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
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.
I’ve been out camping in the desert, talking to strangers, and touching grass around the house for the past week. Did anything interesting happen?
Ok. Pretty much the same.
to be honest my sense of time in this conflict is getting all fucked up
aside from Ansarallah now directly getting involved (no Red Sea blockade yet, I think? that might be predicated on the US striking power stations and/or attempting boots on the ground) and Iran destroying an AWACS plane, nothing especially interesting has occurred in the last week or so relative to the baseline level of this war where decades are happening in weeks
I think everybody, including western politicians and investors, are now aware that Trump is just outright fabricating news about negotiations occurring, and he’s also been saying that Iran is letting through oil tankers to try and placate the US (in reality, any ships passing through the Strait are being let through because the country of origin of the ship has accepted Iran’s conditions, namely to pass through the Larak Passage, and pay for the oil in yuan). both of these statements are to try and drive oil prices/futures lower but any reduction is wiped out mere minutes later, unlike a few weeks before where these statements could keep prices down for a couple days
as far as I can tell, there’s literally no negotiations happening at all, or even any communication between US and Iranian officials whatsoever. the extent of political communication between Iran and the US has been Iran stating their demands by giving them to other countries and those countries passing that on to the US. all talk about how Trump is “making progress in negotiations” is some combination of a) just outright lying, b) Trump misinterpreting Gulf countries making statements as Iran making those statements, and c) Trump misinterpreting actions completely unrelated to US demands (i.e. he believes, or claims to believe, that Iran has let through some oil tankers as tribute or a sign of good will to doing negotiations).
a popular theory now is that the US is trying to sow confusion inside Iran about what the hell he’s talking about so that high-up officials try and communicate electronically with each other to be like “hey, do you know what the fuck he’s talking about? just confirming that none of us are talking to the US, right?” and then those signals can be tracked and those officials assassinated; I’ve seen reports that important people inside Iran have basically been electronically airgapping themselves and only communicating through physical notes transported through on-the-ground messengers so as to counter this strategy. Khamenei himself seems to be completely electronically isolated and his location unknown to even other high-up Iranian officials, which I think is a good strategy and indicates that he has great pragmatism and survival instincts. I do hope he’s holed up 500m deep under a mountain in a missile city in eastern Iran, and not in some Tehran apartment complex or hospital.
One of the rumors I have seen about the source of Trump’s inchoate messaging about the war is that he will only sit for at most two minutes of briefing per day. The remainder of his understanding comes from news viewing and such, which is obviously fed considerably from speculation based on any of his public statements. Some sort of nonsense ouroboros.
Cheetouroboros
Paul Von Ripper totally vindicated 24 years after Millennial Challenge 2002
Day 30
What’s an AWACS plane? Also, is there any news on western casualties from Iranian strikes on ships, bases and hotels/other facilities being used by western militaries? A week ago everyone was claiming virtually no casualties. It seems gard to believe unless they had already abandoned everything and Iran just destroyed the physical infrastructure to make sure the western militaries never come back.
airborne early warning and control, or flying radar
spoiler
No comment on the second part, last I saw reports were 300 injured 13 dead or something like that.
An AWACS sounds like something that would fly at a very high altitude and is protected by sdvanced technology more than pilot skill. Sounds impressive to shoot one down.
I think they hit it while it was on the ground at prince sultan airbase, still very impressive though
(Side note: is ‘prince sultan’ weird to anyone else? It’s like saying ‘prince king airbase’ I had to double check that that is what it’s called)
I think someone else posted the pic in the thread, but if that is the case you can easily see it is the radar apparatus specifically that was targeted in the strike which I found cool.
Lots of bombing and counter-bombing, but the status quo mainly remains.
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