The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
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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 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.
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.
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.
SpaceX's Starship explodes in flight test, forcing airlines to divert
Imagine if a Chinese mission sprayed burning debris across hundreds of km above populated areas. The libs would be apoplectic
They lost their mind when one fell in the Ocean.
Ignorance combined with media framing is a potent recipe for frothing Libs
Definitely going to Mars in 2025.
2025 doesn't seem to be going so smoothly for
All the more reason that a trip to Mars this year would've been a good idea.
There were already supposed to be humans on Mars in 2020! IIRC he promised that in 2010. And it worked, investors gave SpaceX like ~$100 billion since then, it was one of the most profitable lies in history.
Wow they really just seem to be doing the 'full scale model' approach to engineering. Never thought I would see that again in rocket science.
(Usual caveat here about how my respect for SpaceX's technical accomplishments is solely for the engineers and scientists and technicians doing the actual and genuinely amazing work, and not the know-nothing shithead who technically owns most of the company.)
The popular joke expression used in a lot of spaceflight forums for what SpaceX is doing is "hardware-rich development". It results in more prototypes going boom (that joke expression is "rapid unscheduled disassembly"), but real-world problems get ironed out a whole lot faster because they run into the weird unexpected issues in the prototype phase instead of the production phase. SpaceX did this hardware-rich development with Falcon 9 as well. Lots of very public booms early in the prototype phase, especially when they were working on the landings, but now it's one of the most reliable rockets ever to fly, and the only production booster ever to ever be reused. Landings are only noteworthy on the very rare occasions when they fail. There's now an individual Falcon 9 first stage that has matched the space shuttle Endeavour for number of successful launches and landings, 25.
The Super Heavy booster has already been caught successfully by the launch tower 2 out of 3 times. The one failure (attempt #2) was actually due to a radio link problem on the tower, not a failure of the booster itself. The safety-abort scenario a loss of communications between the booster's autopilot system and the tower's auto-control systems is to deliberately ditch the booster in the ocean. That booster did an intact soft landing in the ocean just offshore from the launch tower as per its auto-abort programming. It's entirely possible that if the radio link worked that they would be 3 for 3 in booster catch attempts. They've managed to make it look almost easy now on attempt #3. For context, that booster is over 70 metres tall and 9 metres wide. It's about as long and about 50% wider than a Boeing 787-10 airliner's fuselage.
The upper stage, Starship, was always going to be the biggest challenge. No-one has ever tried to build such a vehicle before, a truly massive reusable upper stage that controls its fall with four fins like a skydiver uses their arms and legs, then flips vertical for a soft catch by the launch tower, just like the booster. The trick is that it comes back at the much faster orbital speeds, which puts a massive amount of stress on the structure. We're going to see many more of these prototypes blow up before they nail the engineering. But given their track record I think it's a safe bet that it will be a matter not of "if" but "when". The prior Starship flight test result in it soft landing in the Indian Ocean within metres of its target point. The pace of Starship reliability development will rapidly quicken once they catch their first one and analyze the hardware directly instead of relying on telemetry.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: