Image: one of our POW camps filled with captured soldiers of the Christmas regime.
Season's greetings, fellow godless communists. I'm here to disseminate orders from our Supreme Communist Dictator as we once again find ourselves fighting against the very concept of Christmas. As a reminder, by the end of our five-year plan, we plan to be in a position to attack and dethrone God, but this intermediate step is required to fulfil this directive. Our forces in the field have made significant, if gradual, progress since you received your mission update last year. It has been difficult, but we have developed a series of defensive lines to prepare for a counteroffensive out of Lapland that will try and reach the Gulf of Bothnia in an attempt to cut the land bridge that we have set up across Scandinavia.
Currently, we foresee a few major threats. General Santa Clauswitz has been developing many tools in his workshop, including artillery-launched snowballs, barbed tinsel, and reinforced gingerbread armor plating for his tanks and infantry carriers. President Frostyy has made the following public statement: "The socialists who wish to destroy us have no idea what their defenses are about to face. Democracy will always defeat autocracy. Christmas will always triumph over X-mas. The leaders of the axis facing us are all on the naughty list and will be tried for crimes against festivity once this war is over."
Delusional as this may be, the next couple days will be the most dangerous as they stage their counteroffensive, and we need everybody to pitch in and get into defensive positions. We expect this to be the last major push that they will make before collapse. Please report any Christmas trees, mistletoe, or general symbology of the Christmas regime to your superiors.
Over and out.
The weekly update is here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Finland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 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. - 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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
You know, since Kissinger died, something's been scratching at the back of my brain: what's left of the US administrative Realist camp? Brzezinski, Kissinger, H.W., even Powell, are all gone. Obama? Oliver North?
Personally when realists say they have no ears in the corridors of power, I think they are failing to encapsulate the problem. The United States has a culture of liberalism, which is why it coats its actions by a liberal veneer. Some members of the elite probably believe in that liberalism, but likely not most of them. When someone like Mearsheimer says that Ukraine is a waste and that the US should focus on China instead, he's not necessarily disagreeing with liberals and non realists. He's failing to convince the hegemonists.
A person can be a realist and believe all the axioms of realist international theory, but also believe that the US is the greatest economy and military power and that the US losing face is a danger to the world. Therefore the US has to (and can) act against China, Russia, Iran, the resistance in Palestine, left-liberals in South America, all at the same time. This might sound insane but even if the average elderly politician in the US can be convinced otherwise, it's much easier for them to kick the can down the road than it is to confront new realities.
We'll see what the american elites do once Joe Biden's generation is fully retired. Hell, the millenials who made it in politics probably don't disbelieve in enough tenets of american hegemony either. Once enough time passes we'll see a renewal period has a lot of potential.
I think part of the issue is that everybody loves to call themselves a "realist" regardless of their actual position because it makes them sound more correct and worldly. To the extent that I'm unsure to what exact degree the idealist vs realist camps even exist in the US in the current stage. It feels like it's all just getting blended together as everybody tries to pull the empire in every direction at once, leading to these really zig-zagging policies and statements. Blinken trying to make friends with the Chinese, while Biden then calls Xi a dictator five minutes later. Deals and discussions but also fearmongering and shooting down weather balloons.
Unironically, this is called Liberalism. It's viewed as in-between Realism and Idealism.
It's an arrogation, isn't it? By calling yourself a realist you're entering the arena of discourse as though your opinions are factual and rational. That would mean you're the only game in town. Except reality is more akin to that joke about 3 rabbis, one question and 5 different opinions.
That's my problem with people like Mearsheimer. Is what he proposes much more reasonable than what the US appears to be doing? Yeah, of course he basically wants to apply the winning formula of the Cold War except inverted (allying or keeping Russia at arms length while focusing on China). But that doesn't mean the 'liberals' or the 'liberal hegemonists' aren't also applying the same State focused, zero-sum principles as the realist school. It's much more likely that some people hate China and some people hate Russia and no camp wins long enough to make their policy consistent.
Which I think is the key criticism against the realist school. The entire worldview pressuposes that States are rational, monolithic actors. It's not that different from, say, Alan Greenspan basing his ideology on the rationality of markets and market actors and then realizing that individuals within said institutions have their own interests, their own prejudices, and lack perfect data about the world around them. That's why IR theories are interesting but never exhaustive models of reality.
CPC believing one of the chief imperialist ghouls is honestly trying to be "friendly" with them is on the same level as if the Russians/Putin suddenly were to believe some Minsk 3 agreement would be honestly upheld by NATO/Ukraine/US.
The issue with Biden is he is suffering from dementia therefore he can't keep the mask on not that he is actually derailing some master US FP grand scheme regarding China.