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.

Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.

Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.

summary

The Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran’s demands.

For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran’s position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.

The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump’s announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I’m definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah’s attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.

As I’ve been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here’s a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.

  • Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.

  • Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).

  • Situation in the Sahel: “Mysterious” third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.

  • Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.

I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi’s recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.

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:

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.

  • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    69·
    21 hours ago

    Exclusive: US military personnel are being targeted using location data, Pentagon letter shows

    US Central Command says it was warned that adversaries used location data to target troops
Lawmakers urge Pentagon to act, citing adtech industry as national security threat
Calls for disabling ad IDs, restricting location sharing, and moving away from Chrome on devices

    WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - U.S. forces deployed to ​war zones have been targeted using commercially available location data, according to reports fielded by military officials, an illustration of how ‌the global surveillance economy is shaping the battlefield.

    In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, opens new tab, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater." The message, sent on April 14, offered no further specifics, but Centcom’s area of responsibility includes the Gulf, ​where U.S. forces are facing off against the Iranian military over the Strait of Hormuz.

    The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. Sign up here. The disclosure was the first official confirmation that U.S. forces ​had been targeted in an active war zone, Wyden and a bipartisan group of legislators said in a letter sent on ⁠Thursday, opens new tab to the Pentagon.

    “Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries ​to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned. Wyden said in a statement that it was ​time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

    The Pentagon said in an email it would respond directly to the lawmakers but did not elaborate. The lawmakers said in their letter that their efforts to obtain more information from military officials about the reported targeting had been unsuccessful.

    LOCATION DATA TRADE FUELS PRIVACY CONCERNS

    Location data is widely used in digital ​advertising, which is a key source of revenue for many tech companies. Such data is typically collected from smartphones or other devices by apps or ​service providers before being sold to data brokers who collate and resell the data, sometimes via complex networks of intermediaries. Although the threat to privacy inherent in selling the details of ‌people’s day-to-day ⁠movements on the open market has long been a matter of public discussion, its potential as a national security risk has recently drawn concern as well.

    As far back as 2016, one U.S. defense contractor was able to leverage commercially available location data to track special operations forces from their bases in the United States to a sensitive staging post in Syria, according to an account first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, opens new tab.

    More recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets ​drew on billions of coordinates collected by ​a data broker to expose the granular ⁠comings and goings, opens new tab of people stationed at or around 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.

    Two groups that represent digital advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not return emails seeking comment. The letter from ​U.S. lawmakers to the Pentagon said that, given what military officials know about the trade in location data, ​they should have acted ⁠faster to protect their personnel, for example by disabling the unique advertising ID attached to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in the field, and steering staff away from Google’s Chrome web browser toward more privacy-focused alternatives.

    One of the letter’s cosigners was U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican who was formerly ⁠a U.S. Army ​Special Forces officer. Harrigan said that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to ​collect and share user data” and that every day they remain on government-issued devices “is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops.”

    In a statement, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google said that ​Chrome had “industry leading security.” The company added that it had “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers, opens new tab.”

    Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis