Image is of a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.
As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there's been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.
In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia's runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda's 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn't risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.
Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America's ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.
Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
lol I could run your crank ass through every chapter of Capital and you'd just waste my time deflecting, flattening and caricaturizing all my points (or more accurately all of Marx's points)
You can't even drag yourself out of basic category errors and you seem utterly baffled by basic econ/polisci terminology and their meanings and applications
I'm sorry but you never read this shit and it shows, and worst of all you have forum brain, where your miseduction was reinforced to the point you've developed an idiosyncratic, idealistic heuristic where you legitimately believe the foundations of the social mode of production that underwrites civilization is based on fuckin "semantics"
That's almost as bad as that one dumbass from the old chapo sub who thought the "future of socialism" was through Marginal Utility Theory and free markets
Anyway I guess thanks for the laugh cause this was definitely the funniest conclusion to a struggle session I've ever been a part of (couldn't have been any less funny then arguing with a user who busts out the Time Cube charts after yelling at me about the satanic evils of Zohran Mamdani)
But legit plz go touch grass before you end up developing that nonsense into a full-blown crank ideology, forums clearly don't sit right with you
You can't even discuss a single point in chapter 1, like commodity fetishism. You can say (often wrong) things about it and 5 other things instead, but respond to what I say? No of course not.
You simply don't have the courage of your convictions, so you stoop to lying and trolling. And now simply copying both my vocabulary and accusations I've made against you (selections and caricatures, things you do and I don't).
If you were in a half competent socialist org and acted like this you'd be receiving discipline for uncomradely behavior and remedial education at minimum. Most likely just socially iced out. I assume you either don't organize, are in one with no discipline at all, or act very differently irl. It's unfortunate that you spend your time here, dragging down discourse and understanding because a person criticized your socdem boy.
I already replied to this and you've ignored it. It's not a clever thing, you just invented some nonsense I didn't say. Now you're claiming victory for doing so? Are you 12?
Hmm. Maybe 18? No socialist appeals to the "basic terminology of political science" as if that's a good thing to leverage. But a naive college kid stoked about the Mamdani campaign? Yeah maybe they'd think that's a good way to condescend. Would explain the intellectual insecurities as well.
Here's another of of those "I'm rubber you're glue" incisive comments I've come to expect from you.
Word salad. Organize your thoughts before writing them. Nobody speaks the language of your incompetently pedantic stream of consciousness.
Uh I don't believe that you're just a bit of a liar. Which you're aware of.
Oh no that kind of thing is more in your opportunist camp. Get back to work justifying sending more cops against the anti-imperialists. Though I recall you had no idea what this was referring to and started fibbing about it.
It isn't really a struggle session, that would require some kind of consistent disagreement and fight. This is actually just a petty thing, you don't actually believe in socialism or the truth (the former requiring a commitment to the latter) and just act in bad faith when confronted. It's not like you have any opinions you can actually defend.
Is this something you think other people will understand?
Yes I can see exactly how much you care.
Instead of breathlessly ranting at me, maybe go pick up a book, cause frankly you're kinda of dumb af
Sounds like I was right, you're done. Since you seem to lack the capacity to do it honestly I'll just do it for you: bye