124
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 a map of Middle Eastern oil/gas production sites, which Iran has promised to strike in retaliation if their own energy infrastructure comes under attack.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleFor the weekend of August 1-2, Trump had once again promised major strikes on Iran, which would have included crossing the critical red line of striking their energy infrastructure. In response, Iran once again essentially promised to end the possibility of modern civilization as we know it throughout much of the Gulf States and, to a certain extent, the Zionist entity, with the economic impacts radiating outwards around the world from there. The frustrating part about these threats from Trump is that while he's reneged on them before, the consequences of them actually occurring are so dire that it's difficult to ignore them; rolling a dice with even a 5% chance for complete catastrophe will always be nerve-wracking.

Anyway, as we all know, these strikes did not occur, with the excuse this time being much the same as the previous times: our regional allies begged us not to (potentially true) and Iran called us and said they were willing to negotiate/surrender (untrue). The point of these threat displays is at least twofold: first, to see if Iran is genuinely going to flinch, or, at least, if internal elements that may or may not exist will be spooked into action against the IRGC; and second, to manipulate oil prices downwards by creating constant cycles of "relief" out of an otherwise relatively constant downward trend as Hormuz stays closed and oil reserves continue to ebb. I do say "relatively", of course, given that Ansarallah now appears to be delivering a boot up the ass of Saudi Arabia by taking offline quite a lot of its refinery infrastructure.

It is into this situation that Ukraine seems to want in. For those out of the loop, the situation over in Ukraine has largely the same overall attritional dynamics as previous years, but with a few added wrinkles. Ukraine started striking Russian infrastructure a while ago, and while their effectiveness is hotly debated and I don't want to dismiss them as totally ineffectual, it's clear that the psychological effects - such as they are - are greater than the material effects. Russia's retaliation strikes have been considerably more impactful, including strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports and vessels, and a campaign explicitly against gas stations across Ukraine, as well as some rather impressive and disruptive explosions at Ukrainian military fairs and production sites. Zelensky has admitted publicly that they are now basically out of Patriot missiles and that Russian missiles are now landing entirely unopposed (beforehand, they were just landing largely unopposed, given the lackluster performance of Western air defences in general). He seems to have considered a possible way out: linking together the Ukraine and Iran Wars to a united front against Russia and Iran, which would then grant Ukraine more munitions to keep fighting on.

Now, for all the fear I've seen of this occurring (and, don't get me wrong, the US and Russia being in non-proxy, direct conflict is a genuinely frightening prospect for continued life on Earth) how linking together two wars which the West is quite decisively losing into a single war would help at all is beyond me. At this moment, at least, US military planners appear to agree with me. Ukraine hit a Caspian Sea vessel going to Iran a while ago, but then seems to have quickly apologised after being given a stern talking to by the US. This shows just how willing the US is to grant Ukraine more aid, as their own interceptor stockpile is running very low due to Iranian strikes. One would almost feel sympathy for Zelensky if is wasn't for... well, everything that's happened. The path of Ngô Đình Diệm is a tough one to walk.


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

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.


129
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 the Jazan refinery complex in southwestern Saudi Arabia, near the Yemeni border. The big squares depict large thermal signatures - i.e. giant fires caused by missile strikes.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleAs many predicted quite early on in this conflict, the US simply does not have the stockpiles nor production lines to maintain the firing rates we saw in March and April. There's at least five strictly military problems:

  1. Not enough interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles, and many missiles get through regardless. This includes a dearth of interceptors in the Zionist entity proper.

  2. Not enough stand-off munitions to cause a real breakdown of Iran's military and society. There's enough left in the submarines and in whatever stockpiles they have mustered to give one last very serious barrage before they're just completely out (unless they start taking all their missiles out of the Pacific and Europe), but even if this is done, this shock and awe failed the first time around, and the missile cities have proven impregnable to Western military technology.

  3. Not enough penetration of Iranian airspace to allow a transition from stand-off bombs to their near-endless supply of glide/gravity bombs. On the edges of Iranian territory it can be possible, but doing so any further inside causes exponential risk to the bombers. Notably, Reaper drones can carry JDAMs, hence why they continue to be used so much despite how often they're getting shot down.

