Image is from Futurama.
Happy holidays, fellow godless communists. We are in year three of the Five-Year Plan to eliminate all Christmas cheer and create a world free of the joys and festivity of Christmas. Nobody should have to be reminded that in our concrete brutalist communist strongholds, NO ornaments are allowed in December. Please report any Christmas trees, snowflakes, baubles, and presents to the evil secret police, and anybody caught violating their Volcel Pledge by having a tentative kiss under a mistletoe will be shot on sight.
Developments lately have been grim. Our Supreme Communist Dictator Brandon is being removed from office by Christmas-loving patriots, and soon, Christmas will adorn the White House for another four years. This is obviously very disappointing, but while Christmas joy is strictly prohibited, good vibes are still strongly encouraged. Revolutionary optimism (a term we only bring out when things are going very badly and we need to be delusional) shall triumph over defeatist rhetoric by stooges of the Christmas regime.
We must have hope. Our foreign allies aiding us in destroying Christmas now possess hypersonic weaponry, allowing us to compete with and overcome the engine technology powering Santa’s sleigh. Abroad, they have destroyed factories and hit cities with missiles travelling at unimaginable speeds into precise targets, while the Christmas regime struggles to produce their own such missiles, as they are still reliant on aircraft bombing campaigns. Precision has a quality all its own, or something along those lines. We just have to hold out another two years or so, and I swear to you: we will live in a world without this accursed holiday.
No current struggle session discussion here in the news megathread please, you will be banned from the comm and your comment will be removed.
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The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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.
‘When You Leave Israel and Enter Gaza, You Are God’: Inside the Minds of IDF Soldiers Who Commit War Crimes
CW: Nazi shit that is so Nazi one of the soldiers has to literally ask “Are we the fucking Nazis?!”
Here is a tweet with screenshots of text if you don’t want to read the whole thing: https://xcancel.com/shaabiranks/status/1871208919994958023
I couldnt bring myself to read this article after seeing a few of the quotes. The one i saw about breaking a kids arm made me want to throw up
Yep. Truly and absolutely fucked up.
🧱, no trial, for not just the officer but also the group of soldiers that should have fragged that officer immediately
Wittensing the casual and open stomach-turning nazism of israelis and the utter dehumanization of Palestinians made me an anti-Zionist in the first place, when it was still in vouge to defend israel’s right to defend itself into other people’s lands
Literal fascist Nazi regime: It’s just a few bad apples that spoil the barrel. The cognitive dissonance of these people is astounding. Unlimited Yemeni missile strikes on Tel Aviv!
Israelis truly are the most disgusting group to exist on earth.
Back from my self-imposed Hexbear exile, I needed to turn off news (which dramatically failed) and stop reading some of the weird ass tantrums here. Now some unrelated points as usual:
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Situation in Syria is slowly reaching a new chaotic state. Numerous sectarian clashes between HTS and Alawites, and Kurds vs Turkish-backed fighters in the north. The main cities are still calm and in an optimistic mood though, I was in a video call with my cousin on Monday and he filmed some of the markets and main squares in Damascus, it looked pretty calm and people are still in some sort of revolutionary euphoria. Iraq 2003-2007 is still definitely on the cards, sectarian battles and stuff like that will escalate and reach a climax before things settle. The new government from a pure bureaucratic standpoint are doing okay imo though, things are slowly returning to normal and somehow functioning.
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Russian crossing of the Oskol was strangely uneventful, they just crossed from 2-3 points and established a pretty solid bridgehead on the other side of the river. I expected some grand battle when they would inevitably cross the river one day, but it was pretty anticlimactic and Ukrainian troops on the west bank of the river seem to be unprepared and outnumbered even by some Russian troops without heavy equipment. Kurakhove, Velika Novosilka and Toretsk seem to be wrapping up by the end of January, next step is probably Pokrovsk until some bigger Russian movements by summer 2025. The war in the current pace still doesn’t reach any final stage until summer 2026.
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Visiting Iraq with the wife and the kid in around a month, you’ll get a trip report and some non-doxxing pics if things permit.
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I don’t like how things are going in Iran, the country seems to be entering a hard period of decline and they’ll be Syria’d by Trump and Israel if they don’t get their shit together soon.
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This website has some of the dumbest drama I’ve ever seen lmao, grow up
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Daily reminder that the astronauts that capitalism stranded on the ISS are still stuck up there.
Luigi is pleading not guilty
Kinda interesting that the state went for the terrorism angle but the feds are treating it more like a targeted murder. It’s somewhat contradictory and could make it difficult for some of the charges to stick.As well as the state-level charges, he is also accused of federal (national-level) stalking and murder offences that could lead to a death penalty sentence.
You think they’ll risk him becoming a martyr to make an example?
