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.
Oh man exit polls in portugal showing the incumbent center-right winning, which isn’t shocking, what is surprising is some of them show the center-left and far-right being neck in neck. Right-wing liberals in third place, then in fourth place the europhile pro-war greens, having succeeded in their mission of emptying out the far-left of its less radical voters by taking their program for itself while also presenting itself as safe and european.
Communists could rise a little bit, though it’s not looking likely that we’ll regain our strongholds in the interior where anti-immigration sentiment has turned the region to the far-right and tactical “anti-fascist” voting leads people to vote for the center-left.
And the Left Block, which just a few years ago was the 3rd most voted party, could end up being the least voted on the left. It’s ironic, the europhile green party has done to the Left Block and it itself did to the communist party back in the early 2000s, it came in with a bunch of positive media coverage, an image of being fresh and unimpeded by historical debates (it’s anti-ussr) and supported a similar program but less radical and so voters who used to vote for a party to their left (the communist party) shifted right to support the new one, now it happened to them and, again ironically, they could end up getting even less votes than the communists.
I’ll be happy if the communist party increases its vote share since that defeats the ever present media narrative that they’re about to just poof disappear, especially in the context of having taken a strong anti-war position regarding ukraine, which made it pretty hard to publicly be a communist the past few years tbh, and it gives us a better base to keep growing.
Though, all in all, pretty bad results for the left in general and only the pro-war greens will be heartily celebrating.
These are just exit polls but if the results are confirmed then the governmental situation will stay as it was before the elections, there is no right wing majority without the far-right, and the center right still can’t collaborate openly with the far right, so they’ll have to depend on the center-left (who are currently being lead by a guy from the left-wing of the party) to pass laws, all the while the questions regarding the PM’s personal business dealings are still in the air, though from the results it seems like people don’t really care, and really the fact that people don’t care that the PM might be corrupt will probably be the greatest factor of stability for this government to last.
Also, of note: Higher turnout than last time, fair to say that maybe in portugal high turnout favours the far right since a lot of people who don’t vote get activated by anti-immigration shit.
I know a lady who fled with her trans teenager to Portugal thinking it would be safer for them there than in the USA. Hope they’re paying attention to the politics of the region and keeping safe.
It’ll probably be fine for now, anti-trans or anti-lgbt stuff wasn’t the issue the far-right were most vocal about this time around (publicly that is, their base is very vocal about that stuff), and I assume that since that lady and her child are from america they’re probably white so the anti-immigration discourse is not about them, the far-right’s rhetorical targets are mainly roma people (who obviously aren’t immigrants to portugal), people from the indian subcontinent, people from north africa and people from the former colonies, in that order.
Even so, tbh political violence is rare in this country although there were some alarming cases of it this past year.
You could apply this statement to every EU country and it would fit.
Did the communist party increase its vote share this time around?