The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump’s gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
It’s a small step but the commentary I’ve seen is that minimum wage growth has halved compared to a decade earlier (which went from a national average of 14% in 2014 to only 5% in 2023).
Each data point is the January yoy minimum wage growth per province. The outlier in 2023 was Anhui lol, which did not raise its minimum wage for the previous eight years.
The fundamental problem is that budget spending at the national level is still tied to foreign reserve accumulation and government bond selling, instead of just printing the money needed to raise wages. This direct affects how the local government spends as well since many local governments are facing budgetary issues with falling property prices and insolvency. So we still need an ideological breakthrough to see real growth.
Is it true that covid restrictions also ate up a bunch of local government budgets? Heard it from relatives
Yes but the local government finances have been under strain for quite some time and it goes way back to the 2009 GFC.
As the global recession caused Western consumer spending to plunge, many local governments saw their tax revenues (coming from real sector) slashed and found themselves in deficit and unable to take out new loans because they were unable to pay back their outstanding debt.
At the same time, the central government poured in trillions of yuan as stimulus but because fiscally it was mostly untargeted, a lot of the money went into real estate development. So local governments started selling land to property developers for quick cash, then used that to pay back their old debt to take out new loans from the financial institutions.
You end up with this complex situation of local government-financial institutions-property developers tightly bound together. As the GDP growth fell each year, the debt burden continued to rise until an external shock like Covid combined with the falling property prices spiraled their deteriorating debt situation into a full blown crisis.
This graph here shows the current situation with the local government debt:
You can see that the GDP contribution (gray bars) is highly uneven among the provinces, with most of the economy concentrated in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang (left four) - all the coastal manufacturing regions. The blue lines show the debt to GDP ratio and many of the poorer regions have exceptionally high debt burden (e.g. Yunnan (云南), Guangxi (广西), Heilongjiang (黑龙江) all having 600-700% debt to GDP ratio). Only Shanghai has less than 100% debt to GDP ratio.
This clearly cannot go on forever and the central government really needs to understand that debt can be and should be cancelled.
Appreciate the comprehensive explanation. I always learn so much from your posts
If the budget of the government is tied to GDP growth. Yeah pretty much.
My relatives know a lot of migrant workers in the construction sector and most of them went back to the countryside due to the lack of work since covid.
Damn, sad that some local governments didn’t raise minimum wage for 8 years. One of the characteristics everyone likes to mention about China is that unlike other countries, it constantly kept up the minimum wages.
You can really see that wage growth tied to GDP growth. 2014 was the year the “twin surplus” miracle ended in China and growth has been slowing since. There are a lot of financial instruments that have been used to pump money like SLF, MLF and reverse repo but they’re all temporary solutions compared to the central bank just creating net new financial assets. But that would require the central bankers to give up adhering to their indoctrinated neoliberal ideology lol.