Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
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.
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.
Well, at the very least ontological materialism and idealism don't really have anything to do with this matter. One can be a an ontological materialist or an ontological idealist and have either of the relevant views about Pissrael's dependence/independence from the much more militarily powerful polity that is in charge of supplying it with everything, and the same goes for the analyses mentioned.
I'd argue that when people in socialist spaces mention idealism and materialism, they aren't talking about idealism and materialism - not in general, anyway, - but about having a basic understanding of base and superstructure, as well as political-economical analysis based on that.
I don't see how one could argue that, as the objects that math studies are neither material, nor depend on material stuff in any way, and they can be studied perfectly well without any understanding of material stuff.
Well, what is studied by mathematicians is not, in general, an abstraction of something. Unlike physicists, chemists, biologists, etc., mathematicians have the luxury of studying relevant objects directly, with no models involved.
But they don't have any 'roots' in material stuff. I welcome you to try to come up with any counter-examples, though.
(Nor, as I have mentioned, are those things abstractions of anything. Also, There can be abstractions of non-material things, even without involving material stuff, but that's not particularly relevant or interesting.)
I just completey disagree with your statement that math isn't dealing in abatractions and isnt rooted in the material world. This is what makes dialectical materialism different from jusrltbvulgar materialism. I dont have the skills to elaborate in any manner that will convince you, I imagine, but the items in math that we hold in our head or express on paper and manipulate are abstractions, mental categories and concepts in our consciousness that are derivative from the material world, and have the shape they do from an initial contact of this natural material world.
And the dialectical aspect means that the material world and the abstractions we make have a never ending dialogue with each other. It may start initially from counting stones, arrows, rocks etc which causes the abstractions of natural numbers, but then the abatractions themselves grow and themselves impact the development and manipulation of matter, and more complicated ans indirect abatractions continue to emerge. But they are always derivative of the material world. Even when you think you are dealing with a purely abatract ideal, its still expressed in consciousness (a derivative of matter) and manipulated via symbols (a material bearer of the abstraction).
Some quick counter-examples:
Relevant objects do not - generally - abstract anything. They can do so in models, but that is not a given, and mathematicians do study relevant objects outside of contexts of models.
Define 'dialogue'.
Relevant objects obviously do not engage in conversations with each other, so you must be using that word in a meaning other than colloquial. I do not have a good guess for what you actually mean by that word in this context. (And yes, I'm aware that people who use the word 'dialectic' like to describe it using the word 'dialogue', but one reason why I steer clear of using the word 'dialectic' is that I am yet to find actual definitions of the term.)
They quite obviously are not. No matter what different properties material stuff could have (including things merely being in other locations than they are 'currently' (strictly speaking, there is no global 'currently', though this is, admittedly, a tangent)), no non-self-contradictory systems of axioms would suddenly become self-contradictory and vice versa, and the like.
Not sure what you mean by a 'purely abstract ideal'. Relevant objects are not generally abstractions, and how do you even distinguish their 'purity'? Between a function, a complex number, a tensor, a fundamental group, a homology group, an equivalence class of knots with respect to isotopy, a Lebesgue Integral, the C^10^([0, 1]) class of smooth functions, which ones are 'purely abstract ideals'?
An expression of an object is not the same as that object itself, so this isn't really relevant.
They aren't 'manipulated'. You get representations of different things, but you do not actually change any of the relevant objects.