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.
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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.
Yeah if “the war would be over already” if China was aiding Russia… why aren’t they aiding Russia? A bit of a self own disguised as an brag
They believe picking sides in any conflict would undermine their soft power as reliable mediators, instead of an untrustworthy world police role that they don’t want to replace. Or its a bullshit excuse to appease the libs that don’t want to antagonize the US, but I think they believe it.
I mean, they hinted at why. While China cannot afford a Russian loss, it can afford a Russian stalemate. Moreover, the longer they are in a stalemate, the longer the U.S. focuses and commits resources to that stalemate and not towards China.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, but it sounds like Wang is trying to get the EU to commit more into the Russian conflict, with the idea that it hurts China, when, in reality, it just isolates and pushes Russia deeper into the Chinese sphere of influence.
I only say this because I can’t imagine he actually thought that this would work to get them to stop commiting to the ‘Russia is the ultimate hilterite evil’ bit. If he did, then he is a grade-a idiot.
The flipside to this is that the longer the stalemate goes on, the less Russia will be able to aid China in its upcoming and inevitable conflict with the west. Does China want a reduced and lesser ally that has been fully exhausted or a strong and capable one? Yet another short term self-own
China doesn’t need Russia lol. But Russia would be useful as a cannon fodder to keep the imperialist attention away from China.
On Chinese internet, a popular phrase is “a half-dead bear is a good bear”. Understand what it means?
This mentality is why China has no reliable allies and is extremely anti-human and cynical. No wonder they pissed off the USSR and Vietnam and isolated themselves if they think like this!
I doubt Russia would be able to help them all that much in a conflict with the West even at full strength. At most they would be a safer place to get resources, which again, the more isolated they are from the world the more likely that is to happen, and at least they would be able to maintain their airspace which would protect China’s northern border.
I just don’t envision a scenario where Russia’s lack of involvement is the make or break for China, and I would bet that China sees that as well. I don’t think it is short-sighted, it is another case of risk v.s. rewards v.s. consequences engineering thinking, where the rewards do not outweigh the risks involved or potential consequences of failure.
And this is besides the fact that I don’t think Russia, particularly the Russian military, is very interested in direct military coordination with the Chinese or Chinese soldiers on Russian soil.
Ideally China would turn some of its over-production towards making Russian equipment, or modifying Chinese equipment for Russian use, but I also don’t think the Chinese or Russians are that interested in that kind of cooperative technology agreement, as they are direct market competitors in that regard.
It’s not a self-own unless you assume global communism is literally a few conflicts away.
Only one comrade
the sanctions didn’t work so maybe the eggheads in china figured out a recapitalized russia is better for them. or maybe they’re still gunshy after losing to viet nam.