Image of destruction in Mandalay, Myanmar, from Al Jazeera.
As if the ongoing civil war wasn't enough, Myanmar has now been struck by a very powerful earthquake, resulting in 2000 deaths and thousands more injured as of the time of writing. Estimates are that the death toll could reach 10,000. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are damaged, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. The earthquake struck during Eid prayers, resulting in even higher casualties as several mosques collapsed. 20 million people already required humanitarian assistance in Myanmar, and now the situation there will be even worse. International rescue teams have rushed into the country, and aid is being raised, though with USAID experiencing the... changes that it is, the United States will be of even more limited help than usual. So far, China has sent $14 million, while USAID has supplied $2 million. In Thailand, the death toll seems considerably lower, though there has still been significant damage; a skyscraper under construction collapsed in Bangkok.
Myanmar is located very close to the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. In particular, the country is divided in two by the north-south oriented Sagaing fault. This fault is typically strike-slip; that is, each side of the fault moves horizontally past each other. The earthquake's depth was 10 kilometers, which is pretty shallow, and its proximity to the surface amplified the felt force of the earthquake. Additionally, the soft soil in this region tends to further amplify seismic waves through a process called liquefaction. Combine all this with the lackluster building codes due to many years of impoverishment and civil wars, and this explains why the death toll, and the expense to the country in general to repair damage, will probably be extremely high.
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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.
Just saw this posted and wanted to bring it here.
"Digital RMB vs SWIFT: The emerging tech-backed disruption of cross-border payment settlement"
There's been a lot of chatter here about if the de dollarization hype from a few years ago was just that, a false hope with no backing in reality. Some like our favorite power user xiaohongshu pointed to BRICS+ conference and other examples showing that China isn't interested in such a thing, due to factors like a strong neoliberal policy influence, lack of political unity within BRICS+, reliance on dollar reserves and on foreign capital investment.
Worth reading the full article, but it seems to me like China is moving forward on de dollarization quietly and on its own, setting up the standards and processes internally using their position as the center of global production to get everyone on board without needing to include them as equals in the matter, which is what pursuing the same strategy through BRICS+ would require. No reason to telegraph these changes or to rely on politically unstable allies, China can do it all and everyone else will just fall in line.
https://ict-pulse.com/2025/04/digital-rmb-vs-swift-the-emerging-tech-backed-disruption-of-cross-border-payment-settlement/
If you post 'dedollarisation' three times in row while facing a mirror, xiaohongshu/kaplya/droplet will appear behind you and tell you to read michael Hudson's super imperialism
I just finished it last week.
definitely cool and good but note that this is replacing the trade settlement portion of the dollar, not the world reserve currency portion of the dollar. 'dollarization' doesn't just mean doing transactions mediated by the dollar instead of some other currency. the more this takes off, the more the poison is drawn from US sanctions though
yes good point, it's just good to see some momentum on the front after months of nothing ever happens posts.
I mean the traffic was always going to bring back de-dollarization. But China did reject the earlier plea by Putin to create an alternative. It didnt mean they never created an possibility to do so. There was the possibility of Harris continuing the "normalcy" of Biden (fascism with a human face).
They leadership of china does NOW know that continuing like the last decade is impossible and the shanghai libs have eaten dirt.
Right but Putin's plea was within the BRICS+ context, which means China would have to include all BRICS partners in the development process, many of which are struggling in more ways than one. It seems like a way better move to just work towards that goal internally and unilaterally for China, they don't need input from anyone else to pull it off.