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 is of French protestors at the Place de la Republique in Paris - a Palestinian flag can be seen.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

To start as usual with the West Asia, I get the sense that we're once again teetering on the edge of war between the US/Zionists and Iran, with Iran putting itself on high alert and conducting a major military exercise using dozens of ballistic missiles. I greatly struggle to see for what possible reason the US would try and attack Iran again when it's been repeatedly proven that it simply isn't going to work and that the consequences you receive are much worse than the damage you deal. The only conceivable motivation is a near-manic short-term desperation to try and bend the curve upwards on upcoming electoral results. Trump apparently covertly asked Iran if he could symbolically bomb Pickaxe Mountain without retribution and was denied - for those unaware, it's a site in central Iran where the US speculates Iran is rapidly creating a nuclear enrichment facility for nefarious purposes.

The situation in Yemen continues its positive trend for Ansarallah, with their forces now entering Taiz proper after having taken all the territory around it, while also cementing their hold on the coastal plains near the Red Sea by taking some of the mountainous heights there. Egypt has made signals that it may get involved militarily, joining the club of countries that are trying and failing to stop Ansarallah. It's a situation that, if you'll excuse an imprecise historical comparison, is reminiscent of the situation in the then-newborn USSR, where an international coalition tried and failed to save the losing, reactionary side of the civil war there. With oil and transportation infrastructure getting hit all the time and various international meetings and summits getting cancelled and MBS seeming (rightfully) quite paranoid, the Saudi position is looking increasingly untenable. It has similarities with the Zionist entity in late 2023 - their choice is to stop their genocide, engage in diplomacy, and survive a bit longer; or continue their genocide and, in the process, anger everybody, and risk being destroyed in the process.

I admit that it took about two months longer than I predicted, but the spark that was the US attacking Iran is now a conflagration spreading around the world. Several of the protests didn't begin due to problems with fossil fuel supplies, to be clear, but it's certainly contributing to the public anger in pretty much every case. It's hard for me to even be aware of all the protests and riots going on, let alone mention them, let alone analyse them, so to just go through a smattering of the ones that have received a lot of press coverage, we have: France, which began as students protesting an idiotic attempt at education reform and now involves at least over 500,000 and perhaps closer to a million people; in Albania, where protestors are demanding the resignation of their Prime Minister and are now burning down state buildings; in Italy, Portugal, and Belgium, which are simultaneously protesting education and/or austerity; massive protests in India which began months ago due to economic hardship in general and the Chief Justice calling the unemployed "cockroaches" in particular; in Indonesia, with protestors angry at the lack of a meaningful response to the extreme wildfires; in Pakistan, protesting the slide into de facto dictatorship under Army Chief Asim Munir; and lots of smaller scale protests and strikes around the world usually consisting of people who directly depend on diesel (truckers, farmers, etc) who simply cannot afford to keep working while fuel is so expensive.

Without the influence of socialist organizations, it's likely that many protests will be at least temporarily repressed; however, while the situation in the Middle East goes unresolved and the Zionists continue to refuse to accept Iran's conditions, Lenin's dictum of "every society is three meals away from chaos" may start to apply regardless. We're still at least a good few months away from that in most countries, but the trend line is definitely visible.


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.


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[–] 54 points 2 days ago* (8 children)

Sending western infantry into terrain that resembles afghanistan in the era of drone warfare won't work it will be a bloodbath for them. They do not have the safety of asymmetry anymore when drones can hit them from any range.

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  • [–] 44 points 2 days ago*

    No one but the US will send more than a few thousand at most, whatever gets them on the wikipedia infobox without being listed in the "Other" spoiler tag. Most of them will be "officers" who will sit in hotels around Riyadh until Iran makes them go home. They may want to invade Yemen, perhaps as the least shitty plan in a pile of shitty plans, but they won't win even if they did.

    Saudi Arabia can't even dedicate its fround forces to the war and theyre the ones fucking losing it! Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria etc are all pissbabies who won't so much as scuff their boots in Yemen - the former 2 won't even admit to being involved (nor prove they are involved) despite being contractually obliged to!

    Israel isn't even able to made inroads Lebanon without suffering a recruitment crisis. They won't ship themselves to a country whose armed forces (hell, entire fucking population) are horny for the corpses 23yo IDF brigadier generals. Meanwhile those brigadier generals would instinctively empty their magazines onto half of this Coalition of the Unwilling simply for being non-Aryan.

    All of this bullshit implies they could even stage and attack Yemen in the first place. Iran would smash them to bits, YAF missile forces would join in too, so the only other route to Sa'ana a naval invasion to enable a staging force out of striking range. Only the US has the naval forces to enable that - in theory - and would still face real resistance.

    All of this "but what if the US decides to win the war all of a sudden :(((" cope is a misimagining of what the Gulf War/Iraq invasion was. Saddam was in the wrong era of history and weakened his own position to boot, by 2003 the force brought to bare against him was already overkill. His defeat has much more in common with Venezuela than Yemen. Yemen has more in common with Vietnam.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    I hope they try.

    I would say - sorry Yemen. But I think they would also love the opportunity.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 days ago* (3 children)

    Remember how badly the west faired against roadside IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well take that and then point out that the IEDs can now fly.

    That's what they'll be against now. It's not viable. They can not fight asymmetrical war like they used to, that era is completely over.

    They're actually fucked when a western insurgency happens too because that shit will also not be uncontrollable when it starts happening domestically in western countries by various extremist/radical forces. If the old post-ww2 left had drones in the 60s-80s I don't think Europe would be liberal anymore. The various red groups certainly would've won the years of lead in Italy. It is unstoppable shit.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    They're actually fucked when a western insurgency happens too because that shit will also not be uncontrollable when it starts happening domestically in western countries by various extremist/radical forces. If the old post-ww2 left had drones in the 60s-80s I don't think Europe would be liberal anymore.

    Yes, but they can also do Jakarta method supported with 10000x the surveillance data and with LLM-supported analysts. Sure they'll kill uninvolved randos like 1/3 of the time, but that's already assumed as part of the strategy.

    Not saying it will 100% work for them of course, but the tech advances cut both ways.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    good thing there's plenty of Syrian, ex-ISIS and Turkish psychos willing to do it for cheap

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