Image: one of our POW camps filled with captured soldiers of the Christmas regime.
Season's greetings, fellow godless communists. I'm here to disseminate orders from our Supreme Communist Dictator as we once again find ourselves fighting against the very concept of Christmas. As a reminder, by the end of our five-year plan, we plan to be in a position to attack and dethrone God, but this intermediate step is required to fulfil this directive. Our forces in the field have made significant, if gradual, progress since you received your mission update last year. It has been difficult, but we have developed a series of defensive lines to prepare for a counteroffensive out of Lapland that will try and reach the Gulf of Bothnia in an attempt to cut the land bridge that we have set up across Scandinavia.
Currently, we foresee a few major threats. General Santa Clauswitz has been developing many tools in his workshop, including artillery-launched snowballs, barbed tinsel, and reinforced gingerbread armor plating for his tanks and infantry carriers. President Frostyy has made the following public statement: "The socialists who wish to destroy us have no idea what their defenses are about to face. Democracy will always defeat autocracy. Christmas will always triumph over X-mas. The leaders of the axis facing us are all on the naughty list and will be tried for crimes against festivity once this war is over."
Delusional as this may be, the next couple days will be the most dangerous as they stage their counteroffensive, and we need everybody to pitch in and get into defensive positions. We expect this to be the last major push that they will make before collapse. Please report any Christmas trees, mistletoe, or general symbology of the Christmas regime to your superiors.
Over and out.
The weekly update is here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Finland! 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.
can you write more about this? in what ways is the welfare state becoming worse?
Sorry I don't have enough details on that to give a satisfying answer. But the newest government is planning sweeping cuts to save money across the board.
Here are the biggest cuts planned by Finland's new government (YLE/Finnish state media)
https://yle.fi/a/74-20037304
17 June 2023
Petteri Orpo's (NCP) government has set itself a primary target of improving the Finnish economy. This means curbing the increase in central government debt.
Finland's national debt has been growing since 2008. According to the European Commission, Finland was the only EU country where the public debt-to-GDP ratio rose last year.
That said, Orpo's National Coalition Party only invited parties to form a new government that pledged to seek a six-billion adjustment to Finland's economy. This target is based on Ministry of Finance calculations aimed at finding a way for Finland to manage its debts and maintain the welfare state's services in the long term.
The government programme published on Friday includes an extensive list of cuts. The new administration is also implementing structural reforms aimed at generating savings. Getting more people into jobs is further expected to boost the economy.
The government plans to both raise and lower taxes, saying it believes that reducing income tax will strengthen employment and, through that, bring some savings and tax revenues.
Finland will see cuts totalling over four billion euros. These cuts are primarily targeted at areas where the government's largest expenditures lie, such as social and healthcare services.
In the long term, spending on social and healthcare services would decrease by two billion euros from current levels. This includes, for example, delaying the tightening of "healthcare guarantees" (access to care) and staffing requirements.
There are also plans to cut social security benefits by 1.2 billion euros. A further 0.5 billion euros would also be cut from expenses tied to indexing.
Structural measures would, according to the government, save a further 1.85 billion. Increasing employment would strengthen the economy by an additional 1.1 billion euros.
Orpo has said the planned cuts won't impact the most vulnerable in society. Social benefits for retirees will not be cut while there will be some increases in support for families with young children. Instead, the government is targeting significant cuts to unemployment benefits, housing allowances and social security benefits. Savings are also planned in social and healthcare services.
Main savings areas highlighted in the government programme:
Some significant savings areas include:
I think the healthcare system is under quite a lot of pressure from a chromic shortage of staff, and underpaid staff which they do have. So the nurses have gone on strike more than once.
Unemployed benefits are being reduced too, using usual tricks like means testing. I think this will also affect the pensions program which will get progressively chopped down like US social security.