Israel trying to pass the hospital bombing off as Palestine doing it is utterly disgusting and guarantees Netanyahu a spot in the deepest pit of Hell for all eternity, obviously, but do not forget that
a) the only reason why Westerners will believe it is because they want to believe it - they are not being brainwashed and this is not some masterful propaganda being weaved around us to turn kind-hearted people into monsters,
b) no Westerner opinions matter at all. In most Western countries there is no real anti-Israel option to vote for even if they did realize that Israel was a giant factory for crimes against humanity, and Westerners protesting against things in general almost never achieves anything (tens of millions protested for BLM in 2020 and not only did the situation not change, it got worse), and
c) the people whose opinions do matter (both the people in the region, and the leaders who aren't already Zionist compradors) already know that Israel is full of shit and that they just murdered nearly a thousand civilians in a single bomb attack.
It is despair-inducing to think that the genocidal Zionist entity is so brazenly, so smugly getting away with bullshitting this away into a cloud of confusion, as they release their metaphorical squid ink just like they did with the stupid babies story, but the propaganda and the media narrative that they are creating isn't what matters. It cannot address the fundamental contradictions ripping the country, the region, and the world apart any more than masterfully-applied makeup can fix a stab wound. It can merely obfuscate.
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
The Country of the Week is still Palestine! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The weekly update isn't coming because I'm sick and too focussed on the collapse of the Zionist entity.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
What chain of events would need to happen in order for Israel to fall without using their nukes? The nukes are probably the only reason other countries haven't intervened yet, and I'm not really seeing how that changes regardless of how much Israel ramps up the Palestinian genocide. What is the bloomer take on freeing Palestine?
It would be something internal. It likely wouldn't be Israel "falling" but rather some sort of military/natsec coup, approved by the West, to take out the Kahanist politicians that are about to fuck the money up.
it's sad this is the best case scenario but it's the only "good" one i have also come up with when doing anxiety predictions after worrying over nuclear fears
Yeah, I'd love to give you another answer. The only country that I think can make them stand down is the US, because we are their arms dealer and "security guarantor" and I just don't see it happening for a number of political reasons.
they had nukes in the 70's too. i think it's more about the internal stability of the possibly interventionists, syria and lebanon/hezbollah aren't exactly in great shape and the others are justifiably hesitant if the whole gang ain't showing up
but like the US military, Israel's is not completely staffed by wackjobs, they wouldn't be able to function if everyone was "i don't give a fuck let's kill everybody", so there's a hope some slightly reasonable people would be in the room if Bibi got all nuke-happy
If the US breaks, they will bring Israel with them, since Israel would lose their only major ally.
I think the idea of using an EMP from a nuclear blast in low orbit (or something around there) has promise. The idea is that a nuclear blast that high fries electronics so it could conceivably knock out Israel’s nuclear weapons assuming they haven’t taken precautions around this. I don’t know though, it’s been a long time since I looked at this. I think a lot of how and EMP might work in this scenario is theoretical and unknown since no one’s ever tested it.
In theory, you could knock out someone’s nuclear capabilities and wreck their electrical grid to the point of causing societal collapse. Downside is that it’s not exactly a precise weapon so you’re knocking out the electric grid all around. Still, you can mess up a country bad and not (directly) kill anyone. It had a limited amount of nukes to use tbh I’d probably use it this way than using it conventionally.
Edit: here’s more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
Edit 2: if you want to get some bloomer info, check out the section on China in that link:
spoiler
According to a statement made in writing by the Chinese military, the country has super-EMPs and has discussed their use in attacking Taiwan. Such an attack would debilitate information systems in the nation, allowing China to move in and attack it directly using soldiers. The Taiwanese military has subsequently confirmed Chinese possession of super-EMPs and their possible destruction to power grids.[39]In addition to Taiwan, the possible implications of attacking the United States with these weapons was examined by China. While the United States also possesses nuclear weapons, the country has not experimented with super-EMPs and is hypothetically highly vulnerable to any future attacks by nations. This is due to the country's reliance on computers to control much of the government and economy.[38] Abroad, U.S. aircraft carriers stationed within a reasonable range of an exploding bomb could potentially be subject to complete destruction of missiles on board, as well as telecommunication systems that would allow them to communicate with nearby vessels and controllers on land.[39]
Fallout from something like that would go absolutely everywhere and would have drastic repercussions globally. Using nuclear war to try to prevent nuclear war. :-/
There's a lot of misunderstanding of what nukes do and how they work. A nuke in orbit, or even just high altitude, wouldn't bother anyone after the EMP effect ended. It's only like six kg of plutonium or something, with a lot of that mass converted in to energy and various other stuff.
Fallout becomes a problem when big nukes are detonated at or near ground level. When the super-heated blast wave collapses all the hot gas has to go somewhere. It can't go down because the planet is in the way. The path of least resistance is straight up. That's what the mushroom cloud is - As the blast collapses back in to the vacuum it created all the hot gas gets forced upwards in to a massive plume rising in to the atmosphere. If you detonate it close enough to the ground vast amounts of dirt and debris also get sucked up in to the mushroom cloud. When the nuke goes off it does fucky physics stuff and creates a bunch of nasty short-half-life radioactive materials that also get sucked up in to the cloud.
An air-bursting nuke isn't good by any means, but it's much less of a problem than ground bursting nukes. And, depending on who you ask, modern nukes are much more efficient at converting as much plutonium as possible in to energy, meaning less putonium and other crap left over after the nuke goes off.
Physicist here. This is false. Completely and utterly false. Half of the products of such an explosion are going to wind up in orbits that decay into the atmosphere. There's already been tons of radiation sprayed over the entire globe from satellites with radioactive material in them breaking apart in the upper atmosphere, likely causing a great deal of cancer over the decades. The last thing we need to do is invite orders of magnitude more of that shit.
Ah, the "clean nukes" propaganda. Please just don't. The nuclear reactions are the same, and in the process of an explosion caused by them, you're absolutely never going to get completion, or anything anywhere close to it. Whether they make it a little denser to start with isn't going to make a significant difference.
How many millisieverts is the average person going to pick up over the course of a lifetime from a modern nuke going off at a high altitude, if not actually in orbit? How much Caesium-137 is one nuke going to produce? If it's detonated at the correct altitude to produce an EMP how will the resulting material be distributed over the surface of the planet?
i don't particularly think a nuclear first strike, for purposes of an emp or annihilation, is a realistic way to avoid MAD. i have a hard time believing emp-shielding your nukes wasn't already thoroughly figured out by the soviets and americans in like the 60s - and even if it wasn't the US will still nuke you back if israel's arsenal is disabled. while you might theoretically be able to execute a first strike on israel before they could detect you and retaliate, a gamble for the world all on its own, you're not going to be able to hit america without your launches being detected and being subject to MAD all the same.
you would be better off just conventionally invading and hoping the human mind just isn't capable of pushing the big red button than proving it can by pressing it yourself and assuring a response.
Shielded electronics have been a thing almost since the EMP effect was fully understood. I'm not even sure modern electronics are particularly vulnerable to EMP anymore.
Generally electronics are. Our regular consumer shit would be toast. But I'm sure they've been paranoid about putting Faraday cages around all their security-sensitive shit. The idea they'd leave nuclear bombs themselves vulnerable to the EMPs of other nuclear explosions is pretty laughable. They develop nuclear weapons expecting them to be used in the context of nuclear warfare.
I believe their nukes are plane-borne, so lower possible altitude than missiles