Image is sourced from this People’s Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet’s regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we’ve had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil’s Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric’s leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina’s very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
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.
Palestine Action is officially now a terrorist organisation and they post this
I remember getting into arguments about this org being “performative shit” months ago here on hexbear lol, how things have changed.
Direct Actionists have already begun to change tactics, launching actions in the name of “Yvette Cooper” (UK Home Secretary, basically a Secretary of State) which they will argue is a totally different organisation.
Not sure how that works legally-speaking but a lot of far right orgs just “disbanded” following proscription and then started again. PA has the advantage of being able to do that whilst having an non-hierarchical organising strategy that limits risk to organisers and empowers actionists to continue the movement under pressure from the state.
With an active campaign underway, unlike the fash that usually wait around for a chance to riot, the momentum can continue under any name actionists choose, and they dont really need much funding to maintain it. I cannot make predictions, but I do hope that YC (lol) has a fruitful and not-at-all-afiliated career in disrupting the war machine.
Not yet. It’ll be debated in the Lords later today & likely come into effect at Midnight on Friday night.
There’s also an online action meeting about next steps at 7pm UK time on Friday and if people are new to direct action there’s still a crash course online at 7pm UK time (but for international audiences) you can signup for tonight.
14k terrorist supporters on that tweet smdh
When did people say that Pal Action was performative? Damn, they’ve been the only non-preformative western group since oct 7th. The winds of history and all
Yeah i disagree with the entire premise. The only performative UK groups on Palestine are the PSC and the SWP.
They used a massive diversity of tactics to meet actionists’ risk appetite, and managed to shutdown 30% of Elbit’s official locations in the UK. All whilst isolating Elbit from the UK economy via targeting their suppliers, insurers, landlords. Even getting Barclays bank to shift on its israeli/elbit investments was a major victory for the BDS movement.
Pal Action is about as close to a socialist vanguard that the English people have seen in a generation.
Palestine Action is very good and cool and effective but it is not in any way a vanguard, at least based on what I’ve seen. Vanguards build the masses’ revolutionary potential by mass education, embedding themselves in communities and working class organizations, and using their leadership to push revolutionary potential into revolutionary action.
They are doing a campaign of sabotage to weaken an individual capitalist firm and some segments of an imperialist military. It’s a different sort of revolutionary action.
Absolutely agree. I do however think it says a lot about the poor state of class struggle that this is imo still the closest to the nucleus of such a movement, especially in an age where surveillance and infiltration are rife.
keyword: “close”. don’t think they actually meant that palact is a vanguard or anything, just saying
I’ve made a few posts over the years and there’s one or two people that would argue about it each time, here’s an example: https://hexbear.net/post/210760?scrollToComments=false
Probably wreckers.
Fuck that person. Wrong as hell
well i hope they stop spraying paint and start lighting shit on fire because going to prison for being a terrorist and all you did was spray some paint does not seem worth it at all lol. im genuinely curious what took them this long tho, was the embarrassment of one of their (rented lmao) planes being vandalized really what it took for them to crack down after many months of doing this shit?
Yeah this only escalates the risk appetite of actionists who were always playing the long game of less-violent actions to rely on the lenience of the courts: Most of which have largely absolved actionists apart from explicit cases (ie. The Filton 18) where the Israeli govt. requested harsher responses from the state.
I disagree with the suggestion that proscription only came from the RAF raid. The British state was toying with the idea ever since the org began smashing drones in Elbit’s factories. As I said already, some actionists are already held under terrorism charges!
This proscription was inevitable following a months of momentum towards PA’s goals and a number of victories for the wider movement. The raid may have catalysed the state, but the current field situation would be little different in any universe where those planes were never vandalised.
I think it’s purely because this time it was the military being embarrassed rather than a factory being attacked. Tarnishing the image of the British military is viewed as deeply damaging to the state or something. They don’t want to look weak.
Exactly. Plus it’s a red meat political issue for the kind of reactionary gammons they’re exclusively chasing for votes now in the way that a private company isn’t (even though the RAF planes were owned by a hedge fund).
I would guess, more likely, people will just claim to be doing things independently unless they succeed in an action without being caught. The only change this will bring is that the activists will announce in court “I denounce Palestine Action, I just spray painted that bomber jet because I like the color red.” That’ll work for a time before judges start calling it a terrorist network and start Guantanamoing the activists
The end point of all of this is that anyone supporting palestine ends up being accused of being a terrorist.
For sure, but not immediately. Why escalate immediately instead of bringing the entirety of humanity with you by making that a necessary step first?
I need to get that welcome mat that says “I hope those are level 4 plates”
i would be flabbergasted if that defense actually held up in court lmao
Well it won’t for long, that’s for sure. But then they will have to make any action in support of Palestine ‘terrorism’ instead of just from one group. That’s a guaranteed escalatory path that can really only lead to more dissent because of unpopularity. That’s the point
Hey I was kinda right about the strategy, but they went with another name instead of just no name. will have the same result of everything being labeled terrorism but this maintains their publicity simultaneously
they’re literally Actors