Image features Haitian Creole, meaning in English: "Let's Join Hands To Remove Haiti From The Boot Of Domination-Occupation!"
Welcome to the first news megathread of 2024! Last year saw rather little territorial movement in Ukraine (though shocking levels of attrition), and while BRICS has made some important moves, such as the upcoming expansion, there's no massive anti-imperialist offensive yet for us to really analyze. Instead, a lot of things have been going on behind the scenes, with the anti-hegemonic axis of China, Russia, Iran, and others forming a lot of bilateral currency deals as they distance themselves from the dollar. This all culminated in a rather boring year, or so I had thought until October 7th. The courage and heroism of the Gazan Resistance showed us that the imperialists truly are paper tigers, and Ansarallah demonstrated that American naval control is more illusory than the likes of John Bolton would like to admit.
This year will almost certainly be even more interesting and horrific. Debt across the developing world is at record levels, and the incoming hurricane that is the global recession not just on the horizon, but rapidly moving inland. Russia seems to once again be escalating in Ukraine with the return of large missile strikes, and the Zionist entity is failing to make much progress against Hamas, let alone Hezbollah, let alone Iran - instead vying for civilian bombings and propaganda campaigns (e.g. wedding proposals and drawing stars of David in Gaza to prove just how not mad and not owned they are, as their soldiers shit their pants due to insufficient military preparation and brigades are withdrawn due to the tremendous casualties they are experiencing). I'm sure there will be other sudden events that will occur this year. Here's my bingo grid:
In the midst of all this, it's easy to forget the other underdog nation on the other side of the world from Palestine - Haiti. Since I last covered them, about half a year ago, the UN was on the verge of allowing a Kenyan police force to enter Haiti to "restore order", as the country is in a chaotic, perhaps potentially revolutionary situation. This has been described by various Haitian analysts and experts as essentially a US military force in blackface - white blows from a black hand - and Kenya's president, Ruto, has received a lot of aid from the US because of their willingness to step up, including a five year military deal. It took a while longer than I thought for the vote to occur, but on October 2nd, the UNSC allowed Kenya to do this (Russia and China abstained). However, the Kenyan Supreme Court needs to confirm that this is constitutional, and will give their verdict by January 26th. Many Kenyan lawyers and opposition leaders say that this is blatantly not constitutional, but given all the US aid on the line, breaking the constitution might be worth it to Ruto, whatever the backlash.
From the article from which much of the above information has been sourced:
But Washington now has its hands full with other problems. Its proxy war against Russia via Ukraine is going very badly, a fact that even the U.S. mainstream media is now forced to acknowledge. Meanwhile, the successful Oct. 7 uprising by Palestinian fighters against Israeli occupiers has apparently blindsided both the U.S. empire and its foremost client state. The entire Arab world and Global South are both horrified and outraged by Israel’s ever-growing war crimes, as over 20,000 Palestinians, half of them children, have been slaughtered and starved. Meanwhile, the dysfunction in Washington is deepening, Biden’s approval rating is plummeting, and the U.S. economy is lurching toward another crash.
All this means that Haiti may finally catch a break. The desperation in Haiti is very intense but so is the apprehension of and indignation against another foreign intervention. That resistance continues in the streets of Haiti and its diaspora.
Viva Haiti!
The weekly update is here on the website.
Your Tuesday briefing is here on the website and here in the comments.
The Country of the Week is Haiti! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 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. - 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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
The axis of resistance is getting dismantled, like 10 senior officials have been assassinated in the last few days. Are they going to do something or are they going to sit there getting killed by American and Israeli jets?
I don't think "like 10 senior officials assassinated" is even remotely synonymous with "dismantled". If these organizations weren't explicitly constructed with the concept of "make sure a dude being assassinated is as little a problem as possible against an enemy that can assassinate people relatively easily" in mind then they wouldn't currently exist because, well, Israel would have assassinated all the irreplaceable people
honestly I'm struggling to think of any conflict where assassination of senior figures has been an important factor in eventual victory or defeat. It certainly throws temporary confusion into the structure as people shift roles but I can't think of a war where I could say "This war would have gone much, much differently if this guy or 10 guys had been assassinated/not assassinated." Especially in guerrilla conflicts. Maybe taking out like, Mao, or Ho Chi Minh prior to 1965, etc would have changed the outcome in some way, but the armies they possessed don't just disappear into the aether. Feels very Great Man Theory-ish.
Does the U.S. Civil Rights movement count?
The only one I could think of is Gonzalo (he got captured) and maybe Zapata (although I don't really know much about the Mexican Revolution).
Still, it cannot be sustained. Irans “sit and wait” strategy seems to entail them just getting blown up over and over. It’s very frustrating, maybe I’m dooming too much but it really comes off like Iran bit off more than they can chew and cannot properly respond
This is classic Iranian strategy. It is nothing new. Iran rarely if ever responds in kind. When Washington assassinated Soleimani in Baghdad, Iran did not respond by assassinating James Mattis somewhere like Mexico City. Neither will they respond to this terrorist attack by vaporizing some state funeral in Tel Aviv. It is simply not their MO, and if it were their MO, they would not survive as long as they have.
