this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine
(hexbear.net)
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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
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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 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.
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https://xcancel.com/war_noir/status/1860096532059726096
Pinch of salt since this could be op, untrue, or whatever. Probably of interest to those here either way though.
Whoโs who? Are either of these groups communists or are they just mini cartels
After the leaders of FARC (mostly) gave up on armed struggle and signed a peace treaty with the Colombian government, some holdovers kept their weapons and continued to control rural areas of the country, but not as FARC, just local bands with limited geographic reach and little to no ideological consistency.
The ELN are more Maoist than ML, but their ideology has evolved on its own, so it's hard to pin down. They are currently in talks with the Colombian government to get a peace treaty, like FARC. The largest difference in how they're organized from FARC is that there isn't a strong central authority that calls the shots, so some parts of it have developed their own culture, while still being part of ELN.
ELN has a history of successfully stealing weapons and ammo from the Colombian military, and the Colombian military has a long history of collaboration and training by Israeli agents, so it's likely they have a bunch of Galils around.
This incident looks like the result of a turf dispute between two local groups, but nothing like the large scale conflicts between guerrillas in the 90s/2000s.
FARCS also created a political party and are part of Gustavo Petro's goverment, I know he was a former Guerrila but he was a M-19 member (They followed Democratic Socialism and Rojismo, which is like Colombian Peronism).
Ty for adding that context. I thought most people would know part of the peace treaty meant that FARC became a political party and has secure seats in congress (which makes all the worst people in Colombia mad AF), when it's really not common knowledge. They seem to be doing well, although it's really hard to build political power when the bourgeois media has done nothing but demonize you and your name for 60 years. If anything it shows how attached they are to the FARC name. It should be said that many former FARC fighters (especially the lower-ranked ones) chose to step away from the party, and just returned home to aid in the development of the rural communities where most of the fighting used to happen (and still does sometimes), alongside some of the victims of the conflict, who have also returned home.
I have my criticisms of FARC while they were in armed struggle, but they seem to be committed to the truth and reconciliation process, so I'm willing to eat my words if they turn out to be decent people and see it through the end.
As you said, Petro was a member of a different, much shorter lived guerrilla group. M-19 seemed to be one of the more ideologically uncompromising guerrillas, and one of the more urban ones, too, with a lot of its activity in cities and its founders being graduates from public universities. They negotiated with the government in the late 80s, and entered political life just in time to be a key part in drafting the 1991 Colombian constitution, which, as liberal as it is, is a beautiful document that even radical leftist Colombians recognize as an achievement in enshrining the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country as a legal fact, and guaranteeing the rights of so many vulnerable Colombians.
Both are different Marxist-Leninist groups. Whether one is problematic or not I do not know enough to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Colombia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC_dissidents
ELN is closer to Maoism, iirc. FARC was 100% MLs, though.
Hmm, for some reason I thought they had become narcos while the ideology was back seated. My b!
Is narco communism a thing? Because if it's not, it should be.
The way drug production and trafficking works today (at least for cocaine) is extremely exploitative of the peasantry and the rural working class. I don't think you can reform the supply chain to make it communist, when the global North depends on cheap drugs procured violently.
I don't see any reason that this has to be the fundamental mode of operations. It seems to me that it actually creates a great opportunity for communists to shake things up. Perhaps more importantly, in some communities it creates the need to circumvent business as usual and to capture production.
Not to speak of the intended effect of the end product.
I try not to be prescriptive about people's drug use, but I agree there is a well known connection between capitalism, the consumption of stimulants, and the racialization and prosecution of other drugs.
The fact of the matter is that the Global North's demand for cheap cocaine in huge quantities is based on the exploitation of nature and people in the global South.
Yes, it's well-documented - his name was Anslinger.
It goes further back. Coffee houses in Britain were a huge thing in the 1700s, where a lot of capitalist theory and practice was created.
Both tbh, from my understanding the eln flirted with some liberation theology stuff but didn't make peace with the government in the same way that farc did.