There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Palestine! 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.
The weekly 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.
I'm getting the impression the US is stalling and genuinely trying to prevent escalation right now. They don't want to commit to this conflict, they didn't want this conflict at all, huge distraction from both Ukraine and China, it fucks up just about every single one of their plans. The winner of this conflict would be China who sits out on the sidelines and watches as the west and every power in the middle east gets dragged into it.
Pretty sure they will be forced to commit. But I don't think they want to.
The US was already starting to draw down in Ukraine, and it was becoming a money sink. This provides cover so they can exit that front entirely and declare it lost only because they had more pressing matters
I wonder what the EU do when the US abandons Ukraine?
Cope and seethe. And with Nordstream down, buy energy from the US instead.
I'm skeptical that the US can square the overall contradiction between monopoly finance and industrial capital within it's own borders but it's going to be interesting to see how Europe deals with the knock on effects if the US manages it; because the is will likely want a lot of it's energy reserves for it's new industries. Then again, they'll have to persuade the fossil interests to sell to US industry rather than to Europe at a higher price. Essentially, I'm predicting that the US can't solve it's MIC problems under neoliberal capitalism but if it does, it will lose the support network that it relies on to be the world's main superpower.
Take it like the good little cuck vassals they are
The neoconservative and realist factions must be battling over events right now.
That being said, I also reckon that the Russian and Chinese governments are scrambling behind the scenes to figure out what they're gonna do here beyond mere words. Most of their new BRICS members could get involved in one way or another with an all-out conflict, plus Russia and China already have made efforts recently in the region and won't want, say, Iran to collapse if there's a direct or even indirect conflict between the US and Iran. To say nothing of the potential for nuclear launches by Israel, and the absolute Pandora's Box that could be unleashed from that.
I would love to know the real capabilities and equipment that Hamas, and Hezbollah, and Israel, and the United States, and Iran, and so on have, because it feels like there could be a lot of posturing going on that can't be backed up by actions. Of course the United States can bomb the shit out of Hezbollah, but for how long, and how effective would it be? Obviously Ukraine has been a black hole of equipment for the last ~18 months but obviously some things (like F-16s) aren't depleted, while other things (Patriot missiles, artillery) clearly are. The divergent statements are pretty confusing; on the one hand we have quotes from military officials about US stockpiles of some things being at the bottom of the barrel, that they're having to go to countries that once received Soviet weapons to try and ask for them back, and then once those have run out, taking weapons from Israel itself, and so on - and on the other hand, we have grandiose statements where the US is promising to supply Ukraine and Israel and (presumably, to maintain deterrence) Taiwan simultaneously.
Have to remember that Hezbollah aren't a poorly equipped force. The US going to town on them might actually look similar to Russia's attempts to stop the wagner convoy.
The powers in the region (Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Egypt) are probably on the phone trying to extract concessions from Russia and China in exchange for entering the war.
Unfortunately, Russia is probably being noncommital because they're fighting their own front and China is probably refusing to make a "guarantee" because they don't want to be seen as bankrolling a conflict against Israel.
So now we're in this awkward situation of waiting for somebody to blink.
China needs to stop giving a fuck about how the west “sees” them. They really don’t get how racist and evil the west is, they will never be their friends
I was thinking about the situation of China in all this and their decision to not directly influence politics around the world like the USSR did.
Look at the situation the USA is right now: extending their blood dripping tentacles over multiple regions gave them access to unlimited wells of Capital, but that simultaneously fed and strained contradictions that could erupt violently at any minute.
What is happening now? Whether or not in a planned, organized manner, they are all erupting at the same time. That means America has to split it's resources between multiple war fronts, while the other side of each conflict, instead of being supported by another single superpower, is maintained by a single or few actors each. This situation could be the cause of Russia's strategy in Ukraine - no need to win the war, simply get america to waste all their fucking resources.
This is the ultimate toll of overextending your influence. It'll be impossible to support all of the conflicts if they happen at the same time, they'll have to choose. In that way, China's strategy of simply helping the economic development of america's enemies through Capital was probably the most intelligent way of navigating the post-soviet geopolitics.
Someone's been reading Упадок и падение Римской империи: урок номер один
(That's an auto translate. Hope it makes sense!)
I haven't actually!
I've read a few pages of America Against America by Wang Hunin, and he says something to the likes of "a state that extends too far eventually won't be able to sustain itself".
That's the crux of it :D
Is America Against America by Wang Hunin good? Or did you put it down because you didn't enjoy it?
It's ok, I just had other stuff on my mind and kinda set it aside
That happens. Maybe I'll give it a look but I'll probably end up doing the same thing.
The ones who would be dragged into this are the recently joined BRICS members specially Iran and Egypt. I definitely wouldn't call this a win specially if China doesn't support these countries into war. Just imo.
But I agree with the US is sending mixed signals, still the fact they immediately committed a carrier to the region is a good look for them here.
My interpretation is essentially if they all get dragged into a prolonged war and China ends up on the sidelines a la United States in ww2 then China ends up the big winner in all of it.
Wild card here is South Korea and DPRK who China can't really leave alone. It's the main method through which they could easily be dragged into a global conflict.
US could also set up an airforce base on Taiwan and force China to attack
China/Iran could be trying to sweet talk Saudi Arabia into committing to BRICS and to Palestine. That would throw the US off its balance and potentially minimise the threat of Israeli nukes. At the same time, managing to funnel support to Palestine through SA while seeming to keep SA on the fence offers further protection against Israeli nukes – the US will not allow Israel to fuck up the petrodollar. Better for the US to remove the Israeli government and replace it with something that will make concessions with Palestine than take an axe to the roots of it's own power.
Two internal US conflicts that contribute to determining the US-side of the equation will be (1) nobody except the person who will take all the glory will want e.g. the POTUS to be the one who finally fixes the Israel-Palestine conflict (i.e. anyone who gets close will be undermined by someone else who wants that on their record) and (2) the MIC which will only be satisfied with negotiations once it's profited as much as possible from the conflict.
This is the nature of the paper tiger. It's got a bite but it's always tearing itself apart from the inside.
I've seen some criticism of China for trading with Israel and apparently not supporting Palestine. Valid. But I wouldn't assume that China's doing nothing just because it's actions aren't on the front pages. There's an incentive to suppress any such information. And the CPC has to answer to it's members and it's people, who might not forgive it for sitting out a genocide, 'domestic affair' or not.
Then why has the state department banned the words “de-escalation” and “ceasefire” and “lift the siege” from their communications?