One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain’t worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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Last week’s thread is here.
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.
Brown Rejects Protesters’ Push to Divest Over Israel Ties
Brown University announced on Wednesday that its governing board had voted to reject a student proposal to divest from companies involved in Israeli military and security activities.
The vote, on Tuesday, was the first of its kind in the Ivy League since the start of the Israel-Hamas war one year ago, which has ignited an international protest movement.
Everyone in the news mega called it five months ago
We just need to ask nicely one more time
And then stop applying pressure at the same time the opposing side ramps it up:
Ahead of the vote, Republican attorneys general from 24 states warned Brown of potential financial penalties if it chose to divest, citing state laws that penalize anti-Israel activism.
This is a lesson that should be part of every group that tries to agitate among students.
NEVER accept promises for future action, let alone promises to “consider” a demand at some point in the future. You must have concessions in-hand or you have nothing. Even in that case there would be attempts to walk it back, but you can at least maintain your organizations in the meantime.
Accepting early mealy mouthed false concessio a only destroys your attempt at organizing in exchange for literally nothing.
Also, be wary of “concessions” that are really just PR moves they would have done anyways to save face.
These are things that must be taught and agreed to as early as possible in the organizing phase. They should be part of every person’s understanding of what you are fighting for and when you would ever consider reducing pressure. Otherwise you will leave yourself vulnerable to opportunists. They will literally take over.
Lmao what a joke
I saw a comment on the TrueAnon sub that said “if any of you youngsters are around in 50 years when the U.S. admits it blew up the Nordstream, let them know we knew.”
We’re basically at this point with the Iraq weapons of mass destruction narrative. I marched; we knew. The lib friend I marched with doesn’t give a shit anymore. (He’s wealthy.)
The 2k ton bombs that Israel dropped on Lebanon were made by the US. US bombs killed Hassan Nasrallah. I don’t see the distinction between the US funding and making the weapons for the genocide(s) (and probably (definitely?) having US troops in IOF) versus having an actually declared war against Palestine/Lebanon/etc (which the US doesn’t even do anymore anyway).
one of the debris signatures from the tornados milton is spawning went up to 30k feet in the air
zoom.earth is showing a projected path of the eye that will take it straight through the Kennedy Space Center.
And Florida is very flat where it will be hitting. And a lot of the area that would otherwise absorb the water and act as a buffer is now developed and unable to do so.
Mangroves? No, man goes
I once again will encourage you all to check out Jon Elmer’s “Resistance Report” section on this week’s Electronic Intifada livesteam. The whole thing is great but Jon’s segment (starts at 1:51:40) is really a wonderful cure for doomerism.
The Resistance is fighting hard and it appears in Gaza that their ability to fight the entity has not degraded at all in the last year. And it’s only just now that Israel has had to commit serious ground troops to Lebanon and this had to come at the cost of taking troops out of Gaza, so the already inept IOF has to try and do more with less in Gaza (and they were already failing with “more”).
Today marks 25th years since portuguese communist writer Jose Saramago won the Nobel prize in literature, don’t know if they ever gave the award to anyone else as based as him but it’s pretty cool. I’ve read a few of his books in audio form they’re very interesting
Here’s a quote from when he visited Palestine
During the Second Intifada, while visiting Ramallah in March 2002, Saramago said that “what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz … A sense of impunity characterizes the Israeli people and its army. They have turned into rentiers of the Holocaust.” In an essay he wrote expanding on his views, Saramago wrote of Jews: “educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted . . . on everyone else . . . will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner.”
Thanks for sharing. This is not a criticism, but in my head I am changing “Jews” to “Zionist Jews” in that quote.
Almost a third of CIA employees experienced sexual misconduct https://archive.ph/sMM8A
This, and they try to pinkwash the wars and genocide in the middle east like they’re murdering in the name of Women’s Rights.
“I am unapologetically me. I want you to be unapologetically you, whoever you are. Whether you work at #CIA, or anywhere else in the world. Command your space. Mija, you are worth it.”
