DRC’s Felix Tshisekedi signed the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity (pictured above). Trump boasted that he was settling a war that had gone on for decades, and remarked, idiosyncratically, “[…] and now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands […]”
A few days later, the M23 militia (backed by Rwanda) advanced into Uvira, a city near the DRC’s eastern border with Burundi and a major commercial and strategic location in the region. Burundi, although a small country, is a significant ally to the DRC and has sent thousands of soldiers to aid them during conflicts; this offensive by M23 aims to cut off a direct route between the two, though they do still share quite a long border over Lake Tanganyika. Tens of thousands of civilians (possibly up to 200,000) fled as M23 approached.
Signed almost simultaneously with the Accords was a Strategic Partnership Agreement between the DRC and the United States, which effectively threw open its critical minerals in the east to American exploitation. These minerals include tin, tungsten, and tantalum, which is vital for many industries. The irony is that M23 has been taking territory in the eastern DRC in order to transport these very minerals to Rwanda and onwards to global supply chains. Signing the Accord was, therefore, a remarkably pointless endeavour for everybody involved. Burundi and the DRC have complained, calling for sanctions on Rwanda, and appeasing to Trump’s pride, calling this a “slap in the face to the United States”, though I doubt the US is ultimately all that bothered about it one way or another.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
Then why not directly allocate the labor and resources to prioritize the domestic sector? Why not use it to raise the living standards of the people directly?
Why would you need to spend a significant portion of your labor and resources on creating cheap goods for Western consumers to earn their currencies before you are allowed to prioritize your own people?
And we’ve seen the outcome of this export-led growth strategy: deflation, wage stagnation/reduction, low purchasing power, which ultimately led to low domestic consumption. Meanwhile, foreign countries are enjoying the cheap goods Chinese labor are breaking their backs to produce while enduring longer working hours and increasing retirement age, with near zero annual leave.
It looks like the leverage is on the US hands, who simply has to put up tariffs to force China’s export sector to divert elsewhere. Meanwhile, the mercantilism is sending every other country to sell their goods to the US in desperation to make up for their growing trade deficit with China. I don’t see any geopolitical leverage at all. It is the Chinese people who are absorbing the costs.
Honestly, I suspect a lot of Westerner leftists support China because they secretly enjoy the cheap goods from China, and not really support the Chinese workers to get the fair share of their own labor.
Anyone here seriously believe that working 26-28 days a month for 10-12 hours is a good deal? If your impression of China stops at the flashy infrastructure, then you’re missing a huge part of the picture. These are the people who make your iPhones. Shifting away from the export sector actually allow the workers to get more rest and recreation time to spend with their families.
I can only speak for myself, but I assure you that isn’t true. I’m just trying to take China’s actions (and lack thereof) in good faith. I want to believe the CPC is still secretly communist and only doing neoliberalism to build productive forces.
I wasn’t accusing you of anything, don’t worry. I think that paragraph lacks context, see my response here to another commenter for a more detailed explanation.
I think almost every Western leftist is exhausted by the flow of cheap, socially useless commodities and would prefer much less of that shit be imported. Anti-consumerism is usually the very first seed of anti-capitalism in the States because it’s the most obvious. Our society is religiously obsessed with consumption that makes our lives hollow and provides nothing of value. We are surrounded by an incomprehensible, unending whirlwind of advertising that makes us fucking bonkers. This is shit teenagers understand.
🤡
i find Xiaohongshu’s analysis interesting from time to time but these random-ass passing comments they sprinkle in just reveal that they’re from one of those types of rare combative tendencies and that they spend their time shadow-boxing made up guys, lol
I think it’s a paragraph that’s easily misinterpreted because I didn’t provide the context. And I apologize for that.
As I wrote in another response, maybe “support” wasn’t the right word to use, but there is an implicit consensus that Western leftists want China to keep the status quo because they either forget or completely ignore the fact that it took an entire underclass of migrant workers to sustain China’s vast economic output.
When you think of China’s incredible industrial prowess and the amazing infrastructure, who do you think are the driving force behind this? I can assure you that it’s not the affluent middle class kids you watch on Chinese social media.
