Image is sourced from this People’s Dispatch article, depicting communists attending the 2023 funeral of Communist Party President Guillermo Teillier, who was tortured for years under Pinochet’s regime and helped rebuild the Communist Party while under a fascist dictatorship.
We had the Six Day War in 1967, we had the Nineteen Day War (Yom Kippur) in 1973, and now we’ve had the Twelve Day War. I wonder how many more very short wars will plague the region until Palestine is freed?
However, moving on from Western Asia from a little while, we have some interesting news from Chile - the former labor minister and communist, Jeannette Jara, has won the primary election for the left-wing bloc in a landslide (~60% of the vote), as the current President, Gabriel Boric, is term-limited. Her achievements include a minimum wage increase and a reduction of the work week to 40 hours.
In November, Jara will face down the contenders from other parties, including José Antonio Kast, who is analogous to Brazil’s Bolsonaro. Unfortunately, Jara is now the lead figure of a party that has been taking quite a few Ls under Boric’s leadership. Ostensibly a Democratic Socialist, he ruled as - you guessed it - a neoliberal, bending the knee to the US and EU. He not only failed to overthrow the Pinochet-era constitution, he actually allowed the right-wing to turn the proposed new constitution into something worse, and had to settle for campaigning against the new one and keeping the old one. And he had very little solidarity with other left-leaning leaders on the continent, like Maduro, Lula, Petro, or Castillo.
With this in mind, I cannot help but look at Argentina’s very recent history and feel a little dread - but if anybody can save Chile at this point, it can only be a communist.
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The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
The Ukrainian Air Force have made a come back to around where they were a year ago or so, with Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile attacks and escort flights with HARM anti radiation missiles, and the occasional Su-35 loss for Russia (8 so far in the war). Not an increase in capability, but regaining lost capabilities. The F-16s help by adding aircraft to make up for the attrition over the three years of war. Ukraine have lost 4 F-16s so far, one to friendly fire, 1 to an S-400, and 2 while shooting down cruise missiles and drones. F-16s also give Ukraine access to “Fox three” active homing air to air missiles again in the AIM-120, Ukraine would have long expended any stocks of Soviet era or Russian made fox threes (R-77), if they even had any to begin with, most sources say Ukraine never operated these. Otherwise Ukraine would be relying on Soviet era stocks or domestic production of R-27 fox ones for long range air combat, semi active homing air to air missiles.
Russia is very reliant on ground based radars and air defence systems, with quite limited AWACS capacity for air based sensors. This allows Ukrainian aircraft to carry out strikes, either with glide bombs like the GBU-39 SDB, or rocket assisted ASSM Hammer bombs, by flying very low to avoid detection by ground based sensors (nap of the earth flying), and using a combination of passive and active suppression tactics on these ground based systems (EW pods from F-16s and HARM anti radiation missiles from MiG 29s or Su-27s). In the air, Russia usually flies combat air patrols (CAPs) consisting of Su-35s armed with R-37M very long range air to air missiles, R-77 long range air to air missiles, and Kh-31P anti radiation missiles. MiG-31s fly high altitude anti aircraft patrols armed with R-37Ms and R-77s. These aircraft have to act as “Mini AWACS” as well due to the lack of Russian AWACS. Very few Su-34 SEAD patrols, unfortunately not many Su-34s are configured for this, they’re mainly used as glide bomb trucks/carriers. So the Su-35s do a combined anti aircraft and SEAD patrol for the most part.
I fucking hate these weapon systems marketing lanyards. They are almost as bad as Congress when it comes to acronyms.
HARM is High-speed Anti Radiation Missile. THAAD is one of the few that actually make sense, Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (which is exactly what it does, it’s a perfect description). PATRIOT has to be the one that’s the most out there as a congress/Raytheon jumbled mess, Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target.
What is the range of the F-16s? I suppose they take off from Western Ukraine, and could potentially conduct a very short period bombing run before returning to base? Clearly they cannot do mid-air refueling on the Ukrainian airspace.
Ukraine’s F-16s can’t fit the conformal fuel tanks that later F-16 variants can, but they can fit external fuel tanks/drop tanks. The typical loadout pictured in Ukraine is 2x AIM-120, 2x AIM-9, 8x GBU-39 250lb SDBs, and 2x 2270 liter/600 gal external fuel tanks + either an AN/ALQ-131 ECM pod or a 1130liter/300 gal external fuel tank on the centerline. Enough fuel for the missions they fly in Ukraine, makes up for the small internal fuel capacity.