One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain't worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
Rant
I fucking hate liberals. I thought writing out my comment would make me feel better but it did the opposite.
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I saw mention of David Simon on Bluesky and I wondered what he had to say about Gaza and genocide. I found a tweet that is quite something. I had to read it a few times because he obfuscates. I've always thought it's funny when something can be phrased simply but the person can't do that. To me it's a Freudian slip. They are so arrogant and obnoxious they convince themselves that confusing and muddled text makes their self-defined iron-clad case even stronger.
He refuses to mention any place or group by name. He avoids words like Gaza, Gazans, Israel, Israelis. I might be wrong but I don't think even the UN does that when taking about a specific location with a specific war and not some abstract, theoretical debate club bullshit. He claims what's happening in Gaza is not a genocide because there has been no intention by Israel to destroy or mass murder the populace.
Also - hypothetically - if somebody makes civilians suffer or targets them that guy is a war criminal. Obviously - that's kind of weird. Israel isn't just small bunch of guys in Gaza committing war crimes. In any case - he says they should be prosecuted fully. After that he pokes fun at people who in his opinion - intentionally or not - misuses the words genocide and war criminal.
He believes the silly people conflate horrific-but-oopsie mass death and suffering as genocide when he says that some undefined group might be war criminals.
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Ninja edit
Despite myself I kept looking around at his tweets. He also praised Israel's pager terror attack. Because of course he did.
Israel: We are want to kill or expel every single person in gaza
Palestinians: israel is actively trying to kill or expel all of us
When the typical ignoramus idiot on the net says stuff that's nonsense - I just ignore it. But Simon knows what Israel does and how they do it. He knows all that stuff in possibly minute detail. But he lies about everything. I'm certain he's aware of the estimate made by the Lancet in July that ~186,000 or more Gazans were killed directly or indirectly by Israel. He can do math. He knows it's possible if not probable that Israel killed ~10% of the population of Gaza which was 2.3 million pre genocide. And god only knows how many injured.
It's kind of frightening to me that some liberals will defend Israel the US to their dying breath. Seriously - what would it take for them to admit they're wrong?
When it personally affects them.
these are indeed heady concepts david, with many balancing factors and tradeoffs. if only there were some objective measure we could use to compare this situation, like say number of civilians killed, number of hospitals/schools/pieces of civil infrastructure/places of worship destroyed, or number of journalists executed. if we had something like that we could begin to cut this gordian knot as posed by your incisive rhetoric, but alas
I'm tempted to learn if he has carefully defined and delineated what a journalism is in Gaza so he can downplay their murders. I'm sure my hunch is right and he's snidely demoted them to being something like "citizen bloggers" or "Tiktokers" or "posters" or whatever. But maybe he'd even admit that their killings if intentional are war crimes that should be prosecuted. As if it's hard to tell when Israel does targeted killing. Like when they merc paramedics who are driving down the road in their well-marked ambulance. Or they blow up a hospital.
He'd never admit to what it really comes down to. I bet if push comes to shove - he thinks of journalists or doctors or paramedics or any civilian getting maimed, injured or killed (in Lebanon and Gaza and perhaps in Iran soon) as little more than human shields.
yeah there's no one who can say anodyne shit like that about gaza without intentionally doing so to cover and whitewash genocide. he clearly deserves to play a starring role in that
sequel. these big brain data driven academy addicts spout all their shit while ignoring the really obvious and objective metrics that can be used to actually analyze and compare these atrocities
the function of something is what it does. no intentions or otherwise