Image is sourced from here.
I think a good place for left-wing coverage on the protests is hasanabi, either on his Twitter or Twitch (and wherever else he is found), as he’s been physically in the streets with the protestors and lives in the area.
Over the last few days, ICE raids have taken place throughout Los Angeles, as well as throughout America more generally. An increasing number of these raids are targeting migrants with no criminal record whatsoever (about 25% right now, but increasing constantly), which is a quantifiable escalation from both Trump’s first term and Biden’s term, where the figures were more in the realm of 5-10%.
Los Angeles has a large percentage of people who are Hispanic; as such, these raids were massively provocative, and protests began to oppose them. In response to these largely peaceful protests, the police have been exceedingly violent, with protestors and clearly marked journalists being shot at by police with “non-lethal” rounds. Trump has recently sent in the National Guard. The rhetoric of the Republicans has been, as expected, abhorrent and cruel.
While obviously coalescing around different issues, there are some parallels to be drawn with the Black Lives Matter protests five years ago; which, while drawing out enormous numbers of protestors, was eventually co-opted and gradually dismantled and failed to achieve lasting social or political goals. The two questions for this protest are: 1) What lessons have been learned by organisers and people on the ground from previous protests? and 2) Is there a general plan, or an idea of a plan, to affect political change (either top-down or bottom-up) that results in either fewer ICE raids or limiting their effectiveness?
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.
throwing out banana peels as you retreat and watching all the marines immediately eat shit
You joke but riot gear being very top heavy or military equipment being very heavy and susceptible to falling / not being able to become righted easily is a VERY serious problem, especially in tight urban areas where through-paths can be easily blocked off from supporting equipment, and we SHOULD NOT joke or make allusions to personnel/equipment being easy to topple because it is very SERIOUS AND POSSIBLE TO DO.
Hopefully no one found that clear joke helpful because it would be dangerous if they did it, which again cloud be very effective in impeding riot control efforts.
Spray around a lot of vegetable oil when retreating, understood.
You’re right, I should not have made such a thoughtless joke. The last thing I would want is to suggest people toss out marbles, or ball bearings, banana peels, grapes, something else something else, uh, something else, uh, dowel rods?