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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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_kid
    ·
    11 months ago

    Some brief analysis of the implications of the assassination of Iran’s top commander in Syria, Radhi Mousavi, presumably by Israel.

    Bottom line: Israel either killed Mousavi as a warning to Iran, given Tehran’s support for the Houthis’ targeting of ships in the Red Sea, as a provocation to beget an Iranian response that would give Israel the pretext to enlarge the war, or as a preparatory move to enlarge the war regardless of Iran’s response.

    It is very likely that Israel is behind the assassination of Mousavi since it is the only power with both a motive and capacity to pull off such a killing - not to mention a long history of assassinating Iranian operatives. The US has the capacity but not necessarily the motive. The analysis below rests on the rather safe assumption that Mousavi was assassinated by Israel.

    US intelligence believes that Iran has been actively involved in the Houthi movement’s targeting of ships in the Red Sea, which has effectively closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait for Israel and cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars. The Houthis insist they will continue the attacks - despite threats of retaliation from the US - until Israel ceases its bombardment of Gaza. Israel, of course, refuses and Biden is loath to press Israel for a ceasefire. From Israel’s perspective, Iran is not paying a price for its alleged role in the Red Sea attacks. The assassination may, as a result, be a warning to Iran that Israel has the capacity and willingness to exact a price from Iran - even in areas where the Iranians may have presumed that they are safe.

    In a second scenario, the assassination may be a deliberate provocation to beget an Iranian response that would give Israel the pretext to enlarge the war. While the Biden administration has given Israel a complete green light to bomb Gaza to smithers, Biden opposes an expansion of the war since that very likely could drag the US into it. The debate inside the Israeli government is increasingly leaning toward expanding the war - they have already mobilized +300,000 troops and there is a growing belief in Israel that it simply is intolerable for Israel to live next to Hezbollah. They thought they could manage the threat from Hamas - and they couldn’t. Even though it wasn’t Hezbollah that attacked Israel on Oct 7, the Israeli argument is that next time it might be Hezbollah, and as a result, Israel has no choice but to expand the war. But unless there is an attack from Iran or Hezbollah itself, the US may continue to oppose such a move.

    But the assassination of Mousavi may cause Iran to retaliate against Israel via Hezbollah, the reasoning goes, and Israel can then use Hezbollah’s action as a pretext to not only expand the war to Lebanon - but also force the US to go along with it.

    There is also a third explanation. According to Amwaj Media, Mousavi was in charge of facilitating the entry of Iran-led forces and arms shipments to Syria as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. If Israel intends to attack Lebanon, taking out Mousavi could be a logical first step to disrupt the arming of Hezbollah as well as its supply lines. As such, the assassination may be a preparatory move to enlarge the war regardless of Iran’s response to the killing of Mousavi.

    All of these scenarios point to one undeniable reality: As long as Biden refuses to pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza, tensions in the region will continue to rise and the Middle East will gravitate towards a regional war that very likely will engulf the US as well. Biden may think that he can control these events and allow Israel to slaughter the people in Gaza while keeping a lid on the escalation risk. He is likely wrong - and the American people may soon find themselves in yet another unnecessary war in the Middle East because of Biden’s strategic incompetence.//

    twitter | nitter

    interesting analysis. the 3rd explanation is most compelling to me - I think Israel really wants to invade Lebanon next

      • the_kid
        ·
        11 months ago

        On further investigation the author is an anti-Iran think tanker in Washington DC.

        this makes it sound way more sinister than it is, like it's some CIA think tank or something. if anything, within the US his org is generally criticized as being too "pro-IRI". I've followed Parsi for a while and read one of his books, he's a lib who's more critical of the US than he is of the IRI. he thinks there should be dialogue between the two countries, he's not a reactionary regime-change guy or anything.

        He obfiscates that it is on fact the US dictating the strategy of the war and the US makes all the decisions. The whole "Israel is pulling the US deeper into the conflict" bullshit is part of an entire mystification campaign designed to give cover to the Americans and specifically the democrats.

        I think that analysis is correct though - the US and Israel have different interests, it's not "anti-semitic" to say that just because they're Jewish. Biden is fine with the genocide of the Palestinians, but he doesn't want the war to spread to other countries where it could threaten the US puppet regimes in the region/hurt stability which is bad for profits. Israel on the other hand is a 19th century style settler-colonial country which wants to expand for lebensraum. Israeli politicians know the US is basically forced to protect it because of its geopolitical interests, so they want to try to drag the US into a larger war.