  4. Not enough naval power to reopen Hormuz. Otherwise, the US could hypothetically wait out Iran and exert economic and covert pressure to encourage political collapse; with Hormuz in Iran's hands, the US's delaying tactics favor Iran instead.

  5. Not enough functioning and safe bases from which to launch counterattacks. Due to debasification (a word that has now spread far and wide after Amerikanet's coining, lol), the US has been pushed back away from the Gulf. This dangerously overpopulates rear bases with planes and makes it so sortie rates are reduced due to how much distance you have to travel and how many refuelers you need per bomber.

No angry proclamations, media offensives, or tacky AI image posts can change this reality, and boy is Trump putting out a lot of that last one. This is why, after the two weeks of attacks we just saw, we see the US very reticent to try and escalate further, and Trump's threat over last weekend to really start bombing Iran did not occur. This is being reflected in the US media, with several worried articles talking about how there just aren't enough missiles to keep the conflict going much longer. One of the only options left is to use ground/special forces to do... something, though pretty much no matter what target he selects, it's hard to imagine it breaking Iran, or doing much to end the conflict, or even being a successful operation past the point where you've landed troops somewhere. We saw the "pilot rescue" (uranium heist) operation fail and aborted before the forces could even step foot off the runway they landed on.

It is into this environment that Ansarallah has suddenly declared a blockade of Saudi Arabia - an architect of the blockade of Yemen and one of the major causes of the country's internal divisions between Ansarallah and comprador groups - and is turning their ships around at the entrance to the Red Sea, thereby cutting off a good chunk of the Saudi's remaining oil exports. Ansarallah has proven they were not interested in some cautious, gradual climb up the escalation ladder; when the Saudis hit a couple Yemeni port facilities, they went ahead and hit Jazan and Yanbu so hard that the fires were still raging a day or two after the initial strikes. The US is apparently asking for the MoU back, and this time with Ansarallah also placated, but it appears Iran is much less interested in the MoU now after it was thoroughly violated by the US the first time - and if it does return to it, it might have much more hardline demands.


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

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.


148

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.

An image of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, c. February, where Iranian strikes have caused substantial damage and several US soldier deaths and casualties.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleAfter an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.

For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran's control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is "attempting", because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.

Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn't firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they're using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it's unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying "Alright, let's get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls--" and Iran just... hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It's not a tenable position to hold, and Iran's capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.

So, what is Iran's strategy? It's what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed "debasification". If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US's military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US's strategy, Iran's is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.


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

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.


136

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 smoke rising after Iranian missiles impact a US military site in Bahrain.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleAfter 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.


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

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.


145
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 reposted from a video AryJeayBackup posted. There are similar videos and images of the funeral procession on that account, plus on other pro-Iran accounts.


With the funeral of the late Khamenei drawing crowds of millions of Iranians, and many dozen visits from foreign delegations and high-up figures from around the world, the war itself has hit a temporary lull. It appears that the battle over whether the Omani route is legitimate is continuing, with transits sometimes relatively elevated (but still nowhere close to pre-war levels) due to American air support, and sometimes stopped by an Iranian strike. What's currently happening in the negotiations is extremely unclear to me because of a massive deluge of conflicting information and intentional disinformation.

However, with Vance confirming on live TV that they are treating the MoU as an opportunity to refill oil stocks (not physically possible to any significant degree given current transits and the SPR's current level) and that they'll see where they'll go from there, the US maintaining that Iran cannot be allowed to have a toll/service fee system, and of course the ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, I currently can't see how this ends without a return to war. The alternative, of course, is that either the US's or Iran's position is much precarious than they're letting on, and they are bluffing but will capitulate under serious fire. I've been keeping my mind as open to the latter possibility as I have the former, and of course, it's not as if Iran's economic situation is all sunshine and rainbows and so that could potentially be the deciding factor, but to me, militarily, Iran has never looked stronger. The missile cities truly stood the test, and its air defense network is still plenty powerful enough to deter American planes and drones from getting too close to its airspace.

