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.
I'd advise your friend to recognize the number one butcher and denier of Arab women is the US and it's regional allies, you can't have feminism if an American made bomb blows every woman in a square block radius to smithereens, also whether they like it or not the only armed force defending the women of Gaza from an entire army of murderous rapists and baby killers is Hamas and its allies
Your friend should recognize the people of Donbass and Crimea didn't choose to have their democratically elected government in Kiev overthrown by fascists in 2014, they didn't choose to have their languages and identities suppressed, their fellow workers burned alive in Odessa, they didn't choose to have neo-nazi gangs attempt to take over entire cities in the Donbass
Minimizing the agency of the west and the fascists who took over Ukraine is frankly a coping mechanism to deny the fact the Russians and Putin had every liberal-ass, money-making stability-at-all-cost-ass incentive to accept a peace deal (a la Minsk) while the West and its Ukrainian allies openly courted unnecessary war and proudly beat the drums
Yeah I think that’s where I also land: emphasize the moral agency of the west in Ukraine. It’s not simply the west supporting the smol bean Ukraine but the west manipulating Ukraine into fighting a proxy war to the detriment of Ukraine and the benefit of the west.
This doesn’t address the sexual violence issue but I guess that becomes a question of competing narratives and a discussion about manufacturing consent.
When it comes to feminism and Islamic liberation movements, I think friend becomes an idealist. The USA isn’t blowing people up in Iraq because they’re women which means it isn’t a feminist issue. I guess here I need to tack materialist like you suggest. I’ve previously talked about the need for multiple liberations in Palestine - one for Palestinians, another for Palestinian women, etc and that one need for liberation doesn’t counter another but I wonder if there’s a better way to frame this.
I mean, it's literally as easy as asking a simple question
If the US military invades another country, while STATESIDE it is infamous for misogyny, sexual violence and rape against its own members, aren't the women of said country by definition at risk from such an organization and isn't it the duty of any feminist to opposes said organization and its imperialist activities that makes life harder for millions of women in the invaded region
Also I'd point out the not-so-subtle shift your friend makes between Ukraine and the Middle East, when the US invades it's not a feminist issue, but when Russia does suddenly it is? Inconsistency like that points to a lack of seriousness
This is pretty solid. I’ve been trying to work out how to say “feminism isn’t a shield for imperialism” but I can’t quite figure out a way to say that which isn’t simply justifying other forms of patriarchy, and honestly I’ve been trying to work out to what extent as a white male anti-imperialist I perhaps, likely, underweight feminism vis a vis imperialism but the double standards angle is food for thought.
Do we have an active feminist comm?