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.
If you think about it, the US believes that they live in a Dark Forest universe. They truly believe that they have to annihilate their opponents before these emerging states/powers surpass their own technologically and escape their sphere of influence.
I am seriously starting to believe that this is the reason Obama likes the Three Body Problem series so much, while taking the wrong lessons from the books, which was a cautionary tale about how the most “rational” belief of destroying your opponents before they have the capacity to do it against you may let you overpower them in the short run, but ultimately lead to the mutually assured destruction of our world. It emphasized that a bit of irrationality, naivety and delusional about our opponents are sometimes needed to put a stop into this chain of madness.
We’ve been very lucky that Putin, who is in control of thousands of nukes enough to blow up the world several times, does not see the world in the same Dark Forest state as the US does. Putin is naive and even delusional about a rapprochement with an imperialist West for years, and yet it was exactly this attitude that kept the peace for as long as we have (even with the war in Ukraine, there is a lot of restraint from escalating further).
It is strange how the history of the US seems to be a history of its enemies underestimating its resolve and capacity for violence.
Underestimating its brutality and evil, more like. Willing to do or encorouage the vilest deeds imaginable to maintain capitalist hedgemony.
It reminds me of the recent Speak No Evil horror films (both the Danish original and the American remake) in the same way that the US will keep pushing your boundaries and see how much you’d let them get away with it. Maybe there are some hard truths in those movies.
The US used its violence to do a good thing exactly once and it involved attacking itself. And even that turned out to just be disciplining itself so it could continue doing violence.
Probably because a lot of the types who wouldn’t get labeled as “extremist.”