          • krammaskin [none/use name]
            ·
            11 months ago

            Trista is a Swede/Iranian working in the US. As an foreign policy expert, he is generally critical of the US empire and how stupid its diplomatic efforts are in regards to especially Iran.

            I appreciate that he is always factually correct and refrain from spin such as calling Hamas and Hezbollah "terror organizations" which is common elsewhere in the West.

            He is also willing to say things we "know" that other "experts" try to avoid. In the above example, he rightly assumes that the assassination was carried out by Israel even though we will likely never have convulsive evidence of that.

            When it comes to predictions and the quality of his analysis, he tend to be OK. He often gives personalities and individuals more importance for shaping world events than I'd care for but he is generally pessimistic that the US is going to be successful with its global affairs, diplomatic efforts and wars. I think he's approach to International Relations is from an academic area studies which makes him less dogmatic.

              • krammaskin [none/use name]
                ·
                11 months ago

                Is Trisa a lib? Yes. Was he wrong when he said that sanctions will not help protesters? No. These sanctions were sold to the public as a way to help regime change in Iran and he was correct in pointing out that it wouldn't.

                The same with the analysis that Biden's Gaza policy hurts his chances to win against Trump.

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        11 months ago

        The Quincy Institute is nominally on "the left", to the extent that there is one within US foreign policy think tanks. It's important to remember that FP think tanks in the US do not follow the standard "left-right" paradigm, but instead the "realist-idealist" paradigm, and the Quincy Institute is one of the more prominent realist think tanks. To that extent, they do receive or have received funding from groups like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and George Soros, because those are some of the largest financial backers of the realist camp in the US. The way these think tanks get set up, it's not all that hard to get $500K-$1M grants from these multi-billion dollar foundations, and they are pretty regularly criticized by the idealist camp for not being sufficiently "pro-American" even though many of them are domestically Republican/conservative. Legitimately, we could probably set up an openly socialist FP think tank and get funding from these guys as long as it looked professional and we had some well-credentialed people working for us. That's just kind of how things work in the American FP think tank world: the whales throw what, for them, is chump change around and they see what sticks.

        The Quincy Institute does some pretty good analysis, and they have people with some leftist credentials like Daniel Bessner working for them, as well as journalists who maybe aren't leftists but are well-respected by many leftist, like Jim Lobe and Anatol Lieven. As with all analysis, it's definitely good to read it critically and not just take it at face value, of course.

        In terms of what you are saying, I think you are falling for basically the flipped version of what you are accusing Parsi of doing, which is removing all agency from Israel and claiming that the US is behind everything. This is a trap a lot of Western leftists fall into and it ends with us misunderstanding a lot of global events.

        You are undoubtedly correct that the Biden admin is much more active in the planning and coordination of this war than they want the US public and Democratic voters, in particular, to be aware. However, Israel and Netanyahu are their own actors with their own motivations, and not simply puppets of the US. Israel coordinating efforts with and taking guidance, or even orders, from the US, while at the same time going behind Biden's back to manipulate the situation towards their own goals, to the objection of the US, is not contradictory or mutually exclusive. We are talking about a country that has it's own nuclear weapons program that it is able to go to the White House and demand new presidents sign an agreement saying they won't talk about Israelis nukes. They do in fact have their own agency and power not just within the region but in US politics. It is important to remember that when looking at these global events, that these "local powers" have their own motivations and power bases, and that the relationship is more often a "partnership" than a "dictatorship".

        • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
          ·
          11 months ago

          No comment on the rest, but Bessner is a perfect example of why “leftist” as a descriptor is meaningless, man is an anti-Marxist hack

          • mkultrawide [any]
            ·
            11 months ago

            I'm not really sure what you are basing this claim on, but I don't think it's accurate to label him as anti-marxist. He's not an Orthodox ML or anything like that, but a lot of his analysis is informed by Marxism.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      The debate inside the Israeli government is increasingly leaning toward expanding the war

      Do it you cowards. Hamas is drinking the IOF’s milkshake all day. The IOF and all their 21 year old colonels who can’t manage anything more than teenagers throwing rocks at them has been exposed for the paper tiger that they eye. Hezbollah would wipe the floor with them, they did it before after all.