Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
Syria is essential geographically and politically for a stronger axis of resistance. It is good for the imperialists if the government falls (which is why they are behind all of this) and bad for Iran, Hezbollah, and anyone that works with them. Breaking up and preventing solidarity between states and organizations is the entire point of the US supporting Israel. Isolated states and organizations are much less powerful than those that can work together.
Given who would be toppling the government, it would be replaced by US stooges and people in the orbit of Daesh. All kinds of horrors would be possible within Syria under such a regime and you could add Syria to the group of states that will allow Israeli and US jets and missiles through but will try to shoot down those of Iran. You could also write off the various supply lines to Hezbollah et al that go through Syria and add a new front for any attacks on Lebanon, being fully surrounded by Israel and Syria.
I don't disagree with all that, but this literally means nothing anymore to a random Sunni Arab villager in rural Aleppo who gets 8 hours of electricity on a good day, 25$ in pension and whose sons are either dead or refugees in Belgium. We keep focusing on these bigger pictures, which is theoretically the smart thing to do, but people are tired comrade. The misery of the Baath government has made everyone indifferent or outright hostile. And what Axis is there left? Iran since Soleimani's death is the most useless ally you can have. Nasrallah and by extension Hezbollah are dead, it's over. Hamas are dead. There is no Axis, there is no united Pan-Shia anti-imperialist front, there's nothing left anymore. That's the bitter truth. Our finest young men and our greatest leaders in Palestine and Lebanon are gone. The Axis became a hierarchy where Iran allowed Haniyeh and Hamas to be eaten, then allowed Nasrallah and Hezbollah to be eaten, and now they will allow Assad and Syria to be eaten. All that so that they keep storing dollars in Dubai banks without risking anything. The Axis was solidified the day Al Muhandis and Soleimani were in the same trenches in Aleppo and Mosul, and it died the day Trump bombed their car.
There is truth to the psychology you describe and its material basis. But if the Syrian government falls it will get worse. See how life is in those areas controlled by Daesh. 8 hours of power? How about half of one's family killed and no power at all for most unless they follow the exact dictates of the local reps. These are not speculative things or baseless fearmongering, it has been a daily reality for those in the parts of Syria and Iraq occupied by them.
Think of those who became so frustrated with the USSR that they began dismissing it. Yes, it had a great series of mistakes, and this contributed to their downfall, but (1) the primary enemy is the imperialists, (2) the imperialists are the main opponents of those we may want to dismiss, and (3) after the USSR fell, the world got worse and millions died during capitalist restoration anf maximum pressure by imperialists on all of thr countries that depended on that trade bloc.
Nearly every criticism of our "allies" can be correct and we will have less power and more death and a stronger imperialist bloc if they fall.
So to br clear I do not think criticizing the Syrian government is wrong, but it is incorrect to think of its hypothetical fall to US-backed forces as anything other than a disaster.
he knows it will get worse comrade, thats what hes saying. People are just too tired of war to care anymore.
They're saying there is no axis at all, arguing there's nothing to lose from this.
Iran Contra 2 is coming, we need to wait a decade to see what Iran gets from this. It can be as simple as realizing they were becoming a Russian protectorate and balking at the idea due to great game issues. (Russia wanted Iran just as much as Britain) The saddest thing here is that this all came apart partly because of support for hamas, which last time I checked is more aligned with the syrian rebels than the palestinian groups harbored by Assad.
The real issue here is that China realpolitiked itself into supporting equally shit regimes in Pakistan and Myanmar. When those regimes fall, the belt and road initiative is going to have a major setback. Shia sectarianism was a mistake.