After 15 months of genocide - and resistance to it - the Israeli regime realized that they could not win a military victory against Hamas, and were forced to sign a humiliating ceasefire in order to get their hostages returned.
With much of Syria under the control of Al-Qaeda, and an increasing level of covert infiltration into Lebanon, the crisis in the Middle East is not over, and we may still be in its beginning stages, as the center of hegemony continues its gradual shift away from the United States. Their navy, once considered the best in the world, is likely also not very happy about their ships and aircraft carriers being forced to retreat by Yemen, one of the poorest countries; and all eyes are on Iran, who has, over the last year and a half, demonstrated a newfound confidence and strength to directly strike Israel.
The recovery for Gaza will take, at a minimum, decades; it could indeed never fully recovery to even how it was before, considering it is not in Israel's interests to see their concentration camps recover. But Hamas has proven to be steadfast and the tunnel network has proven its resilience, despite facing some of the most powerful conventional bombing in history. This shows that Palestine's liberation is a when, not an if; and hopefully a much sooner "when" than expected before October 7th.
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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.
Retroactive internment camps are coming. A lot of lives are going to be profoundly negatively affected by this administration.
I have warned before the election that many people will regret not voting for the Democrats. In spite of everything, Trump is going to be 10 times worse than Biden. The next 4 years are going to be hell and the Democrats might still come back anyway when people have had enough of Trump.
True, but genocide is a red line, and refusing to vote for its perpetrators is an absolute moral position
I don’t disagree with you, having conscientiousness is good, but American socialists are not in the position to make such a decision.
Let’s put it another way: if the Democrats come back in another 4 years, you still get the same bad policies from them anyway, except that you would also have suffered an additional 4 years of extremely bad Trump policies that jeopardized the lives of many minorities and could very likely crush nascent left wing movements with his fascist thugs. This is not an option that we can afford.
I often try to learn from history: China sided with the US to get rid of the USSR - the same imperialist US that it just fought bitterly with two decades earlier that caused nearly a million casualties.
You can say those were questionable decisions, but what you cannot deny is the success of modern PRC.
If you want socialism to prevail, you have to be able to think in the long term. We want to put a permanent end to the genocide against Palestinians, and we have to think of realistic strategies that can allow such a goal to be materialized in the future.
I don’t think this is dialectical, long-term thinking. And I know that because so many of your other takes genuinely are that. I think what you’re describing here is just an elevated form of the lesser-evil electoral trap that liberalism forces its political subjects into.
American socialists do not have power, and more importantly, will not gain power by playing into such bourgeois schemes. I could see that argument if there was a left movement broadly in the US that could make those calculations and use such concessions as legitimate leverage.
But not only is that not the reality, it is so, so far from the reality. And the only consequence of socialists voting for one side or the other in our situation is the dirtying of our hands with the blood that imperialists squeeze out of both us and the world, only for that bloodstain to be a scarlet letter impeding actual organizing.
“This is not an option we can afford” — the more dialectical, long-term thinking version of that imo would be, “This the option we have no power to avoid; what does it mean for us”
Well we for a ceasefire because of trump, and there is no sign Kamala would have pushed for such a thing.
I'd rather the mask be ripped off than let Dems do their charade. This country needs to fail to be reborn.
The Dems are going to continue trump’s policies anyway and maybe even add to them. Did it every other time with every preceding Republican administration.
Just look at New York. Vote Dems because republicans will be so much worse! What’s that? Democratic government is building a massive prison to rival Bukele’s dome? Huh.
Don't worry, 12 Democratic senators (including darlings like John Fetterman, Mark Kelly, and Mark Warner) voted for it.
Thank u blue MAGA, very cool
Trump is going to be worse (long term at least) than Biden/Harris but the Democrats were doing everything they could to let Trump win. My cope is that the possibility of the Democrats winning was always just an illusion or at least a delay of the inevitable