#KnowYourValue #WomenInIntel
More female war criminals, etc
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Someone on Hasan’s stream said their family members live in the path of the hurricane and there are wild amounts of misinfo flying around. People saying “don’t take the $750 b/c FEMA could repossess your home if you don’t pay it back” and people generally downplaying the seriousness of Milton
don’t take the $750 b/c FEMA could repossess your home if you don’t pay it back
The only reason misinfo like that is so successful is because it’s cruel enough to sound like something the US government might actually do. See Medicaid estate recovery.
you’re totally right. pure evil
red. did a series of interviews with five prominent figures from the Axis of Resistance for October 7th.
One each with Hezbollah, the PIJ, the PFLP, Hamas, and Ansarallah.Will there ever be a reckoning for these celebrities who have endorsed Kamala? It makes me fucking SICK! Fucking fascist hell hole of a country.
Its a lib individual/small thing, but you could strive to achieve 10 seed ratio on their creative output, we always need more comrades seeding
But can one separate the art from the artist when it comes to supporting genocide? They can use whatever semantics or logical gymnastics to justify their choice. It is, in action an endorsement of genocide.
I mean they dont do it in their songs (unless its like world war z or whatever)
artists are whatever, they aren’t your friends, they arent politicians, its a crapshoot what they think on any situation
New polls just dropped is Kamala going to be
2? All signs point towards yes.https://nitter.poast.org/IAPolls2022/status/1844077361857519795
I think her mishandling of the hurricanes is going to seal the deal. Your average USians does not give two shits about Palestinians. But it’s very easy for her opps to spin her as an off-putting out-of-touch “let them eat cake” Antoinette figure, which is 100% true. I suppose it’s fitting in a way. Trump basically lost because of a pandemic that the country was unable to handle and now he might be back of natural disasters that the country is also unable to handle. Perhaps this is the way forward in US electoral politics. Some “once-in-a-century” natural disaster plows through the US, which is taken as a sign by the electorate that the current party in the White House has lost the Mandate of Heaven and must be replaced by the other party.
I sort of doubt she is coming off as an Antoinette figure, but I agree that the storms contribute to a general sort of malaise and paint the current administration, fairly or unfairly, as weak, and thus lead to change of regime feelings/vibes.
Your average USians does not give two shits about Palestinians
this is true, but if the race ends up being very tight in michigan to her other fuck ups the muslim community there could really fuck her over with her absolute refusal to even throw the uncommitted the tiniest, most pathetic of bones.
Apparently Waltz also shat the bed during the VP debates, which have had more importance this time round since Trump is so old, so people on the fence or slightly leaning towards Trump were interested in how his potential replacement presented themselves. It seems that Vance won them over.
Imagine losing a debate to JD Vance of all people. How embarrassing.
Hard to say obviously, but, insofar as the VP debate was indicative of a vibe shift or had any effect, I think it had much less to do with Vance as a probable heir apparent, and much more to do with how he is able to frame the race and how Harris is ceding rhetorical territory to the right.
Vance was able to articulate a support for a “Trumpist” platform while giving rhetorical permission to not be MAGA dipshit, acknowledge legitimate grievance which many Americans feel (and which Harris, as heir to Biden, is having difficulty articulating sufficiently), and was able to be conciliatory and not “Weird”. Walz was on his heels, presumably he was going to give Vance enough rope to proverbially hang himself, he thought Vance would be an ideological freak and would look good as an ah shucks guys in comparison, but Vance sidestepped him. And because of Harris’s rightward shift, Walz comes off as weak and less credible. He should be the strong, I gave kids lunch guy, but he can’t get too far away from Harris so he has to give some mealy-mouthed talking points about an economy of joy or some bullshit.
Of course, this is all really symptomatic of the Harris attempt at triangulation – starting w the attempt to encourage the “base” by picking Walz and not meeting Bibi and declaring No Going Back, to pivoting wholely to the “Center” and endorsing nuclear first strikes and hugging the Cheneys and framing the change from Biden as an opportunity to get more Republican input. We can’t know the counter factuals, so, maybe there is a path here but, you know, at some point, obviously, at what cost.
Mostly: I don’t know why people doubt Vance. He has the best story since Obama, unimpeachable pedigree. And those eyes!
JD Vance is smart and quick-witted. You don’t go from bumfuck Ohio to Yale Law otherwise. Don’t have to like him, his policies (or his absolute dogshit PR team) to recognize that.
Her birthday is on the 20th. There’s still time for a “happy birthday to this future president” post to really seal the deal.
