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.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
HEAR YEA
HEAR YEA
I, the resident town crier am here to screm at the top of my lungs at the crack of dawn that the 72T Imperialist Book Club has kicked off and people are dropping their analysis’ like it’s hot
The News Megathread Imperialism Reading Group: Week 1 - January 13th to January 19th, 2025
IGNORE THE FACT IT IS THE 20TH AND GO READ YHROUGJ THE THRED
CLICK HERE FOR HOT MARRIED REVOLUTIONARIES WRITING ECONOMIC ESSAYS WEEK 2
The News Megathread Imperialism Reading Group: Week 2 - January 20th to January 26th, 2025
I can tell you’re all excited about inauguration shitposting and so as a treat I will not remove all these not newsworthy posts. Get it out of your system now as tomorrow we will be back to our usual schedule of mod tyranny. Also, everyone shitposting now had better be thinking about what useful content they can bring to the thread later in the week.
edit: I encourage those shitposting on this blessed day to join the imperialism book club
I feel like the war isn’t real-war for Israel… it’s like they are playing with the toys they have. A cheasfire is a mere return into a comfy home for a few weeks vacation for them. They have no consequences and hence, no regrets. Who cares they had to retreat… they had fun and made a buck.
And the best thing? It all started by a atrocious terrorist attack on a Goa-Festival, where all the woke peace loving drugged hippies finally got what they deserved.
A perfect situation for those conservative nationalists if you think about it.
Well it’s a sad world… (I left anger… what emotion is this?)
Edit: Small addition.
Latest statement from Trump, via truth social, on the Russia - Ukraine war.
I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin - and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way and the easy way is always - better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!
Very typical Trump, exaggerating the numbers (I think total allied deaths was 60 million, not the USSR alone). But he’s really planning to go through with the peace through strength policy he promoted during his campaign apparently. Don’t know how helpful sanctions against Russia will be unless he really plans to screw over the “participating countries” Russia does business with (so Europe) in the meantime by closing all the loopholes.
CW: Violence and Transphobia
This’ll fix the economy
Milei government wants to remove femicide from Argentina’s Penal Code
**President Javier Milei’s government wants to strip femicide from Argentina’s Penal Code, eliminate non-binary IDs and remove quotas for disabled and trans people. **
President Javier Milei’s government announced Friday that it will seek to eliminate the concept of “femicide” from Argentina’s Penal Code. The move is part of a wider push to eliminate all legislation that encourages what officials describe as “positive discrimination.” The government says the push is a move to ensure equality before the law.
“We are going to eliminate the figure of femicide from the Argentine Criminal Code. Because this administration defends the equality before the law enshrined in our National Constitution. No life is worth more than another,” said the Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, on his account on the X network. Cúneo Libarona on Friday described the concept of femicide, which was added to the Penal Code in December 2012, as “a distortion of the concept of equality.”
Cúneo Libarona is accused of killing his wife in the 90s but nothing happened with this.
According to the code, femicide is defined as “a crime of murder perpetrated by a man against a woman in the context of gender violence" and convictions normally receive harsher sentences. On its website, Argentina’s Public Prosecutor’s Office says the crime is rooted in a “social system that … preserves the social orders of power, control and oppression of men over women.” The concept was introduced in 2012, although not explicitly, via a law that modified Article 80 of Argentina’s Penal Code.
The news comes one day after Milei angrily attacked the “cancer” of “wokeism” – a term used by the far right to refer to progressive policies targeting social inequalities – in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The mental virus of woke ideology,” declared Milei, is “an epidemic which is destroying the foundations of Western civilisation.”
“Feminism, equality, gender ideology, climate change, abortion and immigration are all heads of the same monster, whose aim is to justify the advance of the state,” said the La Libertad Avanza leader.
In his speech, Milei argued that the concept of femicide legalises “in fact, that the life of a woman is worth more than that of a man.”
(No it does not lmfao)
“As President Javier Milei said in Davos [this week], feminism is a distortion of the concept of equality that only seeks privileges by setting one half of the population against the other,” agreed Cúneo Libarona, who said in an interview last July had stated that tackling gender violence was an “absolute priority” for the government. In order to amend Argentina’s Penal Code, the Milei administration must pass a law through Congress, where the ruling party is in a minority. Opposition lawmakers would likely rally against any such change.
