Image is of the damage caused by an Iranian Kheibar Shekan ballistic missile in Israel, causing dozens of injuries.
Now in our second week of the conflict, we have seen continuing damage to both Israel and Iran, as well as direct US intervention which nonetheless seems to have caused limited damage to Fordow and little damage to Iran's nuclear program. Regime change seems more elusive than ever, as even Iranians previously critical of the government now rally around it as they are attacked by two rabid imperialists at once. And Iran's government is tentatively considering a withdrawal, or at minimum a reconsideration, of their membership to the IAEA and the NPT. And, of course, the Strait of Hormuz is still a tool in their arsenal.
A day or so on from the strike on Fordow, we have so far seen basically no change in strategy from the Iranian military as they continue to strike Israel with small barrages of missiles. Military analysts argue furiously - is this a deliberate strategy of steady attrition on Israel, or indicative of immense material constraints on Iran? Are the hits by Israel on real targets, or are they decoys? Does Iran wish to develop a nuke, or are they still hesitating? Will Iran and Yemen strike at US warships and bases in response to the attack, or will they merely continue striking only Israel?
And perhaps most importantly - will this conflict end diplomatically due to a lack of appetite for an extended war (to wit: not a peace but a 20 year armistice) or with Israel forced into major concessions including an end to their genocide? Or even with a total military/societal collapse of either side?
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.
Like Lazarus I return from the dead, well less dramatic than that I've been gone for like 4 months? Mostly been touching grass maxing and doing stuff that matters.
Which is something I really recommend for people here, just like the theory of humors your leftists juices are going to be in inbalanced if all you do is posting and doomscrolling. If those juices are left imbalanced for long enough it'll pickle your brain which is not good folks. Not good at all.
With rambling and ranting done it's time to give my quick thoughts on things which you aren't allowed to answer to because it'd make this whole post even longer so in the whole Iran-Israel/US war Iran obviously won and all the people saying 'ehrm actually' sound like yanks who are trying to tell me that they didn't lose Afghanistan, Yemen or Vietnam.
Now onto what people care about capital before I left my big thing was basically saying that was looking away from the US and more towards the EU and I'm somewhat right. Capital is not running away from the US obviously but it has gradually shifted and us exceptionalism is dead at least for as long as Trump is president so where has it gone to? Well it has stayed in europe and slightly gone into Germany and one continent I haven't considered South America, one just has to see how much the IMF is bending over backwards for Argentina by not calling in its debt to make sure the country doesn't collapse under the weight of its presidents idiotic decisions. This seems to be part of a broader tactic to 'promote growth and deregulation' If capital starts to feel more welcome in these economies at a time when the US appears to be actively trying to discourage foreign capital then this stream is going to grow. Additionally Latin America has the advantage of still being part of what the US views as its sphere of influence.
An index fund of Mexican stocks is currently up 14.4%, while an index fund of Brazilian stocks is up 14.22% year to date. Compared to the Nasdaq which is up 3%.
Now the EU as a whole had less of a 'stock glow up' as Latin america with an Index only up 7.5% but and this is kinda what I was talking about but while the German economy is in the dumpster the DAX is up 18.5% year to date. Which leads me to talk about GERMANY.
That's right you didn't think I'd skip the worst country on the continent and runner up for worst country in the world.
Now I've ranted about Germany for a while now but since I've stopped talking about those things I bet you thought things didn't get worse. Wrong.
So generally germany is in fullblown Islamophobia, talking US after 9/11 levels of Islamophobia where seemingly everything that's wrong with germany is the fault of the insidious musleman.
This is paired with german journalists during the whole Iran islam war going pretty mask off now apart from Julian Reichelt, who is an outright nazi and used to be the editor for the basically the german 'The Sun', the rest are all 'respectable' and 'centrists'. Which more or less just confirms what I've been saying for years where the current center lies in germany.
But this is just ambient nazi shit I come to expect from the good ole germans no what is more concerning is Germany putting a lot more money into it's army.
The federal government intends to achieve the NATO target of 5 percent of GDP for military and other war-related spending by 2029, the army budget will increase from €52 billion in 2024 to €153 billion in 2029. That is just under 27 percent of the total budget, up from 11 percent previously. Now if we look at how this first raise was 'afforded' it was done by slashing healthcare in 2022 healthcare spending was 64.5bn in 2023 it was 24.5bn and in 2024 16.2bn. Education and Living has also have had cuts of their budget of up to 5%.
Now that alone is bad enough but there's more as always fhe federal government is cutting the funding for naval rescues in the mediterrean sea, basically the country that loudly yelled at the inhumanity of people drowning at sea during the start of the syrian civil war now is more than ok with people drowning again.
But wait there's more, obviously there's a whole bunch of 'renewed militarism'. And here's where I get going, so germanys most beloved politician, the minister of war, has time and time again brought up the topic of mandatory service, because not enough people want to die for germanys imperial ambitions for some reason. Now mandatory military service currently is only suspended so he could just declare it active again with no recourse and my guess is that over the next few years they'll bring this topic up over and over again to soften the blow when they pull the trigger. Basically if the austerity doesn't drive enough people into the army for employment they can just legally do it and the germans are the most legal minded people so doubt on any instability from this. Obviously of course austerity will also drive up fascism but I think at this point that's a given.
With this rising militarism and fascism massive spending (If germany continues to cut spending on social programs and goes for the NATO 5% 40% of its budget would be to pay for the army, I think that's unlikely but hey maybe I'm not savy about the depravity of the germans.), what we are going to see is a massively imperialist Germany that would more than likely seek to get a 'return on their investment'. The most likely targets would be the EU if they don't play ball and Africa to regain their place in the sun probably doing some evil shit with Frances coordination.
Thankfully it's not like the German left fully support this endeavour, wait I'm getting new information that the war minister is from the SPD and that the finance minister is also from the SPD well.... that's just....wait they started this whole thing under a SPD-Greens-Neoliberal government? Well you better hope that Linke will be able to do anything but it's doubtful.
TL;DR Germany is going to do fascism through huge austerity and imperialism in 2029 probably by invading Libya for the sake of 'stability'.
Are we witnessing the death of the UN? Was it ever really alive?
What you are witnessing is basically the whitest of people. All that stuff about human rights and international law was supposed to be applied to everyone else not the germans themselves, the law wasn't supposed to bind them. Which is why the centrist journas are writing shit like this.
This article was so bad and so racist and fascist that they had to delete it.