But I thought everyone loved the Cheneys!?!?
I’m hoping for Kopmala just to see the libs drop the mask when they are unable to explain the Democrat’s actions in a wholesome humanitarian way
That’s happening already.
her whole CHOOSE JOY shtick got really old really quick
No joy in being a pro genocide racist. Hilarious how pathetic the Dems are and that people people even cobsider voting for the majority of us politicians.
Hillary: Folie à Deux
Folly á Deux
I’m watching the series “Big Love”. A scene made me sigh because it’s so much at lib efforts to downplay the genocide in Gaza and now the expanded war in Lebanon. Libs continue to demand people don’t trust their own eyes and trust lib rhetoric and nonsense instead. The libs are stuck because with each passing day the evidence piles up but they are heavily invested in their pretense so they sound crazier and crazier.
Bill Paxton plays a polygamist with three wives who is also named Bill. He’s an expert at hiding reality. People think he has only one wife. One of his employees confides something to him. She suspects his business partner and best friend to be a polygamist. This is a dangerous situation for Bill. The future of his friend’s family, his family, and their business could be at stake.
She must be convinced that what she knows to be true is wrong. They are sitting in his office. Bill calls her accurate accusations “unsavory”. Then stands up to show her the conversation is over and he shuts her down.
“But I know what I saw.”
“What you saw was an action. But you didn’t necessarily see the label you’re putting on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Exactly. There you are.”
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uwozIBMiYj1hhZg0dcctM
We’ve had some comrade linking that excellent video, the author is apparently doing podcast appearance
The weaponizing of feminism and lbgtq rights is absolutely disgusting, the very same people who would oppress the shit out of these groups if it weren’t for the historical victories of their movements, now pretend like they have always been on their side and get to “defend” them by excusing anything from war crimes, fascism all the way to full blown genocide.
Same argument led me to kinda more softish view on christianity role in colonialism, they did suppress gender/familial expressions in local societies (cause bible and roman law says so), but self-evidently its just pretense of imperialism (not that pretense can’t be harmful or move single individuals in zealot fashion), it was democracy against dastardly commies, now its feminism/lgbtq. They just find points of cultural difference to justify lebensraum, the primary force stays the same
Do check out his vid from July last year too. 3 months prior to al aqsa flood
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Hurricane Milton looks like ‘storm of the century’ says Biden
For him. The century has ~75 years left.
AI will save the kids
Eternal President Joe BAIden
Eternal Chairman Jiù Bǎidù
one looked extremely vicious too. moving fast, with suction vorticies swirling around it, almost like the Tuscaloosa tornado
Is Israel just taking out its impotency on the civilians of Palestine and Lebanon? Because they damn sure haven’t eliminated Hamas or Hezbollah
For context, Al Jazeera war crimes documentary. Sick to my stomach, everyone involved deserves Nuremberg https://youtu.be/kPE6vbKix6A
Hilarious how they keep cutting to the British guy who says “destroying civilian possessions and doing [REDACTED] in prisons is against international law”
Unimportant, but this also confirms the stereotype of Israelis having shitty music taste, we get big room “may your village burn” and psytrance blowing up houses
Don’t watch the doc if you don’t want your whole day ruined
Is Israel just taking out its impotency on the civilians of Palestine and Lebanon? Because they damn sure haven’t eliminated Hamas or Hezbollah
I think this is what they are doing in practice, but in theory I think the idea behind hurting civilians during wars is/was to a) reduce morale and willingness to fight in that country because the losses might become too great; b) weaken the resolve of the fighters themselves because you’re probably hitting their families at least occasionally; c) enforce a “racial hierarchy” in which you regard the life of a single one of your countrymen to be equal to 100 Gazans/Lebanese/Yemenis/etc; and d) be seen by your own countrymen as doing something to fight the enemy to make them feel better about the losses you’re receiving
the issue is that historically, none of these ideas actually function and anti-colonial movements were generally victorious regardless. I suppose the only lasting benefit to the colonizers is that the country they’ve ravaged with war is now so fucked up and damaged that it necessitates a continuing relationship to either them or some other capitalist nation to trade with and rebuild, though even this is declining as a factor because of anti-hegemonic alternatives like China, Russia, Iran, etc.
