Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it’s just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a “domestic terrorist” and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration’s policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
I’m surprised to see that they are competent enough to do this op (reducing numbers after internet shutdown). But yea I agree with Awoo.
In a lot of protest videos (even ones shared by Western outlets) there were like 300 people in view protesting and at most 2 chanting “Javid Shah, Javid Shah, Javid Shahhhh”.
It’s a very clever way to manufacture consent. Also means that they can do this with any accounts and figures online, which means they’re probably doing it with figures/accounts they’re boosting because it aligns with their goals.
Several years back I believed this was happening with vaush but couldn’t give you evidence. Just a tinfoil theory i had back then.
I’d believe it. Sometimes our intuition about stuff is just right. Like if a surge of attention or engagement feels inorganic it’s because we’re subconsciously picking up on weird patterns that we can’t fully describe
The thing we can’t fully describe is why tf would anyone listen to vaush
Yeah that’s how it felt back then. When we gave pushback in the form of reddit bots and visible opposition to him the growth dropped off a cliff like they gave up on the strat or something. He then went back to something that looked more natural.
I also felt this way recently during the height of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, H3H3’s content was unnaturally higher than it was beforehand which gave it a boosted feeling.
Specific periods of certain influencer’s history give off this vibe, like Ben Shapiro doesn’t feel unnatural these days but there was definitely a period of time where I think he may have been boosted unnaturally.
It’s been funny watching how bad Ben Shapiro’s viewership numbers have gotten after all the boosting has gone away.
I don’t like vibes-based analysis.
I like evidence-based reasoning.
Here the evidence is that only a small percentage of protestors in the country say his name. That ralliers failed to get others to do so.
Selection bias? What if people are too afraid?
Counter-Evidence: many crowds are chanting death to the dictator, and the fact that they are protesting already contravenes the fear argument.
Think of all the vibes MAGA people get about how things are and how things will happen. They are reactionary and idealist.
We should try to disprove or prove our claims.
You can use vibes to help you identify areas to investigate, but you shouldn’t use them to make conclusions.
When time or resources are lacking and you have to operate on vibes, you should make a note in the back of your head of which things were vibes and what things were derived from that.
If I post something and it doesnt have a source then ask me for a source. I try to set example
Sounds good.
Yes you’re right I definitely overstated it. I should have said that intuition is something to listen to as an indicator of what might be worth suspecting / being careful of. I do think that if you have spent a long time tracking sentiment in an area, you gain a feel for the patterns of the flow of information and influence and if something feels inorganic it can trigger the spidey senses. But it shouldn’t be treated as definitive