back in my map era, we're ukrainemaxxing right now
Declarations of the imminent doom of Ukraine are a news megathread specialty, and this is not what I am doing here - mostly because I'm convinced that whenever we do so, the war extends another three months to spite us. Ukraine has been in an essentially apocalyptic crisis for over a year now after the failure of the 2023 counteroffensive, unable to make any substantial progress and resigned to merely being a persistent nuisance (and arms market!) as NATO fights to the last Ukrainian. In this context, predicting a terminal point is difficult, as things seem to always be going so badly that it's hard to understand how and why they fight on. In every way, Ukraine is a truly shattered country, barely held together by the sheer combined force of Western hegemony. And that hegemony is weakening.
I therefore won't be giving any predictions of a timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat, but the coming presidency of Trump is a big question mark for the conflict. Trump has talked about how he wishes for the war to end and for a deal to be made with Putin, but Trump also tends to change his mind on an issue at least three or four times before actually making a decision, simply adopting the position of who talked to him last. And, of course, his ability to end the war might be curtailed by a military-industrial complex (and various intelligence agencies) that want to keep the money flowing.
The alignment of the US election with the accelerating rate of Russian gains is pretty interesting, with talk of both escalation and de-escalation coinciding - the former from Biden, and the latter from Trump. Russia very recently performed perhaps the single largest aerial attack of Ukraine of the entire war, striking targets across the whole country with missiles and drones from various platforms. In response, the US is talking about allowing Ukraine to hit long-range targets in Russia (but the strategic value of this, at this point, seems pretty minimal).
Additionally, Russia has made genuine progress in terms of land acquisition. We aren't talking about endless and meaningless battles over empty fields anymore. Some of the big Ukrainian strongholds that we've been spending the last couple years speculating over - Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk, Orikhiv - are now being approached and entered by Russian forces. The map is actually changing now, though it's hard to tell as Ukraine is so goddamn big.
Attrition has finally paid off for Russia. An entire generation of Ukrainians has been fed into the meat grinder. Recovery will take, at minimum, decades - more realistically, the country might be permanently ruined, until that global communist revolution comes around at least. And they could have just made a fucking deal a month into the war.
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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.
A guy on Iraqi Telegram went viral for trying to start a boycott campaign against businesses that employ non-Iraqis. He calls himself a far right Iraqi who is angry about Syrian and Lebanese people taking jobs from Iraqis. Literally every medium-sized restaurant has non-Iraqis working there lol. He's also mad that the football national team has a half-Pakistani player, because the advanced Semitic Iraqi race should not procreate with the lesser races. Everyone dunked on him and called him a loser, happy that this brainrot hasn't penetrated Iraq yet. His Telegram page made it to 500 followers before getting trolled to closure. Btw, I'm making an Iraq trip with my wife and the kid in the spring, you'll get a full report in the news mega when it's time.
This xenophobic brainrot has penetrated very badly in South Africa unfortunately. Glad to hear that it's not made it to Iraq yet.
Xenophobia is sadly horrible in Lebanon, it has even reached my family despite my dad marrying my Syrian mom. The shit that especially far-right maronites say about Syrians and Palestinians is just disgusting. Most of it is just imported from American right-wing culture war bullshit, you have Lebanese boomers talking about building a wall on the Syrian border to stop Syrians from coming.
In South Africa we have over 4000 of illegal mine workers, who are mostly foreigners, currently besieged underground, and a lot of people, including government officials, are talking about "smoking them out", and not providing them with any food or water until they come up from underground and face arrest or worse. Thankfully the police did provide them with ARV medication a few days ago.
I can see how the current situation in Lebanon and Syria would unfortunately produce more xenophobia.
4000? That's crazy, I haven't heard about this anywhere. Corporate media and institutions financed by the Western right-wing have introduced this weirdo right-wing rhetoric in our countries, it didn't exist here before this. People naturally moved between these fake ass countries until the 90s and became citizens and literally no one cared. This was super normal especially in the Arab World, but now you have people talking about the fucking Lebanese identity and the Syrian identity, when these countries were one province of numerous empires for thousands of years. Tragic developments honestly, a family like the famous Al Atrash family could just move from Syria to Egypt and become Egyptians not that long ago, now people seethe because an Iraqi family moved to Qatar and their sons play for the Qatari football team.
I was going to make a post on it, but then with the expansion of the de-electrification campaign in Ukraine by Russia (I think Odessa is still without electricity), the response by NATO to directly attack Russia, within it's internationally recognised borders, using NATO weapons that have to have their flight path programmed and loaded onto Ukrainian warplanes by NATO military service members, and then the response by Russia to deploy a previously unknown Conventional Prompt Strike weapon in the Oreshnik IRBM in Ukraine, it's been a lot of news to try keep up with, and I forgot/didn't have time. Here's an article for anyone interested:
Stilfontein’s dangerous and desperate illegal mining industry, GroundUp Media, 18 November 2024
The part about the fake countries is so true in a way, especially with regards to South Africa were so many got illegally stripped of their South African citizenship and forced to live in the "bantustans" during apartheid. It's a seperate issue, but it just shows how fickle the identity of a state can be when the government decides that they don't want you.
The media thing is maddening, what I find more insidious than the outright right wing media which is mainly treated as a joke, is so called liberal/progressive media, often funded by NGOs, that's centre left to left wing on internal issues, but takes a hard right, pro USA/NATO swing on foreign policy issues. Looking at the "Daily Maverick" in particular.
It’s so interesting hearing about this from people in the Old World. Xenophobia has been a part of Guatemala since our beginning. We shared a single nation with the rest of the Central American countries and even then all the infighting and forming of national identities led to its demise.
There’s always a new country to hate depending on which country is doing worse. As of now it’s Salvadorans especially. Before that it was Hondurans.
Lol,that sounds like Serbia
I’ve found that people from the Balkans have a lot in common with Central Americans lol
Well,we were and after 1989 kinda are again something like the European equivalent to Banana Republics
The mining stories are the stuff of nightmares. Part two, the second article linked at the bottom of the first one, describing an unofficial rescue operation, is horrifying.
Why don't they do like normal irregular mining regulation, like here is an entrance, you pay us 10 %, we try to give you food and set up and airduct and waterline? If people are desperate enough at least do something humane (sell 10 % to libs as a win)
The illegal mining syndicates (whom are heavily armed) that control the illegal mining activities already do what you have described, though their fees are much higher. So are you asking why the government doesn't just take the place of the syndicates if people are going to mine illegally anyway?