It’s a common prosecutor folk wisdom that it’s good to gamble on the death penalty because if its on the table then the jury will be more likely to be filled with regimepilled sickos who vote guilty in the name of state violence no matter what.
It’s part of voir dire (jury selection) questioning for crimes that include the possibility of the death sentence to ask potential jurors if they could find someone guilty even if it meant they might be executed in this case. It can be cynically used as a way to find the true sickos, yes, but the defense also gets to eliminate a certain number of jurors, too.
“Please raise your hand if you have ever been impacted by private health insurance?”
The harder the charges they go for, the more likely there’s gonna be nullification.
this is a few days old but nobody posted it i think
Human Rights Watch determines israel is committing acts of genocide
- Israeli authorities have deliberately inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the population in Gaza by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths.
- In doing so, Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide. The pattern of conduct, coupled with statements suggesting that some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, may amount to the crime of genocide.
- Governments and international organizations should take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, including discontinuing military assistance, reviewing bilateral agreements and diplomatic relations, and supporting the International Criminal Court and other accountability efforts.
this is following the previous amnesty international report that determined that israel is committing acts of genocide in gaza
Remember when the Israeli football hooligans were rioting and the BBC tried to pass footage of them beating someone as the opposite?
Today, 45 days later, they are “happy to correct the record.”we used stills and footage from the night to accompany the conversation. This included footage shot near the Amsterdam Central Station appearing to show a large group chasing and attacking an individual.
However, the author of the clip said separately on social media she had filmed Maccabi supporters attacking a Dutch man and so its inclusion during this segment, and some previous use when reporting reaction to the disorder on the BBC News Channel, could have given the impression that this was illustrating attacks on Israeli fans.
No you were explicitly stating a bold faced lie to whip up for political means and public manipulation for the privilage of Zionazis to terrorize a foriegn civillian population.hope they swing like the nazi propagandists did in 1946
Disgusting
I have no mouth and I must fedpost
It’s been 45 days already?
I need a break
BBC delenda est
Only 12 aid trucks (roughly 200,000kg) of aid has entered the northerh half of Gaza since October 2024, or in a span of 2.5 months. Source: Oxfam
piSSraeli sources of claim the amount of food in Gaza has increased to ~3,200kcal per day, equal to Sweden. The actual figure is between 20 to 50kcal, less than a quarter of Auschwitz
200,000 kilograms is what is needed to adequately feed a single 25-story apartment tower such as the Tygerberg’s 1,100 residents in the same span of time.
Feels like we sort of passed over the massive news of the Northvolt (Europe’s only EV battery producer) collapse a few weeks back, so I’m going to re-up it here to highlight how monumentally fucked the European automobile industry is long term. Not exactly news to anybody here that’s been paying attention, but the staggering mismanagement of what is so obviously a key and strategic piece of European industry is perhaps still baffling. The article’s name is “The Northvolt dilemma: can European EVs avoid relying on Asian batteries?”, and as the Betteridge law of headlines states, the obvious answer to this question is “No.”
Two months before Northvolt filed for bankruptcy in the US, Robin Zeng, known as China’s “battery king”, had a quick but grim answer as to why European battery makers were struggling to make good products. “They have a wrong design . . . they have a wrong process . . . and they have the wrong equipment. How can they scale up?” the chief executive of CATL told Nicolai Tangen, the head of Norway’s $1.8tn oil fund. “So almost all mistakes together.” The bleak assessment from the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery manufacturer captures the scale of the failure for the industries behind the critical technology for Europe’s decarbonisation, leaving governments, companies and investors at a loss as to how to recraft the continent’s strategy to compete with China.
Northvolt’s demise means the battle for dominance of the European market is likely to play out between Asian battery makers. LGES and SK On both have European plants, in Poland and Hungary respectively, while CATL has a factory in Germany and a second site in Hungary due to begin production next year. But Tim Bush, a Seoul-based battery analyst at UBS, said there was little prospect at present that the Asian battery makers would be able to help the EU to meet its target for 90 per cent of the continent’s EV batteries to be produced locally by 2030. Bush noted that Korean battery makers were already paring back their investments in Europe, having invested billions of dollars in plants in North America that have been running at low utilisation rates because of lower than expected consumer demand for EVs. Potential Chinese battery investments on the continent were also likely to be complicated by the ongoing trade dispute between Brussels and Beijing over EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, he added. “The Koreans are not expanding, the Chinese have suspended construction and Europe’s new entrants are dropping like flies,” said Bush.
With European start-ups still behind in their ability to manufacture batteries at scale, industry executives say the only solution may be to continue their reliance on Asian participants until homegrown companies can absorb technology knowhow on battery chemistry, mass production and equipment manufacturing. “We need to find a deal with China because we won’t be able to compete . . . without the support of the Chinese companies that control the mining industry, chemicals, refining and their capacity and competence,” Luca De Meo, Renault’s chief executive, told reporters last month.
