Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don’t have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn’t to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he’s gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like “fuel” and “energy” so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what’s going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn’t do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may “only” last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
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.
It’s becoming clear that, on this new era, there is no way for the West to win a war, but also it is clear they can easily win any peace, at least on the short term.
Iran should not falter and attack again.
we must neither underestimate west’s power nor overestimate it. venezuela was a victory for them. and then they started a war that resulted in their defeat because they were drunk on victory. there are still plenty of small nations for them to quickly seize victories around the globe
Even that was more of a symbolic “victory” than anything. PSUV still is in power in Venezuela, nothing really changed, Venezuela is still under heavy sanctions, a lot of it felt more like Trump (or should I say, Rubio) didn’t want Venezuela to send oil to Cuba rather than anything else. Now Russia is sending oil to Cuba anyway. They pushed Venezuela out of the “sphere of influence” of China to the sphere of Brazil and Colombia.
Stealing all of the oil is not symbolic lmao. Venezuela no longer controls their own oil funds, the US does and releases it to them as they see fit. That’s not “symbolic” that’s complete capture of the plurality of the Venezuelan economy. Oil goes to Israel and the USA now, not to Cuba and China. Money goes to whoever the West says it does as they are directly disbursing the money via their fund in Qatar. They are writing the checks. Programs the West doesn’t like will have to get axed as the west now has total leverage. Why does it matter who is in leadership if they hand over their natural resources, and thereby leverage over their entire apparatus and revolution, to the imperialists? What color their shirt is doesn’t change the action they are doing. If anything, having a socialist party doing the handover and facilitating the ongoing extortion is extremely damaging to any credibility or legitimacy and widens the gap between the proletariat and the party. This is such a contradiction it threatens to undo everything. It is an existential contradiction that will come to a head, it can only end in capitulation and mass privatization and transition into a “normal” bourgeois dictatorship in the imperialist sphere, or some kind of schism in the party or internal civil war or uprising of the proletariat who are being directly stolen from.
Venezuela could be the perfect example of winning a peace not a war. If the US had invaded with ground forces on Venezuela it would’ve been the Latinoamerican Vietnam. But they took out Maduro and have been getting concessions from Delcy ever since.
This is exactly the case. Every recent conflict has been a step forward for the global anti-imperialist forces and every ceasefire has been a collapse and defeat. If you are wondering why we “doom” about ceasefires it’s because the last 10 we have seen have been one-sides surrender documents