so Israel is just falling into the same trap as so many other colonial or imperialist projects in the past, believing that a sufficient amount of violence will be enough to dissuade resistance to their regime, and that, sure, it might make them unpopular and morally reprehensible to use increasingly violent methods but this is simply the price of maintaining the project. this isn’t how it actually works; breaking international laws and doing ever more violent acts is not a sign of (albeit evil) strength and power, it actually just makes you lose. there’s no edgy “I have sacrificed everything and killed thousands of innocents but attained ultimate power and now nobody can stand before me!” scene at the end of this path; everybody just hates you and your shitty project collapses. there are countless historical examples here, from Nazi Germany to South Africa.
there is a reason why imperialist exploitation has shifted from a violent, bloody past in which cities were looted by soldiers and civilian populations genocided by armies, to a modern system which is less outwardly violent and instead relying on the banality of debt and poverty and unemployment to enforce inequality. it’s easier to find a common enemy if they’re sending their armies through your land because some feudal lord or early capitalist demanded it. it’s considerably harder to battle an enemy which consists of like, IMF-enforced austerity.
How are famine and pestilence successfully fought, then?
the population has to grin and bear it. this is the terrible truth of anti-colonial resistance where the colonizers hold by far more military and economic power: you must be willing to bear terrible terrible hardships to defeat your oppressors, who are usually used to living in a comfy, privileged position and are unwilling to bear the same kind of burden when they can fuck off back to their home country. Eventually their military and economy will collapse because the soldiers fighting in it lose morale and begin to lose cohesion as a fighting force, and as the economic conditions stagnate and worsen the benefit of this colonial oppression continues to weaken, which further weakens their military. the bet of a resistance force is that the occupying state will eventually collapse before the the oppressed people either turn on the resistance or everyone dies in the absolute worst case scenario. it’s more complicated for a settler-colony (which is part of why it is now considered a war crime to settle territories you are occupying), because it can change this dynamic and make the colonial regime less likely to fall. I admit I was a little worried eventually the entity would be able to toughen its military and population up when it became clear this was potentially extensial, but with the laughable attempts at invading lebanon I’m much less worried, their internal contradictions still seem to be holding strong and their military is dogshit (outside of the airforce) and unwilling to suffer casualties just like it has been for decades. and the way israelis really seem to take psychic damage from like 2 rockets being launched at one of their cities I dont think the population will handle all of their infrastructure being bombed to smithereens well at all and will really start to flee the country en masse. I will look for it later but there is a vietnamese communist with a very relevant quote about this whole dynamic if anyone remembers the quote I’m talking about please link it.
You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
embarrassed I didn’t remember this was Ho Chi Minh, thanks for covering for me lol
It really feels like the vast majority of Israel’s kills have just been civilians.
no no they’re just hamas targets see
If anything, they have just increased the ranks of the resistance. They still cant even safely occupy Jabalia without
I’ll once again use this an opportunity to plug Jon Elmer’s section of The Electronic Intifada’s weekly livestream. What I’m saying below is largely what I got from him this morning.
Short answer is yes. In a year of fighting, it does not appear that the IOF has been able to degrade the Resistance in Gaza’s ability to fight. They’re still scoring
. And Hezbollah has only just gotten into the fight with their ground operations. The IOF hasn’t destroyed the tunnel system in any significant way. It honestly seems very similar to Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh trail.The entity is not defeating Hamas on the battlefield. They know they are losing and they know Hamas has no reason to give them what they want - functional surrender where Gaza is ruled by the Palestinian Authority or a collection of Israel’s buddies like KSA. So all they can do is slaughter civilians. This is the bank robber who, after the bank manager refuses to open the safe, starts shooting customers and insists he will continue to do so until the bank manager open the vault, to make the manager feel responsible for every death. It’s literally terrorism.
Btw when the IOF moved from Rafah to the north of Gaza over the weekend, the Resistance was there waiting for them and scored a number of victories, so that is a good sign of the ability of the Resistance to fight from everywhere in Gaza.
I am writing with some comrades a megathread on Salafi-Wahhabism, to be able to quickly link to people that aren’t familiar with it. If anyone wants to help, DM me here or on Matrix
Wahhabism: a critical essay by Dr Hamid Algar
Cool thread incoming
