Image is sourced from this Guardian article.
The Pope's fucking dead.
He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.
What a way to go.
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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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.
I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it's obviously my programming.
I've been doing these write ups for 38 days now, yeah...
The Yemeni front is very insightful to watch because it's almost a precursor to other fronts, before the now dead ceasefire in Gaza, the Yemenis started winding down operations first. There are also a number of technological firsts in warfare. First anti ship ballistic missile ever used in war was by Ansarallah. Their anti air loitering munitions, and ground based infrared search and track systems, pose a serious challenge to UCAVs like the MQ-9 and are extremely difficult to suppress under current SEAD doctrine. The solution now is just to try shoot them out of the sky.
Is there anywhere to read more about this? I've been thinking about how possible this it would be to create these using current optical technology coupled with the latest computer networking and pattern recognition capabilities.
They already exist and most major militaries have both ground and air based (on fighter jets) infrared search and track. Main limitation is that the atmosphere and weather can attenuate infrared, and that it's a camera system, so range is limited by those factors compared to radar. It's also why it's more common on aircraft (air is thinner and colder at altitude). This also means tracking lots of targets, especially at longer ranges, is complex if only infrared is used. A laser rangefinder is usually added to the system to obtain distance data, and engagement range is usually around two thirds of detection range.
https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/defence-and-security/naval-forces/above-water-warfare/artemis-irst-360deg-naval-infrared
https://www.aeroflap.com.br/en/USAF-f-15c-fires-first-aim-120-missile-guided-by-irst/
As for infrared systems likely in use in Yemen, there's the Iranian Sepehr-14 fire control system, designed to link up with the Iranian Raad air defence system that can fire Sayyad 2C surface to air missiles. The Raad firing Sayyad 2C missiles is a capabilitiy that Ansarallah likely already have, given intercepted shipments of Sayyad 2C missiles to Yemen. You can see the camera array here.
These posts are very useful since I'm developing a game inspired by the Yemeni resistance. Amazing work as usual