Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
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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.
This type of thinking will lead to the destruction of China. They need to get their heads out of their asses
The Chinese economy is strong enough and its political situation stable enough that China’s not going to be “destroyed” lol. Japan miscalculated its move during the Plaza Accord and suffered greatly for it (contrary to popular narrative, Japan wasn’t stupid or being coerced into signing the Plaza Accord, they thought they could beat the US at its own game, but miscalculated greatly), but still that didn’t lead to the Japanese economy collapsing even with a 35-year run of zero growth.
If anything, if China plays its cards right, it is poised to retain its dominant partnership role with the US empire at the expense of the rest of the world (Europe in particular seems screwed no matter what). The declining US empire wants a reshuffle, potentially to decouple from China, and China can still convince the US that it is indispensable for the empire through its actions. Both countries need each other more than they’d like.
China can build the global supply chain for the US and let the US financial capital in as a compromise, and in return they get to keep the value of their $4.5 trillion dollar reserves and use them productively to finance its own internal development, and foreign capital can help save its slumping property and stock markets and help stimulate consumption growth. It’s a “win-win” cooperation depending on your perspective.
The unfortunate outcome, if this is indeed played out, is that we won’t be getting an alternative economic and financial system to the current IMF framework (China seems very insistent on defending free trade, even accusing the US of violating the sanctity of free market principles), and that means many of the Global South countries will likely become very vulnerable to be harvested by US finance capital if their economies fail due to reduced export demand or if cheap Chinese goods flood their markets because there is nowhere else for the goods to go.
At the end of the day, if you think about it, if the US confiscating $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves did not lead China to give up on the dollar, then Trump’s tariffs is even less likely to do it.
I haven’t read it myself, but Radhika Desai has done some interesting research on Japan IIRC. I believe the conclusion she came to was that even if the overall economy hasn’t done great, the working class in Japan has done disproportionately better than their wealthier counterparts. In other words, it’s been a good economy for the workers and middle class to an extent, and not great for the wealthiest.
China is at least 3.000 years old. It is not going to be destroyed by American trade policy one way or another, I can promise you that. It still benefits greatly from its role as global factory, and even if it is outplayed by the Americans it's not going to be destroyed or collapse or whatever.
I meant the PRC specifically, not China as a cultural entity, and I specifically said it would be destroyed by the short-sighted and risk-averse and reactive thinking of Chinese leadership. Not from American trade policy per se, but from continual endless capitulation to American demands and subservience to American monetary policy. Caving on one issue? Not going to destroy the PRC. Caving endlessly forever on everything? Yes it will. I'm surprised Chinese nationalists aren't more up in arms over the leadership embarrassing itself and chickening out of everything. TACO? More like XACO.
China is not capitulating, it is in fact making strong plays with all the cards it has. What you’re seeing is two countries with the world’s largest economies negotiating and positioning to maximize the bargains for themselves, and potentially setting the geopolitical stage for the coming era.
It only seems like China is “capitulating” because you’re expecting China to antagonize the Washington-led neoliberal consensus, when in fact China has shown no indication of wanting to abandon the very arrangement that has benefited both the US and themselves for the past few decades.
To be fair, I used to think that too but have come to accept that the Chinese leadership is simply not interested in forging an alternative.
Heck, even at the height of US-China trade war, literally just two weeks ago, the head of People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, held a meeting with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon discussing “issues including global economic and financial development, China-U.S. economic relations, and China’s macroeconomic policies”:
Like, can you imagine that? Can you imagine China’s central bank asking an American investment firm what is a good macroeconomic policy for China?
I still have a hard time believing that but it’s all true. Imagine Putin meeting the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Everyone here would have instantly called him out as a comprador lol.
All you are saying is that China already capitulated to the capitalists long ago.