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.
Why don’t you ask the PSL comrades cause that sounds like made up garbage
I eventually did, and they had literally no idea what I was talking about lol. Instagram anarchists really do just lie, it’s crazy. I don’t understand why any form or organization makes them so red blooded angry. It’s like they just want marginalized groups to be killed so they can share it on their stories for clout or something.
There was a local city council race during which an Instagram anarchist posted implying that two male DSA candidates had made transphobic and sexist comments in DSA meetings. I said to my partner, having worked with both the candidates when I was a DSA member, that I highly doubted either of them said anything the poster implied they said.
When my partner DMd the anarchist asking about the comments the anarchist said that neither of the candidates had said those things and were both excellent candidates to vote for lmao.
Some people just stir shit. There’s also definitely coordinated efforts by some anarchists to undermine the growth of communist parties, particularly PSL.
I meet a fair number of cool anarchists but I do think the less-cool ones tend to be way more susceptible to this type of thing. I hear this kind of “drama” locally as well about various orgs and I genuinely assume that when it’s this deranged the person is either a wrecker or wreckers have their ear and they’re just unthinkingly spreading it (this is more likely but always hard to tell)
Highly dramatic stories that turn out to be completely made up are pretty commonplace here, they just kind of materialize from someone who heard it secondhand or heard it on the ground from an unidentifiable person
It doesn’t help that the coolest anarchists doing the most praxis got infiltrated by feds a few years back, that probably skews my perception of the remainder of publicly identified anarchists towards dumb shit
Of course baby MLs get sucked into all kind of dumb shit too, weird cults, uninspired book worship, cargo cult behavior like printing paper newspapers constantly as their main/only outreach, etc.