Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don't have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn't to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he's gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like "fuel" and "energy" so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what's going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn't do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may "only" last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
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.
I just can't see how that rescue operation can actually be seen as an unquestionably good thing for the US, even if it was as successful as the NYT reports. If this tally is correct, then the US just spent easily more than a billion to rescue an airman who had no reason to be there in the first place. In fact, this is now the pattern for measuring success and setting goals for the US; the mission objective is to undo all the fuckups that had no reason to have ever happened in the first place, if only this unjustified war had never started.
Not only that, but this victory is arguably the one with the most compelling narrative. It's real action movie shit, a pilot stuck behind enemy lines, being relentlessly chased by crazy eye-raynian ayy-rabs and then badass spec-ops Tier 1 Operatos swoop in and whisk him away to safety in the dead of night. The screenplay writes itself. This is an irresistible story for an US audience, and that includes the people in the upper echelons of the government and military.
In other words, they just barely managed to succeed at a very expensive limited incursion over the course of one night, with a very specific objective to rescue one dude who can just lie down inside a helicopter and wait. This is orders of magnitude easier than either A) seizing half a ton of toxic, radioactive materials after setting up a digging operation over the course of several days, if not weeks; or B) landing on an island where the defenders have nowhere to run and will fight to the death, then seizing it and holding it while under constant bombardment from the mainland.
The way I see it, what this means is that if there was any doubt whatsoever about whether or not they should just do another heroic mission against all odds and send troops to seize either Kharg or the nuclear materials in Isfahan or whatever else they have in mind, this operation will probably tip them over towards actually going on whatever suicide mission they pick.
Also, I can't wait to see Trump openly disrespect the pilot who got shot down over Iran.
We're not gonna stop hearing about how "brave" and "strong" the US troops are over this nothing burger and how "Iran is gonna collapse even harder now look how weak they are" bs lmao not that it matters or changes anything.
we're going to have a scene of the general visiting the pilot's mother and she has a picture of her dead husband and only son and then she cries and talks about Jesus and Trump.
The guy who got shot down - why'd he get shot down? They have training and knowledge. We hadda spend a billion dollars to save the other guy too. Military budget is unlimited but still. Shot down... Bad... Very, very bad... But the weather here at Arlington is really great. I like it. I saw a really good grassy part. Nice. Nice for golfing. I'm not saying I will. But I could. I could. Visit the grave of a loved one play a hole? One hole course at a military cemetery never been done.
Taylor Sheridan furiously typing into his laptop. He's talking to himself - "First the movie. Then the sequel. Then the prequel. Then the tv series. Or movie - prequel - sequel? Or - movie - sequel - prequel as tv series? Or..."
Seriously though - that fucker is somehow going to make a billion dollars from this war.