I just want to say i really appreciate the quality of this discussion and i think very good arguments have been made by both sides, many of which also reflect my thoughts on this matter.

they can’t fully block them without attacking China/Russia which would be considered an act of war

I this this is the essential point here. This is the crucial difference between the old sea routes, where other countries control passage, and this one. Blocking the former would require much less escalation.

Other factors to mention are Russia’s growing superiority in the arctic (US has nothing to rival Russia’s modern nuclear icebreakers), and the capability of shore based hypersonic missiles to interdict a conventional naval presence. The US really only has two options here which is submarines or air sorties from Alaska, both of which involve serious risk of starting a nuclear war…and that’s a threshold I’m not sure the US is willing to cross yet.

Yeah, climate change is a big reason why this route is now much more viable and why it will continue to gain in relevance. In that way this is quite a bleak sign…

Most likely. It was definitely not organic. Whenever you see a sudden spike in almost identical talking points against a threat to the establishment you can be sure you’re dealing with a very top-down co-ordinated propaganda campaign.

Maybe we’re all missing something but it really seems to me like there is very little reason for this feud apart from personal animosity. Policy wise they seem to be on the same page, at least in general terms, and as your research indicates there doesn’t seem to have been any big change in the overall situation such that you could say the new government is doing a worse job.

These internecine squabblee are such a waste of energy…I wish they would focus on the real enemy.

Cold war communist politics was very messy…

Same thing.

This is great! Now i really want to learn more about the situation in Sri Lanka, like actually in detail how they managed it, what their exact positions are and how they plan to govern. Fascinating stuff.

This is a very well reasoned response, and for the most part i would have to agree, particularly with the bit about having an organized and disciplined approach to information (that was excellently put and i will certainly remember that phrase). Disclaimers can and should be added, if only for newer comrades who may not be aware of the biases of a source.

That being said i wonder if we can’t just use a bot that would call up a boilerplate disclaimer for sources that are used on a somewhat regular basis which are of dubious political orientation.

Fair enough. You’re not wrong and your reaction is valid, but i guess i just don’t like seeing strife in communist spaces. I think we can afford to have a little more patience for our comrades than we typically do with others online, and if they are wrong about something first make an effort to explain rather than rush to condemn and dismiss them.

We could all stand to be a little less judgemental, and we should remind ourselves that most of us were not always communists. We grow and we learn. Not too long ago most of us probably had plenty of bad takes.

If you’re worried about empowering the far right, the worst thing you could do is refuse to look at reality because occasionally some far right nutter talks about it

Indeed, because once we start doing that then we allow the right to monopolize anti-establishment and anti-imperialist rhetoric. You don’t dimish the right by doing that, you diminish the left and drive people toward the right. People by and large realize that something is not right and they look for whoever will validate that feeling and give them an explanation. If the left fails to do that then the right will. The surest way to alienate people who are just beginning to have some nascent class consciousness is to give in to the liberal moralizing impulse (of which the ultra-left purity fetish is a manifestation).

If a right wing source presents a correct geopolitical analysis then we need to acknowledge that, otherwise we just discredit ourselves. And then, if and when they go on to state nonsense about other topics we will have the credibility to say “no, actually on this topic they are wrong” and explain why and convince people that we communists have the more correct analysis on the greatest number of issues, because we do not make the idealist errors that the right does.

I think this response is a bit harsh. I can understand where they are coming from, and once upon a time i myself may have had a similar kneejerk reaction. I think that as i matured (politically, though age also helps to put things into perspective) i came to understand that such an emotional reaction was not productive. Criticize what needs to be criticized and learn as much as you can from any source that you can. As Lenin said the most important thing a young revolutionary can do is учиться, учиться и учиться.

I think what the OP of this comment chain needs to ask themselves is this: there are already enough imperialist shills trying to discredit and smear anti-imperialist voices, regardless whether these voices come from the left or the right (and frequently conflating the two anyway); do i really want to help them do that and what does my revolutionary cause gain by doing so?

It’s a little frustrating that you seem to ignore everything i wrote about engaging with the content of a piece instead of just attacking the messenger.

To answer your question, no, there is not much out there with this level of quality of analysis on these topics. There just isn’t a huge amount of content like this coming from progressive channels, i wish there was. By the way this channel isn’t even the worst offender as far as reactionary sources of good geopolitical analysis that have been shared here. When we do so we assume a certain level of political maturity from our comrades, such that they can engage with the analysis presented and separate that from whatever other reactionary views that source may have.

If someone is uncomfortable with giving a particular channel views they can use one of the alternative links provided where the video is embedded on a third party website. I’d recommend doing that anyway for privacy reasons.

The advantage of videos like this is that they use the western media’s own reporting and publicly available information to show how when you actually dissect what they are saying they frequently slip up and admit the truth even while they try to spin it to fit their narrative. That is helpful when trying to deprogram people who would otherwise not trust any non-western source, or who would refuse to listen to any overtly communist channels.

If you think that sharing videos like this should come with a content warning to caution against listening to these sources on other topics then that is totally valid and we can absolutely do that.

With all due respect these are two completely perpendicular axes. His analysis of the Ukraine conflict and the US’s new Cold War against China are one thing and his takes on vaccines and global warming are another thing entirely. Obviously we won’t post any videos of his on the latter two subjects because as you say it’s likely to be BS. There are many anti-imperialists with bad takes on vaccines and global warming, does that mean that everything else they say is also wrong? Conversely, there are countless liberals who are right on vaccines and GW but completely and utterly delusional when it comes to geopolitics.

People can be wrong about one thing and right about another. If a piece of analysis is correct then it is correct regardless who it comes from. Obviously we should be careful to not spread reactionary propaganda, and when it comes to right wing sources that means we need to vet a piece extra carefully before we share it, but also it’s frankly lazy and not very educational to automatically dismiss something without engaging with it simply because it comes from a source we don’t agree with on other topics. If something is BS then i’d like to believe that we are smart enough to realize it, or if not to at least have our comrades point it out for us by dissecting the piece and showing how and where it is wrong.

In fact doing this can often be more educational than just engaging with content that we already know we will 100% agree with. It is a good exercise to engage in critical analysis of a piece, understand what the biases of the author are and identify where their analysis falls short as a result. Obviously this isn’t worth doing with just any old reactionary garbage, something has to have at least a minimum level of coherence and connection to reality, else we’re just wasting our time, but i don’t think this falls in that category.

My guess is money extortion scheme gone wrong.

Either way it’s an act of terrorism.

Here’s a source: https://sputnikglobe.com/20240917/what-is-known-about-mass-pager-explosion-in-lebanon-1120178496.html

According to Twitter he was also actively engaged in attempting to recruit and smuggle mercenaries from Central Asia to fight in Ukraine, and proposed doing the same for Taiwan. Unhinged psycho. Too bad these wannabe assassins are such rabid turbolibs…

Pop science journalism is also frequently sensationalist garbage. In my own field where i am familiar with the subject matter i’d say they have a hit rate of maybe 50% where they actually write something good albeit boring for the average reader, and that’s mostly because the people writing have a real background in science. In other fields where the journalists are essentially amateur enthusiasts the ratio of decent pieces to garbage is even worse.

Here’s a map to put things into perspective:

I won’t try to predict how far they can still go, or even just how long until Russia kicks them out (it’s only a matter of time), but what’s clear is that the more resources they throw into this incursion the faster Russia advances in the Donbass.