Image is from the January 2023 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Over 50 heads of state and 600 CEOs attended.
holding flashlight under face
Imagine a terrifying world where we are all ruled by monsters of every stripe. And not hot ones like werewolves, but instead decaying zombies and mummies who are both insensitive to, and actively benefit from the immense suffering they cause on a daily basis. The top echelon of society, filled with profit-seeking, bloodsucking vampires. And the worst of it is that they repeat on a daily basis that what they are doing is not only just, but there is no other possible way to do it.
Pretty spooky, right? What if I told you that this world... was our own?
Happy Halloween!
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 Lebanon! 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.
This week's first 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.
Feels like the media and western governments are really honing in on the “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” chant over the last few days. In their view, that constitutes promoting the destruction of Israel and is thus terrorism and (ironically) promoting genocide.
I mean, yeah, we do want the destruction of the Israeli state. Settler colonial states don’t have a “right” to exist (USA, Canada, Australia et al included). The problem is, since most people are so woefully ignorant of the history of Palestine, they don’t understand that the destruction of Israel does not mean, like, killing everyone there. It means the destruction of the racist and apartheid system. Palestine will only be free when there is one binational secular state where the rights of all are protected, and the Palestinians who were forced out are allowed to return. So while I (and do think we, too) do not believe anyone currently in Israel proper should be forced out much less killed, the current fascist theocratic ethnostate of Israel must be eliminated.
IRL, I’ve tried to explain the “from the river to the sea” chant by comparing it to South Africa. It was only just that the apartheid system be smashed. South Africa under apartheid was effectively like Israel/Palestine now: bantustans were essentially occupied territory and had no real autonomy but Africans were also not allowed to have any real say in the overall system. When that system was dismantled, South Africa was no longer a racist white supremacist state that legally constrained the rights of the majority of the population. Obviously the work was not complete as there is still significant economic and political disparity, but South Africa was transformed from a racist white supremacist state that occupied and held down the black majority to a multinational state where there is ostensibly equal rights for all. And at no point (to my knowledge) was there any serious consideration to shipping off the white population back to the UK and Holland, much less serious advocacy for genociding them.
I think people have a much easier time wrapping their heads around the situation in South Africa. Just sucks that people are so ignorant that you have to go into such detail to explain it. Not that western governments care, this crackdown on speech is genuinely getting scary.
Many of the settlers in Palestine today were born outside of Palestine and if a just peace were to happen with all the war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, property reforms and equality that would entail, living in the Levant will loose its appeal to those people. They will be "forced" out or at least every will loudly proclaim that they were forced. To settlers being forced out and having to live as equals with indigenous Palestinians will feel roughly the same. They will be as butthurt about losing their Lebensraum as the Rhodesians were, only this time large parts of the western elite will be happy to amplify them.
Keep in mind that many, many Israelis were born in Israel. Apparently about 70% of the Jewish population. There are certainly plenty of landlords from the Bronx, but it's not that clear cut. There are many Israelis who have never lived anywhere else. Removing settlers from recent settlements is certainly feasible but I can't see any scenario where any serious numbers of Israelis are deported to other countries. Europe won't be any more accepting of Israeli refugees than it has been with Ukrainian, Afhgan, or Syrian refugees and it would replace a crisis of settler-colonial violence with a crisis of refugees and possibly stateless people. If there's any model for a peace it's probably post-apartheid south africa, but that's not even close to a good match. There are far more Jewish Israelis than Muslims or Christians in Israel and Palestine. If there's ever any kind of just peace it's going to be unique to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Lots of Jews are going to be living in a free Palestine but I still think that a just peace will result in a non-neglible number of settlers and settler descendants leaving on their own volition. Those who buys into zionist ideology and who believes themselves to be the master race are not going to be happy about having to live in harmony with Palestinians. The nastiest people are going to be most likely to leave and they're going to revel in their own imagined martyrdom.
While it will be hard to have sympathy for the zionist gusanos, it is likely that the fall of the zionist entity which is a prerequisite for a just peace will be a violent and chaotic affair. It is reasonable to assume that the fall of the zionist entity will create actual refugees.
