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.
I think one thing we all are missing is that thinking state is slave to the capital. State serves capital but at the end of the day, state is the only owner of legitimate violence. Capital donates to the parties so parties don’t fuck them over when they win because state stil has the power. Parties won’t destroy their own power
Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t think they needed consent manufacturing. Consent has been manufactured long time ago. They always had the rhetoric of “using your power to do stuff is dictatorship, less you use power, less of a dictator you are”. They could have destroyed the power after winning with this rhetoric. Besides, they could have done it even without manufactured consent
You might like some of these letters of Engels’.
spoiler
[…] Society gives rise to certain public functions which it cannot dispense with. The people who are delegated to perform them constitute a new branch of the division of labor within society. They acquire therewith special interests in opposition even to those who have designated them; make themselves independent of them, and the state is here. And now the same thing takes place as in commodity exchange and later in money exchange: while the new independent power must, on the whole, submit to the movement of production, in turn it also reacts, by virtue of its immanent, i.e., its once transmitted but gradually developed relative independence, upon the conditions and course of production. There is a reciprocity between two unequal forces; on the one side, the economic movement; on the other, the new political power which strives for the greatest possible independence and which having once arisen is endowed with its own movement. The economic movement, upon the whole, asserts itself but it is affected by the reaction of the relatively independent political movement which it itself had set up. This political movement is on the one hand the state power, on the other, the opposition which comes to life at the same time with it. Just as the money market reflects, on the whole, with the qualifications indicated, the movement of the industrial market, but naturally in an inverted fashion, so there is reflected in the struggle between government and opposition, the struggle between already existing and contending classes but again in an inverted form, no longer direct but indirect, not as a class struggle but as a struggle for political principles. So inverted is this reflection that it required thousands of years to discover what was behind it.
The reaction of the state power upon economic development can take a three-fold form. It can run in the same direction, and then the tempo of development becomes accelerated; it can buck up against that development in which case today in every large nation the state power is sure to go to smash for good; or it can block economic development along some directions and lay down its path along others. This last case is ultimately reducible to one of either of the foregoing two. It is clear that in the second and third cases the political power can do great damage to the course of economic development and result in a great waste of energy and materials.