Image is from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' recent article on Kashmir.
It looks like the spat between India and Pakistan could be dying down, due to a new ceasefire. As of the time of me writing this paragraph, it seems both sides want to maintain it (despite some reports of violations here and there).
Both sides have declared victory, which is completely expected given their mutual political parties and nationalist histories. It's a little harder to say which side has actually won, as both sides seem to have managed to shoot down aircraft and hit military bases. India has, in my opinion, had the more embarrassing moments, but international conflicts aren't cringe compilations. I feel no good-will towards Pakistan's comprador government, but it is at least nice to see Modi knocked down a few pegs. Regardless of the final technical victor, it's obvious that - if the ceasefire is maintained - who won are the hundreds of millions of people who won't have to live in fear of dying in nuclear hellfire.
This conflict is a good example of what multipolarity will truly entail. Countries that have been previously limited in their nationalist ambitions by American pressure will now take opportunities to revolt, sometimes against America itself, and sometimes against other countries in their regional neighbourhood. It's also why, as communists, our goals do not stop at multipolarity; it is merely the establishing act of a new era of agitation against peripheral and semi-peripheral capitalist countries that are forming powerful national bourgeoisie classes as the international American capitalists are forced away.
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.
I don't understand why any of these countries shedding crocodile tears for Palestinians are even pretending to care. What would they even lose by fully and publicly committing themselves to Israel's genocide?
Fucking hell all of Israel's allies (like, 99% of the world) might as well drop all pretenses and self-annex themselves into Greater Israel.
Here's an extremely black-pilled take:
spoiler
I'm gonna say this now. With all the continued support Israel's been getting from nearly the whole fucking world, this isn't just Palestinians vs. Israel, it's Palestinians vs. (almost) the whole world. They all want Palestinians gone. Every country wants them gone just so they can shrug their shoulders and stop thinking about them, because they're "inconvenient" for their relations with Israel. They want them gone so they can embrace Israel as the forever empire of the Middle East.I think I answered one of your questions before, but let’s put it this way: what can the individual countries actually do?
Very few countries can survive US sanctions. Unless you’re prepared to go the way of North Korea and Venezuela and the likes, and have the full backing of your own people ready to go through hell with you, you’d better not attract any attention to yourself, and chances are you’d end up a failed state like Libya where everything descends to chaos and having millions and millions of people of your own end up impoverished, just to save two million Palestinian lives?
This is simply the outcome of the world letting US and China to run a huge trade imbalances over the past few decades. By concentrating all industrial capacity in China, the rest of the world are made vulnerable to Western imperialism. This was a very deliberate imperial strategy by the US, and not a mistake like many people are saying.
Europe was never going to take the Palestinian side, save a couple of countries, but even if they wanted to, they are now heavily reliant on US energy to survive, and is in austerity itself.
Russia is already having its hands full dealing with Ukraine, and could barely do any power projection itself. Just look at how it lost Syria. And Putin was literally begging for everyone to de-dollarize since 2022 (to a certain extent, Lula did too), and many countries in the Global South was looking for a dollar alternative during the summer of 2022, but unfortunately China chose not to take up the offer and instead doubled down on defending dollar hegemony. This was a huge opportunity that is now forever lost. Russia’s not going to lose the war or anything, but that economic transformation is not happening anytime soon.
And obviously China is way too comfortable to abandon the status quo. After all, both the US and China have been the greatest beneficiaries of the dollar hegemony.
It is apparent that Trump is allowed to have his nonsense tariffs precisely because they have already seen how the world (mostly China) reacted to Russia’s call for de-dollarization after the Ukraine war started, and are calculating on the fact that nothing will fundamentally change. Looks like they’re winning that bet too.
Even Trump’s crazy tariffs could not replicate the dangers the US dollar faced when it first raised interest rates in 2022. That really was an opportunity that only happens once every few decades.
To put it bluntly, Russia (February 24th 2022) and the Palestinians (October 7th 2023) rolled their dice, and they lost the ultimate bet. The world lost an opportunity for an alternative system to emerge.
There is no point sugar coating anymore. Remember that human agency is the one to change the world. The left has to be at the vanguard of the movement. But are we even prepared? Has the left studied and devised its theory, strategy and tactics to the point where they are prepared to take on the rise of fascism?
We can only wait for the next crisis of capitalism to erupt. But even if it does happen tomorrow, is anyone even prepared to take action?
If your posts are any indication, the answer to that is no. Precisely why I've been losing my will to live.
And if everything has gone according to the U.S. plan, if the U.S. is and always has been 100 steps ahead of everyone else, what's the point of caring anymore? It'd be more feasible to just disappear and let everything burn.
My point is that if you expect revolutions to fall onto your lap, it’s not going to happen.
In the US, they haven’t even had their own vanguard party yet, and people are already giving up? Not even trying to shoot their own shot, and already believe everything will fail?
They haven’t even had their own Bolshevik-Menshevik split yet, the years of exile for its leaders and organizing underground for those who stayed while evading persecution and terror by the Okhrana secret police.
Or the Long March in China - a 6000 miles trek through the most arduous mountainous terrain, where 95% of the CPC rank and file were murdered or died of attrition.
That’s the price you have to pay for a revolution. In both Russia and China, if things had just gone slightly differently, the entire party would have been wiped out. And yet they emerged victorious in the end.
The problem with the left in the Imperial Core is that they already gave up without even making an attempt. Incidentally, these are also the same people (online, at least) who cheered about how brave the Palestinians and Houthis are, how noble their sacrifices have been etc.
This feels like a point that's already been re-iterated over and over already.
Mostly the parts about a revolution not falling into your lap, and how there is no organized left in the imperial core. I've already heard it before.
Thing is, repeating this isn't going to get people to go "Oh my god, I've had it all wrong all along!" and spur them to go outside to form a vanguard party or anything like that. How do you even make an attempt without knowing what you're supposed to do? Especially in these conditions?
This is also kind of the reason I believe people tend to fall into adventurism, it's only the thing they can think of because of how direct it is. The only way they can feel like they can exert some sort of power or control.
And admittedly I don't have plans to do much, if anything at all. The obvious answer is because I am lazy and selfish. My excuses are I still have too much to lose, too comfortable, and still have obligations to others. That and also not knowing what to do, but that's a smaller reason compared to the rest.
(Addition: Also I don't think you actually answered the question of "why these countries are even pretending to care")