Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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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.
With Russia being such a big weapons supplier to India, and China of Pakistan, and given the relations of India and Pakistan to the US, is there potential for India-Pakistan tensions to undermine the Russia-China relationship?
I think India is ultimately going to side with the empire no matter what happens. The Indian diaspora is also well integrated into western countries. Far more than any other POC group. The country itself is extremely right wing (one has to wonder how much the caste system plays a role in this) and with climate change poised to hit India harder than most countries I expect it to go more right wing in the future. I don't think it is India's interests to have bad relations with China or Russia but I just don't see them choosing the East over the West.
An Indian revolution might be in the cards in the coming decades. But until that point, I think India and Turkey are in a similar boat as countries that are kinda on the edge of the Official Westerners Club but they still hold potential membership in that club to be precious rather than limiting, which Russia luckily came to its sense on.
Meanwhile everybody in the imperial core will never really accept them because of a mixture of racism and because they're just independent enough to occasionally do things that the West dislikes (e.g., having relatively a positive relationship with Russia). To be a true friend of the US, you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself fully. Cut yourself off from your energy sources, create a prolonged economic national depression, give the US hundreds of billions while destroying your own industries, help them commit genocides on a moment's notice... Turkey and India will do some of those things but not all of them, and that simply isn't sufficient for America.
I want to believe, but the communist movement in India is much weaker than a decade ago. The different communist parties in India now have 9 members of parliament whereas they had 59 in 2004. The CPI(M) currently governs 1 state (Kerala), while it lost the governance of Tripura and West-Bengal - in West-Bengal it's position deteriorated quickly from being the dominant political force for multiple decade, to complete irrelevance and zero representatives in the regional parliament.
This is so on point.
And everyone knows the best way to gain respect and admission to an exclusive club is to get on your knees and beg haha
India will not quit buying cheap Russian gas anytime soon, that I'm sure of
Yeah, they can't compete with china because of their high-cost energy needs. They need either massive investment, which they court everywhere especially Canada and probably the US soon, or they need to change to a socialist/directed economy.
India has pursued a policy of triangulation for most of a century now and that will continue.
They will partly align with both the west and the east in different ways, and will never take a hard line for or against either the west or the east.
I hope so but as the US really focuses in on China they will sink their teeth into India and thanks to all the right wingers in India I think they will easily be compromised.
It’s possible but I think Russia realizes China is much more important to it than India. If push came to shove and they had to chose between the two, they would chose China.
So if India aligns with the west they will be totally isolated and surrounded by enemies
How would this even look? Russia and China become enemies because they sell to countries which happen to be enemies? I don't think either Russia or China would really care too much about that with each other. And both would choose each other over India or Pakistan, I think.