A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.
Image is one of many rallies in Iran in support of the government and the leadership.
short summary here, longish summary in spoiler tags below: Western standoff munition stockpiles now substantially depleted, therefore Western aircraft activity directly over Iran increasing (as is footage of attempted and actual hits against them) as the US attempts to transition more to using bombs dropped directly onto targets, Iran is increasingly in the driver's seat and controlling the conflict, world economy is fucked and yet could still get much worse very soon, if you require a car to live (especially if it's not electric) and cannot work from home then you have my sincere condolences
longish summary here
While I've seen several estimates on the current stockpiles of US and Zionist missiles and interceptors - somewhere in the realm of a third depleted, perhaps even up to half - it seems like we're reaching the point at which the US does not want to commit even more standoff munitions and is trying their luck against the Iranian air defense network directly.
We have already seen footage of Iran attempting to shoot down, and sometimes actually striking Western fifth generation planes like the F-35, and more footage along those lines is appearing for other plane models (with one side claiming that they evaded interception and the other claiming they hit it, etc etc, propaganda is everywhere, you know the drill). How much the US is willing to test their planes against Iranian air defense is a matter of debate. Strictly speaking, a few fighter jets and bombers shot down would be no catastrophic loss in the grand scheme of things, as the US has hundreds. However, the narrative of such a thing would be quite bad for the US - "You're telling me an OBLITERATED Iranian military can shoot down some of our most advanced equipment?? What are we gonna do against China?!" - and given Trump's deranged jingoistic rhetoric aimed to buoy markets, it's clear that he cares very deeply about narratives. Additionally, with Chinese exports of several critical metals to the US banned, the prospect of replacing these aircraft (and indeed the standoff munitions and the interceptors and the ground radars etc) is looking questionable.
All the while, Iran continues its strikes across the Middle East. Missile and drone strikes are reportedly on the uptick again, demonstrating that Iranian military capabilities have by no means been "destroyed" as Western propaganda claim, though it's impossible to sure there was ever a significant downtick due to Western censorship and outright fabrications. People around the world are gradually realizing the magnitude of the economic disaster that is occurring and may yet occur. Refineries and factories which deal with oil and gas directly are starting to slow down or stop production, and those who make products downstream of those are starting to follow them like dominoes. Outrage at gas station prices is rising, and many countries are considering limiting civilian driving and implementing work-from-home policies akin to the coronavirus pandemic. And now, threats are being made by Trump against both Kharg Island (where most Iranian oil is shipped from) and the Iranian electrical grid - which is highly decentralized and would require a prolonged bombing campaign to completely take out -and the promised Iranian reprisal would be apocalyptic to the Middle East. It would make oil prices rise to previously unfathomable heights as oil infrastructure turned off and remained off for months, perhaps years, and set in motion one of the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophes as the desalination necessary for tens of millions of people is shut down. It would also not be a symmetrical problem, as Iran does not rely on desalination for its water supply.
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
If you have evidence of Zionist 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 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.
Alright newscomm, the rule is no AI slop. Are we going to make an exception for based Iranian AI slop? For example this or those Iranian lego videos? It's all AI slop to me, but I'd like to hear from the crowd.
I think AI slop made by states is notable and newsworthy. Everything else is slop even when it's slop saying something we agree with.
I agree that state posted slop (even the American stuff) is fair to share. It's the AI slop summaries and articles that become noise.
If it's from official channels, even if it's slop, it's showing a sentiment.
No AI slop please.
If people want to post Iranian AI slop - they can post it in c/slop.
No lies.
If it's just a propaganda poster that they had AI create that's fine.
The problem is when it's an AI fake video of an American ship on fire or planes being shot down or anything that falsely leads us and anyone who reads it to be LESS informed and to believe untruths even if they are ones we agree with.
I think false statements by governments are fine to report as long as they are labelled as such. Some commenters here have been reporting Trump's various false statements, for example. It can be informative to note which lies officials feel compelled to tell.
Video is different. People assume it's true because it's moving pictures and it gets spread around and is harder to fact check or search up than text.
Unless it's clearly faked like cheap animation of flames over the white house type anti-American video there's a real danger even if you put "WARNING AI FAKE, NOT TRUE" in text above it of people here re-spreading it around as true within a day or a week. The same risk doesn't exist to Trump's statements which are treated far more skeptically even if done in video form.
At the very least I think anyone who does that without very clearly indicating next to the link or embed (not buried in paragraphs of text) in a bold disclaimer that it's an AI fake should have their post removed without mercy unless they almost immediately edit it to fix it.
Obviously Lego videos and such are on the surface not true life depictions of any sort so fine to spread.
Hmm, maybe if it's spoiler-tagged with that warning, so you have to literally click on that text to access the media?
if i understand them correctly, it would need a noticeable large watermark on the video or image itself
Iran can have a little AI slop, as a treat
The significance of these Iranian videos is that they were made to support Iran's military operations responding to US imperialist and Zionist aggression. And some of these videos had already received a lot of views or interest elsewhere on the Internet. That is why I posted links to them in this news thread. I feel they are relevant to our discussions regarding this conflict. But, I definitely agree in principle that we do not want one billion AI generated videos posted here...
So should we then also allow the ai slop videos the US state department produces? There isn't any significance to them beyond being Iranians dunking on the US. If there is anything in that matters it's what they critique which you could just mention by writing "new Iranian AI slop video out: They say the US is full of pedos"
if it’s an official communication from any of the involved governments i don’t see why not
Yeah, I wanted to say "NO SLOP IN MY SLOP-FREE COMM," but you have a very reasonable point. Official government communication is official government communication...
The future finds new ways to just kinda suck everyday
Are these official?
No AI slop please. Even if it's "official" government use of AI (does that mean all the groyper shit that the White House churns out is fair to post? gag)
Seconding this.
If it's from official government bodies, it should be fair game. One of the newer Lego AI slop featured Russian and Chinese Lego hackers helping Lego IRGC. This has obvious implications if the Lego AI slop was actually published by official Iranian state media because someone had to prompt that and someone had to approve it.
Reports referencing it are fine but reposts make me want to go butlerian.
The AI lego rap belonged in c/memes or c/chapotraphouse or similar, sincerely, anti slop action
edit: wait i posted the effin' cat video like two days ago 😅
I think there's a difference between "I told AI to hallucinate a thing lol" and official government use of AI. Like an exception would obviously be made if the US started posting AI propaganda that was newsworthy. This is no different
Iranian AI lego videos aren't really "news,' so keep the ban.
how's this for an argument: that Iran also started making AI videos just hasn't been news for weeks now. it was probably ok to post about it way back when but we don't have to create a new comment thread about every single video that is made
Let the people post news adjacent things. The community needs to have some positivity and laughter every once in a while.
Maybe coverage about the products of AI is the "news", and the AI itself is a secondary, supporting item.
I'm fine either way. But I love my resistance slop. I go hog wild for that.
"Agitslop" is the term the comrades are using
No slop