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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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.
This is a lesson that should be part of every group that tries to agitate among students.
NEVER accept promises for future action, let alone promises to "consider" a demand at some point in the future. You must have concessions in-hand or you have nothing. Even in that case there would be attempts to walk it back, but you can at least maintain your organizations in the meantime.
Accepting early mealy mouthed false concessio a only destroys your attempt at organizing in exchange for literally nothing.
Also, be wary of "concessions" that are really just PR moves they would have done anyways to save face.
These are things that must be taught and agreed to as early as possible in the organizing phase. They should be part of every person's understanding of what you are fighting for and when you would ever consider reducing pressure. Otherwise you will leave yourself vulnerable to opportunists. They will literally take over.
The problem is students are not very hardy activists. They are enthusiastic, sure, but American students have to pay to be there and operate on strict schedules. Many of these student orgs conceded because summer break was going to destroy their organizational manpower no matter what they did. Additionally the universities hold lots of power over students: access to food, housing, even visas can be revoked. Students are fighting on enemy territory and holding a occupation of a student union building causes far less economic damage than a labor strike. Then theres the socioeconomic aspect where most of these protesting students are either poor, struggling and indebted or middle class first rally ever types who can't handle institutional or police pressure. Not blaming them, everyone starts somewhere, but there are serious limits to student activism, at least in America.
Edit: felt like i was being too pessimistic so want to add that students working in conjunction with other sectors of society can be a really potent force. For example university staff or labor unions joining with students. When student enthusiasm can be supplied with wider resources and organization the authorities start getting really scared. That happened a few times and we saw how it came with massive crackdowns but even then the students at UCLA and Columbia put up a good fight against a goddamn freikorps and psycho NY cops. A lot of other places were able to resist police and administrative attack, so although divestment largely wasn't successful perhaps thousands of radical students have learned some important lessons not taught in class.
I think of the May Fourth Movement in China, and how many future leaders of the CPC were shaped by those largely student driven protests. Our future has not yet been written.
Those things are all true but these student protests were taking these deals due to cooption by student groups that are fundamentally liberal and treat, "we will have a meeting with you later" as a major victory. Many burned their ability to return based on such deals, sapped enthusiasm and capacity for any summer organizing with false senses of winning or the people who knew better feeling defeated.
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