Iran's two greatest geopolitical rivals are nuclear armed regimes with established genocidal track records and irrational victimhood complexes. Even if Iran developed their own nuclear weapons program as a deterrent, you cannot fight nukes with nukes, and you cannot win a nuclear war against a state which is spiraling towards oblivion all on its own. It is extremely costly to retaliate in-kind against a state which will shamelessly slaughter 1000 civilians as retribution for every one of its foot soldiers you put in the ground.
Iran's strategy reflects this. They don't put all their eggs in one basket. They don't take actions which give their enemies easy excuses to escalate. They support the enemies of their enemies very broadly. They help groups like Hezbollah and Ansarallah reach positions of strength and sovereignty over the course of years, which lifts them into the position where they can independently drive tens of thousands of settlers off their fronteirs and take a giant shit on Red Sea shipping. They foster conditions where the resistance in Iraq and Syria can molest American bases for months on end despite the incredibly weak position of these states. They foster the conditions where these various fronts of resistance would still persist even if "Israel" resorts to the "Samson Option."
For better or worse, this proves incredibly frustrating to their adversaries. Bombing a memorial service for a man who's been in the ground for four years already should highlight just how much this strategy has aggravated them.
I think the Iranians know that they're the country most likely nuked by the US. They have an extremely strong conventional army, their geography is near impenetrable, they don't have their own nukes as a deterrent, they're economically, politically, and ideologically opposed to the US, and they're far enough away from the US that Burgerlanders think they can get away with glassing Iran without radioactive blowback.
In range of oil fields tho
I understand the West's attacks and violations require a immediate response, they can do damage now, but they can do even greater damage tomorrow. Time, I think, is on their side. The Hegemon and it's ally, "Israel", are losing power by the minute. The world is experiencing changes, and as comrade Vijay Prashad says, the War in Ukraine and the War in Gaza are accelerating them, creating new scenarios for alternatives to grow and prosper. There's combustion everywhere, it's happening "almost naturally". It's time to think, to study, make strategies, not to lose our heads in attacks driven by anger instead of rationality. They want us to act now, because this is when they feel powerful enough to receive our attacks. But soon, their internal contradictions will be too much for them to handle, and that is when we all act.
See the "Coalition" assembled against Ansar Allah, the western countries, apart from the US and the UK, are not really willing to fight a ridiculously motivated army that is the Yemeni one, despite their clear technological and power disadvantage. They smell weakness, but they must wait. Their response will come soon.
Remember, in a few years we'll be talking about a new scenario. Time is a powerful ally, and you must give time... some time.
Leaders can be killed, jailed, disappeared, silenced. But ideas cannot. The Resistance is an idea, the leaders are there to "make sense of them". Without them the idea loses cohesion? Yes, it suffers a blow, but it's never definitive. Let us remember the words of comrade Sankara: You can kill an individual, but you cannot kill ideas.
And we on the Left must also observe, study and organize. We have to take advantage of the situation and we must be ready to act when our time comes. And it might come sooner than we have anticipated.
You can absolutely stomp out a movement, it’s happened countless times in history. Maybe not completely destroying it permanently but enough to cripple it for decades. Absolute brutal state violence works, as evidenced by the current world dominated by violent states that perpetuate themselves long past the resistance to them in most cases. America won and defeated communism for a century, of course not a permanent victory but perhaps enough of one to doom our species.
These changes will slow and even reverse if Israel and the west regains military dominance and defeats their enemies in the field. Our victory is not inevitable, we must fight not sit around getting picked off
to be terse, what do you want the resistance to do? I empathise with both sides here, I want to see a response to the Zionists, but at the same time I am quite terrified about a broader conflict in the region. actually, to be clear, I don't think it would go well for the resistance. America+Israel are too strong and there's no USSR to prop up a real resistance. China are pussies, Russia is focussed on Ukraine, who else is there?
Yeah, the strength of America in the region has really been exemplified by their victories over the past few years. The total occupation and defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan was one thing, and now we can see their aircraft carriers and ships bombing Yemen without any response, instantly breaking the Red Sea blockade in a mere few days after Operation Prosperity Guardian united the West. As we see Israel finally bringing their successful campaign in Gaza to a close after taking a mere few hundred troop losses and virtually no vehicles losses to bring down a 30,000 strong Hamas force fortified in a tunnel network, what hope is there anymore? After Hezbollah lost the 2006 war, the writing was on the wall. If only there was some form of unified Resistance that could take on America and Israel, but we simply don't live in that world.
There needs to be a broader conflict otherwise the status quo of Palestinian genocide and Greater Israel will continue. I want the American bases in Iraq and Syria wiped off the map with full on assaults and sieges, not rockets that give one guy a concussion
The Palestinian resistance is a guerrilla organization. The leaders don't matter. The orders were handed down before Oct. 7th. The fighters all know what to do. The only way israel can dismantle the resistance is by destroying weapons caches which they are not doing. The only officials that matter are the ones handing out rockets.
removed