So basically, the Europeans destroyed their only chance of domestic battery consumption by epic mismanagement, and their acquiescence to USAmerican empire means they’re fucking up their opportunity to draw Chinese EV investments into Europe proper due to tensions and sanctions, and the US/South Korea can’t even begin to supply the necessary battery supply for the EU, so their car industry is basically fucked. The USAmerican destruction of European industry proceeds apace…
Source: https://archive.is/4Ys7n
I guess it has been a hectic few weeks, we were bound to miss things.
The Americans and Europeans are just too ideologically stuck in neoliberalism to reindustrialise. China’s already out paced the in most manufacturing, and they see to be catching up with the more high-tech stuff like microchips as well. The only thing the US seem to be able to do about is sabre rattle and eat their allies.
That said, I do find it darkly funny that Europe’s economy is getting cannibalised to keep the US afloat, the Euros spent the last 2 centuries doing that to the rest of the world.
That said, I do find it darkly funny that Europe’s economy is getting cannibalised to keep the US afloat, the Euros spent the last 2 centuries doing that to the rest of the world.
As a filthy euro, I say good riddance, we deserve it.
Also in my view the US is way more dysfunctional and so would be more likely to squander the riches and fumble the bag, paving the way for Chinese dominance. An economically strong and united Europe might be a more stable centre of capitalist power in the long run, but this way we might be in a position of weakness when the US-led hegemony collapses and so forced to mend relations with Russia and China
(Who am I kidding, the EU will keep being belligerent and chauvinist until nukes are dropped on every European parliament.)
An economically strong and united Europe might be a more stable centre of capitalist power in the long run
Europe had that slim chance around the 50s. Suez and then the inclusion of the UK into the EC ended that. The EU counter-pol to the US that was all the rage in the 2000-2016 era was not a sign of european strength but the american lax hand. I used to get snark by this very site when I said that the european nato states were just US puppets and that the US would tighten its grip if they showed too much sign of a divergent trajectory, lo and behold then nordstream 2 happened.
Wow how lucky are we that the automobile industry isnt a significant portions of the industry of Italy, Germany and Spain -wait…
It will truly be the cool zone when almost all of former classmates become jobless because they work at Mercedes-Benz.
Whenever I’m down and think my job is pointless, I just remind myself that there are people in this world whose job it is to install turn signals on German cars, and I then I don’t feel so bad.
One of Karl Marx’s most persistent points, from “On the Jewish Question” forward, is that despite the formal freedoms that we enjoy in a liberal state — the right to freedom of speech, for example, or freedom of religion — we are socially and in fact unfree. (As Bruno Leipold reports in his Citizen Marx, a lot of Marx’s evidence for this claim, particularly about religion, came from travelers’ reports to America, which Marx read assiduously.) That is what it means to live in a liberal society, says Marx: formally free, actually unfree.
But lately I’ve been wondering whether we are not living in the reverse. Despite the efforts of right-wingers to bend the state in a repressive, less free direction, society seems more and more resistant to these efforts. Producing a situation that is, in some sense, the mirror image of what Marx described.
You are totally free, unless you protest anything state deems important. Or strike in important industry. Look at my leftist “intellectuals”, we are boned
They really allow anyone to write there.
Pro-Palestine campus protests are effectively banned, right? The state doesn’t have to be directly involved.
The attacks on economic rights and economic freedoms provided during the New Deal and Social Democratic era also extents to the social freedoms.
The only reason why the state allows some dissent, instead of putting people in jail is because it doesn’t see much threats.
I call this style the “Nuh uh” school of sociopolitical analysis, just assert bullshit without data or even a formal structure and use people who actually knew what they were talking about as a crutch or in this case a punching bag
I call it active recuperation, just under the surface: amerikkka decentralized system of education is great as it allows to resist “tyrants” (tyrants in that case is retvrn christians and anyone trying to talk about native genocide). Palestinians and trans people can be hand-waved away to be discussed “later”:
There are exceptions to this rule: the most obvious ones being the suppression of the debate over Palestine and the mobilization against trans people. These all need to be part of our analysis. But the resulting portrait may be more complicated than many of the recent accounts suggest.
Like that those happened under democrat president? Or maybe that state doesn’t care one bit about trans issues, and allows people to fight over it, while being very concerned with palestine (just as it was with black power and peace movement before)
But the resulting portrait may be more complicated than many of the recent accounts suggest.
