more like thucydideez nuts, gottem
Image is of a satellite image from MizarVision, a Chinese firm that has recently shown pride in being sanctioned for showing uncensored images of the Middle East. The West is not allowing up-to-date satellite imagery of the region to hide destruction.
As always, my weekly summary/preamble is in spoilers below.
preamble
Military news remained relatively subdued last week, with the main front continuing to be the Lebanon border. With dozens of vehicles destroyed and many more Zionist casualties, they are now desperately searching for a solution to the FPV drone threat, with certain analysts characterizing the whole situation as the entity stumbling foot-first into a bear trap (hence the megathread title). Unfortunately for them, two better and more resourceful militaries have spent the last year or two also searching for a solution and have generally failed - with anti-drone strategies consisting mainly of 1) build your own cheap drones designed to physically intercept their cheap drones and 2) separate your forces up rather than conducting large frontal assaults WW2-style and accept that you're gonna have to fight for many months to gain substantial ground. This also explains why they're so eager to kickstart a civil war in Lebanon, although as I've stated before, I don't personally know whether that would be a silver bullet given how the Lebanese army has been deliberately not allowed to become a threatening force due to Zionist fears, and indeed, I don't know how many Lebanese citizens and soldiers would fight against the only force in their country fighting against an army trying to annex their territory and which murders hundreds of people at a time in aerial bombings on their cities.
Aside from the ever-worsening global economic catastrophe, the main event has been the US visiting China. Trump clearly intended to time the summit such that it took place after subjugating Iran and perhaps also Cuba. However, with the former goal not even remotely achieved, and the latter goal delayed - hopefully indefinitely, though the US still seems pretty intent on it - it all amounted to a big nothingburger. Marxist economist Michael Roberts has written up a great piece on the current state of the US-China economic conflict, stating among things that, despite the last decade of US sanctions and economic warfare, the Chinese economy has done extremely well, building up their own domestic industries to replace commodities lost from sanctions. China has, up to this point, refused to withdraw its aid from Iran, and seems to be looking to start moving its tankers through the Strait via Iran's new tolling mechanism.
China obviously continues to maintain its position on Taiwan, and Trump has continued the US tradition of respecting this in words and disrespecting it in actions, but it's becoming clear to everybody but the most delusional diehards that the US will not be fighting China in and around the Pacific for at least a couple decades, and likely never will. There is little choice. The Ramadan War has definitively proven that the US has been severely militarily and logistically weakened over the decades despite skyrocketing military budgets, and much of their equipment, strategies, and tactics are woefully outdated for the modern battlefield. The prospect of the US fighting a war against China and not immediately losing has gone from "almost implausible" to "hilariously absurd". Unable to meaningfully impede China, the US will have to content itself to increasingly ineffective sanctions campaigns and bullying/overthrowing nations that do not currently have much of a capacity to resist. In that vein, one hopes that Iran and friends will share their expertise in drone technology and underground fortification around the world. The age of the tunnel is upon us.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
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.
More footage from Russia's retaliatory strikes (and the aftermath) yesterday on various military decision making centers and military industrial sites, in and near Kiev:
https://en.topwar.ru/283297-prilet-boevyh-blokov-oreshnika-zasnjali-s-blizkogo-rasstojanija.html
https://southfront.press/massive-russian-strike-hits-kyiv-after-tragedy-in-luhansk/
Oreshnik 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
6 emoji for the 6 MIRV
What I don't understand is hitting arms plants in the middle of the night when I assume they're not staffed or running. You want to hit them during the day and kill the workers with specialized knowledge and experience because that's a double hit. Machinery can be replaced with imports from Europe potentially within weeks but it would take many months if not half a year to get new people up to a decent skill and experience level where they're not sometimes making mistakes that result in a higher failure rate on their products.
I don’t know much about weapons manufacturing but I know similar factories are massively automated. If you take out the machinery, you can set back production by months or even years.
