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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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.
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.
embarrassed I didn’t remember this was Ho Chi Minh, thanks for covering for me lol