Get it? The Sturmabteilung?
Anyway, Ukraine will probably launch its counteroffensive soon. Maybe this week. Maybe next week. Eventually, for sure. Probably. So I'm taking the week off to prepare for it. Your regularly scheduled programming will be back on May 1st.
Image is of dragon's teeth fortifications in Ukraine, from the wikipedia article.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
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 journalist reporting in the warzone.
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 still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). 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 ~ Another 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's army.
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.
The victories of the Austrian Communist party are some real bloomer stuff to me. The positions of the actual successful and more principled styrian wing have taken over the national party, and now they have 20% in one if the most reactionary regions of the country(from 1% last election). The party anchored itself in the populace, by participating in electorialism, but organising mostly outside of it. The cadres lower their wages to the workers median and the rest is put into a pot to help anyone who asks for help(for example with the landlord, groceries or the boss). That integrity managed to catapult them into power and also keep them there. They will not bring us to the revolution, sure, but they will make the working class more class concious and help built a movement that can.
fantastic way to kill the "out of touch elite" stuff dead
more parties should do this
Also a fantastic use of mutual aid, one that moves it beyond being regular charity (which is inherently good, but not great for organizing).
They raised 290.000 last year through this and helped thousands of people directly. They use the people asking for help to construct a kind of mass line.
I get why this would be a very effective mobilization strategy. Who would you believe would actually do something for those at the bottom of society, the people who buy big glossy ad campaigns telling you about all the good they want to do it the people who are actually using their limited resources to actually help people here and now?
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In Denmark Enhedslisten, the leftmost party in electoral politics, pays their functionaries the same wage as a skilled metal worker in Copenhagen get. Elected politicians who receive a salary for being full-time politicians pays a "party tax" to lower their income to metalworker levels. The money goes into the party's general funds. Metal workers get a decent pay so the politicians are still able to live comfortably but it's still significantly lower than the "I'm a very special boy" pay politicians in other parties gets.
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It's probably a little premature, but I would love to read a really good analysis from the KPÖ of what they think they are doing right, and what other comrades can learn from them w/r/t how to run a communist party successfully in an imperial core country in 2023.
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Thanks!
Any good English language coverage of this stuff? Austria is a real blind spot for me in European politics / news and that does sound very positive.
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/448919.kp%C3%B6-an-der-macht-fernziel-sozialismus-nicht-vergessen.html?sstr=KP%C3%95
This, of course, is not english, but it is a good left critique of the current KPÖ and it's problems and victories. Maybe Deepl will like emit something usable with this. This newspaper is a surviving GDR/DDR medium, which makes it's reporting very principled.
I'll give it a go with translate when I've got a little more time. Thanks.
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Oh, sadly they are pretty fashy. In some stares the FPÖ which is a nazi successor party, is in goverment.