Rhinemetal for example has been expanding production for years and still aren’t even close to their targets. It is not as simple as plug the machine in and go.
It seems humane to avoid killing if it can be avoided.
are you seriously asking why russia would avoid killing a heap of noncombatants?
beyond basic decency, the factory is not trivially replaced as you suppose and public opinion in europe is something russia has to be sensitive to.
Allies in WW2 bombed the shit out of factories without regard for civilians near them in carpet bombing raids. Precision bombing the willing Nazis who run the factories supplying the terrorist child murdering Kiev regime with weapons to murder more civilians and sure some soldiers are absolutely fair game.
Let me ask you this. How would you classify Americans who work for arms companies making bombs for the empire's global terror? Are they innocent? Are cops? Are "just wanted college" soldiers? There are degrees perhaps here but those in these sectors are not innocent. They are part of the machinery of war, they have no dual purpose claim to innocence like those who run trains or keep the power on. Their only job is producing weapons that kill, deadlier and deadlier weapons. And in this regime's case shamelessly using them on civilians in violation of international law while the collective west covers it up, denies it and calls it Russian propaganda. They're no different than zio-nazis making weapons for the IOF. Both are arming Nazi forces to commit human rights violations against civilians as part of a campaign of racial/ethnic hatred that the west denies, propagandizes against and uses its hold over international human rights orgs to prevent independent validation.
Kiev for its part regularly targets Russian defense industries where possible as well as civilians so don't lecture about moral high-ground. Ukrainian Nazis and Euro-Nazis don't care. The west doesn't care and denies it, anyone globally watching by now has already taken a side and if they're with Russia they're not going to turn against them for trying to kill off the people keeping the civilian terrorist attack machinery of the Kiev regime operating.
Sure there are some who took those jobs to avoid getting drafted but I'd say it's less honorable. Drafted they fight and attempt to kill Russian soldiers. That's fair under the rules of war. Not drafted their hands create weapons used by Bandarite criminals to kill children and other civilians. I'd say that's worse. Through their cowardice to save their own skin they willingly participate in committing atrocities against others.
If all it takes to get you to kill children is someone putting a gun to your head you're not very moral. You make it sound like these are full of slave workers. If so I'd expect regular sabotage, explosions, etc. But there's no evidence of that. There are plenty of cowards and die-hard Nazis including yes many women who aren't even eligible for the draft happy to do this work to kill Russians who they see as subhumans.
this is not ww2 and russia does not have the PR power to sweep (you can certainly argue unfairly defined) heaps of civilian casualties aside.
they're working with their circumstances, and they will not win a "debate" on the lawfulness of striking war industry proles.
this is more important than direct military utility btw, a political settlement brought about by Europe ditching Ukraine is much more feasible than a blitz to Lvov so aggravating the eurolibs with deaths that are not unambiguously valid targets is not productive. the odd drone and cruise missile hitting civilians is much different than a precision munition like oreshnik.
There is no debate. Europe and the US have already declared Russia a criminal. Only force and facts on the ground matter. "Rules based order" and their shrieks of law this and law that do not matter and should be given no heed.
Pandering to Euro-fascists is pointless. It's what got Russia into this situation since 2014 and I'm not sure why you think falling for more of this nonsense is a good idea. You consume too much NATO propaganda.
You've already let them colonize your thinking as Putin foolishly has and look where it has gotten him years of fell for it again awards. This whole SMO fell on its face at the start because he thought he could use pressure to get a quick win and they held. He continues holding his punches while the west salami-slices up the escalation ladder. They use thoughts like that to control you, and control the scope of your actions to their benefit. I find a negotiated solution unlikely to be happily accepted by the Europeans and at this point it's outright being a fool of the highest order to think it viable after all the betrayals, all the years of "soon" and yet nothing changing. If the present energy crisis hasn't pushed Europe to sue with Russia for peace nothing will. These liberals are disciplined, they are ride or die for Euro-American white supremacist imperialist capitalist rule and liberalism triumphing over all to their dying breath. There is no major workers movement in Europe that can bring their economies to their knees to force them to consider otherwise. And to think that being a good little obedient enemy for the west, following their dictates for the rules of war where they get to murder and SA your civilians, torture your soldiers, and think themselves civilized while calling you a savage will get them to respect or fear you? Utter nonsense.
