Image is of smoke rising after Iranian missiles impact a US military site in Bahrain.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
After a few weeks of both diplomatic and military manuevering - mostly over Iranian control of Hormuz - we have hit the hottest phase of military exchanges since at least the MoU period began. The US has generally focussed on striking southern Iran, although they have also sporadically hit transportation infrastructure elsewhere, which was repaired in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, Iran has struck a wide range of targets, with an interesting focus on Jordan, but has, up to the time of me writing this, so far relented on striking the Zionist entity. The US and Iran have had little periods of mutual military strikes during the "ceasefire" before, and so it's hard to tell for sure whether this yet another temporary spat or if it represents a full return to the pre-ceasefire conflict.
A complicating factor in this conflict is that Ansarallah has become increasingly active, and seems eager to start to break the siege it has been put under by threatening to attack Saudi Arabia and Saudi-aligned forces. This has put Iran in a somewhat awkward spot. On the one hand, it has greatly helped Ansarallah resist foreign attackers and has even recently sent civilian airplanes into Sana'a to begin to break the siege. On the other hand, Iran has, with China's help, generally desired to improve its relationship with the Saudis over the years. While in this latest war there have been a major dispute between them over whether Iran is "allowed" to strike US military infrastructure located in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis strike me as considerably less anti-Iran as the UAE, let alone the Zionists, and did send a delegation to Khamenei's funeral. I guess we'll just have to see what happens next, but I strongly suspect that Iran is going to help Yemen over the Saudis.
And finally, Lindsay Graham has died of a sudden heart attack a suspiciously short time after visiting Ukraine. He was a true enemy of civilian populations all the way to the end of his life, and he seemed to particularly despise children. He advocated for using nukes against Gaza and the total annihilation of anybody and everybody who had even the meekest criticism of Zionism. If God (and, more pertinently in this case, Satan) does exist, I hope Graham is extended the exact same level of courtesy and respect in the afterlife that Graham extended to all Palestinians.
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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:
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.
It's more that Fedorov, even though he's mostly a hype man, was one of the few competent people in the Ukrainian military as defence minister, and was actually trying to wage a more modern war than the "WW1 with drones" type of of fighting that has been happening for longer than WW1, by actually trying to target logistics in the rear with the mid range strike drone procurement, getting local production licences for air defence ammunition, etc. Fedorov also had close ties to the leading innovator in the field of Ukrainian drone technology, who goes by the pseudonym "Flash", and whom Russia has tried to assassinate multiple times. Every single Russian war related source of information or social media channel was celebrating the firing of Fedorov by Z man, that's how bad a move it was for Ukraine. Z man even had to have a public meeting with Flash and apponint him as some kind of advisor to prevent him from outright quitting. Now Z man is trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together after making an initial brain-dead decision based on political loyalty to Syrsky.
Reality in fact is the exact opposite. It is Syrskyi who, despite his brutal methods, is one of the few actually competent people in the Kiev regime military, while Fedorov was a shyster who sold a fantasy about a "Crimean drone offensive" that went nowhere apart from generating PR headlines. Also his "reforms" were a disaster. Firing him was one of the few smart things the cokehead of Kiev has done recently.
The fact is that drones cannot replace boots on the ground. The basic infantryman is still the backbone of any army, and logistics and combined arms warfare is what wins wars, not high tech toys. Ukraine cannot "silicon valley innovate" its way out of fundamental problems like lack of manpower. From a purely cynical standpoint Syrskyi is right to push for expanding conscription. At least that way they can slow down and delay Russia's advance.
But if you run out of meat for the trenches all your fancy drones become useless. Once Russian forces break through the front line and get into the rear where the drone teams are and disrupt their operations, the whole drone defense strategy collapses. No amount of pinprick drone strikes on some bridges or trucks is going to do enough to stop Russia's advance, and neither is creating a fuel crisis for the civilian population in Crimea going to win the war.
Eh, I feel like this is somewhat overstating the potential of the Ukrainian mid- & long-range campaign - it was already starting to reduce in effectiveness due to the Russians deploying countermeasures, it couldn't solve the fundamental mismatch in manpower and materiel on the battlefield to begin win, only delay the Russians somewhat, and Ukraine is also suffering the same kind of damage several fold. He seems more like the representative of the "techbro capeshit" faction, the "um, manpower issues aren't real actually, we can just win with clever technological tricks!" approach to the war. The license for munitions production is also a joke, that shit ain't happening.
Him being fired feels like simply an acceptance of reality (well, to an extent, actual acceptance would involve surrender, assuming one's goal is for Ukraine to actually continue existing as a nation) - the main name that started being floated around as a replacement was the internal affairs guy, i.e. the cop in charge of the busification campaign, and the nazi ghouls praised the idea, saying that he "has the experience to fix mobilization" (https://xcancel.com/Mylovanov/status/2077678124335038677). (also I'm just finding out that the Azov guys are straight-up posting on facebook, lol, I thought they'd be behind some telegram channels or something but nah, just openly nazi accounts on the biggest social media platform
).
This basically reads to me as "well, no, manpower issues are real, and there's no technological solution here, we just have to feed everyone into the meat grinder".
I would emphasize your point that Fedorov was a hype man. In my opinion, everything he got credit for was happening anyway at NATO's initiative.