Image is sourced from this People's Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet's regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we've had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil's Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric's leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina's very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
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.

in US procurement news, U.S. is Falling Short on 155mm Artillery Shell Production: Current Output and 1 Million Goal Timeline
So, it's up to 40,000 projectiles - that's from 14,400 at in 2022, which is not even an extra 30,000 in 3-and-a-half years, and they're supposed to get to 100,000 by next year
. For comparison, the daily usage by Russia is 10-20k, with a peak of 60k some time ago.
But wait, it gets better - it seems like production may have actually gone down from last year
spoiler
Once again, the West's mockery of the Russians for relying on old stockpiles is
. It's Cold War era stockpiles all the way down!
More details on the potential breach of contract: Army ‘considering terminating’ General Dynamics’ oversight of new 155mm production lines
yeah that contract I signed up for? yeah I'm just not gonna do like a third of it man, I just don't feel like doing it
The US doesn't care about traditional gun based artillery, and hasn't cared since the Gulf war, it's not a critical part of US/NATO/western aligned doctrine. They're only trying to up artillery production because of Ukraine. US doctrine is all about delivering air support with precision guided munitions. This doctrine was spurred on by its success during the Gulf war where 65 F-111s armed with 4x GBU-12 Paveway 500lb laser guided bombs destroyed over 1500 Iraqi tanks, with the relatively newer F-15Es destroying a couple hundred more with the same loadout (the performance of the A-10 aircraft and M1 Abrams tanks were vastly overstated). Artillery was mainly relegated to counter fire/battery missions with MLRS rockets with DPICM cluster munitions, and ATACMS missiles taking out static air defence sites. US/NATO gun based artillery was vastly outgunned, out ranged and outnumbered by Iraq, yet it had very little effect on the war.
This US doctrine has been refined since then, with the introduction of the 250lb class Small Diameter glide Bombs (SDBs) to replace the GBU-12. The laser guided GBU-39 SDB variant, and the GBU-53 SDB II with a multimode radar seeker, and Israeli SPICE 250 with TV guidance, can hit fast moving targets at distances of 75km, and stationary taegets at distances of over 100km, all independent of GNSS/GPS guidance, and pack a much bigger punch than your average 155mm artillery round. Modern EOTS systems, such as those on the F-35, can track targets at this range from medium to high altitude. A vast upgrade on the 15km range of the GBU-12 and 1990s era targeting pods. One F-35 carries 8x SDBs internally, an F-15E can carry 20 along with two external fuel tanks + two conformal fuel tanks, much more than the 4 GBU-12s per aircraft. Essentially, why have artillery when you have this:
Now this obviously relies on obtaining air superiority, but the US have invested heavily in this area and SEAD/DEAD (suppression/destruction of enemy air defences) capabilities. Stealth strike aircraft also allow for carrying out strikes in contested airspace. How many countries have the capability of stopping an F-35 from getting within 75km of a frontline target and dropping 8x SDBs? And if longer range air defence systems are suppressed, F-15s and F-16s can start doing the same outside of the range of short and medium range air defence systems. In other words, how many missile launchers (and other targets) did Israel take out in Iran, using this class of SDB/SPICE 250, along with UCAVs and Mossad assets with ATGMs and FPV drones, without firing a single artillery shell? Visually verified numbers on missile launchers alone, excluding duplicates and decoys, are around 60, actual numbers likely higher.
Further, I don't think Russia wants to fight an artillery and drone based attrition war, if they could get air superiority near Kyiv and bomb it every day with Su-34s they would, and they certainly tried at the beginning of the war, it's just that the Russian Air Force lacks the SEAD/DEAD capabilities to do this. Ukraine also don't want to fight this war where they're drip fed western weapons and slowly losing ground to Russia every day, if they could do a NATO style combined arms maneuver offensive they would, but they tried that in the summer of 2023 and failed, they don't have the air assets for that and will most likely never get them. Which is why the situation in Ukraine is like this. Ukraine is a unique situation and this does not apply to a hypothetical US-Russia conflict, or a NATO-Russia conflict, or even a US-China conflict, which would be primarily a naval conflict and not a land war. The lesson from Ukraine should be that, it's a unique situation and what's true of Ukraine is not true outside of it. For instance, Shahed/Geran one way attack drones: highly useful vs Ukraine, useless vs Israel.
and utterly failing to meet their production targets, i understand its not their literal upmost priority to build artillery vs air stuff but like you just wrote some massive paragraphs arguing about doctrine that misses the point, post some screed about the US being able to suddenly surge air asset production that would be a far more relevant to a discussion about the US military's ability to meet production targets.