Image is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ recent article on Kashmir.
It looks like the spat between India and Pakistan could be dying down, due to a new ceasefire. As of the time of me writing this paragraph, it seems both sides want to maintain it (despite some reports of violations here and there).
Both sides have declared victory, which is completely expected given their mutual political parties and nationalist histories. It’s a little harder to say which side has actually won, as both sides seem to have managed to shoot down aircraft and hit military bases. India has, in my opinion, had the more embarrassing moments, but international conflicts aren’t cringe compilations. I feel no good-will towards Pakistan’s comprador government, but it is at least nice to see Modi knocked down a few pegs. Regardless of the final technical victor, it’s obvious that - if the ceasefire is maintained - who won are the hundreds of millions of people who won’t have to live in fear of dying in nuclear hellfire.
This conflict is a good example of what multipolarity will truly entail. Countries that have been previously limited in their nationalist ambitions by American pressure will now take opportunities to revolt, sometimes against America itself, and sometimes against other countries in their regional neighbourhood. It’s also why, as communists, our goals do not stop at multipolarity; it is merely the establishing act of a new era of agitation against peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries that are forming powerful national bourgeoisie classes as the international American capitalists are forced away.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
Which is literally manufactured by the Chinese anyway so if they wanted they could do it to that too. They don’t, because it’s not good business sense, but they could!
Someone on a (non marxist) server I’m on brought it up when I mentioned China. Fortunately 100% of the other people online all saw through it immediately and I think they also started to see it as sus also. The issue is that people simply trust news outlets, they do not think they would print something untrue or something that is blatant propaganda. People are deeply naive and gullible, most generally good people think society is running sensibly and fairly. Being critical of new outlets is not normalised.
Fortunately at the current moment China is actually getting widespread popular support because of Trump. The current atmosphere is very good for us.
Yeah, I joke, but I have actually noticed a bit of a shift in the libs in my life towards China. While previously much more reluctant to discuss it, there’s a lot more positive talk and a lot less pushback when I call them out for things like “Chinesium” I asked a buddy to travel to China with me last year, he didn’t want to (though it was much more financial issues than any-anti China stuff) but now I feel like he’d be much more positive about a trip like that.
With the crowd on this server I literally couldn’t say a word about China before without getting winnie the pooh authoritarian bazinga shit in response. I would have been crucified then if I said the things I now say about China openly. Exactly the same people, the only thing that has changed is their own attitudes and behaviours. They are definitely shifting.
Lgbt people that are currently experiencing regression in the west and have no hope for the future are extremely open to hearing that lgbt issues are progressive over there and that the Chinese community will likely be a leader on these issues eventually.
Climate change people are extremely easy to pull around to “China good”, probably the easiest.
American Liberals like China standing up to US.
European Liberals like China standing up to US and repeatedly say “we need to be closer and trade more”.
China is winning the propaganda war on every single front. The west has zero positive ground to stand on anymore and it’s so easy.
Even Chinaphile nationalist content can get upvotes in baby-left leaning spaces. Won’t be number one in those spaces but it won’t be sent to oblivion either.
Don’t get me started on tiktok, while comment sections are generally mixed (i do not understand how comment section algo even works) the videos themselves are being massively liked and spread very far.
Yeah, the tide is definitely turning. To the point that I’m wondering if the US will try to push out new versions of USAID and RFA and similar to try and reign in the narrative. They just seem to be using the same tired old rehashed stories they’ve been using since the 90s. Though that could be an example of the decay in our modern neoliberal system, the people coming up with the anti-China propaganda are all True Believers in the system and so can’t actually make shit up the way their forebears could 30-40 years earlier.
Most likely true. Many of them do not recognise that they are lies, they actually believe the propaganda.
If you actually believe the propaganda and don’t realise it’s made up then you don’t realise that you need to make up new propaganda.
They were much better off creating well educated true believers in capitalist ideology, when they destroyed education and used media to turn everyone into believing in nothing they set this path in motion.