“The fact of killing a woman does not take you directly into femicide … you have to have killed her because she is a woman,” said criminal lawyer Gastón Francone in comments to the AFP news agency. “This aggravating factor … is different from killing a man because he is a man,” said Francone, who pointed out that the maximum sentence for a homicide without aggravating circumstances is 25 years, while life imprisonment for a femicide can be up to 50 years. Data tracked by the government and several NGOs show that on average one woman is murdered for gender-related reasons every 30 hours.
Argentina recorded 255 femicides last year.
‘Positive discrimination’
According to reports, Milei’s government is also planning to tackle a number of other progressive pieces of legislation as it ramps up its “cultural battle” against “wokeism.” The “equality before the law” push is said to be led by Strategic Planning Secretary María Ibarzabal Murphy and a team headed by top presidential advisor Santiago Caputo. It targets all regulations that guarantee “differential treatment before the law,” said government sources.
Among other measures under consideration is the elimination of non-binary national identity cards (DNIs), which were introduced in 2021, and the so-called “trans quota,” which establishes that the state must reserve at least one percent of jobs for transgender people. The Noticias Argentinas news agency reported Friday that the Milei government would like to repeal the Gender Identity Law (Nº 26.743), the Law for the Promotion of Access to Formal Employment for Transvestites, Transsexuals and Transgender ‘Diana Sacayán - Lohana Berkins’ (Nº 27. 636), the Law on Electoral Parity in Areas of Political Representation (Nº 27.412) and some aspects of the Micaela Law (Nº 27499), amongst others.
The Milei government also discussed the repeal of a labour quota for persons with disabilities (Nº 22.431), which obliges the state to ensure that persons with disabilities have the right to work, but the idea was dropped. Back in November, Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni stated that “Argentina does not admit prerogatives of blood, birth or religion: all its inhabitants are equal before the law.”
(No they’re not equal before the law lmfao)
“The National Government will provide the necessary measures to eliminate any ideological and discriminatory policy that enables the entry to public employment by criteria other than those specifically related to the suitability of individuals,” he concluded.
Davos denunciation
Milei’s appearance at Davos and remarks online may land him in hot water. At least two legal complaints have been filed against Argentina’s President, accusing him of threats, incitement to violence and abuse of authority, among other offences.
One was filed by the Federación Argentina de Lesbianas, Gays, Bisexuales y Trans (FALGBT) and is before the Federal Criminal and Correctional Court 3, headed by Judge Daniel Rafecas. Milei was also denounced by the lawyer Gregorio Dalbón, along with secretary general of ATE Capital stateworkers’ union, Daniel Catalano, and former national deputy Myriam Bregman.
FALGBT said in its complaint that Milei “has initiated an escalation of violence towards various groups and social groups, under the pretext of embodying a “cultural battle.” “However, as the months have gone by, this aggressive attitude has become more and more radical until it has turned into concrete threats that would constitute actions of public intimidation, incitement to collective violence, incitement to hatred and discrimination,” argued the group.
In comments to Perfil, FALGBT president María Rachid denounced that “President Milei’s entire speech is a compilation of threats, intimidation, violence and discrimination.” “To use a gay couple who committed abuse as an example to say that those of us who defend LGBT rights – which he calls ‘gender ideology’ – are paedophiles, is like saying that those who defend the rights of heterosexuals are paedophiles because of a case of sexual abuse of a heterosexual person or couple, as most cases are. Even given that fact, it would not be logical to say so,” she argued.
“Milei pointed against the ‘lefties’ who defend the ‘gender ideology’, that is, those of us who defend the rights of women and diversity, and the ‘woke ideology,’ which is nothing more than those who fight against injustice, racism, patriarchy and care for the environment,” said Rachid. During his Davos speech, Milei railed against the trans community and made reference to a case of child sexual abuse in the United States, which he then suggested was linked to the homosexual community.
Hours later, in a post on social media, he slammed “shitty lefties” and warned them he would “go after them to the farthest corners of the planet” – a clear threat.
He did this while defending after he did the nazi salute.
Dalbón made the same point in his criminal complaint against Milei, stating that “saying that he is going to look for all of us who think differently, to the last corner, is a crime.”
In comments to Noticias Argentinas, Dalbón confirmed that the complaint in Argentina, based on the publication that the President wrote yesterday on his social networks, was filed with federal judge Daniel Rafecas and that the prosecutor in the case will be Paloma Ochoa. Additionally, the complaint will be filed with the Criminal Court in The Hague and the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, said Dalbón. “I believe that the case should be investigated, to investigate the President and to ask him what he wants to do with Argentina and with this single way of thinking. Incitement to collective violence, practically saying that he is going to look for all of us who think differently from him, to the farthest corners of the world, is a crime,” he said.
