Bulletins and News Discussion from October 23rd to October 29th, 2023 - Tunnel Vision
Bulletins and News Discussion from October 23rd to October 29th, 2023 - Tunnel Vision
Friendly reminder: when commenting about a news event, especially something that just happened, please provide a source of some kind. While ideally this would be on nitter or archived, any source is preferable to none at all given.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine, though we will switch next week to a new country.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly (biweekly?) update is here.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
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Boiling down to fundamentals I've encountered two types of arguments in the past few weeks:
Hamas is beheading babies, so retaliation makes sense, Israel has a right to defend itself, Jewish people are entitled to their homeland
deranged, out of touch with reality, historically ignorant
Well Hamas is a conservative islamic organization led by dudes living in Qatar, so they would just create their own apartheid ethnostate lead by rich palestinians
this is just bizarre radlib bothsidesing using a hypothetical outcome to Hamas winning and them not being perfect secular social democrats
And this made me realize that the biggest propaganda achievement by Israel and the US has been convincing people that this is between Israel and Hamas, and not an anti-apartheid insurrection that happens to be led by Hamas among others.
"Anyway, the only thing we can do when we see an apartheid state is to wait until the oppressed people have the perfect grassroots leftist movement not contaminated by either rich people or conservatives, a movement that isn't targeted for assassinations by the CIA and MOSSAD; and then when they rise, we should cheer for them from the sidelines as they try to seize power from a nuclear-powered, genocidal apartheid state supported by some of the richest countries in the world. This represents the principled leftist position."
That's the main thrust of their media blitz. Thats why it's important to never accept the framing of "Israel-Hamas war" and to tie this into the overaching narrative of freeing palestine. Call ot the Gaza massacre, the war for Palestinian independence, or whatever you want, but never let them set the framing as a war against Hamas.
"Do you condemn Hamas?"
"I support the right of Palestinians to oppose their opression under an apartheid state."
"But surely you condemn the horrible acts of Hamas?"
"Palestine must be free, and this is a war for their freedom"
"But that doesn't justify x atrocity"
"The thought of X atrocity is terrifying, which is why it's important that we ensure palestine is free from such barabarism" (if they're baited into arguing that or questioning what barbarism Israel has committed, you've won)
"So you're saying its okay when Hamas does it" "Look, I can see that Hamas is at the forefront of your mind in this conflict but you must understand that this is just the latest chapter in a long conflict, and that Palestinian freedom is a bigger issue."
"But 1400 dead shouldn't be overlooked."
"The sooner Palestinians have their freedom, the sooner we can put this sort of bloodshed behind us. I don't like to see anyone suffer, and the mutual enemy of both Israeli innocents and Palestinian innocents is the apartheid that forces them into a false conflict."etc