There are 280-300 million migrant workers in China (nearly the entire population of the US) who are mostly invisible to not just to the Westerners who admire China’s incredible development, but even among the Chinese middle class themselves. These people have limited access to housing, healthcare, education, pension and public services despite working and living in the same cities as the urban citizens.
And yet this is the true underclass of workers in China that are making your iPhones, that are building all those amazing infrastructure that the middle class is enjoying the fruits of their labor from.
This is also where the “90% house ownership in China” myth comes from. It’s because when your hukou registration is in the rural area, the municipal governments do not have to provide you with access to those public services in the cities. You are technically not a resident of the city, only a migrant/visiting worker, because you technically have a home back in your provincial town/village that your parents own.
Again I can assure you that when people think of China’s amazing development, not just foreigners but even many local middle class folks, they almost certainly never think about this huge underclass of migrant workers who are behind this. And thats my point.
Ironically, in order to solve the low consumption problem, it is these people who need to be taken care of. And simply by raising their income (which will include China giving up its net exporter status), the huge potential of its domestic consumption market can be unleashed.
Whenever I see Xiaohongshu talking about something I know about, they are often obviously incorrect. I don’t know as much about China as they claim to but I have no reason to believe it’s any more coherent than the shit I know they’re wrong about
What are those things that are incorrect? I’d love to be corrected and learn from you. Thank you.
Generally speaking, they’re the posts like this one where you make some wild statement and get pushback from multiple users. I know I’ve commented on some of them. Forgive me for not wanting to spend my time digging through your post history to win an internet argument.
This is not about winning internet arguments though. This is a discussion forum for us to share our knowledge. Nobody is winning any points here lol. (And I’m mostly here to practice my English and share things I don’t often see reported outside of China)
If you know something that I’m obviously wrong, please do share. I read most comments responded to me and try to learn from them. Since you said it’s about things you know about, I simply thought I’d ask.
I think there’s a different reason for why you don’t see a lot of Westerners, or more broadly speaking the members of the so called Middle Class, pay attention to the issues workers face. Is because they have never experienced them. It’s not that they “secretly” enjoy cheap goods, it’s just a fact that the exploitation of workers directly benefit their interests. And they’ve never had to work in a sweatshop, they never had their family members work in one, they don’t know what’s it like to lose your family to being overworked.
Just look at how much attention they pay to War Heroes like Zaitsev or Lady Death. Meanwhile I have never even seen any of them even Mention Stakhanovite movement. Do they even know who Stakhanov is? Westerners just want to automate this work, which isn’t inherently a bad thing I’ve worked in a farm before and I would not want to do it again, but the issue is they just don’t care what happens when the worker is no longer needed. They can say they care, but words are meaningless without action, none of the theory they care about so much would mean anything, was it not for the workers who put it into practice and built these amazing cities.
Just like you have said I have seen those workers left abandoned in desperate situation and having to rely on Charity, in Chinese cities. Same as they have been abandoned in cities where I live. It is a great shame veterans of labor are treated like this.
“Enjoy” really depends on who and what. A lot of local industries are getting crushed by China flooding the market, so it doesn’t even benefit them long term. Hence some countries like Mexico you mentioned, setting up protective measures for their local industries. Sure consumers like Chinese goods, but it’s short sighted. And also one sided because a lot of these countries can’t offer China anything that China wants, or China simply says no even if we have something we could export to China. That’s another thing lack of domestic consumption in China influences. If China had more domestic consumption, they’d be more willing to import goods.
South Africa has had to turn to Europe as someone to export goods to, because of US tarrifs exporting to the US is not competitive, and China simply not wanting to import more South African goods as South Africa’s trade deficit with China grows and grows.
I just struggle to see who this merry go round benefits long term aside from capitalists… Chinese workers toil away to make goods for export, said goods crush local markets outside of China which hurts workers there. China doesn’t want to import more due to lack of domestic consumption, so the trade imbalance between China and foreign nations grows and grows, and foreign countries have to find other markets for their goods, at the moment it’s Europe because of US tarrifs. But Europe could also implement tarrifs and protectionist measures down the line, and then the merry go round continues.