Image is of a Khorramshahr-4 medium range ballistic missile, which has a range of about 2000km.
As I said in the last megathread, trying to figure out what exactly is happening is becoming ever more difficult. The gist of things is that Iran has, very justifiably, refused to negotiate (assassinating their leader and striking their country with hundreds of missiles in the middle of negotiations causes some reluctance to return to the table, I suppose). Censorship across the Middle East has further ramped up, with reportedly extreme punishments for posting footage of Iranian strikes online. From what I can gather, Iran's number of strikes have stabilized at a comfortable daily rate, with strikes into both the Gulf monarchies and Occupied Palestine continuing apace. Official charts of these strikes over time seem very disconnected from reality on the ground, but again, it's hard to really get at the specifics.
The messaging on how long the war is expected to last is rather muddled on both sides. The Trump administration fluctuates more than daily - and even sometimes in the same speech - on whether the war is already won or whether it's going to last months longer. The US seems to be coming up a new possible scheme every few hours: a ground invasion with the Kurds? A ground invasion without the Kurds? An amphibious assault? A series of commando operations to steal Iranian uranium? A massive parachuting operation into Tehran? Fuck it, let's just send the Navy into the Strait of Hormuz? There doesn't seem to be a coherent plan for continuing hostilities beyond firing more and more of a limited stockpile of cruise missiles into mostly non-military targets, hitting easily replaceable drone and missile launchers with a limited stockpile of drones, and burning a limited stockpile of interceptors at an astounding rate (and, in the process, disarming every other Western-aligned country of their interceptors).
Meanwhile, from Iran, I've seen rumors and reports from classic anonymous "senior IRGC officials" (no doubt some invented by Zionists to sow confusion), that I don't know how to substantiate, ranging anywhere from "If the US pulls back their forces now, we will restart negotiations," to "It doesn't matter what the US or the Zionists do or say, we aren't stopping until every last trace of Zionism in the Middle East has been extinguished," to a few positions in between those poles. Despite the damage to infrastructure in Iran, it doesn't seem like there has been any political or social fracturing. Not to speak too soon - perhaps the West will start earnestly trying to overfly Iranian territory to drop their very plentiful bombs soon - but every indication is that there will be no regime change nor societal collapse in Iran in the short and medium term.
The US is desperately trying - and mostly failing - to keep a lid on the economic firestorm they have ignited. There has been much ado about oil prices and oil futures and indexes and what all the myriad Lines going up and down signify and things like that, which is befitting such a financialized empire which is so disconnected from the actual physical flows of materials and much more attuned to vibes and speeches. The only thing I'm personally paying much attention to on the economic front is the drones and missiles slamming into fossil fuel infrastructure, the Hormuz blockade, and the resulting global shockwave of shortages, stoppages, closures, bankruptcies, and force majeures spreading out from the epicenter that is Iran.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
We JUST had a big referendum about staying in confederation, the dofus who ran it decided to make it on a vote in the legislature so we could all see who's pro or anti seperatism instead of just a direct public vote later 🙄. didnt seem to slow down the separatists agenda who then immediately launched their own campaign lol, which is getting very very little attention or support.
Alberta has definitely been captured by oil interests for a while, regardless. Just before or after covid, we sent a crack team of researchers to ask Chicago or New York traders about our oil royalties and they were mostly surprised they were so low and haven't changed and remarked most countries increase royalties regularly. WCS oil is traded quite far below WTI, I guess cause we like doing our plucky part, and refineries and upgraders are mostly down in the states. Oh we have them in fucking New Brunswick which ends up being operated mostly as a private concern by the Irving family, but not a lot in Alberta!
Anyway, when polled, most Albertans would rather stay in confederation. Because Alberta was created on top of the numbered treaties instead of unceded territory, it would be a complete mess in how separation would even work because First Nations signed treaties with the Crown and not whoever happens to decide to be in control of the Alberta leg at the time of seperation. We don't even have a distinct identity or language like Quebec does, the only thing powering seperatism here is sheer fucking whiny white settler grievance. Does make centristy-lefty "patriotism" a weird gimme because the UCP and federal Tories have a lot of seperatist ties.
Not saying you're wrong but messy is exactly the modus operandi of US(CIA)foreign policy. Destabilization and intervention is the name of their game and popularity or popular support is not a consideration of theirs when pushing an agenda. Although, Canadian law enforcement, particularly CSIS, have a long history of collaboration with American surveillance programs and policing. If the price is right our corpos won't hesitate to sell out to the americans.
Meaningfully, we're very integrated status quo to the American O&G market and sell at a discount to their refineries and upgraders and haven't changed royalty rates for many many years. It's hard to imagine what more the US could get from us under an independent regime or folded in to the US empire. When pipelines are full, we rail out oil over even food nevermind passengers - our previous premier even gave loan guarantees to oil companies to the tune of billions of dollars contingent on Trump winning in 2020 more or less for the expansion of keystone, which didnt happen so we just gave them billions for literally nothing!
Independence would have real messy hurdles and Canada, federally, has no interest in making it easy for a province to unilaterally leave - which is why the numbered treaties being signed with the Crown is such a big deal because Alberta is entirely within them. Even then, there is no majority or plurality interested in independence. The settler grievance people, when pressed, imagine we would keep our passports, "our" chunk of the canadian pension fund, would be able to freely use Canadian dollars, healthcare transfers would keep coming in, the rest of Canada would "have" to allow pipeline construction to tidewater, etc. Even if there were plurality support, there is no basis to an Albertan identity like there is for the Quebecois nation which is probably why people think they'd keep all the benefits of confederation while being independent lol.
Could the CIA intervene? Yeah I guess but to what end, don't they have fingers in pies in Venezuela or the Middle East or somewhere actually important? Would the Albertan corpos sell out to the states? Bad news, they did already decades ago. This is currently the sell out.
How about, not having to pay for Canadian O&G at all? The same could be said of the entire Canadian economy. As integrated as Canada is we still nominally have a say in who we sell to for how much. And also, titles mean everything to libs. No matter how favorable the situation to the US, at the end of the day, its still Canada. And if Trump wants to change that, like the Gulf of America, then he'll do it.
You misunderstand. I'm plainly saying legalities and treaties and legislation...none of that matters. It doesn't matter how hard it is for a province to leave confederation. If the US wants Alberta bad enough, they'll go for it. International law is essentially just American Ad Hoc demands of everyone else.
Exactly. Im saying the CIA and FBI and all of them have already had their fingers into Canada for ages now. Canada is an indispensable resource depot for the Americans and in the increasingly likely event they do get forced to withdraw entirely from the ME that importance will become an existential necessity. This is why I laugh when Canadians say they are afraid of the US physically invading. They won't need to. We'll just see major unrest and then the Americans will roll out some pretext...or maybe not even that if Iran is the new norm...to justify bringing Alberta, or wherever under their direct security umbrella.
As an American who has been to New Brunswick: no, thank you, we pass.