I do think zionist refugees will be among the more welcome ones in the west. Their treatment will be closer to that given Ukrainian refugees than to that given again ones. ÅWestern elites have sympathy for victims based on who they are and on who are victimising them. A free Palestine is going to be a significant loss of geopolitical influence for the west who is likely to be antagonistic to the new state. Consequently the real and imagined hardship of the refugees will be of utility to western propaganda goal.
The media and government are only talking to people on deaths door. Ie the elderly
No one else is listening. It's just an echo chamber
Well the SA settler-colonialists are converting and emigrating to Israel so
I was in a leftlib Jewish discord server when the flood happened (I am a gentile) and there were a few zionists in there, and on day 2, they were already talking about this phrase being antisemitic. The media is just catching up to them now.
The worry among zionists and neutrals alike was that with so many having no "home" to return to outside of Israel, they would face antisemitism as a minority, and part of that seemed to stem from the unfortunate history of them facing pogroms over and over again and them worrying about this being another excuse to start one, so that long-term ongoing cultural history of trauma plays into it.
It's an element I dont suspect was there for South African whites when their apartheid ended. Yeah, the ruling class is going to rear retribution when they lose power, but white people in general don't have a lot of history of outright persecution either.
And I think that adds to the fear that many Israelis and many Jews have. I'm not sure how to talk around that, but I think assuaging those fears somehow is a critical part of of persuading the liberal Jews who could otherwise be moved left.
Appealing to justice for Palestinians alone isn't going to penetrate a trauma response. And its easy to tell Jewish chuds to fuck off, but leftlibs whobare otherwise radical on a lot of issues have that additional hurdle, and I don't suspect there's much that gentiles can say to address it
IMO this is where socialism comes in. We can try and elevate the voices in the PFLP, DFLP, et al. Compared to say, religious theocrats or even secular liberals, us socialists can point to a genuine, historically consistent advocacy for truly equal rights for all without oppression. It’s not just talk, it’s a core value.
And I don’t want to speak for Palestinians, but honestly I would imagine in a situation where the one state solution was actually within our reach, I don’t think there would be any issue with having the United Nations or at least a consortium of nations like China that could step in and help ensure the establishment of a state that respects the rights of all, if that was a guarantee that Jewish citizens felt they would need.
Anyone have any good reading suggestions related to this? To Israeli and Palestinian leftist perspectives and theory?
Worth keeping in mind; If we accept that Hamas are religious fanatics, we also need to accept that the Sharia provides laws requiring Muslims to protect Jewish and Christian people living under Islamic rule. idk if Hamas would follow those laws if there somehow came to be a Palestinian state incorporating all territory currently occupied by Israel, with a Hamas government and a Jewish majority population, but it at least needs to be considered and treated as one perspective from which to view possible future situations. Historically the application of these laws has varied from place to place and time to time; Some Islamic kingdoms and states have readily sent soldiers to protect religious minority populations from violence and persecution, while others have violently oppressed minority religious populations. But both of those situations are part of the political and religious history of Islam.
Word. I don't think there's anywhere in the world that would be willing to take in nine million Jewish people. Whatever happens, Israelis are staying in the Levant. That's just the reality now.
But it's worth remembering - Hamas changed it's charter years ago. It initially said that Hamas' enemy was Jewish people, but they changed it to specifically say that their enemy is Zionism, not Jewish people. idk how sincere they are about it, but it's at least possible to have truth and reconciliation within an apartheid state. Shit's still a mess in South Africa, but the end of Apartheid did not bring mass systematic deportation of white South Africans. This is all a fucking mess, but there's still, always, hope that humanity will prevail over hatred and violence, that some kind of just peace is possible. Back in the 90s, during the Oslo Accords, there was serious movement from Israel towards removing settlers from recently occupied areas. It's the primary reason Rabin was assassinated. The current situation was not fait-accompli. Likudniks and Kahanists worked hard and did plenty of murder, propaganda, and terrorism to get here. Human effort got us to this horrific situation, and I hope against hope that human effort can bring us somewhere better.
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