After 15 months of genocide - and resistance to it - the Israeli regime realized that they could not win a military victory against Hamas, and were forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire in order to get their hostages returned.
With much of Syria under the control of Al-Qaeda, and an increasing level of covert infiltration into Lebanon, the crisis in the Middle East is not over, and we may still be in its beginning stages, as the center of hegemony continues its gradual shift away from the United States. Their navy, once considered the best in the world, is likely also not very happy about their ships and aircraft carriers being forced to retreat by Yemen, one of the poorest countries; and all eyes are on Iran, who has, over the last year and a half, demonstrated a newfound confidence and strength to directly strike Israel.
The recovery for Gaza will take, at a minimum, decades; it could indeed never fully recovery to even how it was before, considering it is not in Israel’s interests to see their concentration camps recover. But Hamas has proven to be steadfast and the tunnel network has proven its resilience, despite facing some of the most powerful conventional bombing in history. This shows that Palestine’s liberation is a when, not an if; and hopefully a much sooner “when” than expected before October 7th.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
xiaohongshu spent the bulk of election season saying Biden had it in the bag
There was a general trend on hexbear as a whole to dismiss Trump. Which I didn’t understand, all the unbiased and reliable polling data I saw from a few weeks out showed Harris and Trump at a statistical tie in terms of people saying who they would vote for, but with Trump leading on most key issues. An indicator that the election was at best a coin flip for the Democrats, and at worst a large loss. Which is a pretty bad place to be in, and favouring Trump. In the end we got something in between the two, though leaning substantially towards a large loss for the Dems.
Also I think a large amount of US hexbears live in a liberal or radlib bubble a bit, I’m not American and even I could sense that the popular energy was in favour of Trump on conservative leaning social media and the like. I fully understand why people don’t want to expose themselves to that, but without checking in at least once in a while you can lose touch with what’s going on, which way the wind’s blowing, etc. That goes for geopolitics too, with reading sources that you usually disagree with on principle.
never once grappling with all the Americans telling them they were extremely wrong
due respect, all I can say is we all have our blind spots, myself included
to be honest I get that uneasy feeling about their global economic perspective when I see their confidently wrong takes on internal American politics, the same way I do when I read a journalist I’ve thought was pretty savvy writing about something I am professionally familiar with and completely fucking it up
I need to read Superimperialism, then I might have enough context for their pessimism but I haven’t done the investigation
Pessimism? They thought Harris would win and the Republicans had been abandoned by the bourgeoisie! As much as I hate the Dems that’s got to be some measure of optimism, surely.
oh I guess I was thinking about their grumpiness about the future of China (and to a lesser extent Russia)
It’s okay to be suspicious about MMT
We’ll see what happens in the midterms and in 2028. Far too early to say who’s having the last laugh. I suspect the Dems will make a come back sooner than most think.
Well yeah, that is the way the American political see-saw works. Since neither party actually delivers the outcomes voters want (since doing that would require spending money on something outside propping up the financial sector), American voters become disillusioned with whatever party they voted for and either don’t vote or cross party lines.
The Democrats will probably get a swing of some progressives that reconsidered their non-voting, but unlikely more than a slim majority in the House.