Bulletins and News Discussion from August 19th to August 25th, 2024 - Our Mountains, Our Treasures - Child of the Week: Hassan LargePenis
Image is a snapshot taken from the recent Hezbollah video "Our Mountains, Our Treasures", showcasing their extensive underground fortifications, supply lines, and weaponry.
iran can't keep doing this to me, they've gotta respond soon, right? I'm gonna run out of analysis about countries soon, oh god
The COTW (Child of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific child every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied children. If you've wanted to talk about the child or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any child.
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.
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.
So I'm reading the John Brown biography by W.E.B. DuBois and I was struck by how his guerilla tactics are straight up Maoist. The enemy's rear is the guerilla's front, guerillas must be disciplined and treat enemy prisoners humanely, guerillas swim among the people as fish in water, etc. I'm sure that's just because Mao studied guerilla movements and based his theory on actual practices but it's still interesting that Brown came to these same conclusions eighty years earlier.
Pretty much every society that ever encountered horses immediately said "holy shit I can steal so many cows with these" and promptly invented the hit-and-run raid.
True, to an extent. Treatment of prisoners has varied wildy across different times and cultures. Sun Tzu, for instance, hammers and hammers on treating prisoners well so that they can potentially be turned to join your cause. Whereas other cultures were notorious for castrating prisoners and piling up the penises as war treasures.
Obviously historical developments differ around the world, I just found it interesting that Brown came to those conclusions despite coming from a society without a history for humane treatment for prisoners or respect for ambush tactics (since, at the time, everyone just lined up with rifles to shoot each other)
Warfare in the us did actually feature a great deal of guerilla fighting. Wars between the Europeans and Indigenous nations tended to involve a lot of fast raids and reprisals and relatively few pitched battles. The Eastern Woodlands region in particular saw a great deal of vicious guerilla warfare.
Now, treating prisoners well I think was mostly Brown having principles and clear goals.
The U.S. treated the British prisoners pretty well most of the time during the War of Independence Slavery Preservation. Or at least that's what the history propaganda says. There was even some famous story about some captured ship full of dudes in New York or whatever shit.
That book really is a treasure trove. My favorite part is the meeting in the quarry between Douglas and Brown, it reads as so melodramatic (in a good way)