Translation from academic newspeak: “I don’t care about Palestinians or trans people, in fact they brought the “complications” on themselves”
I fuckin despise these weaselly cockroaches
Doesn’t even make sense. The mirror image would be something like a misrepresentation of the USSR where the government is presented as over-bearing and bureaucratic but through it people’s economic/work life and social/non-work life were expanded greatly compared to what their lives would be like under capitalist development.
Also, when would they say this inversion took place in liberal society exactly? Also, also, if they’re pointing out that people are resisting an oppressive state them that’s not a mirror image but a 3rd square in their little chart of formally/actually free/unfree.
Formally free / Actually free (communism)
Formally free / Actually unfree (liberalism, as Marx described)
Formally unfree / Actually unfree (fascism?, what imperial society is careening to)
Formally unfree / Actually free (his “mirror”, what I’d say is socialist development?These people are like megachurch owners who quote Marxism like scripture to make themselves sound trustworthy and enlightened, despite not having even a surface level understanding of the material. Western radlibs eat this shit up and the imperial core thrives once again.
We joke about the war on Christmas, but it’s literally happening in Syria as Christians have reportedly been murdered in Wadi Al-Nasirah and threatened with expulsion in Maaloula. Less immediately harmful, but symbolic, is the arson of the Christmas tree in Suqaylibiyah
moderate rebels
Machine translation
Simon Jarour Samta and Helen Khushuf from the village of Al-Jamskiyeh in Wadi al-Nasara were killed.
The case was initially presented as a robbery turned murder, but it later emerged that Simon had been beheaded and Helen shot and killed.
This was not just a robbery – it was an act of Islamic extremist terrorism that coincides with the chaos spreading throughout Syria, making Christians obvious targets.
Felt the urge to dust off some research on family friends and rediscovered that I’m 4 degrees of separation from Assad. Solid ones, too. Guess that’s less signficant now
Baking hope in Gaza: Making Christmas cookies in a displacement tent
Khan Younis, Gaza – From a makeshift kitchen with a sand floor and a nylon roof, and lacking the most basic equipment, Mayess Hamid prepared Christmas cookies this year.
Hamid, 31, has been making cakes and cookies for about 10 years, working at one of Gaza’s largest cake shops before it was destroyed in Israel’s continuing war on the besieged enclave.
Like many in Gaza, she lost her job when the bakery she worked at was bombed.
“I wanted to start the year with optimism and make Christmas cookies to distribute to the children around me in the camp,” she says as she kneads.
“The war turned our lives upside down. I lost my income, and my home was destroyed,” says Hamid, who has been displaced nine times since her family left Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, and has now settled in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
“My children are excited, waiting eagerly and trying to help, especially with decorations,” she adds, arranging the cookies in a baking tray.
Making cookies was challenging because of basic food shortages that are so severe that some parts of Gaza are in famine.
Israel has largely blocked the entry of aid and commercial shipments since the beginning of the war.
Drawing from her experience, she substitutes unavailable materials with things she can find.
“Before the war, I decorated cakes with ready-made sugar paste. Now, I use a mix of liquid cheese and powdered sugar, and it works,” she says.
Lacking Christmas cookie cutters, Hamid drew stencils on paper using her phone, cut them out, and shaped the dough by hand using a knife.
“Even simple tasks like baking cookies have become challenges during the war,” she says, arranging the cookies and preparing to bake in a nearby clay oven the whole camp relies on.
“From gathering materials to shaping dough and baking, each step feels unfamiliar and complicated.”
As the second batch of cookies bakes, Hamid begins to decorate the first inside her small tent.
“The war may have taken my home and life as I knew it, but not my passion for decorating and attention to detail,” she says, glancing around her tidy tent.
While trying to bring a festive feel to the displacement camp, Hamid cannot hide her sorrow that the world celebrates Christmas as usual, while Gaza endures a second year of war and devastation.
“We try to smile, but our wounds run deep, and there is little we can do. We feel forgotten.”
At the same time, she still clings to hope that this Christmas will bring peace. Her sole Christmas wish is for the war to end.
“Just let the war stop. Let the killing and destruction end so we can live in peace with our children,” she says.
hope pope fucking drop kicks biden when he arrives in vatican.
Excommunicate his ass first, so that he knows he is going to hell
Why does nobody get called out for being a
in the news megathread when they don’t link their source 😤Former President Bill Clinton is in the hospital after developing a fever
Fuck Jimmy Carter, but it would be hilarious if he outlived Bill Clinton because he’s even worse.
the man is practically dust, whatever black technology they use to keep former presidents alive, this is arguably abnormally cruel at this point
Bro looks like the Emperor
Mr. House looking fucker
homie is 4 years younger than biden, I need biden to die first to fulfil the prophecy
we can have a dead ex-pres opening act to the year of four presidents as a treat
Carter’s lived longer than the fucking crocodile from crocodile dundee
Carter keeps winning
