Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
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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.
Oh, qatar is now promoting inter-islam conflict, very cool. Poor iran, hope they get a nuke before getting invaded
oh yeah what did Qatar do to help Mr. Dalloul?
Truly disgusting shit
Iran tested a multi stage ballistic missile earlier today, so they could be working on a delivery system. I imagine they'll approach the US/NATO with the following strategy: we have the delivery system and raw materials (in enriched radioactive material) to make a nuclear weapon that can strike anywhere in the world, and we can have it operational tomorrow. Let's work on a new nuclear deal, otherwise we will build the nuclear weapon.
That could be cope from me though.
that "new nuclear deal" will be used to split Iran from the Axis of Resistance, then once Zionist proxies have secured Lebanon and Syria and Iraq the west will break the agreement and escalate into war with Iran
If Iran goes down this route it heads towards its own destruction. Stop. Believing. The. West.
They are agreement incapable. They are perfidious in all cases. Dealing with them is a surefire path to destruction, the only possible path forward is to resist. I hate this new Iranian government and their weakness and stupidity. I believe I even stated during the Iranian elections that if Pez won it might result in a complete collapse of the Axis of Resistance, and it's looking more and more like I was regretfully correct.
Maybe this is seethe but IMO Iran's position within the AoR was always a bit weak. Iran has regional interests and a proxy rivalry against Israel which was always on the table, just accelerated by the Al Aqsa flood.
I mean if they don't have it functional and ready, they won't have time. Having material isn't enough, you need to explode it and have hundred ready to go to achieve parity with pisrael. If you say we may build nukes, talk to us, you'll just get bombed continuously for months on end. If you have nukes, the bombing always carries the possibility they'll miss one and their sa systems will shit the bed
Yeah that's true, which makes it more likely that it's a negotiation tactic for a nuclear deal 2.0, than nuclear proliferation.
i'm so fucking tired of this shit. Why do I care more about the national sovereignty and interests of countries than they care about themselves? Why does it feel like every country I support actively wants to destroy itself with stupid mistakes and caving when they don't need to?
Maybe I should just become an imperialist so the West starts hesitating and acting against their own interests instead. It really does feel like our enemies move at lightning speed and our allies move like half-asleep slugs.
Because they are constantly being interfered by porkies interests.
At what point do they realize the money being dangled in front of their faces is merely the angler fish bait? There is no path forward for Iran where they Liberalize and normalize with the west and reform. They will either push forward their own revolutionary path, or they will face regime change and collapse and internal barbarism and looting. Those are the two options and they must realize it or they will be destroyed
Because they aren't marxists/world-systems guys? They cast their eyes to iraq and see happy porkies there, so what its tiny slice of population, and the oil and dividends aren't taxed?
All you have to do it look at history of what the west does to its enemies when it’s victorious. It doesn’t take a Marxist to see the looting and pillaging. Gadaffi was sodomized with a bayonet by American backed terrorists. That is the kind of fate that awaits the current leadership of Iran if they take the path of reformism and sell out their allies and refuse to develop nukes.
I think that @plinky is right in that they clearly aren't Marxists, but I also think you have a "geopolitical" view of how states make decisions. While they are influenced by the idiosyncrasies of individuals, governments are effectively a tangled, writhing mass of competing class interests and the decisions made reflect this and nothing more.
Iran/China continually tries to achieve rapprochement with their mortal enemies not because of some rationalistic calculus (which would be incorrect anyway), but because there are capitalist interests that push them to do so. In the case of Iran under Khomeini they had more of a planned economy so those interests superseded this of mercantile businesses who would benefit greatly from removing sanctions. China is in a similar situation which was eroded by their integration into the global market.
Only a country like the DPRK can choose to pursue self-reliance via a socialist dictatorship, and this it was able to survive an apocalyptic crisis and become effectively impregnable to imperialism.
If that's failure, then I guess the Khaleej is a bunch of Sunni capitulationist cowards