Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.


Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.

Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).

Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.

I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.


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.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel’s 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.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

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.


      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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        I totally get this and agree with it at several levels, but I think the heart of the argument/contradiction here on this website about this issue of basically “trusting Iran/Russia/China/etc to do what’s right in their anti-imperialist strategy” could essentially be the following:

        1. We (broadly) are Marxists who use historical materialism to analyze the world’s past, present, and future, and believe this to be the best ideology yet conceived to do this task and for helping create revolutions by supporting the proletariat of countries, in the service of dismantling imperialism and creating world socialism and eventually, communism.

        2. Iran and Russia are not ran by Marxists. They are governed by an eclectic mixture of people that agree and disagree on many issues but can be broadly defined as ideologically liberal and capitalist, with socially conservative aspects.

        3. By asserting that we put critical support (or maybe even something approaching full support, for the Zposterist faction among us) behind the decision-making of these countries, if the decisions they make are incompatible with what a Marxist-Leninist (or MLM etc) interpretation of the world would suggest is instead the best option, what does that imply?

        Now, I think the answer to this is, 95% of the time, pretty straightforward - many of us are only regurgitating what we see online and in the media and don’t have anything even close to all the information. And we have no choice but to do this, because none of us are getting that information from Israel or Iran or Russia or Ukraine. So we can’t actually form a full analysis of the situation, so it will be very probably be inferior “advice” (of course, Iran and Russia and China aren’t listening to any of us). We are, to put it bluntly, dipshit leftists with only a little more credibility than the stereotypical Western Leftists because we think NATO is bad.

        But there’s the 5% of cases, and Syria right now I think is in that 5%, where we both know for sure that what the anti-imperialist leader/government did, didn’t work. And there’s Marxist explanations for why that failure occurred and how it could have been hypothetically prevented. And the question is: is [current war] like Syria in this sense, where the anti-imperialist camp genuinely is fucking up and we’ll be doing post-mortems on Iran or Russia or China like we are currently doing with Syria? And there will be people who assert that it is, and there will be people who assert that it isn’t.

        the solution to this is to, uh, invent two-way time travel and then report back on what prolewiki says, as that’ll be the replacement of wikipedia under world socialism once the US is dead and buried

        • LoveYourself [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          2 days ago

          By asserting that we put critical support (or maybe even something approaching full support, for the Zposterist faction among us) behind the decision-making of these countries, if the decisions they make are incompatible with what a Marxist-Leninist (or MLM etc) interpretation of the world would suggest is instead the best option, what does that imply?

          Full support…critical support… who cares??? Its stupid.

          The revolutionary vanguard in the global class war against zionism and US imperialism is here in front of the world fighting. Do we not see it???

          The question is will we, the people of earth who want a better world free of US zionazi tyranny, follow their lead or not.

          • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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            2 days ago

            The revolutionary vanguard in the global class war against zionism and US imperialism is here in front of the world fighting. Do we not see it???

            The question is will we, the people of earth who want a better world free of US zionazi tyranny, follow their lead or not.

            Yeah, no worries, I agree with this. I’m not about to start posting about how Iran sucks or anything. There’s just been a frustrating set of events over the past couple years (delaying True Promise 2 just for Israel to use that time to murder Nasrallah was particularly embarrassing for them) and it’s difficult to determine when to be like “If there are 1,000,000 fans of Iran, I’m one of them. If there are 100 fans of Iran, I’m one of them. If there is 1 fan of Iran, I’m him. If there are 0 fans of Iran, I am dead” and when to be like “yeah, maybe don’t make a deal to delay your response attack to Haniyeh being murdered because you think the US/Israel is being nice to you suddenly.”

            • LoveYourself [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              Yeah no worries I agree with this

              If we believe it then we should act like it.

              Stop getting our politics and analysis from influencers on twitter and clout chasers like Hasanbi and nazi news outlets like al Jazeera. The revolutionary leadership are giving clear speeches and clear directions and clear guidance. They have written books and recorded speeches. Alhamdulillah we can even watch many of them subtitled translated into English!! If we need something more Western-focused, Samidoun and Masar Badil are right there and have tons of content and ways to engage.

              The Leader wrote an excellent book on the struggle/warfare of truth telling also known as Jihad al Tabiin. Its on Libgen you can even read it! “The Neglected Obligation” by Ali Khamenei.

              Edit for Anna’s Archive link. https://annas-archive.org/md5/58befaae3933a3f02f4fcada6ed7d410

        • Boise_Idaho [null/void, any]@hexbear.net
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          Syria just isn’t remotely comparable to Iran (or Russia or China). And even for the case of Syria, I’ve read hearsay that Russia and Iran more or less left Syria out to dry because Syria’s state apparatus was too compromised with disloyal generals no longer obeying Assad. If this were true, it’s not a particular big blunder for them to cut their losses like that.

          But is this hearsay actually true? How should I know? I don’t have an intelligence agency.

          • Chertstone [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            I mean our resident poster from the region did report people being glad that Assad was gone. And if that is not an indication of its failures than what else is? Besides for now there isnt an wide-scale retvrn to baathism uprising in syria. Which also should give one a clue.

            In the end the soviet union could not overcorrect the afghan socialist nor could russia overcorrect baathist syria.

        • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.net
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          We (broadly) are Marxists who use historical materialism to analyze the world’s past, present, and future

          not really lol, I’d be surprised if a majority of people on this website have even read the Manifesto

      • RomCom1989 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        I really don’t get why people on here act like they know better than whole ass states,I find that baffling

        Acting like a bunch of internet randos can formulate better analysis than entire state apparatuses is insanely arrogant to me

        • we did knew better , we had a hole Pizza around the Pentagon index thing going on… it was Complacent to not follow hexbears advise for the Iranian leadership - deadly complacent.

          one should follow the newsmega. Its can be very informativ.

            • I never said that , i said -

              Follow the Newsmega. Obviously there is wrong stuff in here … thats how important the newsmega is. Newsmega did wonder if Iran was going to be attacked tonight - Iranian Leadership didnt - It should have wondered as well if its gonna be attacked tonight… it should have followed the newsmega.

            • Boise_Idaho [null/void, any]@hexbear.net
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              After more three years, the news mega still haven’t learned that Putin’s speeches aren’t worth listening to. There’s plenty of things the news mega is wrong about lol

    • niph [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      I wish I could upvote this a thousand times. Western individualism has done a number on leftism unfortunately. It lends to both armchair-generalism and isolationist doomerism, including among Hexbears

      • MizuTama [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        I like to joke about my inner Third-Worldist but think a large contingent of Western leftists has theirs constantly buck for control and frankly win. I can understand some curiosity in a strategic sense but it mostly comes off as waiting for Superman to save the day and wondering why he’s late

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      I agree with this to an extent but I also think in another direction that the Russian doomers have affected the Ukraine war in a positive way by pushing their side into improving when criticising the huge mistakes Russia made. Those were people with large platforms and military experience though.