Elsewhere, we are nearing the completion of the latest wave of comprador installation in Latin America, with Colombia and Peru returning to a hard right political stance after a brief stint with more left wing politics. Venezuela is also being forced into submission regardless of which party is technically in charge under threat of overwhelming force by the US, after the US successfully bypassed Venezuela's major and only defence, a well-armed and party-loyal population in the hundreds of thousands, by simply saying "If you take arms against us on the ground, we will do you what we did to Gaza." Whether the Venezuelan people will continue to accept this humiliation or rise up is still up to debate, but if there is no response by the government at all, it does seem to spell a pause, though not necessarily the end, of Chavismo as it is currently conceived, and new developments will be needed to take Venezuela forwards. And, finally, Cuba has been forced to take the Dengist route (reform and opening up) for the possibility of survival after nearly a century of a more tightly controlled socialist economy, as the siege this time around proved even more impactful than even the very difficult times after the fall of the USSR. The next logical steps for the US will be to crush Brazilian and Mexican leftist politics, so we may see the ignominious return of the Bolsonaro faction, and perhaps even the man himself.

As I currently see it, with electoral tampering and fraud now both very commonplace and essentially unpunishable by leftist forces, there's three main paths forward for the continent: 1) a return to the anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare that characterized much of the 20th century due to the once-again-confirmed failure of electoral politics; 2) just accepting submission to regional US hegemony as the US withdraws and relocates its forces and agents from Eurasia under fire, and hoping that maybe they can win an election here or there and that Somebody Abroad Does Something (the mythical "international community", etc); or 3) the allure of the growing Chinese hegemony proves too powerful for even the American compradors to resist and they sign developmentalist business deals with them that undercut the IMF and World's Bank plan to maintain imperialist underdevelopment.


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

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.


137
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 rescue efforts at a damaged residential complex in Caracas on June 25th.


Weekly preamble in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe situation regarding both Iran and global oil markets is getting even more complicated, and that's without even including the regular injections of disinformation from people like Barak Ravid and Trump himself. In my current estimation, the negotiations are proceeding as if both sides would rather see a deal than not. At the very least, there have certainly been enough blatant violations of the MoU articles that Iran would be fully justified to end negotiations altogether, and yet they are not, which must mean that they really do want a deal. Until a few days ago, these were mainly issues that Iran has been prepared to show... "flexibility" on (others might say "cowardice"), such as Zionist aggression against southern Lebanon. Both at the start of the April ceasefire and at the start of the MoU, they made Lebanon out to be a red line issue, but ultimately seemed convinced by the US saying to them, via backchannels, that they'll yank the leash back on their mangy, rabid dog. Therefore, it's safe to conclude that Iran, in practice, either only symbolically cares about Lebanon as the number of buildings destroyed by the Zionists is now climbing into the tens of thousands, or is confident in Hezbollah's ability to withstand assaults and eventually push back the Zionists to the border.

However, very recently, the fighting has once again come closer to home for Iran, with renewed, albeit limited, exchanges of fire in the general area of Hormuz. This all stems from an unfortunate contradiction that Iran has wandered into with regard to Oman. In short: their legal argument for why they should be able to extract tolls/service fees from shipping through Hormuz relies on the concept of Hormuz being part of their territorial waters and not international waters, which is literally true. However, it is also possible to transit Hormuz entirely through Oman's territorial waters too, and, critically, Oman has not shown any serious interest in charging a toll, and is letting shipping pass freely. Oman is also much less able to seriously withstand foreign assaults than Iran, meaning their position is precarious - side with Iran, and risk a Western military assault that destroys them; side with the US, and risk Hormuz never truly reopening because the IRGC will not tolerate ships bypassing their authority. So, Iran is now legally stuck: to have a toll, it must find a way to argue that territorial waters are important when it applies to them, but aren't important when it applies to Oman. Or, of course, to somehow convince Oman to set up their own toll, in face of the dangers.

So far, the result of this has been Iran asserting, both verbally and through drones and missiles, that transit through the Oman channels is, at least during the period of the MoU, illegitimate. This has squashed hopes by many analysts that Hormuz flows would return to normal very soon - after a very brief peak, these numbers now seem to be descending to near-wartime levels. This is happening as the US's reserves continue to drain at a frightening rate. That being said, Iranian oil tankers are getting out in large numbers and reaching foreign markets, so it's not as if Iran is solely being disadvantaged by the current situation. It's even possible that Iran is waiting for enough of these ships to reach Eastern Asia before they plan to restart the war. I'm unsure if this is actually likely, but I've seen several others suggest it, and it does make sense to at least make the most of the current lack of blockade while you figure out if the US is actually going to give in to any of your demands.