Yours is the appeasement train of thought and that simply hasn't worked and won't.
Never let enemies and what they think of you dictate your actions especially when you know they use that to manipulate and control you. Putin is a pathetic liberal coward who still harbors fantasies of selling gas to Europe again and letting the Russian bourgeoisie live the high life of vacation in France and Spain.
What Russia needs now is to demonstrate a willingness to escalate to the west to re-establish deterrence. One of their biggest failures was not immediately hitting Ukraine with incredible levels of violence or hitting the west with an Oreshnik after their nuclear triad was directly struck and hampered with help from the west by Ukraine. They lost that chance to escalate. This is a relatively safe form of escalation that doesn't risk getting locked into a spiral that ends in nuclear exchange and it should be taken.
Fuck those Nazi arms workers. The global south is not going to be quick to abandon Russia despite any desperate propagandizing of the west about pure aryan Nazi arms workers.
it's so funny, the great satan and its allies will carpet bomb civilians nonstop and every opposing force has these weird hangups, reminds me of the resistance in west asia not shooting at helicopters picking up injured personnel or I guess Iran deciding it's haram to build a nuke, meanwhile their enemies will ruthlessly do just about anything because they have the power to and have no illusions about using all of it. they will do the most repugnant things repeatedly, they're actually still doing it right now in Lebanon every day I see another dead paramedic or child on my timeline the Zionists explicitly doubletapped. when will the periphery unapologetically act the same way? im so tired of them holding themselves to a higher moral standard for no reason. they've already been reduced to demihuman status by those in the imperial core, especially russia. they truly have nothing to lose
blow a heap out your ass, you want russia to win and you're too out-of-the-loop to understand why they're operating the way they are.
consider the war planners in russia are a bit more committed to winning than you and have substantially more information than you do. sorry the most prepared people to make these decisions don't agree with you ig?
if this were true governments would never make mistakes that outside analysts advised against, and they constantly do. Governments are filled with individuals who all have their own personal incentives that can distort the cumulative actions of groups, to say nothing of ideological biases, where it easy for a marxist outsider to autopsy and see what happened or predict an outcome. Russia had more information than me in 2014 and 2015 too, but they still negotiated Minsk 1 and 2 when I thought it was stupid as hell and perfidious. How could I possibly know better than the genius Russian war planners?
I believe the problem is morale. Russia has to consider how targeting arms manufacturing workers would impact the soldiers who have to actually do the killing, and they've likely determined that it would cause more problems on that front than it's worth.
Russia wants Ukrainians to see them as the humane alternative to their crazy bloodthirsty government. The hope is eventually a more neutral Ukrainian government could be established.
I think vast majority people agree arms manufacturing workers are not civilian and fair targets and they probably have some night shift workers
they don't. especially in a country seeming to abduct every person not doing that to the front line.
russia also capitulates its moral high ground if its heaps of workers struck by ukraine are validated as targets by a deliberate, surgical weapon like oreshnik. you can't claim hitting your workers is a crime if you murk hundreds of theirs on (undeniable) purpose
Ukraine does target Russian workers though?
they do, and in much broader grains than direct war manufacture.
i'm not claiming this prevents attacks on russian civilians, just that not killing ukrainian civilians is best practices. it might not matter much to the western press but russia's conduct is important to (slowly) increasing antiwar sentiment in europe and to the third world where russia is not a pariah state.
Those who are part of the military-industrial supply chain and logistics are considered combatants in international law
international law is distinct from the court of public opinion. russia obviously values the latter heap more than the former, which the west would obstinently claim was illegal anyway