Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (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.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine, though we will switch next week to a new country.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly (biweekly?) 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.
Why I Just Quit DSA, by Maurice Isserman
This article is the equivalent of a right-wing Democrat (
, I know) addressing the Republican National Convention to say "I didn't leave the party, the party left me."
Party discipline? In my socialism? Jfc.
Americans fundamentally do not understand what a political party is. It's fascinating.
Even liberal democracies have party discipline with the exception of America. This isn't even about socialism.
I become more and more convinced everyday that political illiteracy of Americans is the strongest tool of the capitalists.
Are you kidding? America has TONS of party discipline going on. That discipline is all just aimed directly toward the neoliberal and fascist direction of capitalist empire. People are disciplined pretty much instantly for wandering off the party line. The people who show signs of slightly progressive impulses, basically.
It's just "too political" if you have some third-party or even non-party political organization which has some other direction to their discipline. In other words, only the one (Republicrat) party is allowed.
I, uh... yeah. I mean, that's what a party is. That's what democratic centralism is about. If you want a discussion group then go to the next room over. It's one thing if you're objecting to outright reactionary behaviour; quite another if you're just unhappy that they aren't licking the boots of a settler-colonial apartheid state. Might not be a socialist if you're behind those kinds of countries, might wanna try one of the "national socialist" ones instead.
At least this incident has been very useful for determining who is and isn't on the Left. The Ukraine situation was one thing as it was at least a little complicated and invasions are hard to justify a lot of the time and many people don't know the history or have a very biased interpretation of it, etc, but like, a settler-colonial state which keeps minorities in open-air concentration camps? If you get that issue wrong then please get the hell away from us
That's why democratic centralism is against DSA rules.
It is? Damn. Are there any significant orgs that follow it?
PSL does. Socialist Alternative might. But yeah, you can't join DSA if you're also a member of an org that does democratic centralism.
From the DSA by-laws:
. . .
So they set up the rules to protect themselves against entryism, but in my experience, DSA folks find the very concept of democratic centralism to be insidious, and it takes a lot of work to persuade them that accepting the results of votes is actually what democracy is.
nah democracy is claiming the votes were rigged until your dying breath and forming a faction to sabotage every single action taken by your party until you can claw your way back to power again through fraud, deceit, and factionalism.
seriously though i used to think democratic centralism sounded insidious too until i realized it was just how actual democracy should work. the "centralist" part just sounded "spooky authoritarian" until i got an explanation from an actual marxist and was like "ohh"
Psl, my folks, FRSO, the black panthers (the actual one and not the cranks), that marcyite trot group PSL's descended from, there's a decent handful out there.
Are you saying you’re a part of PSL or FRSO?
No
🤡
I didn't realize there was already a thread about this: https://hexbear.net/post/908476?scrollToComments=false
I sort by "hot" and every now and then I'll miss the biggest discussions on the site because they hit "active" almost immediately. Then when I remember, and sort by "active," I end up exclusively with two-day-old posts where 2/3 of the comments are responding to one wrecker.
Exact same thing happens to me. It's like finding out that your friends held a party and assumed you knew and you're like, huh?