There’s way too much going on right now for me to really focus on any one country this week. The aftermath of the fall of the Nepal government has, somewhat surprisingly, reverberated around the world, and not only in countries that are enemies to the West as you’d expect; for example, Morocco’s government battle fiercely with Egypt’s and Jordan’s to be first in line to lick the dogshit off the boots of Zionists, and yet Morocco is currently embroiled in a large protest wave based primarily around a youth unemployment crisis (though their population is also remarkably pro-Palestinian, which generates additional friction). We’re also seeing similar protests in Madagascar, Peru, and Paraguay, and perhaps more will come. I’m personally fairly doubtful in the potential for meaningful economic results from these protests (the current imperialist system seems too deeply embedded for a movement that isn’t explicitly communist and anti-imperialist to alter conditions), but it is quite possible for new political results at least.
Outside of the developing world, it appears that the unpopularity of western leaders, such as in the UK, France, and Italy, is creating new levels of unrest. In Britain, the political system has become so utterly moribund that even the artificial democracy of a two-party system (more-or-less; the Lib Dems do exist I suppose) no longer suffices, with both Conservatives and Labour gradually sinking. The Reform party appears like it may become the new standard-bearer of the capitalists and petit-bourgeois - that is, the historical wellspring of fascism - and the Left Party (whatever name they eventually choose) may or may not rise to meet the occasion. In France, they’re on their fifth Prime Minister in two years, after Lecornu lasted about a month, attempting the liberal classic: promising change, and then appointing the exact same people who have ruled for the last few decades. And pro-Palestinian protests and general strikes have erupted in Italy, in defiance of their rightwing government under Meloni.
While there’s plenty of other events (e.g. continuing aggression against Venezuela that might soon erupt into a war) it would be remise of me not to mention the very much ongoing events vis-a-vis Palestine and a potential peace deal there, seemingly supported to some degree by Trump. It could be legitimate, and it could be some big act (very likely the latter, IMO). Both Trump and Netanyahu seem to believe that they’re very talented political masterminds, producing manoeuvres and feints that would make Machiavelli blush. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I trust the militant organizations inside Palestine to outplay these American failsons. Hamas and similar groups are not nearly as gullible as the Iranian reformist faction - though few people are!
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
People like Norman Finkelstein have argued, throughout the genocide and as a tactic to gather sympathy, that it is a genocide and not a “war” exactly because the resistance is incapable of engaging militarily against the IDF in anywhere near the same level, at some point Hamas was killing less than single digit soldiers a day. For most of it there was no “resistance” at all, indeed it was just a genocide and not a war.
Looking at this trajectory and emerging with “Hamas is stronger than ever”, I’m sorry is just self-delusion at best. I do not fault you or anyone, do not take it the wrong way, Its good propaganda, but its one thing to say and another to wholesale believe it. It implies they do not need urgent allies, it implies the world’s continued cowardice is not a factor, it implies their situation isn’t at all desperate.
Wave a magic wand and pretend everything is as best as it can be since Oct 7th. What are you or Hamas going to do about the mountain of rubble that will take 50 years to clear up? What are you going to do about the complete destruction of every bit of key basic infraestructure. Gaza is destroyed and there is not coming back to pre-Oct 7th. This is Israel’s success. They’ve made Gaza permanently unlivable.
One thing the anti-Israel broad left discourse doesn’t understand, or refuses to understand is that humanity isn’t perfectly rational, this isn’t some Paradox game with clear cut “rules”, with a clean list of objectives you can number from from 1-10 and a map with a gold star saying “this is the objective you win or lose if you capture it”. The objective is the normalization of the genocide, again as he would say Israel has repeatedly done this killing sprees, “mowing of the grass” as he puts it for decades, each time with greater scope, greater violence, greater casualties and expansion of their influence.
Again wave a magic wand and pretend its all over now wash it all away as another “operation”, you look at the track record and its undeniably a success for them. Now defining a success as the same metrics as we do, assuming we share the same core ideas of what success looks like is a massive logical fallacy. Nazi Germany was successful in killing the Jews. They just weren’t successful in building their shitty little ubermench fantasy land. Indeed you’d find for many of them the greater goal may as well be irrelevant, they were in it just for the evil(in violence and pleasure) of it all.
