Image is from the January 2023 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Over 50 heads of state and 600 CEOs attended.
holding flashlight under face
Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Lebanon! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
Nasrallah delivered a realistic and clarifying speech that set the new terms of engagement. High quality leadership as always.
This is what was needed and we can be sure this speech has psychologically eroded and confused the Zionists and their American masters.
His speech clearly explained how Hezbollah has been involved in the fight and that this fight today is driven by the SELF DETERMINATION of the Palestinian nation as represented by the Resistance Leadership, specifically Hamas.
His speech exposed the hypocrisy of Arab nations and Lebanese compradors begging Hezbollah not to act; showing how shameless and munafiqeen so called Arab leaders are.
He specifically identified the US as the cause of the massacres in Gaza and the region and, as a small non-state paramilitary threatened the United States of America! And revealed that Hezbollah has the capabilities to sink the American navy ships! Alhamdulillah
When he says "now is not the time for the knockout blow" is because the entity is bleeding out every day. Hamas is winning in Gaza. The occupation gets weaker every day. Unless the imperialists carry out a pre-emptive strike on Lebanon then Hamas will dictate when Hezbollah joins the fight. Its a long game and you have to understand these leaders are responsible for literally millions of people. This isn't a video game.
Liberation wars are paid in the blood of hundreds of thousands of martyrs. If or when escalation occurs then the massacres in Gaza these weeks will be only a small fraction of the pure blood spilled by the imperialists. If you have no skin in the game then it is beyond deplorable to be calling for escalation of a war.
May Allah grant victory to the Mujahideen and peace for the martyrs. Inshallah
I love it when Westerners, whose countries can declare war and commit endless atrocities without it impacting them in the least, start crying and getting demoralized when a military leader doesn't immediately declare war (on a nuclear power who is willing to kill tens of thousands of their countrymen in bombing raids) in a pre-planned speech and instead establishes an escalation ladder
Thank you for this, comrade. If Hezbollah or other resistance groups act too soon, or when conditions do not align as best they can for their actions, it can unravel whatever plans they may have. While the settlers and imperialists have shown themselves to be vulnerable, they are still the forces that have caused so much unimaginable suffering and are capable of the most extreme violence in their desperation. We on the outside will not know the full extent of the conditions that need to be taken into consideration when deciding military moves until long after this war has ended, I feel. And even if we did, it is not our place to condemn or to criticise the people who are fighting for Palestinian liberation. Have we sent missiles into the settler territories? Hezbollah has, and will continue to do so. It is the task of all people who are not directly fighting the occupation to focus on supporting the people suffering under it however we can. And the organizations which we can influence must be where we direct our criticisms if we care to have an effect on the situation.
"A member of one group told me that if i was really concerned about the liberation of Black people, i should quit school and get a job in a factory, that if i wanted to get rid of the system i would have to work at the factory and organize the workers. When i asked him why he wasn't working in a factory and organizing the workers, he told me that he was staying in school in order to organize the students. I told him i was working to organize the students too and that i felt perfectly certain that the workers could organize themselves without any college student doing it for them.
Some of these groups would come up with abstract intellectual theories, totally devoid of practical application, and swear they had the answers to the problems of the world. They attacked the Vietnamese for participating in the Paris peace talks, claiming that by negotiating the Viet Cong were selling out to the U.S. I think they got insulted when i asked them how a group of flabby white boys who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag had the nerve to think they could tell the Viet Cong how to run their show." ~ Assata Shakur
As theorists, propagandists, and shitposters, we are the students of revolutionaries in Palestine, not the scholars. I have thoughts and feelings for sure, but their results speak louder. When the revolution comes to the west, we'll have the benefit of these warriors and martyrs who will have shown us the way with their triumphs and their missteps
This is a great point. There are some things over the last month I have feelings about but I think part of being in any struggle is being able to recognize when verbalizing your thoughts isn’t helpful.
100% agree with you. He can't over emphasize what Hezbollah has done because that would be weaponized as "Hezbollah is just cynically riding the achievements of Hamas on the bodies of Palestinians" and the emphasis on Hamas conducting it on their own initiative is to highlight the Palestinians as the center of their national liberation struggle as well as deflect accusations that Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, et al are just Iranian proxies. If Nasrallah's claim that Hezbollah has tied up a quarter of its air force, a third of its army, and half of its navy is credible, then Hezbollah has done a great deal already.
Thanks, comrade. This is a good analysis
Has not Hamas requested that others jump in? More hot air from these chumps. The West has never been this weak. Now is the time for big moves.
I do not see the Arab nations offering up 50+ martyrs in this battle and keeping over 1/3rd of the Zionist army distracted in the north while destroying dozens of tanks and enemy soldiers. I do not any in the west doing much of anything besides symbolic denunciations which is not nearly enough. You should be ashamed of yourself calling The Army of God "chumps" in the face of the most well armed military on the planet.
You're fighting the good fight in the comments here. Thanks for keeping peoples' heads in the game
Of course. Combating defeatism is something we all must do 🤝
Thanks for affirmation
Israel is going to turn their sights on Lebanon after they complete their genocide in Gaza.
Hamas did say a week or so ago that they were disappointed Hezbollah hasn't done more to help
This statement was from a spokesman who hasn't been involved in Hamas for years IIRC, and was an attempt to try and create the illusion of divisions between Hamas and Hezbollah. The two forces are in constant communication, and if Hamas wanted Hezbollah to escalate, they would have already done so. Hamas needs Israel to enter Gaza City so it can destroy their forces, keep them bogged down, and then call on Hezbollah to start their operations.
That specific interview with Moussa Abu Marzouq was also mistranslated originally. This gives an analysis and clarification.
Hamas has multiple times implored regional actors to join the fight against the zionist entity.
Source.
It's PFLP statements that they're thinking of. Not Hamas.
source
I can't go through all the statements digging right now. The account people are getting these statements from is this one though. The website abruptly stopped updating on the 26th, I fear the person maintaining their site updates may have died.
The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades telegram and pflp telegram are still active. The websites of all the major factions in Palestine have been brought offline by the imperialists unfortunately.
The most recent statement of condemnation on the telegram you linked is a very specific criticism.
"Appeal from the PFLP to all the honorable (Palestinian nation) and freedom loving people in the world:
In the face of the torrent of blood flowing in Gaza, words no longer work : Rise up...fight ... storm the embassies of the aggressor countries ... Burn them ... Destroy them. Demand a stop of exports of oil and gas to the countries that are partners in this aggression. (Now is) the time of blood. History will not be forgiving ...Trust that the people of Palestine will not forsake you."
Does this sound like a criticism of Hezbollah or someone else?
pflp.ps isn't offline, is that not the official site? It's the site I was getting their statements from prior to the updates stopping on the 26th.
Isn't there also the internal situation in Lebenon?
Thank you, this a helpful and correct perspective.
This is pretty much what I thought. I wasn't a fan of the structure of the speech but the content was good. He did some good pumping up the troops and calling the US a bag of flaccid dicks. He explained the "why" of it all, What Hezbollah have been so far doing and plan to do in the future. He called on other Arab nations to do their part and mildly shamed the leaders who need it.