Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 18th to November 24th, 2024 - Could It Soon Be Azover? - COTW: Ukraine
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.
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capitalism DEFINITELY is when no food.
Argentina snubs G20 summit launch of Brazil's global anti-hunger alliance
*Argentina the only G20 country not to sign up to a global anti-hunger initiative set to be launched at the opening of leaders summit in Brazil. *
Argentina was the only G20 country not to sign up to a global anti-hunger initiative set to be launched at the opening of a G20 summit in Rio, host Brazil said Monday. The decision by Argentina – led by President Javier Milei – deepens a political gap between the nation and neighbouring Brazil, whose left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is championing the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.
A total of 81 countries signed on to the flagship initiative – including 18 of the 19 nations in the G20 – but Argentina was not among them, according to a communiqué. Its membership is "under negotiation," a source in the Brazilian Presidency told the AFP news agency.
The Global Alliance is an ambitious initiative pushed by Lula, a former steel-worker. It aims to eradicate hunger and poverty by 2030 and reduce inequality. Milei and Lula, whose countries share a border, have had a tense relationship even prior to the Argentine's election last year.
An ally of US president-elect Donald Trump, Milei has imposed radical austerity measures in Argentina to bring down high inflation. The policies sent the poverty rate in the country soaring to 52.9 percent in the first half of this year, 11 percentage points higher than in the previous six-month period.
Milei was the first world leader to see Trump after the Republican's win in the US presidential election. He attended a gala at the Republican's Mar-a-Lago Florida estate last Thursday.
The Argentine leader has several times labeled Lula a "communist" and "corrupt."
The Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty also has the support of international organizations such as the European Union and the African Union – both G20 members – as well as financial institutions and NGOs, bringing the total number of signatories to 147. The initiative's goal is ambitious: to reduce world hunger, which affected 733 million people last year – nine percent of the global population – according to the UN.
For Lula, who grew up in poverty before a trade unionist and eventually president of Latin America's biggest economy, the initiative is dear to his heart. At a national level, his left-wing policies have already lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty.
I sometimes don't even know what they're trying to achieve. Hunger good I guess? It's even worse when we consider that these global programs never really have impact on the matter, because hunger and poverty are essential to Capitalism, but still they have to signal that any kind of movement towards improvement, no matter how insignificant, must be squashed. Just sign the fucking thing you pathetic motherfucker.
death to "israel" btw
Joining the fight against hunger on the side of hunger. Milei should put his money where his month is though and go on a hunger strike until the anti-hunger initiative ends.