There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account.
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.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is Palestine! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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 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
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 goal is for Palestinians to be free, not for their occupiers to suffer as much as possible. Our politics are based on liberation and equality, not punitive vengeance. Now, does that mean you can't smile when you head 7 IOF members killed each other? No, of course not, but it's also some borderline antisocial behavior to want to watch them die terrified. The effect for the side we're rooting for is the same whether or not you have footage of the deed, so you can celebrate that it happened and move on.
Some of the comments I've seen here lately do make me wonder.
On one hand I understand that going out of one's way to watch kill videos says something ugly about the person who does it, but on the other, in a sense it feels to me that cheering for these events but not wanting to watch those videos feels like ordering sausage but not wanting to see how it's made.
The current climate on Hexbear is one where expressing the slightest bit of unease or disappointment about anything a Palestinian resistance member does is met with dismissal, ridicule, and mod removal of one's post, if not outright banning.
In a sense, I understand that. There is a long, Iong history of Israel supporters using any instance of a Palestinian doing something distasteful to affirm the settler-colonial project and demonize the very concept of Palestinian resistance. Anyone who does that deserves to be roundly mocked and tossed out of the room. Even if every single atrocity propaganda report against Palestinian fighters were true, it would not invalidate their cause or justify Israel's existence.
But by the same token, if someone is so sure of the righteousness of these things and thinks they should be held beyond question, it seems to me that to see it, to watch it, must give them a better understanding of what they're promoting than just reading it as text on a screen. And if one is going to take a stance, shouldn't they try to understand what they're arguing as well as possible?
My mind keeps going back to the ghouls who drool over footage of Russian soldiers getting blown apart in Ukraine. Yes, they're horrible people, but they're up front and forward. They have no aversion to what they want to see happen, and they're willing to face the reality of it head-on. They look at human beings with dreams and wishes and loved ones getting turned into piles of shredded flesh and laugh and cheer, and that's monstrous, but they are at least willing to look at what they're laughing and cheering over.
Sorry about this turning into a bit of a ramble. This stuff has been on my mind for the past few days and I've been struggling how to articulate it in a way that won't get me banned.
There is a great deal of bloodthirstiness going around that I find concerning. It is very important that you do not become your enemy. Warfare is horrible and destructive, including to the souls (pardon the term) of individual people, and it is very hard to survive and come out the other side with any kind of compassion intact. But compassion is necessary for what comes after the war. A true peace cannot be maintained through vindictiveness and oppression.
A concrete example from history would be the GDR; Immediately after the war the USSR stripped the GDR of factories and heavy machinery as reparations for the massive destruction the Nazis had inflicted. But very soon after they reversed this policy, realizing that by weakening the GDR they were also weakening the cause of socialism. An economically stable and secure GDR would strengthen the position of socialism far more than oppression and economic extraction would. And so the GDR turned in to an economically strong, socially progressive socialist state that in many cases was exemplary of what socialism could achieve even under siege conditions. It was not a matter of forgiving the Nazis for their crimes, but rather a pragmatic analysis of what would best serve the cause and lead to overall victory.
I get you. At least for me, I cheer Palestinians on because I understand that what they did last weekend, though ugly and hard to stomach, was one of the biggest cries out against colonialist oppression in a long time. It signals a changing tide. At a deep, human level, I can't ever cheer at footage of the settlers getting what is by all means a justified response to occupation, but I think there's no contradiction here. Could I look at Chinese peasants tying their landlords to a post and beating them to death and cheer it on? No, because I'm too removed from that context to overcome my basic human response. Can I still celebrate the Chinese revolution as a historic event that delivered political justice to a population that had been humiliated and ransacked by the rest of the world? Yes, actually. So there's a certain level of detachment necessary I think, no matter how well informed you're never exactly in the same social context as the oppressed people who are doing as they see fit to liberate themselves.
Yeah, I can't really disagree with any of that, and it helps me put things into perspective. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I agree. I will always counsel against vengeance and reprisal, but under most circumstances I accept that the decision is not mine to make.
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