Image is of many Hamas soldiers supervising the handing over of Israeli hostages to cars heading out of the Gaza Strip.

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.

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

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    5 hours ago

    Russian Presidential Aide Ushakov on Putin and Xi Jinping’s Conversation:

    It was a very detailed conversation, as always in a friendly atmosphere, it lasted 1 hour and 35 minutes. Both bilateral issues and international problems were discussed in detail.

    Chairman Xi Jinping gave a general overview of the content of the January 17 telephone conversation with President Trump. They noted the willingness to establish relations with the United States on a mutually beneficial and respectful basis if Trump’s team really shows reciprocal interest in this.

    Ushakov - on negotiations with Trump: Many signals are coming from Washington these days, but we are now ready to receive some specific proposals that can form the basis for a conversation between our leaders. And during these contacts, we will set out our positions regarding possible considerations and proposals from the United States.

    Putin and Xi met over zoom to discuss what to do with Trump. Not sure what this all means yet but looks like both sides are ready to negotiate with Trump?

    • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      Russia can’t continue the war at this pace forever. Their pseudo war economy peaked in the middle of last year and is on the downturn (like many predicted) and Soviet stocks of military equipment will eventually run out. Russia has significant new production, but it’s not enough to keep with with the current rate of attrition with regards to tanks, APCs and IFVs. So unless they plan to reduce the intensity of operations once Soviet stockpiles dry up, with less armour on the frontlines (new production is still significant enough that Russia will always have some kind of armour at the front, even if it becomes a minority of the vehicles present), they’ll have to think about negotiating an end to the war when the Soviet stockpiles do finish, and I’m pretty sure that they’ll finish before the end of Trump’s term. So that means negotiation with Trump.

      Russia could also switch to a full on war economy to boost the levels of new production, but I think such a move would be highly unpopular, I can’t imagine forcing large amounts of people to work in military factories would go down well.

      I think that the above is a testament to the industrial capacity of the USSR more than anything else.

      • combat_doomerism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Russia can’t continue the war at this pace forever. Their pseudo war economy peaked in the middle of last year and is on the downturn (like many predicted)

        isnt this because the neoliberals who run the central bank just keep raising the interest rates?

        • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          It’s because they don’t produce enough fully new equipment to match the current rate of attrition. A lot of the “newly produced” T-80 tanks for instance, make use of refurbished hulls from Soviet stockpiles. The production of fully new, from scratch equipment is an issue that goes beyond the monetary authority/system/supply. To fix that, a lot more people would need to be employed in the factories, old production lines started up again, etc to get the volume of new equipment produced to match attrition rates . I don’t think Putin telling some office workers in Moscow that they have to build tanks on an assembly line to keep the war effort going will go down well.

          On the other hand one can say that Ukraine may also run out of equipment (and more importantly manpower) soon, but as the defender it’s not as critical. Despite all the issues Ukraine is facing, the frontlines have not collapsed as of yet. There were some close calls and big losses, but the Russians didn’t just start blasting through to Kyiv or Odessa, and Ukraine still hold a bit less than half of the territory they captured in Kursk, around 440 square kilometres as of now (initially 1000). Ukrainian command is still very slow to retreat and slow to redeploy units, but it’s not like they are making a final stand for every settlement. They fight until they are encircled with only one way out, and then usually take that way out. And Russia in a very Sun Tzu esque way, always leaves an outlet for escapes in their encirclements of Ukrainian settlements and don’t press the desperately encircled troops too hard.

          Sure Russia can continue the war in 2027 or whatever with the current rate of limited new production, they will never really “run out” of armour. But if you thought Russia was moving slowly up until now, just wait until they have less than half the current amount of armour on the frontlines. Which is why I think they’ll negotiate before that kind of inflection point.