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
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.
Huge power outage in Spain, Portugal, some parts of France at least. A while ago.
Edit: No cell data. Using my dad’s Internet hot-spot which has satellite Internet
Edit 2: My father says some airplane crashed into a very high voltage line
Edit 3: Some cell data, but very slow, probably under a lot of pressure
Edit 4: airplane story might be fake, but it’s confirmed a very high voltage cable got cut somehow
Also radio is so back lol
Total blackout in Portugal, Spain and some parts of France!!!
Guees who’s not working 2day
There is going to be a protest levied against the Egyptian government at their embassy in Pretoria (28 April, 13:30 SAST), organized by various activists, media outlets and humanitarian groups in South Africa. Bus services have also been provided to take protesters from throughout Soweto and Johannesburg to Pretoria. The nature of the protests is to demand the Egyptian military to forcibly reopen the Rafah Crossing to reallow the delivery of aid which has been left to rot for the past 2 months and allow medical refugees to escape the Strip, alongside others who so may decide to.
Some of Egypt’s crimes that were highlighted include the crackdown and arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters following the Western-backed coup that overthrew the democratic election of Mohamed Morsi, with the Sisi regime as the incumbent successor, trafficking by often demanding refugees from Gaza pay as much as R100k ZAR (or R50k ZAR for children) for each to be allowed entry to Egypt (There is an instance of even a Palestinian-South African citizen having their passport seized and being imprisoned without charge for over 1.5 years - Egypt won’t allow them to return to South Africa because of the lack of passport that they disposed of and don’t consider a South African ID valid enough to fly back into Johannesburg), Egypt and ISISrael have also destroyed many of the cross-border tunnels used to smuggle in good, most importantly food. This also at a time when WFP and other aid groups have alarmed that there is literally no food left in their stocks and aid workers continue to be targeted in bombings. Organizations such as Africa Muslims Agency and Gift of the Givers may even have to face a bitter reality that none of their workers will be able to return to South Africa.
Rafah as a city also no longer exists. The former city has been annihilated in totality, all of it’s former 700,000 residents have been ethnically cleansed and all 70km2 of it is under a kill-on-sight order. The entire Gaza Strip has been squeezed down to 100km2, with plans for squeeze down the area further to convert al-Mawasi into an actual concentration camp.
Infinite death to ameriKKKa and death to piSSrael
The two other votes were Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley.
Big news in the announcement of the latest US Military budget plans, in a GOP proposal. It seems that after being on the receiving end of Iranian designed ballistic missiles, and with the rise of ballistic missile proliferation in Russia, China, India, North Korea, Israel, and even Pakistan, and with the death of the INF treaty that previously banned the development of these weapons for the USA and Russia, the US wants advanced Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle (MaRV) equipped ballistic missiles, including Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) and their area denial capabilities, for themselves. The US Army alone wants to spend over 800 million dollars (there are more expenses not in the screenshot) on the development and production of modern ballistic missile systems. This is a historic moment, and admission that these weapons are valuable battlefield assets (which I have been saying for years now), despite the distorted information from the cruise missile lobby. This cruise missile lobby in the US is being reigned in for the first time in over three decades (Pershing-II MaRV equipped ballistic missile was retired in 1991). ASBMs have acted as a very effective area denial weapon for Ansarallah/the Houthis in Yemen against US Navy warships and aircraft carriers, even without landing a single hit. The carriers don’t dare get within ASBM range.
If anyone wants an example of some of the outlandish lies told by the cruise missile lobby in the USA over the past four plus decades, here’s an excerpt from the book “Lighting Bolts - First MaRV”:
excerpt, click here to expand
Our mid-January 1978 meeting with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was less helpful than Mike, Jack or I had hoped. Two subjects were on the agenda: (1) in-flight survivability of Pershing-II versus Tomahawk (GLCM) and (2) distribution of important targets in Warsaw Pact nations. The meeting began with a blunt declaration by a DIA senior analyst, who claimed, "Warsaw Pact radar systems would never see Tomahawk cruise missiles."He declared the radar cross section of the cruise missile, as seen from the forward hemisphere, was under 0.1 square meter (roughly one square foot), similar to the size of a “sparrow.” With no measured data but only analytic estimates, we contended the cross-section of Tomahawk was closer to a few square feet nose on, increased near the beam to over 10 square meters (i.e. about 100 square feet) and reduced somewhat through the rear hemisphere. The wings and tail surfaces would have a large radar cross section, particularly if the missile flexed or vibrated during flight. By contrast, experience with observable signatures of reentry vehicles suggested Pershing-II would have an order of magnitude smaller radar crosssection throughout its reentry trajectory.
This technical disagreement became heated and persisted through the meeting and until the end of the evaluation. DIA personnel insisted Soviet radars would never detect Tomahawk (i.e., even with multiple cross-range radars deployed). They claimed visual and thermal observable signatures would be even less likely to be seen because the cruise missile flew very low (<100-foot altitude) and high velocity (-550 mph).’ Upon return to San Diego, I enlisted Terry G. Smolin to help review the British experience in detecting and defending against 2,300 German V-1 buzz-bomb cruise missiles fired against London between 13 June 1944 and March 1945. British success in finding and intercepting the 25-foot long, 400 mph, V-1s was low in June 1944 but within five weeks of experiencing the threat, they redeployed antiaircraft artillery (AAA), added ground observers, developed aircraft interceptor search-and-attack tactics to engage the missiles. By the end of July 1944, they intercepted 60 percent of the V-is, and by March 1945, over 80 percent of the missiles were prevented from reaching targets.’ We concluded that Tomahawk would eventually be detectable and could be destroyed by advanced defensive systems. However, we noted that Tomahawk demanded a different type of defense than was needed to stop Pershing-II MARV.
Side note, this tracks with reported interception rates in Ukraine. Anywhere from 25-66% for cruise missiles, but only 4% for ballistic missiles. Even though war has changed in many ways since WW2, in some ways it’s still very similar.
As for why the focus worldwide is on MaRV capable ballistic missile systems and not hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), with HGV programmes being cancelled or making up only a small amount of a missile force compared to MaRVs for say China, here’s some required reading: Hypersonic weapons are mediocre. It’s time to stop wasting money on them..
Main problem HGVs have is that their launch is the exact same of that as ballistic missile, a rocket booster straight up into the sky, easily detectable by early warning satellites. However, because HGVs spend a lot more time gliding in the atmosphere with large amounts of drag, they take longer to reach their targets than ballistic missiles, which spend the majority of their flight exoatmospheric. Another problem is that this drag effectively limits HGV maneuverability, even a perfectly performed turn can result in an HGV losing 10% of its energy, on a single turn! Here are some slides from a UK MoD analysis of HGVs, showing just how limited the turn capabilities are. And these calculations are based on an impact velocity of Mach 2, not even close to hypersonic (Mach 5). If the constraint was charged from Mach 2 to Mach 5, the turn/divert capability would be much less! Remember, HGVs have no propulsion system once seperated from the rocket booster, they’re gliders.
Expect future hypersonic weapons development to be focused hypersonic cruise missiles well above Mach 5 like the Russian Zircon (there’s no point in creating a hypersonic cruise missile that’s barely hypersonic, see the US Navy cancellation of the HALO missile), and hypersonic boost vehicles (attaching some sort of rocket motor to the HGV) like Iran’s Fattah-2 concept, to negate the energy loss from pure gliding. I also expect we’ll see some copies of Iran’s Fattah-1 MaRV equipped ballistic missile. The Fattah-1 MaRV was the first MaRV to put a thrust vector control sustainer rocket motor on the MaRV itself, allowing for trajectory changes or corrections while exoatmospheric, and for improved glide phase performance with an additional source of energy.
The fact of the matter is that MaRV equipped ballistic missiles can outperform HGVs in many scenarios (which is why I go on about MaRVs being “game changing” weapons all the time), and even if a MaRV equipped ballistic missile is expensive, HGVs are far more expensive still.
US airstrikes on Yemen continue for the 44th night in a row.
The following governorates have been hit by airstrikes so far:
Sana’a
- 3 houses hit in Bani Al-Harith District.
Amran
- 3 airstrikes on al-Jabal al-Aswad (Monte Negro/Black Mountain). This mountain has been hit a lot over the past six weeks.
- Two airstrikes on Sufyan district.
Warning for potential graphic imagery during ongoing airstrikes:
Opposition sources also report multiple rounds of airstrikes in Saada and Ta’izz Governorates, but this cannot be verified.
okay so it turns out that after all …
🇰🇵 🤝 🇷🇺 DPRK officially announces sending troops to Russia in accordance with strategic partnership agreement — KCNA
On the occasion of the liberation of Kursk, Comrade Kim Jong Un specially stressed the following:
"They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honour of the motherland.
In praise of the heroism and bravery of the proud sons of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a monument to the battle feats will be soon erected in our capital city and flowers of praying for immortality given by the motherland and the people will be placed before the tombstones of the fallen soldiers.
The fighting spirit and heroism of the soldiers who demonstrated the great name of the strong and the glory of the victors will shine long in the high platform of respect and honor generation after generation.
The motherland should hand down forever the soul of them who fought to defend the great honor and take important state measures to specially and preferentially treat and take care of the families of the brave soldiers who participated in the war."
Hundreds of officers belonging to the UAE-backed ‘Yemeni National Resistance’ have defected to Ansarallah (the Houthis), and gathered in the capital Sanaa for briefing. These officers defected from the UAE-backed ‘Yemeni National Resistance’, their territory is on Yemen’s Western Coast
They are led by General Tareq Saleh, nephew of the late President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former Houthi ally that defected to the side of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2017. It seems almost all of their high command have defected.
- Telegram
Israel bombs Lebanon’s capital Beirut
Israeli forces have carried out an airstrike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement with the country’s resistance movement, Hezbollah.
Julian Assange and His Family Attend Pope Francis’ Funeral - Telegram
Article
‘We’ve all come to Rome to express our family’s gratitude for the Pope’s support during Julian’s persecution,” Stella Assange said. On Saturday, Australian journalist Julian Assange went to St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican to pay tribute to Pope Francis.
On social media, his wife Stella posted a photo of the WikiLeaks founder and their two children on Via della Conciliazione, with the Basilica in the background.
“Now Julian is free, we have all come to Rome to express our family’s gratitude for the Pope’s support during Julian’s persecution,” she said.
“Our children and I had the honor of meeting Pope Francis in June 2023 to discuss how to free Julian from Belmarsh prison. Francis wrote to Julian in prison and even proposed to grant him asylum at the Vatican,” Stella added.
Could you imagine Julian living with Pope Francis in the Vatican lol
Chief of General Staff Gerasimov through TASS has confirmed the presence of DPRK fighters in some capacity:
Gerasimov also commended the role of North Korean fighters in the liberation of the Kursk Region.
“I want specially to note the participation of servicemen of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in liberating border areas of the Kursk Region who in accordance with the Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between our countries rendered considerable assistance in crushing the Ukrainian army’s combat group that had launched an incursion,” Gerasimov said.
As Russia’s military chief pointed out, “soldiers and officers of the Korean People’s Army were accomplishing combat objectives shoulder to shoulder with Russian servicemen and in the process of repelling the Ukrainian incursion showed high professionalism and displayed endurance, courage and heroism in combat.”
Vancouver police say several people have been killed and multiple others injured after a vehicle drove into a crowd at a street festival Saturday evening.
The incident happened shortly after 8 p.m. near East 41st Avenue and Fraser Street, where the Lapu Lapu Day Block Party was taking place.
Police said the driver is in custody.
Just happened hours ago, I’m not really plugged into socials so I’m not sure what’s known or fake
Patrick Lancaster has his
cw blurred deadThe Swiss under-23 fencing team turns its back on the Israeli team during the medal ceremony of the European Fencing Championship in protest against genocide.
- Telegram
