Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.

Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the “Three”, alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.

Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump’s appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump’s high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China’s existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.

Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they’re supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.

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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

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.

  • AlHouthi4President@lemmy.mlEnglish
    75·
    2 days ago

    Regular day under US cultural/media/economic hegemony:

    All Muslims are terrorists except for al Qaeda which is the legitimate government of Syria. In the UK now Al Qaeda Emir Joolani who was just this week removed from terrorist list but Pal Action is still proscribed.

    Bashar al Assad was a comically corrupt supervising straight out of a marvel film and if you disagree then you are an “authoritarian” “axis of resistance ideologue” who is “denying atrocities.” Sednaya prison was the worst thing imaginable and deserved global multilingual media attention but Sisi’s dungeons with pro-Palestine demonstrators and al Saud’s significant increase in death penalty including minors (in some cases over social media posts!) are not even worth mentioning at all.

    Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq are “Iranian power projection” but two decades of US occupation and its naked threats against the Iraqi government is “US influence”.

    Democratically elected president of Venezuela Nicholas Maduro is a “dictator” who must be overthrown but don’t ask why the US refuses to participate in UN human rights reports.

    • AlHouthi4President@lemmy.mlEnglish
      29·
      2 days ago

      Excerpt from article about the situation in Egypt:

      Two years later, at least 120 remain in pretrial detention on charges of “spreading false news” and “joining an illegal gathering.” No major demonstrations have been held in Egypt since.

      Lawyers with EIPR told Drop Site that dozens of others have been arrested for social media activity expressing solidarity with Gaza. “People have been detained for sharing a post or changing their profile photo to the Palestinian flag,” said a defense attorney who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. “It’s enough to accuse someone of belonging to a terrorist organization.”

      In one case, two minors from Cairo’s Dar al-Salam district were detained in March 2024 after painting graffiti reading “Free Gaza.” They remain behind bars today, held in a prison for adults in pretrial detention on charges of “spreading false information.”

      …

      “The regime uses the Palestinian issue to polish its image internationally,” said Kaldas. “But inside Egypt, it cannot tolerate any independent mobilization. Every chant, every banner, is treated as a potential revolution.” He added, “Most Egyptians fear that joining a protest for Gaza could mean vanishing into the system—held in pretrial detention that can drag on for years without trial or release.”

      Thousands of political prisoners are being held in Egypt in pretrial detention without ever having been convicted of a crime, a practice widely condemned by human rights groups. In August, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk condemned Egypt’s widespread use of a practice known as “rotation”, whereby authorities bring fresh charges against individuals as they near the end of the maximum two-year period of pretrial detention—resetting the pretrial detention clock and holding people behind bars indefinitely.

      By some counts, there are more than 60,000 political prisoners behind bars, including thousands held in pretrial detention. Between 2018 and 2021, monitoring groups recorded 941 rotations affecting 774 individuals—some rotated up to seven times. In December 2024 alone, the State Security Prosecution rotated 88 detainees into new cases, restarting the clock on their detention.

      • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        1 day ago

        Egypt is also not taking any direct action while the RSF/Janjaweed are committing genocide in El-Fasher, slaughtering thousands, if not tens of thousands, in a matter of days. Only token support for the SAF, Egypt don’t even destroy RSF’s air defence systems even though they restrict Egypt’s freedom of action in the region. Even Turkey of all nations provides more support to the SAF with the supply of Bayraktar UCAVs and operators/training.