Iran has struck Israel.
previous preamble
The continuing fall of the remains of the British Empire is pretty entertaining from the outside: an archaic royal family that is seemingly being smote with disease by God itself for their past crimes; a navy that virtually no longer functions, ramming into foreign ports and under constant repair; and an economy that cannot seem to stop sputtering, fucked whether they're in the EU or outside it. Watching the impacts on people from the inside is a little more worrying, though.
A fifth of the population is in poverty, including nearly a third of all children. These figures have barely shifted since the Labour government in the early 2000s, aside from a decreasing poverty rate for pensioners. Actually, poverty hasn't substantially shifted since Margaret Thatcher. Before her, the poverty rate was around 14%, but her catastrophic policies caused a major increase, and poverty levels since then are still 50% higher than over 50 years ago, because neoliberal economic policy since then has not fundamentally changed. Parties and corporations have impoverished the usual vulnerable groups, such as large families, minority ethnic groups (including half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households!) and disabled people. These differences are also regional, with the North more impoverished than the richer Southeast (but some of the poorest boroughs are in London, so it's a complex pattern).
With Corbyn's defeat in 2019 mere months before the pandemic began, the Labour Party shifted back towards the right, with left-wingers purged from the party if they did not kowtow to Keir Starmer. This leaves us with a situation where the only substantial difference between the two parties would be on social policy, but it goes without saying that economic policy is the overwhelming factor that determines if minorities can have a decent life. Worker-oriented movements since then have been largely not under the umbrella of major party leaderships, such as the Don't Pay movement in late 2022 that arose in the wake of dramatically rising energy prices where 3 million people vowed to not pay them (which did lead to results).
Most notably recently is the major upset in the constituency of Rochdale - the victory of George Galloway - who is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, which describes itself as both socialist and socially conservative. This took place both in the context of aforementioned economic troubles, as well as anger over Israel's genocide of Gaza in the British population, especially in British Muslims. It remains to be seen how much of this is an isolated event, especially as Corbyn has, understandably, refused to collaborate with Galloway due to his socially conservative stances. The UK general election will be held at some point within the next 9 months or so, and might well be a shitshow depending on what happens domestically and geopolitically before then; parallels to the current American electoral shitshow with increasing anger over Biden are pretty apparent. The Conservatives are quite likely to lose given 14 years of uninspired rule if current polling is correct, but it truly is a race to the bottom.
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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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
US asking China to ask Iran to please not retaliate against Israel
The circus gets more and more ridiculous as Biden sends his clowns out to do more and more pathetic bullshit
US asks Venezuela to ask Cuba to ask the DPRK to ask Yemen to ask Syria to ask Laos to ask Russia to ask China to ask Iran to pwetty pwease not give Israel consequences for genocide; god forbid settler-colonialist states do anything
China to Iran: "The US says please don't attack, purple monkey dishwasher"
I believe taking this at face value is a mistake.
The US wants Iran to attack, not the opposite. As the quote shows this is literally only about yet another facade about the rules based order shit, giving plausible deniability by saying "hey we warned you, we asked you not to attack, but now that you did that we have no choice but to invade and destroy your country, sorry not sorry".
The US is going to support Israel no matter what and in return Iran will continue with their strategy and do whatever they want regardless of western "diplomacy" this is all irrelevant and considering this is just playing for the western media, to once again create a narrative about normalcy and "order". If and when war comes the US doesn't want to be seen as the aggressor, not anymore.
Don't just go by the headline, the quote above is actualy rather about setting up Iran as the belligerent actor here, its not at all about the US being afraid or wanting to avoid this when in fact it would be in their benefit.
I just can't conceive of any possible way the west can invade Iran. They can't even stop Yemen from doing a blockade, their resources are spent from a proxy war in Europe... there's just no way that threat is real unless it's a nuclear first strike threat.
The imo one lesson we should learn from Ukraine is that the entire western political and military core actualy believes their own BS. Of course every rational and neutral observer agrees Iran is not Iraq, the US would be at a disadvantage etc.
But at the same time just look at the Ukrainian counteroffensive, there were already NATO intelligence leaks(weeks earlier) doubting it and yet they went ahead. Why would it be different? It all comes down to political will and this is why they want Iran to be the aggressor.
IMO its the same thing. I'm sure there are probably dozens of such similar top secret analysis saying they can't invade Iran or it would be very costly etc and yet it changes little to nothing in reality.
Also the US playbook towards Iran is consistent with what they want in Taiwan i.e bait Iran/China into being the aggressor so that they can have a justification to do the whole "coalition of the willing" shit again. But since Iran/China are the aggressors it would actualy be 100% justified.
But which proxy would they have invade Iran? I don't believe the West has the ability to do even a very limited invasion, whether they want to think they can or not. The air lift capability isn't there, the navy would take months to prep and transit and it would be telegraphed and obvious.
My understanding is the navy is already struggling to keep ships at sea under it's current workload.
Link's not working for me, so I assume you're talking about this article: https://www.ft.com/content/015ceea7-d324-46cf-8d72-8b1864885260
The headline really is insane. "US asks China to tell Iran not to retaliate against Israel." Oh how far the empire has fallen... Iran has a right to defend itself baby
Too afraid or too ashamed to call Putin directly?
I think Russia has the pull here. Just say, Iran, no air defense systems for you if you attack. And Iran will need Russian air defense systems to defend against American and Israeli air strikes.
But what interest would Russia have in that? If anything, the West getting themselves even more entrenched in the Middle East will pull resources from Ukraine.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Russia just launched a test ICBM at this time. They're 100% going to back Iran when the time comes.