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.

An image of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, c. February, where Iranian strikes have caused substantial damage and several US soldier deaths and casualties.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

After an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.

For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran’s control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is “attempting”, because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.

Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn’t firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they’re using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it’s unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying “Alright, let’s get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls–” and Iran just… hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It’s not a tenable position to hold, and Iran’s capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.

So, what is Iran’s strategy? It’s what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed “debasification”. If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US’s military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US’s strategy, Iran’s is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.


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:

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.


  • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    FT Exclusive: The Trump administration has collected more than $13bn in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales this year, according to FT calculations, but has said almost nothing about what has happened to the money. ft.trib.al/1K9B0QT

    :fell-for-50-million-dollar award:

    • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      Is there a non pay walled source besides taking the financial times’ calculations as facts? If anyone here is trusting FT’s reporting as facts then the fell for it award would certainly be appropriate for those who do

      Either way, no one here has argued that Venezuela isn’t under siege or being strong armed into concessions.

      • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        all napkin math: they exported around 200 mb of oil in half a year, at 80 dollars a barrel roughly, so the numbers are broadly correct, maybe on the high side, because their price of extraction was around 30. usa obviously disbursed some of the money or they wouldn’t be shippingoil, but somehow inflation and currency exchange rate fall have all maintained themselves (3x and 3x fall since january),

      • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        no worries, when they agree to saddle the country with debt, put usa military bases in, and mr. viceroy allows “democratic transition”, nothing will be fundamentally changeable by that point

        Serious situation going on in Falcón state. Local campesino sources tell us of eviction efforts in four separate estates, w/ security forces charging against hundreds of families, destroying crops, and burning houses. We’re gathering info for a report

        https://nitter.net/venanalysis/status/2078720212937916583

        there is also this shit, but there haven’t been an update yet (the image provided is very naive, if genuine, fucks sake)

        • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/venezuela-campesinos-denounce-landowner-attacks-demand-state-support/

          Article on their website on the 22nd. Not much better, but its a private landowner who bribed security forces in the area. Would be good if the government stepped in and put an end to this shit, but I would wait a few more days for now updates.

          I want to be more positive, but I get where you’re coming from too. Its not very encouraging.

          • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            would be nice if popular defense forces (or whatever the militia is called, unless they are the “security forces in the area”) threatened to step in tbh, leaving the government with no choice, but i’m just dooming more and more

              • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 day ago

                i dunno with eartquake, they can basically do everything, entity normalization, southcom offices, food imports by cargill, concessions out of a wazoo, losing court case for guyana (which i’m surprised they still going for)

                • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  “If you criticize the US takeover of Venezuela, that means you believe the US propaganda about how they are taking over Venezuela, which means you are actually repeating the US State Department narratives and harming the revolution”

                  The narrative control of the west is always quite impressive. They got a bunch of BLM protesters to kneel as a sign of “protest” against a cop who killed a guy with his knee, the sickos were probably cracking up about that one. They can invert any scenario, somehow it becomes chauvinist and imperialist to criticize and attack imperialism. Somehow if you don’t defend IMF takeover you are now a western leftist purity tester lmao

                  • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    i mean i see their point (by that point they didn’t have lots of cards to play, re military), but also that’s the point of gunboat diplomacy innit.

                    if they were to fold on full debt, they basically fucked themselves over much more (if its 170 billion, 70 billion might be plausible to be around nill effect) than just stopping exporting oil flat out. (so i’m going from 70/30 inside job/forced concession in the january (solely based on military perfomance) to 99/1 when they get debt deal)