Image is sourced from this Guardian article.
The Pope’s fucking dead.
He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.
What a way to go.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
They dismiss every material explanation for the war in Ukraine as Putin Apologia. And if there is no material cause there can be no material solution. So the Euro libs call for war and call everybody against this ‘idealist.’ I AM LOSING MY FUCKING MIND.
Literal idealists calling you an idealist for doing material analysis. Can’t make this shit up
Communists are too idealistic. Socialism only works in theory. What we need is for everyone to just stop believing in nonsense, if we could believe the right thing and do our best we could fix the world’s problems.
Hegel Strikes Back
this but “the right thing” is communism
I guess that’s where I disagree. We aren’t engaging in a project to change people’s hearts, to convince them of the correctness of our ideas. We’re engaging in a project of the use of political power to define a new social reality that is liberatory for workers across the globe, a historical struggle defined not by right and wrong, but by the inevitable progressive forces of the people who hold power in their hands. “Progressive” in that sentence doesn’t mean “good person” like liberals often use it, but literally in the sense that it progresses history forward, dialectically.
“Communism is not love. It is a hammer to beat our enemies with” - Mao Zedong
Obviously that’s not to say that on a personal level, one person can’t feel guided by moral or sentimental things, because the counterpart (we’re getting really dialectical now) to the above quote is:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” - Che Guevara
I was just being glib but this is a good comment
They’ll say that Putin is abducting thousands of Ukrainian children as evidence of pure malice, then turn around and say he’s forcibly deporting them. It doesnt make any sense. They’ll say its a genocide but can’t articulate the grievances that would motivate a genocide like this.
People committing genocides devise moral frameworks to justify them. Netanyahu claims religious supremacy and ancestral lands bs, Hitler based it all on race, colonizers claim to bring genteel civilization to native peoples. Russia doesn’t do any of this. Most likely the kids that are being moved around are just being moved away from active warfronts and destroyed cities. Even if it’s just a raw land capture for wealth and power, there’s no point in chasing out all the future farmers and factory workers.
western media uses short clips from the Russian alexjoneses like Dugin as proof for genocidal Russian imperial expansionism
The West always needs atrocity propaganda to drum up war fervor
What do you mean by this?
If the war happened because “Putler is evil” and no other reason, then there can be no peace deal. The west is not willing to even consider Russian conditions or demands as real, so they can’t compromise
From Dialectical and Historical Materialism
I know what materialism is, what is meant by material solution? Who is implementing this supposed material solution? Why does a material cause need to be understood for a material solution to be implemented?
A material solution means an actionable, real solution; something distinct from the current approach of “well the Russians are wrong for invading so the right thing here is for them to just pack up and leave” which you’ll often hear when discussing the situation with liberals. The reason you need to understand the material causes to establish or implement a material solution should be pretty evident from the premise of materialism.
I think you might be getting at a different point, that we are just a handful of users on an online forum with literally 0 impact on the material reality of this war. I agree with that.
Material solution would be the disarming of Ukraine, denazification, surrendering the four oblasts, etc
If you propose that no material factors inform Putins actions then how do you propose to stop him other than the complete destruction of Putin or even Russia at all? If you think Nato expansion was a factor you already have an avenue to negotiate on for example (al though I think that specific factor is overstated on the left).
To me the war was a result of a capitalism no longer being able to sustain the profit rates the ruling classes needed to keep peace among themselves. So the global and regional powers start to want greater control over its ‘sphere of influence.’ Remember that the first part of this conflict started in 2014 when Ukraine was deciding between a European and Russian aid package. America’s first response immediately folded its narrative of the conflict into the war with China that Washington wants so badly. With this turn to Autarky I at least expect some of the Euro libs to use it as an opportunity to promote a new free trade regime.
Why didn’t the EU diplomats just convince Putin he’s wrong about the world after his Munich speech?
Oh he’s an evil madman with thousands of nukes you can’t reason with? I guess we should escalate the war then
Peak liberal logic
Just curious, why do you see NATO expansion as an overstated factor in the war? You say yourself that the war is about control of spheres of influence, and what is NATO but part of the US’s power projection?
In the interwar period the central Europe was carved up after Britain and France stopped underwriting the defense of many countries which led to the carving up of the smaller countries by the larger. To be blunt, these countries were never big enough to be independent. When the USSR dissolved itself the successor state that is Russia was already too impotent to keep central Europe in its influence. My view is that when Russia stabilized and reformed from a super power to a regional one its ambition started out limited enough that the new Nato countries were already considered a lost cause.
The material basis wasn’t simply capitalism. That’s true but reductive.
Imperialism is integral to capitalism, and US imperialism was seeking to flip Ukraine in an inter-imperialist conflict with Russia (and longer term consequences also for the conflict with china), which presented an existential threat to Russia resulting in war.
Libs don’t know what words mean. They think idealism is when you want good things to happen.