Over in Ukraine, the situation seems to be slowly heating up. It's always hard for me personally to figure out the seriousness of the statements of the Ukrainians and the Russians - you'll look back on a year of exaggerated threats and bold statements and promises of grand offensives and threats of nuclear war and yet, on the battlefield, all you see is fairly standard attrition and positional warfare. Anyway: there's been much ado about Ukrainian attacks into Russia proper over the last few months and whether it's having an impact on their economy (not particularly), wartime production (not at all), and social fabric (kinda). However, the rumors of Belarus getting more directly involved in the war - whether they want to or not - are increasing in intensity, with Ukraine threatening that they'll fire on Belarusian border military equipment if it isn't withdrawn. Also, the Russian hardliners seem to really want to start attacking European military production supplying Ukraine, though Putin appears to have squashed those desires. But at the end of the day, the attrition and territorial advancements continue to convincingly favor Russia.

And lastly, the numbers of the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Venezuela are rolling in, with ~1500 dead, ~750 buildings damaged and collapsed, and many thousands of people affected and being assisted by the government. From the footage I've seen, it's quite disturbing, and obviously not coming at a great time for Venezuela geopolitically either.


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

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:

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.


124

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 (presumably; there's no caption) of Zionist strikes on southern Lebanon, where they are attempting to replicate their strategy from Gaza.


This week's summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:

preambleDiplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in... perhaps not earnest, but it's certainly started. Iran's very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump's (and therefore Iran's) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to "mellow out" and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don't believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he's really quite stupid, with "Israel" being in its worst position in decades under his rule.

Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn't stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn't bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump's threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there's essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.

Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it's now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there's going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it's going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn't going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.

However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): "In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed." Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they'll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn't an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran's strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn't have complete dictatorial power unlike how he's conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.


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

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:

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.


137

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 Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.


My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summaryAfter many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they're going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America's perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they'll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they're very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there's one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I'm a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn't risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they're "agreeing" to don't really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we'll know for sure soon.


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

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:

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.


159
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 Ansarallah military spokesman Yahya Saree delivering a statement/speech.


The ceasefire appears to be at least temporarily over, with an exchange of fire between (what appears to be) predominantly Iran and the entity, though as always I expect we'll find increasing evidence of direct US involvement.

The chain of events was as follows, in spoilers below for those who haven't been keeping up:

chain of events summary

  1. A while ago, Iran warned the occupation entity that if they strike Beirut (with particular emphasis on its southern suburbs, which is an area where Hezbollah officials/structures are concentrated as I understand it) then they will directly strike the north of Occupied Palestine, turning the area into a military zone, and encouraged settlers to leave to avoid civilian casualties.

  2. This warning was grudging accepted by the entity, who ordinarily has a policy called the Daniyeh Doctrine, in which they murder civilians en masse by bombing apartment buildings and houses in enemy cities in order to pressure the military forces they are battling to give into conditions they ordinarily would not be obliged to accept, because the Zionist ground campaigns are usually fairly ineffective at achieving goals on medium to long timescales. While removing their ability to bomb Beirut didn't halt the Daniyeh Doctrine entirely (they could and did hit other places), their distinct inability to strike the capital when they ordinarily could do that freely was a big source of discontentment in both the civilian population and the military.

  3. As Hezbollah increasingly attrited the Zionist offensive forces, the attractiveness of bombing Beirut in retaliation increased regardless of the consequences, and of course the Zionists do still want to do anything they can to attack and weaken Iran directly and are much worse at hiding this than even the US. This resentment culminated on June 7th, where the Zionists conducted an airstrike on Beirut on a Hezbollah HQ.

  4. Iran immediately said that this constituted a break in the ceasefire, and Khamenei put Iran back on a full war footing. Within 6 hours of the strike on Beirut, Iranian missiles were flying towards the northern occupied territories, in what they regarded as merely a warning shot. Western media was obviously fairly dismissive of this; 182% interception rates and all that jazz, but we have several videos of missiles hitting targets.

