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.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
"'Failed' how?" It no longer exists all of there allies besides the DPRK and Cuba fell NATO has advanced and caused the war in Ukraine today and Azerbaijan has invaded and ethnically cleansed Artsakh the other wars, life expectancy drop and on and on..... I would consider these results abject failure F-.
Cool. And you are just going to ignore all of its achievements and long-lasting impacts? Hell, chances are, I wouldn't be literate if not for the USSR.
Notably, the USSR did not fall because of relevant achievements and I do not see how the USSR helping in anti-colonial liberation contributed to that.
Did they become NATO's old-style colonies (as opposed to neo-colonies) again? Did things like elimination of illiteracy get rolled back?
Also, if the PRC is 'succeeding' so much, where are its allies with non-capitalist economies and which are not neo-colonies of NATO? Oh, wait, that's just the DPRK and Cuba.
Sounds like the PRC is not achieving anything much in this regard, so bringing up this point as something that the PRC differs from the USSR favourably is extremely silly.
Which is happening while the PRC exists and not contemporaneously with the USSR, so claiming that this is a fault of the USSR - especially considering the PRC actively helping NATO in cases like Afghanistan - is similarly silly.
The PRC is either unable or unwilling to prevent NATO from doing this. This is a failure of the PRC in comparison with the USSR. This is a point in favour of the USSR.
Again, this has been happening contemporaneously with today's PRC, and not contemporaneously with the USSR. The PRC has failed in this regard.
Which was done by liberals who destroyed the USSR, and not by the USSR. Extremely bizarre thing to pin on the USSR, along with the rest of this list.
I ignored none of their achievements I merely said they failed which is true and we should learn from their adventurist failures and yes everything that happened in eastern Europe since the 90's is the direct result of the USSR's failures. In order to advance world communism you cannot be destroyed so easily as the self proclaimed Vanguard of revolution was. I could continue to argue with you but I think it would not be very productive.
You did. You basically claimed that the USSR's failure was not magically making it so that things that rely on the economy being planned would be conserved after its destruction and the liberalisation of the economy, and not magically making it so that the small former colonies would be capable of standing up to NATO without help of large well-equipped militaries (such as those of the USSR and the PRC).
How did the former colonies 'fail'?
What are the 'failures' of the USSR, compared to the PRC?
Calling successful anti-colonial liberation actions - like the one in Vietnam - 'adventurist failures' is obnoxiously silly and ignorant.
Meanwhile, so far, the PRC has not helped the rest of the world as much as the USSR did.
Again, this is extremely silly. You are claiming that the enemies of the USSR partially dismantling the USSR's achievements is somehow a fault of the USSR, while the PRC - under its current economy - can't reach the same achievements at all.
The PRC has nothing to show in this regard. This is literally happening contemporaneously with today's PRC.
'Destroyed so easily' is when you successfully fight off the Lebensraum and exist for decades afterwards while the world's hegemon actively tries to destroy you.
The PRC has already significantly liberalised its economy, and you don't exactly have any ground to speak about the USSR being 'easily destroyed' until the PRC restores planned economy and/or starts helping the rest of the world dismantle colonialism. So far, the PRC has not only not matched the achievements of the USSR, but has also actively aided NATO.