I wont even touch the greater scope of Syria and Iran being cooked as these are gigantic victories on their own.
With regards to the “public opinion” keep in mind the vast majority still sees Oct 7th as Hamas committing war crimes. The original mainstream reporting still goes unquestioned by most. The situation is still just as bad and any such repeats will be met with even harsher measures. We know the only way out is complete destruction of Israel and that means a military victory against both civilians and the IDF. There is no such clean war BS. As far as the global opinion is concerned, as much as they hate the genocide, the majority is not supporting Hamas violent resistance either.
Global opinion is just as irrelevant as before, minus everything Israel killed and destroyed which made them feel bad, realistically Hamas still can’t even throw rocks at their tanks or they’re just terrorists.
The majority of gen z people in the US, aged 18-24, sympathize more with Hamas than Israel. https://www.trtafrika.com/english/article/150871e81987
We will see how Finklestein’s strongest argument that Gaza is unlivable will hold with the ceasefire.
If Gaza is unlivable, by definition the Palestinian’s will abandon it fully once the borders open. If they don’t, then it is not unlivable because the Palestinians will make it livable once again.
The Zionist entity is obviously not making Gaza unlivable, which would involve them dousing Gaza with white phosphorus and other chemical weapons. The whole point of any settler project is to steal land from the Indigenous, not render it uninhabitable to the point where it’s not worth stealing.
“Uh aktually we won the Vietnam War because we killed more Vietnamese.”
But the thing is, America did win the Vietnam War in the end. They achieved their objectives. Vietnam is now more closely aligned to America in many ways than it is to China, it has fully opened up its market, resources and people for exploitation just as the capitalists wished. The Americans may have ‘lost the war’ but they won the peace and achieved their objectives of stopping the spread of communism and causing rifts within the communist bloc.
This is either a decade plus out of date or taking “who do you like” public opinion polls as meaning a damm thing in geopolitics and foreign policy. Vietnam is closer to China than they have been in a long while. China friendly party wing has won out the struggle over the last 3-5 years. There is zero chance the US gets anything meaningful out of Vietnam in terms of China containment stuff in the near or medium term future
it’s hard for me to take this too seriously when America has tens of billions of dollars of investments and there’s entire communities of white sexpats colonizing the area. That’s kind of my criteria for losing to America
By your own logic China has already lost to America for the same reason. But that’s a ridiculous way of analyzing material conditions.
It’s also completely ignoring the lived experiences of the Vietnamese people, which are objectively much better off because the viet cong won the war. They are still a dictatorship of the proletariat and can decide their own economic and foreign policy; their market reforms and normalization with the West were done by their own volition much the same way China did, they did not surrender anything to the Americans, unless you think allowing foreign investment is “surrendering” which I fundamentally disagree with. If you actually want to know how the Vietnamese are doing you should listen to Vietnamese Communists like Luna Oi that talk extensively about their country through a Marxist lens.
Finally, I find your description of White Sexpats as colonizers a bit reductive to the actual meaning of the term. Yes I think they’re absolutely repulsive as well, but they’re still just tourists/ visa workers like any other immigrant and aren’t literally creating another British Raj. Also, it kinda sounds similar to the anti-immigrant/ great replacement rhetoric you see in the west where far-right types say mass migration (which they sometimes call “colonization” too) of non-white people will cause a “white genocide” and is surrendering our countries to the “globalists”. So I’d rather not use this kind of language to describe sexpats as it gives ammo to fascists.
But that’s not BynarsAreOk’s reasoning. Their reasoning is literally arguing over K:D ratio. It’s like saying the DPRK lost in the Korean War because the US destroyed every single Korean building to the point where bombers dumped their payload into the ocean because there was nothing else to bomb.
“The Nazis won WWII in the end because NATO was and is staffed with Nazis and West Germany where all the Nazis winded up to escape justice from the Stasi annexed the GDR while the Soviet Union was overthrown by anti-communist forces from within” is something most people here would agree with while “Aktually, the Nazis won WWII because they killed a lot of Jews” isn’t serious analysis.