Image is sourced from this People’s Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet’s regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we’ve had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil’s Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric’s leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina’s very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
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.
Here’s machine translated and excellent article from a Marxist Croatian politician on a very popular Croatian lib portal, who had some actual success in politics, about the songs that were sung on this concert…
AFTER calling for a ban on Marko Perković Thompson’s concert at the Zagreb Hippodrome, Workers’ Front president and former parliamentarian Katarina Peović took to Facebook to list Thompson’s songs that she finds objectionable.
Below we present her announcement:
“Is it true that Thompson promotes national, religious and racial intolerance?”
‘Say, my brother’
Does anything more need to be said about Thompson than to remember his song ‘Say, my brother’ which he sings with Škora in which there is a line ‘but God forbid, so that they need us, the thick fog will descend again’ which is a reference to the Ustasha song ‘Spustila se gusta magla iznad Zagreba’ which reads 'it was not the thick fog above Zagreb, but the brave army of Poglavnik’?
The song to which Thompson refers celebrates Ante Pavelić ‘Poglavnik’ (‘Poglavnik gave them the name of the brave Ustaše’), the battle for Kupres (‘a thick fog descended above Kupres’) in which many partisans died in 1942, and celebrates the Ustasha Rafael Boban and the Black Legion (‘the leader was the knight Boban, a real Ustaša’, ‘Poglavnik gave them the name of the Black Legija’) whose units beat prisoners with clubs, stuck needles under their nails, ordered them to lick the floor and salt, were killed, robbed. Thompson celebrates the regime that had a children’s concentration camps.
‘Pukni puško’
Thompson’s song ‘Pukni puško’ from 1998 is a dedication to the Ustasha anthem and vigil ‘Puška puca’ which reads ‘The gun shoots and the cannon roars, thunders like thunder, Now the Ustasha soldier is fighting for the Croatian home’.
‘Spicy grass on a spicy wound’
‘Spicy grass on a spicy wound’ is a 1995 song by Poglavnik Ante Pavelić, the motto under which the Ustasha were founded, ultranationalists in World War II responsible for genocide against Jews, Serbs, Roma and Croats who were their political opponents [aka communists].
‘Jasenovac and Gradiška Stara’
Around 2003, Thompson was [unofficially] recorded singing the slaughter song ‘Jasenovac and Gradiška Stara’ in front of an audience. The song reads ‘Jasenovac and Gradiška Stara is the house of Maks’s butchers’! [“Maks Luburic” was Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps. This is an especially sickening song as it literally describes in detail slaughter of Serbs and revels in it.]
‘Geni kameni’
The song celebrates the Ustashas and denies the anti-fascist struggle. The lyrics in the song read ‘The 45th was bad, It scattered us across the world. And now a new vine is growing, The swallows have returned home’. The song also contains the racist line ‘…blue blood, white face, new children are being born…’.
‘Bojna Čavoglave’
‘Bojna Čavoglave’ greets with the Ustasha salute ‘For the homeland ready’ which the HOS members themselves associated with the Ustashas and the Ustasha movement.
‘Lijepa li si’
‘Lijepa li si’ from 1998 is a memory of the borders from Croatia that it had during NDH. Thompson dedicates it to Herceg-Bosna, Mati Boban, the creator of Herceg-Bosna – an artificial state that sought to establish a Croatian territorial unit in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was an attempt at Croatian separatism ended with the Dayton Agreement and the establishment of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, under international pressure.
‘Pictures of Bleiburg’
The song from 2025 equates the Ustashas with the Croatian army and the entire people, even though the majority of the Croatian people joined the Partisans and were on the winning side in World War II.
‘My Ivana’
The song from 2017 is a dedication to the Ustasha units in the Battle of Kupres in 1942, in which many Partisans who defended the homeland and fought against Nazi collaborators were killed. The lyrics read ‘That damned fate took Ivana away from us, took her from Kupres, near the white world. Only one strong desire remained, to sing the song of the hero of Kupres.’"