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.
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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.
Statement from Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher-Ghalibaf regarding the violations of the US-Iran ceasefire:
He states the very workable basis on which to negotiate has been violated, and a ceasefire and negotiations is now unreasonable.
https://xcancel.com/mb_ghalibaf/status/2041943537386958858
No one on earth can say that the IRI did not try to de-escalate.
Which was exactly the point of this whole exercise. It's why Russia continued to insist they were open to negotiations and always went through the motions whenever the US asked for talks, even though the Russians knew it was always a farcical charade. You have to appear as the reasonable side, that's how you keep the support of the global majority behind you, which now both Russia and Iran have.
This has been a very good couple of days for the Iranian war effort, I think. They agreed to a ceasefire under some pressure from China and Pakistan, issuing an extremely strong statement of "absolute distrust" in the Americans and Israelis, and the perfidious settlers, of course, did exactly what all of us knew they would - all of this in the wake of the most openly genocidal statements by the Amerikkkans yet. Iran's intensification of the war effort in response will be on extremely strong legal and diplomatic ground, and even China will have to accept and go along with it, I think.
Iran retains the upper hand in this conflict in every sense.
It's so egregious when the terms of the ceasefire very clearly say "Lebanon is included" and Trump is like "no Lebanon is not included;" it does not get more clear than that.
Yea I think there's a lot of political value here in trying to get a ceasefire because Iran is closing the Straight of Hormuz.
Closing the Straight literally fucks the entire global economy and the global south will likely take the brunt of the repercussions. People aren't going to be able to work and there's a serious fear of famines, people are going to die from this.
It has to be crystal clear that this is the US/Israels fault and not Irans and not even joint responsibility. Iran gave them good terms of surrender and the US probably could have negotiated it down, but they just have to do more ethnic cleaning in Lebanon.
One thing I've been thinking about as of late is how important demonstrating to your allies why they need to lock in to struggle against the existing order with you is for your relations with them when your actions would pull them into an uncertain or detrimental situation. The observation I have gathered as a layman is that geopolitics is an exercise in wading through inertia, as generally, states want stability. You never want to be the unreasonable actor as the underdog power, because your casus belli needs to be persuasive and rational for your allies not to hedge on the status quo.
many people aren't going to weather an energy crisis for the first superstructural reasons you gave them, so you have to consistently demonstrate that you have to do this.