  5. Trump publicly warned the Zionists to not respond, which many sensible people immediately diagnosed as kayfabe, and Iran obviously remained on guard against a counterattack. This came a few hours later from Zionist drones and stand-off strikes from aircraft likely in Iraqi airspace, just like in the initial phase of the war months ago. These hit sites in western and central Iran, including a petrochemical facility, but also with some interceptions.

  6. Iran then responded to this counterattack with a yet bigger warning shot into the occupied territories. Ansarallah also joined in with strikes on the Zionists, and they additionally announced that the Red Sea is now closed to all vessels linked directly to the entity. Certain accounts have said that the Bab el Mandab is now actually under full blockade, but this is not clearly substantiated as of me writing this at about 2pm BST, June 8th. There's been a lot of "considering closing" and "threatening to close" and "moving to close" the Red Sea over the ceasefire period that hasn't materialized, so I don't want to get out over my skis.

Worth noting that according to Yves over at Naked Capitalism (a fairly reliable and left-leaning, but not communist, website), we're now about a month or so away from reaching "tank bottom". This is largely because commercial demand destruction has not sufficiently occurred due to oil price market manipulations keeping it low, and also because there have been basically no government policies in the US like widespread work-from-home orders. So, soon the shortages will be of the literal oil molecules not being available and not just the price signal. So there's an increasing anxiety in the US to get this conflict over before the economy really starts to crash in the latter half of the year, one way or another. As a deal seems only increasingly unlikely given US stubborness and inability to accept battlefield realities, a return to military strikes as we've seen appears the only way forward, despite almost catastrophic munitions shortages.


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

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:

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.


137
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.


As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there's been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.

In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia's runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda's 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn't risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.

Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America's ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.

Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.


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

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:

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.


140

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 Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.


Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.

summaryThe Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a "Memorandum of Understanding" with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran's demands.

For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran's position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.

The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump's announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I'm definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah's attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.

As I've been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here's a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.

  • Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.

  • Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).

  • Situation in the Sahel: "Mysterious" third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.

  • Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.

I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi's recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.


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

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:

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.


133
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

more like thucydideez nuts, gottem

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 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.

preambleMilitary 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

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:

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.


[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 132 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Stunning stuff out of Foreign Affairs today:

Although it was the United States and Israel that instigated attacks on Iran on February 28, leaders in Tehran deserve some of the blame for failing to effectively deter their adversaries.

Not much point reading past this, to be honest. Enough to think about just in the first sentence.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 113 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

this isn't them "going all out", it's not them casting off their self-imposed shackles and fighting their enemies with all their previously undisplayed strength, they're just pissing everybody off and losing as fascist regimes always do before they fall

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 110 points 2 years ago

Joe Biden just stepped down? Wow. I didn’t know that. You’re telling me now for the first time.

He led an amazing life. What else can you say? He was an amazing man. Whether you agree or not, he was an amazing man who led an amazing life. I’m actually saddened to hear that. I am saddened to hear that.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 113 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

why do I even bother touching grass when extremely funny things keep happening while I do so.

I saw this when I loaded up Hexbear and I was just like "oh fuck, has Israel invaded Lebanon or did Russia hit NATO or something?":

must once again make an effort to be 100% online at all times. put the newsmega microchip in my brain

the sheer whiplash from "WE MUST DEFEAT TRUMP AT ALL COSTS! we're so desperate that we have to consider ditching the president to do so. it's the ONLY WAY to defeat fascism and Project 2025" to "<3 get well soon, hope your hospital stay is good, xoxoxo" from liberals is going to be extremely entertaining. violence is never the answer unless it happens to be against Palestinian children.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 111 points 2 years ago

There's this fascinating contradiction that we've seen now in both Ukraine and Israel where they're simultaneously asserting that everything is good because their air defense systems intercepted everything, Iran/Russia is seething and coping because of it, etc etc; but also that this was a massive and brutal escalation and Iran/Russia must be punished for all the harm they've done to us. I can't personally say I care that much about whatever narratives that Israel produces to cope with their losses, and the last six months show well how Israel even more so than Ukraine is putting all their cards into propaganda in the hopes that it'll affect things in the real world somehow, as if saying that your military bases aren't being BTFO will un-explode them.

