As is tradition, at around this time of year, we discuss the latest developments in the communist plan to destroy Christmas and everything festive and jolly - including that bastard kulak Santa Claus. Down with holly and myrrh, and up with historical materialism!
This year, I'm highlighting the economic trend of de-Decemberization, as the world struggles to break free from the seasonal hegemony imposed by the North Pole. Some regard it as a rather overhyped phenomenon, stating that the chains of Christmas are too frozen for any country to thaw and break in the current environment. Others are more optimistic, and assert that perhaps an alternative world holiday could be established to outright replace it, or maybe a series of smaller holiday traditions can bring it down like a pack of wolves bringing down a moose.
To return to seriousness, as this year draws to a close, I hope everybody here - yes, also you, the person reading this - has a 2026 that was better than 2025, and that the efforts of the United States and their proxies are foiled at every turn. One day, humans will live in a world free from empires, and it would be nice if as many of us as possible lived to see that world's birth.
At the very least, I'd like to live to see an aircraft carrier sink beneath the waves.
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.
Watched Sky News report on Venezuela this morning and it was basically all "yeah this is about oil, US wants Venezuela's oil" which surprised me.
They were posing the questions "Is it about drugs, is it about regime change, is it about oil?" then just outright answering that with it being about oil.
BBC too is starting to get into the questions. UK media is not wholeheartedly supporting this. They're less supportive of this than they were of Israel in the 3 months after October 7th until they finally gave up and accepted they'd lost control of the narrative.
There's a few things at play imo:
US support for war elsewhere takes the focus from Ukraine. We know in the background that a deal was likely made between Trump/Putin/Xi on their future spheres of influence, and the UK was left in the dark just like the rest of Europe. Of course, in that light, anything to prevent all wars but the "good" wars is important for the UK/Europe.
Domestic support. Opposing the war in South America is a very safe choice because we have no recourse to change it even if we wanted to. With "Israel" and Ukraine, which gets most of their trade and weapons from Europe, turning public opinion against these projects would open up the risk of actually doing something. With Venezuela, it's not like we can kick the US out of SWIFT, or embargo its container ships, cancel weapons contracts, or put out warrants for the arrest of its president... but if we make a song and dance about opposing it then at least we stood up for what's right.
Partly linked to the previous point, but the BBC is probably one of the foremost experts on propaganda where state media is concerned. With that comes the curated and editorialised admissions of the truth, even at its own expense, should it restore the faith of even a few critics. I imagine many people here still consider the BBC a "reliable" source of information, even despite its roles in teeing-up the most fascist administration of a generation. I'm included in this, to be fair, but it's important to note that the state media will happily concede a few points if it keeps you strung along sharing their slop over someone else's.
Perhaps Europe will try to pose some difficulties to the whole thing as a way of pressuring to get a piece of LaTam too, and not just the US
Perhaps. Sky being so blunt about it took me by surprise the most because they're owned by Comcast. Either the British news office for Sky is running independently or there's some resistance to it within the american factions.
I think the Europeans are a bit pissed off because the Gerald Ford carrier strike group was redeployed from Europe to Venezuela, leaving them with less direct US military support, as part of a broader trend.
Yeah, I think it's this. And I think they probably want cordial relations with Venezuela so they can buy oil from them. I think the EU wanted the Guaido 2.0 plan that Biden had organized instead of Trump ignoring Machado and Gonzalez, and just attacking and stealing stuff from Venezuela.
Maybe Europeans haven’t forgotten the Iraq war as wholly as the Americans seem to have
Probably because that Free Trade agreement is once again threatened to be shot down by eu farmers.
The analysis by Yves on naked capitalism is that the motivation is more geopolitical, to remove Venezuela from Iran's support network
I can’t recall where I heard it suggested, but it’s certainly possible that weakening Cuba is at least a strong secondary goal. They’re in a tough spot already, and losing a major trade partner in Venezuela would make things even tougher.
I’m not sure this is a primary goal overall, but I could absolutely see this as Rubio’s personal objective that he just keeps to himself about.
Maybe true but if the media was saying that it would be pro-war.