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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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.
Sad seeing people with their heart probably on the right place, choosing to forego the most important moment of their careers as a moral gesture towards people suffering; but being misguided to the point of calling the Palestinian genocide a war. Fucking state propaganda
Seeing as it's Han Kang's father paraphrasing his conversation with her, then the Korean article translated into English and the 'two wars' appearing to be an editorial parenthetical, I don't know if we can say for sure than Han Kang herself called the Palestinian genocide a war. I'll keep an eye out for an any statement from the author herself and update. That being said, that's how it's being (misre)presented.
Yeah, you're right that we're playing a game of "the broken phone" (idk if that's the name in English) with the author, her father and the writer of the article, the original meaning might have been lost at some point
I wouldn't be surprised if the father introduced his own spin onto what he heard from his daughter, yes. I have enough respect for the author that I would imagine she'd rather take her time and give an official statement, and her father may have just pushed ahead and put words in her mouth. That thing kind of happens with parents...
Yes, telephone or broken telephone I think is a common name for it. Unfortunately where I grew up it used to be (and sometimes still is) called
cw sinophobia
'Chinese whispers' because of the stereotype that a) Chinese people are gossipy, unreliable and deceitful and/or b) hard to understand because they don't understand English wellWell, at least "el teléfono escacharrado" (the broken phone) isn't sinophobic. Not that we don't have sinophobic idioms in Spanish, we have plenty sadly.
I gotta be honest, I never get this rhetorical insistence. The Palestinians and the resistance are waging a war of liberation. Wars have never needed to be evenly fought or without horrific crimes - I'd say war is almost definitionally the opposite of that. Genocides only ever happen in direct connection with or as part of a war.
The term "war" in my opinion places a kind of moral middle ground in which "both sides are bad and fighting each other". More accurate words like genocide, invasion, ethnic cleansing, mass displacement and murder, etc. better portray the situation. Saying "war between Hamas and Israel" is what western media uses to abuse bothsideism. After all, why wouldn't Israel have the right to bomb Gaza if they're at war with it? That's the mindset they're trying to instill. It's part of the whole "this conflict is too long and complicated, don't bother to understand it" rethoric used to keep progressives in line (conservatives don't have any problem with bombing Arabs).
Who has ever used it this way? That's what I don't get. The Vietnamese fought a war to oust colonial powers and secure their socialist revolution. The sides were not equivalent morally or militarily, but that's never kept anyone from calling it a war. This position is such a weirdly rosy view of the word "war
These are events happening within the war, and they are common features of war throughout history. I mean, invasion as contrary to war?
This I agree with because it misrepresents the nature of the war to support the colonial position. But the word "war" isn't the issue - it's the framing of the sides. The war is Israel vs Palestine. One side is right and one side is wrong. That's how most wars are.
Seeing how western media uses the word "war" for bothsideism, I'd rather stray from it, and call it a genocide, which is much more representative of the situation at hand, and much more unequivocally condemnatory of the actions of Israel.
I'm sorry but I can't even remotely agree with that statement. Most wars have historically been power struggle between the elites of two distinct areas of influence, and so most wars have been illegitimate in that sense, with both sides being wrong. I don't think Sargon of Akkad waging war against neighboring regions made either side justified, I don't think WW1 had a good or bad side, I don't think most medieval wars that took place in Europe had a good or bad side. As such, I'd rather use other terms for conflicts that are morally one-sided. And again, I'm refusing the word "war" here because it's the frame that western media are trying to impose.
The nobel prizes are also imperial propaganda, they probably come with a cash prize I guess but I dont feel great implying any writer worth their salt should strive to get a nobel prize
infact the second woman to win a nobel prize, Bertha von Suttner was literally Nobels secretary, a woman of some pedigree, who was brave enough to write some pacifist book in in the late 1890s
Suttner later introduced theodore herzel to the russian tsar, who convinced him to support the zionist movement because it would redirect the radical russian Jews, zionism has its roots in anticommunism wow! Kibbutz! Socialism!
sorry, this is kind of irrelevant, but I see people talk about nobel prizes a bit with some level of almost awe. I felt like i was losing it going down this rabbit hole the first time, i never got around to collecting my notes.
Fun fact: this guy is the man with the most pull on who wins a nobel prize and if you scroll down to the controversy section you'll see that he had close personal ties to another guy we're all familiar with