Image is of an Iranian Qadr-110 missile.
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 promised a response to Israel, 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.
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.
Don’t know where else to talk about this so forgive me for this not bring news, but I was watching Hasan’s latest vid about the ongoing escalation between Iran and the US/ Israel and many of the comments were criticizing people in there defending Iran’s right to national sovereignty and self-defence by saying stuff like “but Iran is aUtOritaRiaN unlike the free and democratic US!” and “but Iran doesn’t have gay rights and oppresses women!”.
It’s the usual liberal moralistic platitudes that get thrown around whenever consent is being manufactured for war against a US designated enemy in the Global South, but the fact that so many supposed progressives are still trying to justify the imperialization of Iran WHILE they are actively protesting against repression and the destruction of civil rights in the US of A just astounds me.
Just goes to show how deep the neoliberal brain worms still run in westerners, and it also revealed to me how many of Hasan’s own fanbase are still very much liberals.
This shit is like an actual mind virus. They just mean that "we're western and they're not" but pretend it's about a higher value like democracy
Most of them don't even know Iran has a president
For the better to be honest. Imagine what the libs would think of ~~Iranian Gorbachev~~ Pezeshkian.
Hasan’s chat are disgustingly liberal
I don't understand why the debate is framed around moralistic platitudes. The matter of Iran being able to defend itself or not, being able to enrich uranium or not, being able to pursue nuclear weapons development if they choose to do so, will not be decided by the moral stance of the state, but rather by their military and scientific capabilities.
For example, a hypothetical Iran could be the most morally pure state on earth. But if it's missiles and air defence don't work, they'd get crushed by Israel and no amount of moralistic arguments about sovereignty or rights will change that. On the other hand, a hypothetical Iran could be a terrible "authoritarian regime", but if their missiles and air defence systems can hold Israel back and inflict damage on Israel, they'll have sovereignty and the ability to chart their own destiny, regardless of if they morally deserve it.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun and all that.
He does an incredible job of exposing them to actual analysis while not pushing them away. We can pretty much send all the liberals we know this direction (mainly his YouTube channel imo) and he says most of the same takes that we have on here, but he's a lot more palatable I think. Plus he can do the work of explaining non-liberal analysis to them, so I don't have to. If it takes I can actually have a more interesting conversation with that person sometime in the future, and work out their remaining brainworms.
I finally started watching a couple of his clips when someone linked him talking about Yeonmi Park here and have been impressed. He was talking good things about North Korea and it was blowing his audience's mind. But he talks in such a joking / disarming way, I think it gets past most people's automatic propaganda defense reflexes to immediately click away.
I'm going to start recommending him to people. He seems like a great intro.
He is. He's not good for anyone on this site, but you can tell he draws on the same source material. If he wasn't a public persona he'd fit in just fine. Most noticeable thing is that he's more sympathetic to Ukraine than most here, but he understands that the conflict is deeper than "Russia just decided to move in in 2021 cause they're bad".
It's good to watch him and get familiar with him, so that you know what you're recommending. I had a friend text me just the other day "hey did you see Hasan's coverage of the ICE protests?"
And that's just because I sent them a link last summer during a conversation about something that was going on. Just like "yeah idk if you've heard of Hasan, but I thought his take in this clip was pretty decent. I don't always agree with everything he says, but it tends to be pretty sensible, even in those cases". Didn't really think it stuck, tbh
the problem is that on here, no one knows we all actually look like
Unlike Israel, the only democracy in the Milky Way that is taking slowly and gradually these away.