Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan's - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it's not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won't attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 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. - 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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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'm not gonna "um, actually" all of these accusations because they obviously point to her being at best a lib reformist with the odd performative "socialist" act and at worst a CIA asset. I just don't personally understand why any of this actually matters from a communist or even socialist perspective.
We're all pretty aware of how reforming the system from the inside is impossible even if the "left" bloc was a supermajority of Congress. Even a hardcore communist who was hiding their power levels and entered office would soon be met with the dilemma of when exactly to reveal their stance and, y'know, do something. If you have to worship the American civil religion, actively praise brutal war criminals, vote for issues that you don't support in order to maintain the facade for some future purpose... when do you reveal yourself?
"Oh, they're going after abortion now? I really wanna start organizing a socialist alternative and using it to put genuine pressure on power, but hey, I've got a number of years still in office - much worse things could come along."
"Oh, they wanna create concentration camps for immigrants? Well, maybe now is the time to finally act... but... maybe they'll go after all black people next, and the American people probably won't be willing to defend immigrants en masse due to propaganda, and..."
and so on for years and years, until you've accidentally had a decades-long political career obeying the Democrats at virtually every important issue, thus making you indistinguishable from a tepid Democrat centrist despite internally desperately wanting to build a dictatorship of the proletariat and dismantle imperialist structures and praying to a portrait of Mao every night
the inherent claim being made throughout all these discussions of AOC over the years seems to me to have been either "we must support AOC, even if critically, because she's better than every other Democrat and has some good policies regardless of whether she's a Bad Person or a CIA agent or whatever" or "by supporting AOC, we draw effort away from supporting actual socialists and communists in America and so it's a giant waste of time," when I literally don't think it matters at all. a total breakdown of America due to its unwillingness to solve any social issue nor reindustrialize, leading to the creation of a bunch of little quasi-capitalist, quasi-feudal little fiefdoms ruled by the failsons of our current failsons that are then conquered by a more efficient and attractive socialist group seems infinitely more likely than communists ever overthrowing the government as it currently stands, and I can't see AOC or Bernie or whoever becoming communist warlords
like Biden vs Trump, I don't have any explicit problem with somebody deciding "okay, Biden is literally a genocidal piece of shit but I will take the time out of my day to vote for him because I fear what Trump will do to the people I love," like, sure, whatever. what I have more of a problem is debating whether Biden or Trump is better instead of doing anything else. "you can care about two issues simultaneously" is only true if you're not on the 56th struggle session about AOC or Biden or Trump or Bernie while barely discussing anything that's happening outside of America. luckily I think this site has gotten better and more internationalist about this and I hope we won't have any struggle sessions on voting this year but on less explicitly communist spaces that I may visit from time to time, I can only shudder.
To me, the biggest danger of AOC is that she's being groomed to be the next Obama. And Obama was an extraordinary effective agent of domestic counterinsurgency, probably one of the most effective operatives. My fear is that zoomers will fall for her just like millennials fell for Obama.
Point taken. I was debating on whether to post that Twitter thread since it's too US-centric and honestly isn't really news either since most of the information is already known.