Image is of Iranian missiles in one of their many fortified underground facilities. I sincerely hope this isn't AI generated, because I'm very wary of posting footage of explosions or combat and having it later turn out to be fake.
Now that the initial shock of the war's beginning is over and there's a meaningful dataset to analyze, the takes from the many hundreds of Geopolitics Understanders are flying in, with predictably extreme variance about how long they predict this war to last and who will ultimately be the victor - and, indeed, what victory even looks like for either side. There are some who are already toasting to their side's victory, but most serious analysts seem to believe that if there isn't any negotiations, and it's just attrition to the death, then it's gonna be a long war (months or even years), and then, depending on the analyst, either the US or Iran then concedes defeat.
All of these takes are being informed by quite possibly the worst information environment yet conceived by humanity. There's the usual stuff: falsehoods, lying by omission, wild exaggerations, state propaganda, doctored videos, masses of bots boosting certain narratives, etc - but now also easily accessible AI which creates images and videos that can be quite convincing unless further inspected by tools online, and people claiming that some non-AI videos were made with AI. On top of all of that, censorship across the Middle East is now in full effect, spawning arguments about whether Iran's strikes have actually decreased in intensity (and if they have, then why), or if we just aren't seeing them as much on social media anymore. Scant footage here and there confirms that strikes are still happening, but I suspect that most of the evidence of further damage to Western facilities will either be satellite imagery or indirect indicators like rescue crews gathering in certain areas, as well as the he-said-she-said of official statements by either side. Given the West's utter lack of reliability with reporting... well, pretty much everything, but especially the Ukraine War, I know which side I'm predisposed to believe, but obviously Iran's government generally isn't going to report successful strikes by Western forces for a myriad reasons.
However, the military conflict is being gradually eclipsed in importance by the growing likelihood of a global economic crisis of massive proportions. A very large proportion of the fuel that keeps the world running is now not moving, and may remain so for weeks or months. Some are even predicting that 2026 will be the year of the biggest energy crisis in world history, dwarfing the crisis of 1973, as countries around the world begin to restrict oil and gas exports and tap into limited reserves. In such a situation, Iran clearly holds all the cards, because even if the US eventually achieves air supremacy, it is still relatively trivial to fire cheap drones en masse at tankers in the strait and at oil facilities throughout the Gulf. Assuming that Iran and the US do not negotiate, then even if the US eventually somehow wins and can reopen the strait within a few months, the global economic and political situation may be so degraded that the victory will be pyrrhic.
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
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.
My perspective on this is that what are we comparing this to, exactly? If we are to see American population as exceptionally bellicose does it follow naturally that other countries (especially in the Western political order) have populations less supportive of their country's military actions? I think in most countries a large portion of the population simply doesn't even examine this, they just think it is the government doing government things, there is a well-known tendency to rally to flag or at best simple indifference. I can't in good faith say that American population is more bellicose because there are politicians from other countries (who very much are the same libs as you describe here in ideology and behavior alike) who criticize American government's actions because their politics and interests didn't bend that way while the population of those said countries are completely indifferent about whatever their military is doing at the time. A lack of opportunity and a whole lot of untested principles doesn't make for a better morality, especially when it is so quiet as to be internalized completely.
In that respect, the fact that I see so many Americans so starkly opposing not only their government's actions (whether out of factionalism like liberals talking about procedure and decorum or genuine anti-war stance even if comes from weird libertarian beliefs nested in American exceptionalism) but also genuinely oppose their own state and military's circumstances and stakes in the global order to benefit of American Empire is something that I find valuable. It is then not that America doesn't have bloodthirsty warmongers, warhawks, outright ideological automatons lockstep with whatever their party line is or everything else, it is that those exists everywhere else as well with a larger portion of population simply existing in quiet assent or silent indifference.
It reminds me, in a roundabout way, of Westerners accusing non-Western people from war torn countries of violent radicalism when a lot of Western populations radicalized to violent rightwing regime with some of the highest standards of living in the world and having faced no conflict or violence in their lives. Simply put, the standards are not the same to say American population is simply more bloodthirsty because American government is involved in more wars with little to no input from the population, Europe was involved in basically almost all of American adventurism and in cases where it wasn't (like France in Iraq War, they were simply too invested in Iraq to support a war and it wasn't due to any anti-war sentiment in France and they bombed Libya more than America did when it was in their interest to do so) yet you don't see as much of a contentious discourse as Americans get into nor as much of a principled anti-war stance even from bizarre ideological fronts.
So overall I do think America is not exceptionally warmongering as a population, certainly they are not as chauvinistic as some other states nor so easily pulled into jingoism despite the government's efforts to keep those impulses under control.
Comrade I am sorry but I cannot accept your statement that Americans are not chauvinistic or pulled into jingoism we literally have a civil religion, and it precisely this ill conceived notion of superiority and American exceptionalism that allows the empire to carry out violence in our name with near zero pushback
That's exactly what I am getting at, American government and media at every turn tries to evoke chauvinism and stoke jingoistic sentiments in general public of America and despite that the population isn't significantly chauvinistuc and jingoistic proportionally and has a significant amount of people who are consistently anti-war and anti-intervention on solely humanitarian grounds.
I do appreciate and value your self-criticism however as someone not from US, it's exactly this sentiment that one's own country and its population is not sufficiently against senseless suffering that creates the environment that makes it impossible for a consensus to form which allows people to merely acquiesce to whatever agenda politicians want to see through. Believing we can always do better prevents apathy which is so effortlessly pervasive.