Here is September 19th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 20th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 21st's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 23rd's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is September 24th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
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.
Last week's discussion post.
I want to sympathize with the protestors in Iran but Reddit has already started to act as though the exiled shah will lead the next regime.
I sympathize with them but know that they will tragically be co-opted by regime change ghouls. The whole world deserves better man.
It’s a color revolution sparked by a lie. The woman who died just collapsed suddenly without anyone touching her, they have it on cctv in a public lobby.
All the usual suspects and pro-west groups are involved in riling this up and boosting it.
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The initial protests were all saying she was beaten to death in custody. You, as well as I, know that these protests aren’t just randomly happening right now as shit pops off in Armenia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. Iran had moved troops to the border with Armenia to ward off Azeri aspirations (Azeri has imported all the Turkish/Syrian fascist jihadists and they are chomping at the bit for war).
Get real, these laws have been in place for decades. This is coming to a head now, from a comprador group, for a reason. Because the fascist NATO alliance is calling in favors, and they will happily make Iran and Armenia into fascist jihadist bloodbaths if this is allowed to continue
Iran should make a good faith show of reform, and if those efforts are swatted down and the rebels keep attacking the Iranian state they should and will be crushed as color revolutionaries
Those MEK goons are 100% behind this bullshit. And some people here are lapping it up like obedient lapdogs as if we all didn't see what happened in Hong Kong.
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People don’t break into violent protests over medical aneurisms, they do it over murder. The initial Kurdish protesters claimed she was beaten to death, it was in their communications and chants. There was no murder here.
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https://www.iranintl.com/en/202209172983
9/17/22 - London-based (lol) Iranian media claims she is killed with “blows to the head”
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/21/1124237272/mahsa-amini-iran-women-protest-hijab-morality-police
“Her father says she was beaten to death in custody”
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202209165767
Weird how a London-based gusano media org is the top reporting source on this for western press.
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But isn’t that an inevitability? As long as the American/Western Empire exists, its media and intelligence agencies will latch on to any instability within opposing nations, regardless if it’s manufactured or organic. Can we really compel actual Iranians to sit tight and wait for the West to fall (whenever that’ll finally happen) before doing any activism just because we critically support their current leadership?
Even if they jumped the gun on making assumptions about this women’s death, it seems more than reasonable to protest against religious fundamentalism in your government. I mean it’s more understandable than the HK rioters, who were pretty openly stooges of Western fascists. I’ll never openly ally myself with all the NGO’s and American politicians that are trying to take advantage of the situation, but I’m not sure I can explicitly oppose people trying to improve their day-to-day lives.
It’s unfortunate, but I feel like the only thing I can do is to hope this movement doesn’t completely throw itself to the West, as futile as that might be. Maybe the impact of US sanctions might create a more independent opposition, but that’s probably wishful thinking. I’m just not sure this community’s response should be to demonize the on-the-ground protestors, and I don’t think that makes me a radlib
This is what people said at the start of the Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan Arab springs. It’s what they said during the color revolutions in Belarus and Kazakhstan. When the pressure of the imperialists and colonizers are besieging you, you can’t give in.
But what does that mean for actual Iranians? Should the women there just shut up and keep wearing the hijab as they’re forced to? It’s not like these religious laws are a necessary ingredient for resisting the West (China sure as hell doesn’t have them). Why can’t we want Khamenei to be more like Xi? I mean I’m a party to leftist infighting as much as the next Hexbear user, so why is that off-limits for other people? (not saying all the protesters are leftists obv)
It’s not the Iranian women in this protest. It’s fascist militants killing people. A peaceful, reformist protest I would support. Not this color revolution chaos that brings instability, violence, jihadism to the most relatively progressive force in the Middle East
No, it’s people rioting against police brutality. If this happened in any western country you would be cheering right now, but at this point it’s clear that many leftists view Iranians not as people but pawns in a game of geopolitics.
A communist calling for peaceful reformist protests against police brutality, fucking shameful.
the case of "police brutality" that sparked it was fake though
of course, fuck the west. Iran is a relatively progressive, anti-imperialist force and an ally to the AES bloc and this is obviously not good faith protesters but violent people seeking regime change. Perhaps I need to remind you of the concepts of critical support, imperialism is the primary contraction & your duty to be a revolutionary defeatist and avoid imperialist intrigue.
The cause doesn't matter. Protests don't work like that. If we found out today that George Floyd died of other causes the protests would still be just as valid, because they are about a larger, systemic issue.
If the Iranian people seek regime change then that is their business. What you really mean is that Iran's current government is useful in the larger struggle against US Imperialism and that means that no matter what they inflict on the Iranian working class they should know their place and suffer through it. Only westerners are allowed the privilege of self-determination.
This is the same energy that said we should have supported the Jan 6 protests because a cop shot one of them, complete bullshit both the MEK scum and the Iranian pigs can get bent
jan 6 was not instigated by police brutality, silly comparison
so the argument is that absolutely every protester is an agent of the West and that the whole thing’s astro-turfed? that not a single Iranian woman truly opposes the morality laws and that none of them have ever wanted to organize? how will we know when that’s not the case? is it even possible for a protest in Iran to not be a color revolution?
I think the issue is that every significant protest in 'bad authoritarian country that the West hates' was either started by intelligence agencies (the relatively recent protests in Cuba come to mind, the ones before the much more massive rallies in support of the Cuban government) or will be co-opted by them to suite their goals.
So in a sense, the answer to that question is "no", but the answer to:
is also "no". Like, the point being made isn't that Iranians don't have very legitimate grievances with their government and want some changes - of course they do, virtually every person on earth wants their own government to do things better, Iranians are no different - it's just to say that there's a ton of nuance that we have to have when talking about these governments and the protests they face as they oppose the global hegemony that historically has, and currently can and will destabilize them internally by any means necessary.
Not quite. The west will only latch onto instability when it serves their purposes. They don't just do revolutions any time its easy. The Arab spring was timed to get the US out of the "great recession." It allowed them to make some quick money off stolen oil and distract USAians from the fallout of the recession domestically. I remember Occupy protestors talking about Libya and Tunisia like they were a good thing.
when would destabilizing Iran not serve Western purposes? obviously there is some kind of operational tempo wrt intervention/spook shit that waxes and wanes, but i fail to see why the US would simply pass up an opportunity for chaos. literally any protest activity in Iran can be co-opted by Western interests, which tbf is something to be wary about.
but i don’t think the appropriate response is to bar all Iranians from ever protesting or doing activism. the existence of bad-faith actors doesn’t give Iranians some moral obligation to comply with unjust laws. i just don’t feel it’s at all reasonable to tell people living outside the West to just hunker down and take the flak until communism wins.
CIA heart attack gun??
This is literally just the Hong Kong riots all over again. It's no coincidence the riots are happening right when Iranian troops are at the border between Iran and Azerbaijan after Azerbaijan invaded Armenia and committed war crimes against Armenians. Iranian dissident groups are thoroughly compromised by the West, whether it's through monarchists who want to reinstate the shah or "leftist" terrorist groups like MEK.