Last night really was a paradigm shift, which was easy for me to forget in the videos of drones and missiles smacking into Israeli installations. Israel's sense of invulnerability shattered on October 7th, and their operations and propaganda inside the Gaza Strip since then has been one big attempt to not just attempt the impossible task of destroying Hamas, but to rebuild that sense of strength in their society. When Hezbollah and Yemen joined in, it was two further blows to them. But one thing that Israel could tell itself while rocking back and forth in the fetal position was that there was still one last shield it possessed, one way in which it was still strong - it knew that Iran would never attack them directly. They simply would not dare. It would be too massive of a hurdle to jump, too dangerous for Iran to strike them, a nuclear-armed power. They would only ever act through resistance groups, they thought. And that has been more-or-less true for many decades now.

Until last night. The Rubicon has been crossed. There's now little left for Israel's sense of protection. Weeks where decades happen.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 117 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

good god, already seeing "well, shucks. we were THIS close to Holding Netanyahu Accountable and now Iran has done this and made people support him again" takes. there's eating from the trashcan of ideology and then there's going out to your nearest landfill and diving headfirst into it

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 114 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If anybody wants to know what the hell I've been doing for the last month that has disrupted the Goddamn News schedule, it's been creating this hefty list of theory that is now up on the bulletins website. It's far from finished, but I got to like 75 pages in Google Docs and I was just tired of sitting on it for any longer.

And these aren't all just crusty books from the 1940s. There are a couple on there from 2024 and quite a few from 2023, for example.

Post explaining it here.

The regular posting schedule will be continuing ASAP.

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 108 points 2 years ago

There was more sympathy in most of the Western media for that billionaire bozo who got owned in that Titanic submarine than for all the civilians murdered in the Gaza Strip, I swear to god

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 158 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

1-2 weeks ago: "Leftists have no idea about history. People can join bad organizations, even the Waffen-SS, to resist a foreign occupation and that doesn't make them a Nazi or a bad person."

Now: "Any Palestinian who joins or assists Hamas or any militant Palestinian group should be shot on sight. I support a complete siege of Gaza; all 2 million people inside must suffer, even die, for their crimes."

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 115 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

coming through for me one last time

edit: Rogov has confirmed it which is enough for me to switch the megathread title

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 108 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Hexbear might actually be one of the most non-bigoted places on the internet. we are militantly against bigotry. no epic logical debates here, you just get smacked in the fucking face by a banhammer if you try that shit here

[-] SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net 117 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

man, getting more and more exposure to the libs on here, it's just...

I, too, once thought Castro was a dictator. I, too, once thought that China was a totalitarian hellscape in which people are governed by social credit scores. I, too, once thought that the DPRK was a so-called "hermit kingdom" of its own making with effectively hereditary monarchs. I, too, once thought that the Soviet Union was an abject failure, or at best a highly imperfect project that "proved" that communism cannot work in practice. I, too, thought that liberalism and civility and rational debate and compromise between differing political parties was the only way to really achieve anything, and that you must always take the high road even while your right-wing opposite takes dishonourable stabs at you. I believed that swathes of Africa and Asia were undeveloped - rather than underdeveloped - because of corruption, not exploitation. The war in Iraq might have been bad in retrospect and we shouldn't have gone in based on a lie, but somebody had to be the world police. That's obvious, right? The police are what keeps us safe!

These were all beliefs I had when I was young and sheltered from the world, when the hard edge of economic consequences hadn't yet really hit me. When those consequences and problems did hit me, I didn't have the classic experience of going from a dreamy liberal living in fantasies of equality to a hardened conservative who understood that things have to be unfair because that's just life. I realized, through personal experiences and also through exposure to ideas from the left, including some of the people on here, that most of what I knew about other countries and history was tainted with misinformation, or twisted beyond recognition, or just flatly not true. I wasn't brainwashed. I haven't been turned into an agent for a foreign government. I'm certainly not in an echo chamber - I'm literally surrounded by contrary ideas every day because other people play the radio or watch the television around me and expose me to the latest and greatest of liberal arguments for X and Y.

Others have expressed this point before, what strikes me about all the libs on here is that they seem totally unaware that the vast majority of us once held the exact same positions that they once did and have moved past them. That we might have been in their shoes. We all know the arguments, we've not only seen them, many of us were previously convinced by them.

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SeventyTwoTrillion

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