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Abu Obeida:

In the name of God, most benelovent, most merciful. "So fight them, that God may punish them by your hands & put them to shame and grant you victory over them and soothe the hearts of a faithful people" [Qur'an 9:14]

Praise be to God, Lord of the universe who wrote: "I shall prevail, I and My messengers" [58:21], and blessings be upon our prophet, the mujahid, the martyr, and upon his kin and companions and those who fought his jihad thereafter. Oh sons of our mighty people, you who face the machine of murder and terror with immense faith; oh people of our Arab & Islamic Ummah & its mujahideen, oh free people of the world...

After 38 days since the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood, our warriors continue to confront the intruding vehicles and forces of this enemy in the city of Gaza and Beit Hanoun on multiple axes, conducting operations against the enemy, destroying his tanks and vehicles. Attacking buildings his troops fortify in, and smashing the the gatherings of his soldiers, with mortars and guided missiles, causing great injuries and casualties in their ranks. Our warriors destroyed, partially or fully, 20 vehicles in the past 48 hours, between tanks & APCs. The invading forces shall remain, every step they take, under the fire of our fighters. The deeper they intrude, the worse the price they shall pay.

The sick dreams of the Zionist war-leaders, about ending our resistance in Gaza, are but an attempt to escape their resounding defeat and the bitter reality that they live. They, whose faces are covered in soot that is as black as the political and military fate that awaits them. We remind these delusional leaders that Isaac Shamir had the same ambitions, as did Rabin, who wished to wake up and find Gaza swallowed by the sea - and this was a time in which our fighters were but dozens, with light arms. Sharon, too, who promised to end the Intifada in but 100 days. These, all, have gone to the garbage heap of history with nothing but a record of slaughtering innocents - and our resistance remained, and grew greatly in might. You, murderers, will not be luckier than they were, and you will achieve nothing but disappointment and downall, by the will of God.

Our faith is absolute, in God's victory, and the justice of our struggle and the holiness of our battle, the Mother of Battles - but this does not absolve every member of our Ummah from their duty towards this war. The hysteria that the occupation and their masters live in, for fear of the movement of the resistance forces in our Ummah, is proof that this is a true nightmare for them. We see your actions, and the extent of its effect and the chaos it creates in the Zionist aggressor. Our martyrs, who ascend every hour in Gaza, shall be enshrined in history as the mightiest of martyrs in the holiest of battles. Blessed are you, our people and fighters, for this great honour. Each unmoving witness to the pain of our people shall be hounded by shame and disgrace. Under God there is only what God decrees, and the faith of our people, and their messages of loyalty and support from beneath the rubble, are the best evidence of their greatness and pride, and of their entitlement to the medal of honour in defense of the path of our prophet, and within the struggle in our holy and blessed land.

Victory is but patience for an hour, and God always prevails in His purpose, though most people do not realize it [12:21]. This is jihad: it is martyrdom or victory, and God's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you.

Ecologist: The peasant food web

I don't really have a strong take on this, but I think it raises some interesting points. While I am obviously pro-vegan, at the end of the day, the choice between vegetables harvested by slaves 8000 miles away and factory-farmed animal meat is no choice at all, so regardless we'd need to abolish the profit motive to actually achieve any of this, but agrarian localism is an attractive idea in that post-revolutionary context.

In Saying NO, I argue for low-energy input, job-rich, local agricultures – what I call ‘agrarian localism’, and others refer to as ‘the peasant food web’. Ultimately, this goes hand in hand with a less urbanised world than now. I see this not as cruel fantasy but the most benign reality now achievable.

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The spectre of ‘mass death’ haunts arguments for ruralism. Often, the underlying idea is that the peasant food web simply can’t produce enough food compared to modern industrial methods. This isn’t well supported by the evidence.

There’s currently a dispute in the research literature concerning the proportion of all food globally produced by the peasant food web, but even the low-end estimates concede that per hectare productivities are higher than in the industrial system.

One recent study found that farms up to 10ha in size are currently producing 55 per cent of the food supply calorically on 40 per cent of the agricultural land, consistent with the well-established ‘inverse productivity’ relationship with farm size. The underlying complexities are numerous, but it’s not true on the face of it that small-scale local farming can’t feed the world.

Food analyst Jim Thomas has shown that it’s not quite as difficult to transition the rest of the global food economy towards local peasant food webs as it might seem from George’s claim that the average minimum distance the world’s people can be supplied with staple foods is 2,200km. But it is difficult. All the more reason to get on with it.

Contrary to claims about the need to produce more food at higher yields to combat hunger (claims persuasively critiqued long ago by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen), the reality of the present industrial food chain is the overproduction of low-price food at high cost to people and nature.

Rybar video summary of the events of November 11-13

https://streamable.com/rmtcan

Rybar video summary 16-17

https://streamable.com/ct23q1

Rybar Summary of November 18, 2023: