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.
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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.
Question for folks: do you think any sizable portion of Americans actually like or approve of Hegseth’s super aggro and macabre messaging style during this war? I’m sure there’s a small hard core of idiots who are like “fuck yeah” but overall as a message it seems so gross and unpleasant I have a hard time believing that avg joe Midwest trump voter really finds it appealing. He’s basically dancing on caskets on live tv every time with these way overturned bro speeches and it makes me cringe so hard I usually have to fast forward or switch to another video because it’s so over the top, evil and stupid.
I suppose I should be glad though—I always used to argue that I wish the American empire would at least just be honest about what it was doing, because then the rest of the populace would have to choose whether to adopt that into their identity or resist it somehow, and I guess this is sort of closer to being honest about the venal and bloody intent of the empire. Maybe it would be worse if Hegseth was doing dem things and claiming to be liberating women or fighting for democracy. Either way, it’s definitely jarring.
Yes. The average American is highly propagandized, overconfident, and has never actually experienced the domestic impact of a war in the US. American conservatives are functionally Nazis. “Anti-racist liberals” gloat about dead Russians in Ukraine by calling them “orcs”. The only reason more liberals don’t like Hegseth is because of the letter next to the president he serves and that he does Crusader rhetoric. These people still
to Hillary Clinton saying “We came, we saw, he died” with regards to the death of Gaddafi and turning Libya into a slaver state.
Look at how feral Americans got after 9/11, while Iran has experienced a dozen 9/11s in the last week alone.
This country is a nation of little Israels. Every European minority group that was oppressed or persecuted in Europe fled to the New World to enact their revenge fantasies upon the indigenous population under the tutelage of same European colonial powers that oppressed them in the first place.
Getting very close to fedposting here, and to be clear I’m not planning anything, but I think Americans might change their tune if the war hit closer to home. I feel like so much of this Macho BS is because the only people who really experience war first-hand are troops. No one around here is worried about their kids getting blown to bits by a missile strike!
I’m optimistic that gas prices and the ensuing inflation will do a lot of the work, actually.
AI bubble gonna pop too
Exactamundo. We’re so insulated from the kind of terror we inflict abroad that war is no more than a movie or spectacle on TV to most of us. It sickens me, this normalcy. Everyone going about their business as if we’re not fascists doing fascist shit.
I also think of John Brown a lot
But people thought the same after Sandy Hook and 👀👀👀
I don’t relate with “normal” Americans and think I’m better off for it. These people are not good.
Sandy Hook didn’t actually materally affect the hogs
Yeah all fair points.
I guess I was hoping that at some level, some plurality of Americans find this sort of thing disgusting, not the political class, but like regular people. But the messaging of hatred towards Muslims and Iran has been ongoing for decades, I’m constantly shocked at random racist shit people will say casually in convo about “how they’re all religious fanatics and terrorists that want to kill us.”
I mean at least, most Americans don’t want this war. But that could be for all sorts of reasons—someone could be violently antisemitic and not want to have “good white Americans” dying for the zionists, etc so harder to draw conclusions there.
It’ll probably be the usual ~30% who praise anything trump does. One “on the street” interviewee was like
Directly implying doubt as to her personal agreement with the war, but just fully trusting that Trump knows best anyway.
It is going to hammer the wedge between the establishment and the [neo-Nazi] anti-israel far-right.
I think caskets, high oil prices, and dragging this out for months will do a whole lot of damage, and the crusader attitude is going to play poorly on top of that for anyone who is not on the religious right.
Yeah the crusader thing seems so specific and small-niche, and pretty caustic generally speaking to most people.
I wonder if there will be a lot of caskets. I can imagine a few thousand MIA after this. The administration could just ghost military families.
and then use the MIAs they know are dead as a bloody shirt to be waved for political leverage for decades the way they did after the colonial slaughter in Vietnam
Problem is, those MIA aren’t actually IN Iran, which undermines the whole narrative. After the war, just go to Bahrain or wherever and look for them if they’re “missing”, not like Iran would/could stop anyone from doing that.
And if they instead say they actually are missing in Iran for some reason, that’s even worse for the narrative, especially since statistically 90% of these “MIA” wouldn’t be “operators” or whatever, they’d be base-dwelling forklift drivers or drone-software-update-installers or whatnot.
Yeah I wonder what the what the number will be, what the announced number will be, and what the number that will imprint on USians would be
It’s pretty hard to even speculate on any of those, since we don’t know how long this is going to go on
For decades the political class and the entire media apparatus has insinuated that Iran is a threat to the personal safety of Americans, motivated by an inscrutable religious mania, and has no legitimate reason to have any grievances or fear when it comes to the west because their is no contemporary history of the west trying to interact with Iran. There’s similar unified messaging around Iran’s exiled diaspora. These poor rich people never did anything wrong. They were kicked out, but there also wasn’t a mass movement against them.
Now, I think most Americans aren’t motivated by bloodlust, and see the above messaging as a good enough reason to leave Iran alone. I also think most Americans believe the insinuations are true, and Iran is just like every other official enemy and is ruled by cartoonish super villains. This is despite most Americans also being very skeptical of their own political class. Very few are willing to accept that all of the media they see might actually be complete bullshit. There’s an assumption that it must be at least partially true. Part of the culture of no coherent class consciousness is having great respect for private (billionaire owned) media.
Ultimately, I think the number of Americans actually motivated to harm Iran is very small, but the number of Americans who have a negative impression of Iran and its role in the world is massive. There will be no left/internationalist media that will overcome the messaging saturation of MSNBC, Fox, CNN, etc. There is nothing different about this war that makes the bloody intent of the empire more clear than what people could see from the wars of the past several decades.
Just ranting. I’ve got more productive things I should be doing.
No, good rant. Feels accurate to me, particularly “they don’t wish them harm, but they basically believe some of it must be true” part. I struggle with that sometimes trying to unravel things myself. Like even if US/WEST/Israel are actually the great satan, doesn’t mean that everyone else are shining saviors either. But in the balance if you’re looking for who’s the biggest threat to world peace, there’s simply no question who’s got that prize, and it sure ain’t Iran.
It’ll be the same thing they always do, CHUDs will be frothing at the mouth with glee at the bloodshed, liberals will be talking about how “The violences is bad
Iran needs to be stopped.” and then in 10 years time they’ll insist they were always “against the war” when they’ve been giving it nothing but unconditional support the entire time.
you don’t know/hate the hogs enough
Yeah feels like it mostly. Probably why I don’t love leaving the house that much anymore haha. The society feels like threat at this point.
The question might be a moot point on some level. The mass psychological effect of the United States just easily destroying Iran would have been positive for the incumbent party. The only people who would be tilted against Trump in that scenario would have been those that are anti-war by principle - those types are rare in most countries, most of all in the US. It takes a containment breach on the level of the Gaza Genocide to rub most Americans the wrong way when it comes to war abroad.
Posting the dragon ball z god of genocide while bombing Iran is one thing. Doing it while losing the war against Iran because you have no plan and your objectives are insane and you went to war because President Netanyahu ordered you to is just pathetic.
Hot take but I don’t think America has a particularly bloodthirsty or warmongering population, that’s despite the constant consent manufacturing and propaganda. A lot of people, especially in West, have extremely uncritical acceptance and reflexive defense about their countries’ military actions in a way, it comes to them so naturally that they are not even aware that they more or less just acquiesce whatever their respective governments tell them as reason, so they default to conforming to raison d’etat consensus as nation-state ideology. Meanwhile Americans appear more zealous because American population is more polarized and inherently more outspoken about these things. It’s one of those things that becomes more visible the more contentious it is, paradoxically appearing more accepted when there isn’t actually a consensus.
So the baseline lib response is “Iran deserves it BUT we should have followed procedure”
I disagree that Americans aren’t bloodthirsty war pigs. They’re just extremely steeped in it, to the extent that they can’t see it. Fish in water. The government commits all these heinous crimes and they don’t give a fuck. Just please, we beg you, next time fill out the proper forms.
I also think Hegseth is repulsive even by American standards, though he does serve to shift the Overton window. The American norm is to enjoy the spoils of wanton depravity but maybe, should the uncomfortable need for introspection arise, to feel bad about it. Yes it’s so sad, but let’s talk about happier topics.
Hegseth painting himself from head to tail in blood is off-putting not because of a disagreement on the MORALITY of war, but because it breaks the kayfabe.
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.
Ah I see. I think you might be biased based on who you interact with. Maybe the communities you frequent online skew a certain way. If you drive down the road here in even a suburb a solid 20% of cars have trump stickers, you see Trump flags regularly, and almost every house (no bullshit literally almost every house) is flying the US flag
This is not a normal place
I am not basing it on the online communities I interact with of course, as otherwise I’d have a much higher opinion of Americans. I am basing it on more regular Americans I met and interacted with, political developments, media, political polling and statistics in general. Americans also often have less idea about politics of rest of the world (which is natural, as US is center of global politics and people from outside of US know much more about US politics than other way around usually) and don’t realize some of the things they complain about as uniquely American just isn’t and that funnily might be another manifestation of American exceptionalism. This is not to say that there aren’t bloodthirsty warmongers in America, you are governed by such a cohort already and both parties are more or less pro-war. It is just rightwing populism, chauvinism and jingoism exists everywhere and I don’t see Americans as particularly above average in that regard and that again is despite the American government’s efforts.
One interesting point to be made is that as attitudes shift among the american population, you can see a hardening of the christian nationalist and older demographics. I remember watching this religious studies guy explaining that the many headlines about ‘young people going back to church’ were, unsurprisingly, lies. It’s just that the decline in the religious population isn’t as quick as it used to be - and those that remain religious are just becoming more insular and going to church that much more often, including the young people.
I suspect something similar is happening with that hardcore 20-25% of the american population that powers through a genocide and two wars with Iran and asks for more. It’s a hardening of the military families, religious wackos and others who are ideologically inclined towards war.
I think that’s a good approach. People receive opinions from around them, but many are not critically engaging with it all the time like all of us neurotics on here. If they come face to face with the evil more, as in the admin stands there and tells them that they’re bathing in blood, and they loooove it, I feel like that can cut through some of the distance and fog.
And I mean hell, I remember the bush years, and the non stop support our troops yellow ribbons shit, which in hindsight is so unpleasant given what we know, but was just sort of universally adopted amongst a large sector of the population post 9/11 without interrogating it. We’re the good guys, so of course we support our good guy troops doing good guy stuff to the bad guys. I think somewhat more people are confused or straight up disabused of America as the unequivocal good guys after the last two decades of decline and absurdity.
It some ways existence of US and Israel is a moral hazard, because it can too easily validate unexamined beliefs about the world and be an obstacle to introspection about one’s moral values because it is too easy to just take for granted the fact that US and Israel are so oppressive and destructive that it overshadows everything else. This is a pitfall I see many people fall into, especially in West, where they think their moral duty done simply because they are critical of US and Israel. It is easy to criticize others (especially when we are talking about geopolitics impact and humanitarian catastrophe that is US Israel) and difficult to self-criticize with lingering national liberal sentiments that are the foundational ideology of all nation-states but one should realize the magnitude of damage US and Israel does only makes it easier to think oneself principled without ever putting those principles to test.
My gut feeling is 1/8 of USians completely buy into his rhetoric. Plenty of people are genuine religious nutjobs or want him to openly call for genocide. They want him to say “woe to the vanquished” or quote Thucydides after bombing an Iranian orphanage. It’s when gasoline and groceries go up that will make them have second thoughts.