Image is of Gazans breaking their fast with the Iftar meal during the ongoing Ramadan.
Due to a request by @miz@hexbear.net, this thread's COTW is Qatar.
The ceasefire deal broke down early last week after Israel unilaterally changed the terms of the agreement and then blamed Hamas for not meeting them. Violence against civilians has rapidly accelerated to pre-ceasefire levels, with many hundreds dead already, aid once again cut off, and Israeli soldiers once again entering and occupying the attritional labyrinth that is Gaza.
I'm not yet in a position to make any solid predictions or analysis, as the geopolitical situation in and around Israel has changed fairly substantially over the last 6 months; in some ways benefiting Israel, and in other ways not. We know for sure how Hamas and Ansarallah are reacting (thankfully, with open hostility to both Israel and the United States), but the state of Hezbollah has been a giant question mark for months now, and precisely what Iran plans to do (beyond the usual level of supplying weaponry and intelligence to all the allies it can) is unknown. Syria will be almost certainly be a big wildcard, and we'll have to see if the compradors in Damascus can weather the storm.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
Dear comrades, if your protest has any dudes in superhero costumes, meme signs or excessive signs in English if you're not in an English-speaking country, then I'm truly sorry, because your protest is already doomed. Look at Turkey, their protest thing felt serious for like a day, then it turned into goon material for the r/Europe cucks, and now the English signs and the superheroes have arrived. My estimation now is that Erdoğan will rule for another two decades before Allah elevates him to the seventh heaven. I'm not even praising Erdoğan here, it's just that his opponents have fatal liberal brainworms, where protests are held not as a disruptive tool to pressure the ruling government, but as an elaborate esoteric pledge of allegiance to western cultural hegemony. Georgia was the same, and it also failed.
Look at my protest dog:
Turkey is already pretty westernized, hell most turks liberals as immigrants are less western than modern turkish urban populations are.
But its true, Euros have been trying to color revolt erdo out of office for a while.
Last week at a pro-Palestine rally in Australia, some nazis turned up in naurto headbands with light sabers, asking to take photos with people, so I can confirm, dressing like this at a protest is nazi shit
if it makes you feel any better that photo is AI
I'll admit that I didn't realise that until after I clicked post, but here's a real image that still inspires rage in me.
it's still terrible but at least it isn't pikachu cradling batman like that ivan the terrible and his son painting while batgirl strikes a pose on the police van behind them with perfectly arranged blue and orange movie poster lighting terrible
This one is very good, I was curious so I searched for the name on the watermark and that guy REALLY likes Atatürk
yeah honestly machine learning is getting scary better at passing off as genuine, the main thing that tipped me off was that a protest wouldn't have poses straight at the camera and a higher lighting/cinematography budget than your average indie film which made me look for artifacts and reverse image search it
It is? I can't tell the difference anymore, what are the telltale signs?
The poses and the cinematic lighting, for two.
I can't imagine Riot Police would let someone dressed as Batgirl (or is it Catwoman?) clamber around on their truck without beating them half to death, either. The original point about English signs and Superhero shit being an indication that your civil disobedience has been co-opted is still valid though.
True facts.
other than the cinematography as other posters said, batman's armor/belt is fucked up looking, it looks like he has a third leg in the back, and two of the police officers have gibberish on their helmet
Yeah the Batman and catwoman looked pretty obviously generated
throwback to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
WHY IT DIDN'T WORK - When a deep practice gets too popular too quickly, what originally made it remarkable and transformative can often get lost in the rush to replicate it. In their understandable excitement to get clownish on the streets, too many of the CIRCA spin-off chapters didn't take the time — either at the technical or the soul level —to develop their "deep clown." Consequently, they were less effective on the streets than they could have been, and were themselves less revolutionized by the experience.
If you want to die of cringe/have a good laugh, watch the videos of the 2022-2023 Brazilian election protests where far-right people funded by Bolsonaro and his allies make these protest memes with shitty English stuff, they held dances, attempted to communicate with aliens (?), prayed to a tire and the statue of a tank. And then they got beaten up either by the local police (since Bolsonaro gave orders for the federal police forces to do nothing) or by football fans. I think Hassan reacted to some of these videos at the time.
Sidenote: I hate the meme signs at protests. It got really dumb in 2016 in the US where it felt like the signs were just to get social media clicks.
Yeah, I felt this a the original women's march. I was hopeful about it, and then it was like "Trump tiny penis"...haha funny, or whatever, but are you taking this seriously? And then, wouldn't you know it: march around the one block with signs for a couple hours and then go home, most never to be seen or heard from again.
I love when radical street theater is done well. And Juggalos are generally pretty cool. But I think with this other shit there's a point where the humor stops being subversive and starts kinda doing the opposite. Real humor was always designed to poke at the actual pain. Liberals might occasionally be "haha cute", but still aren't all that funny.
The English protest signs in non-english speaking countries always make me suspicious. To me they scream "this is performative for western audiences"