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.
Ok, so, I might be dumb, but what are these NGO’s actually doing that causes material harm? I can see they’re being sponsored by big companies but how are they hurting people? They just seem like generic tax dump off sites that make people look good when they put 0.1% of their income in it
If both are imported than the one that nullifies the other (pro) should be supported
How does it hurt you to support gay people? Why is complaining about someone else’s treatment of gay people negatively affecting the working class in Singapore?
If I recall correctly @Al_Sham@hexbear.net has linked an Arabic article on the role of civil societies for regime change in Lebanon. I can’t find it. It may prove to be helpful for you.
Onto my response, the material harm NGOs cause to people are two-fold.
On a societal level, they aim to circumvent and build alternative structures to the current government and thus without the “democratic accountability” that these governments have to face (even if they are bourgeois dictatorships, they still have to manage the contradictions within society to remain in power). This can be seen in many colour revolutions that have occurred the past 50 years.
They also introduce and import foreign concepts, what I call “academic lib phraseology”, without the democratic consultation and “diffusion” to the masses. The masses here aren’t dumb when they realise that these NGO liberals speak the same as any other NGO liberal in other countries or those in the West. This is not a coincidence.
On a local level, despite their claim to the contrary, they actually maintain and sustain the oppression of LGBT people. Since they do not address the material basis of the oppression and are funded by foreign elements, their only justification and purpose for existing IS the existence of the oppression of LGBT people in the targeted Global South country.
Why would an LGBT rights NGO founder want to achieve LGBT liberation? The founder would lose their only source of income and their entire career!
This is similar to when the labour aristocrats in a trade union stops representing the interests of the rank-and-file.
This also means that the NGOs feature the worst of the liberal activists, who are often groomed by the West in the first place through their scholarship programmes. They are filled with opportunists and careerists, because to them, civil society is their way of climbing the corporate ladder and for their “professional development”.
“LGBT” is in scare quotes because it is a foreign concept that has not gone “indigenization” or like I said before, “democratic consultation of the masses”. You may be surprised to find how many people reject the LGBT label because they recognise that this fundamental process has not occurred and perhaps may never occur if the West keeps interfering.
I hope my exposition here helps understand why I am hesitant in using “LGBT” uncritically.
And truthfully, gay people will not be affected if I claim to support them (or not support them) because I have only spewed words on a public forum. There needs to be action with theory - like you yourself recognise.
It doesn’t phase me in particular if you repeat these narratives and say you support gay and/or LGBT people. If you want to believe that I am a homophobe and transphobe that has a personal vendetta against LGBT people, believe away. If you only want to understand a country through Western opinion polls and what liberal Western-funded NGOs tell you, I can’t stop you.
But please don’t act surprised when anti-imperialists in the Global South reject this assertion.
Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar has a whole section on this but these article is a good start.
https://al-akhbar.com/Politics/327588/ذخائر-الحرب-الناعمة-الأخبار-تنشر-بيانات-ووثائق-التمويل-الغربي-للمنظمات-غير-الحكومي
https://al-akhbar.com/Politics/327901/
Soft War tag مقاتلو الحرب الناعمة https://al-akhbar.com/Keyword/11347
Unfortunately this is one of the many "forbidden topics" in English "left" internet 🤷♀️
Watch how quickly otherwise reasonable people start sharing Radio Free Asia/Europe and NED resources and Soros and Ford Foundations as "facts" the moment the topic arises...
I’m definitely willing to buy NGO’s being bad, but LGBTQIA+ activism isn’t even remotely comparable to ideologies that have been brought over by colonialism or whatever. As you’ve stated these organizations have an active material interest in not supporting LGBTQIA+ interests, which implies that, unlike the majority of ideas imported from the West or as part of imperialism, there isn’t any active violence being used to force people to participate in it. It seems unlikely to me that there would be roving bands of white people killing in the name of gay rights, or “schools” being instated to force gay rights on people.
So it not having undergone “indigenization” is seemingly irrelevant. It’s silly and absurd to reject it on those lines, like rejecting germ theory because you first found out about it from a white person level silly.
Also, at risk of coming across as a “no true Scotsman”, any actual queer or LGBTQIA+ theory would account for different conceptions of gender locally.
So yes, this seems pretty homophobic. Also…
Ok, few things:
Finally,
In no circumstance do I reject this. I do, however, reject the idea that you entirely represent all discussion that has been had there, because not only does queer Marxist theory exist that has been written by non-white, non-Western people (how absurd and racist is it to even suggest otherwise?) but it is extremely unlikely to me that some random internet person could even remotely convey all of the arguments and ideas that an entire diverse and inclusive community has had (I do not mean this offensively- I am also a random internet person). Are you gay or queer in any way? This statement makes me curious about your experience with queer culture. I’m willing to believe that I am lacking a lot of information as a Western person, but the way you approach this conversation communicates to me that you are missing some experience in queer theory and ideas as well.