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.
I’m back from my two-day hiatus from Hexbear, Twitter, Telegram, and similar sites and I feel much better, was really starting to have a breakdown near the end there. Good time to do it too because not a shitload has happened beyond the usual steady drumbeat of Israeli atrocities. Can think more clearly and strategically now, sorted my thoughts out.
At just over 6100 comments, last week’s thread was the second most commented thread on the site, of course behind the ~7200 comment thread the week before. At this rate the newschads will be be responsible for the first, second, and third most commented threads in all of Hexbear!
Swiss update:
There were elections for the national council yesterday and the numbers are in.
Quick rundown of the parties:
SVP: Right wing reactionaries
SP: Soc Dems
Mitte: Center-right conservatives
FDP: Center-right market liberal
Grüne: Greens
GLP: Greens but market liberal
EVP: Evangelical sickos
EDU: Regional reactionary party
PdA/Sol.: Communist parties
Lega: Anti-italian reactionaries
MCG: Anti-french reactionaries
So last election cycle was during 2019 where green parties won big because 2019 was very different from now, SVP won a ton of votes, they positioned themselves as staying neutral in the Ukraine-Russia war and got quite a push from the Isreal-Palestina war starting. SP regained seats lost to the green from last cycle. Mitte actually merged during the last cycle as a last ditch effort because they were losing a lot of seats to now regaining a seat and overtaking the other center-right party FDP which has taken more than a few fairly unpopular positions, they didn’t lose much more because neoliberals but it is still a somewhat big shift so it remains to be seen if mitte can ‘out-center’ the neoliberals.
With germany also having a couple of elections coming up it’s going to be interesting how much, if even, greens are going to lose votes and which parties will pick up those votes. In my opinion german Greens with CIA plant Baerbock, look it up she was in the Marshall fund think tank, will lose a ton in the upcoming elections.
Also a piece by our boy Bhadrakumar over the weekend: Biden gives booster dose to the faltering Ukraine war. He comes down rather pessimistically on the Ukraine War for Russia. He says that the war in Israel has essentially injected new life into the “democracy vs autocracy” conflict, with Biden pretty explicitly saying that both Russia and Hamas are threats to democracy and thus in some way part of the same axis. Poland’s electoral changes do not herald any changes in their support for Ukraine, and Sunak eventually losing to Starmer in the UK also will change nothing.
Essentially, he says that the post-counteroffensive wobbling has been mitigated, and everybody continues to be all-in for the war, including large amounts of funding to keep the Ukrainian economy going. He says that the advantage that ATACMS gives Ukraine is meaningful, and so too might be the supply of Gripen planes, which can operate from narrower, shorter runways including highways, thus meaning that airbases need not be used. The United States has said that the White House is still going to deliver new and increasingly advanced weapons systems in the coming months (which are still under production).
Who can say now that what happens in Ukraine, which is 10000 kms away, does not concern the United States? Biden began his speech on Thursday on a Churchillian note: “We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come. That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight.”
He went on to say, “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”
So, Ukraine war is no longer about the Westphalian principle of national sovereignty and the UN Charter — or even about this being not an era of wars. It is actually about American leadership, American alliances, American values — plainly put, hegemony, NATO, exceptionalism.
Personally, I think this is much too pessimistic and if Israel is caught in a long hot war and the US is forced to supply large amounts of weapons to Israel and the US military bases in the Middle East then Ukraine will naturally receive less stuff, but nonetheless it appears that Ukraine’s economy will not be the factor that causes the eventual collapse, due to all the funding. It’ll be either the equipment running dry, or the lack of trained men. Given Russia’s ability to adapt to new weapons systems used against them, I also think that the ATACMS will eventually be mitigated, as will whatever planes the West sends - the Russian military only continues to grow in power as best as I can see. Regardless of what happens, looks like the war is definitely still on for 2024 - any chance that the US might walk away with its tail between its legs and do the classic move of abandoning its ally as it loses, that possibility has been squashed for now.
Anthony Bourdain would be a “Israeli war crimes are cringe but Hamas does have to go” guy right now.
Roshdi Sarraj, the photographer who took [that] widely shared picture of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, was himself later killed by an Israeli airstrike.
