Image is of an Iranian Qadr-110 missile.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they’d be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
An Iranian response is en route to Israel. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
why the hell haven’t you declared independence yet
Cause we are still chock fucking full of liberals who are barely ready to fight for fucking anything (including basic social democratic reforms that they already believe in). Theyre coming around to “the illegitimate colonizers of the United States government have nothing to offer you and never will, so we might as well focus on the illegitimate colonizer state governments which at least offer a smaller playing field for us to actually do a couple things to stabilize ourselves with some succdem shit” type of thinking.
If we can rouse some real grassroots direct democratic support for some succdem shit, then the US will be forced to crush it and heighten internal tensions, or let it slide and the West coast might actually start to believe a better future is possible.
The average west coaster has views to the left of the Democratic party at both the state and national levels. Objective right now is to make that apparent, and jdpon don is doing a lot to help that along. “Hey CA! if the feds are actually going to cut all of your federal funding, why TF are you sending them 30% to get nothing in return?”
I already know that there are Cascadia state agencies that are preparing to reject the Trump admin funding that comes loaded with “you must cooperate with ICE” and “you must hollow out your DEI completely” strings attached. Looking forward to the US weakening its own taxation authority, cause it releases some obvious fucking questions, even for liberals! MSM will have a very challenging time trying to spin that narrative if it takes root among “progressive liberals”.
Anyway, the ingredients are there, we just need to turn up the stove this summer and get it simmering. If Dems lose in 28, “West coast independence” will be a viewpoint at the fringes of the mainstream in 2030. Won’t be any more controversial that “yeah I’m a Bernie fan, off if you think it’s ‘unrealistic’ or whatever”.
I’ve seen your argument for the independence movement and I think it’s pretty good. Do you have a political organization carrying out the work?
No, I currently work with my union who has a lot of DSA-adjacent type stuff going on. Most of this is just online and IRL yapping, just to get the juices flowing in people who have a left-of-liberal mindset.
I might be down to have more specific conversations with people who have an established account on here (like you), so DM if you’d like to carry that on a bit.
I don’t think revolution will happen in the imperial core, but we can fight for social democracy and force the federal government to shut it down. It would be a great experience for liberals to see their electoral movement get shut down on their faces. Those are the circumstances under which people will shift left into joining an outright socialist org (perhaps a party?) that has a regional focus. I hope to be in the mix when that happens ofc (maybe I’ll see you there??)