A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image depicts the aftermath of a Yemeni missile impacting King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleIt's been a much slower week than last week, consisting mainly of consolidation and (so far, empty) threats.

In Yemen, Ansarallah continues to battle Saudi-backed mercenary groups. Gains have been relatively slower compared to the lightning offensive earlier that took the western coastline, which makes sense with all the new territory they have to administer and generally sort out, including fortifying towns and cities against potential Saudi assaults from the north. The biggest news so far has been Trump apparently being on the verge of striking Yemen over the weekend due to Saudi insistence, to the extent that embassies across the region issued alerts warning that they might soon be attacked, but then deciding not to when people in his administration told him not to. I haven't cared for Trump's theatrics for several months now, so I won't care to speculate whether this is a bluff or a double bluff and so on; all I will say is that a couple years ago, a significantly stronger US military tried and failed to dislodge Ansarallah's control of the Red Sea, and that this time, they even seem willing to hit Saudi oil facilities in response.

On that note, diesel continues to break new price records, and gasoline isn't too far behind it. Outright shortages haven't yet become systemic, as tempting as it is to look at a couple gas stations running out and drawing trend lines from there, but it's certainly going to be where we're headed if there isn't a diesel export ban eventually, which Russia and others have already implemented. A ban would somewhat alleviate US price hikes, but would cause major instability throughout the rest of the world due to the ubiquity of diesel in transportation infrastructure, and if you've created a favourable international order over the past century or so, you really don't want to blow it up.

Next up: Poland's been amping up their anti-Russian rhetoric to new heights lately, joining Germany and others in advocating for further aid to Ukraine and the creation of modern national armies in Europe to send into Ukraine to battle Russia directly. This type of thing would have been rather frightening to me back in 2023 and 2024, but at this point, all I can do is shake my head. We all saw how the US military, which is more powerful than yours, has faired against Iran, which is weaker than Russia - and you want to arm yourself with largely American weapon systems, or at least systems heavily inspired by the American MIC? Lol. Lmao, even.

Lastly for today, Trump seems to have taken a victory lap over their more-or-less annexation of Greenland after Denmark permitted it. As I and many others noted back when this was all over the media initially months ago, the US has had a military base there for decades already and has been investing in mining there too for a while, so this is more of a formalization of the de facto status quo. Denmark previously technically had a veto on US military activity there, but now seems to be gone; after all, there is little chance that Denmark would ever have the courage to actually use said veto anyway at this point. So, geopolitically, it's a fairly minor news item that serves mainly as yet another humiliation for Europe in a long chain that stretches far into the past and continues to stretch into the future. For the Greenlanders themselves, however, this does seem like pretty catastrophic news, with any and all non-US foreign investment (such as by China) likely to be cut.

(and as a postscript here just before I hit post: yes, the Iranian president physically travelling to the US is embarrassing for Iran and very embarrassing for him. at least Araghchi going makes sense given he's the foreign minister. the silver lining of this debacle might be a further discrediting of the non-hardliner side?)


Last week's thread 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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 63 points 5 days ago (1 child)

https://archive.ph/ZrXD1

Photos show extensive damage to US Middle East bases

An inspector general said hundreds of structures were damaged in the Iran war.

more

U.S. bases in the Middle East have suffered severe damage as a result of Iranian attacks, images and videos obtained by ABC News show, as the Pentagon surveys the costs of a war the U.S. began more than six months ago. The images, which were recently obtained by ABC News but capture moments in time across the conflict, show damage to buildings and an aircraft at three U.S. bases in Kuwait and a Saudi base that houses U.S. assets, some of which were evacuated amid the danger. CBS News reported earlier this week on widespread damage to U.S. bases in the region. The Pentagon has not provided public information explaining the extent of the damage done by Iranian attacks to U.S. bases in the region in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan, but satellite imagery has consistently captured the impact of strikes. The Defense Department also took preemptive measures to move personnel from bases vulnerable to Iranian attacks before the war.

A senior U.S. service member told ABC News that the damage to the facilities would take “decades” to repair. "I believe the American people are unaware of the extent of the damage that American bases are taking in [the Middle East] right now due to the conflict with Iran,” the service member, who was granted anonymity, told ABC News. "These bases have been irreparably damaged. And if we choose to rebuild them, it's going to be a decades long undertaking,” the service member said. “Like, this is not something that's going to be fixed in six months. We're talking about years and years of construction and rebuilding in order to reestablish what's been destroyed." The Pentagon declined to comment to ABC News. Since the war started on Feb. 28, 18 service members have been killed and 824 wounded, according to the Defense Department. A Pentagon inspector general report found that “hundreds of buildings and structures” had been damaged at American posts across the region. The internal government watchdog, which released its report Monday, estimated the cost of the war at $33 billion, though an assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost at $38 billion.

The Pentagon has consistently downplayed Iran’s offensive ability in the war. The deadliest Iranian attack of the war came on its second day, when six U.S. soldiers were killed in Port Shuaiba in Kuwait. The soldiers, who had been moved from another location to Port Shuaiba to better protect them, were at a largely unfortified location, surrounded only by six-foot concrete walls. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the U.S. makes force protection its top priority, but that Iran would be able to penetrate defenses at times. “Every once in a while you might have one, unfortunately we call it a ‘squirter,’ that makes its way through,” he said when asked about the Kuwait strike in March. “And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operation center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons.” Among the photos shared with ABC News is what appears to be an E-3 Sentry aircraft, damaged in late March, on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The E-3 is a surveillance aircraft that is deployed for early warning and is valued at $270 million.

Fighting between the U.S. and Iran has been intermittent since an April ceasefire ended full-scale conflict, which included Israeli forces. The U.S. and Iranian militaries have continued to trade strikes for days or weeks at a time, with the U.S. largely striking targets along the coastline of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran firing at U.S. bases primarily in Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, and Qatar. Three U.S. service members in Jordan, and one in Iraq, were killed in July by Iranian attacks. The service member who spoke to ABC News said the Pentagon is not being transparent about ongoing warfare. "It's being kept a secret, and we're acting like it's no big deal, but, you know, there are drone strikes and ballistic missile strikes actively landing on bases every day," the service member said.


This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, from an Iranian attack.

This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to a U.S. aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, from an Iranian attack.

This image independently obtained by ABC News shows damage to at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, from an Iranian attack.

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment