Image is sourced from this Guardian article.
The Pope's fucking dead.
He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.
What a way to go.
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
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.
how long do you think it will take them to successfully pivot?
There's still nearly 5 billion allocated for cruise missiles, so they'll still play a big role. The cruise missile lobby is still very strong, despite being reigned in a bit for the first time in over 30 years. As for hypersonic weapons, the money allocated is similar to that of ballistic missiles (between 800 million to a billion dollars), but it's all for testing and development, no production costs (unlike ballistic missiles, which include production costs). So it looks like the hype on hypersonic weapons is dying down if they're just giving them a bunch of research projects with no forseeable move to production in the short term.
As for how long it would take to pivot, the USA is the inventor of the MaRV equipped ballistic missile, the Pershing-II was the world's first MaRV. The Martin in Lockheed Martin made it. So if the right amount of money is thrown at at it, it shouldn't take long. The US Space Force for instance calls MaRV equipped ballistic missiles "legacy systems". That tells me that they think it'll be relatively easy to get up and running again. That could be hubris though, it's quite a technical challenge to get these systems operating correctly, it's literally rocket science.
not saying this is the case with respect to the military but i see people say this about reshoring industry when the problem isnt so much money as it is the time needed to regather the expertise needed to train people in industrial matters. how much does the same thing apply to the military, especially tech that they've abandoned for decades?
As for tech that's been abandoned for decades, the US military's actually working hypersonic weapons program, in the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon/"Dark Eagle", fitted with the Common-Hypersonic Glide Body, is based on a 1980s project called SWERE (Sandia Winged Energetic Reentry Vehicle Experiment). SWERVE was/is kind of a hybrid of an HGV and a MaRV, and uses many of the same technologies a MaRV equipped ballistic missile would use. Lockheed Martin has been heavily involved in the manufacturing of it. So technology wise, everything is there to make ballistic missiles and re entry vehicles. The main question, if they actually pass this proposal and get past the initial production phase, is what will the production rates look like. For instance, the US only has 2 400 ATACMS missiles in it's stockpiles, with half of those being expired. ATACMS entered service 34 years ago. The US only gave 50 ATACMS to Ukraine, with no plans for further deliveries. However, the US plans to replace ATACMS with PrSM, and Lockheed Martin just scored an almost 5 billion dollar contract for PrSM production, an indefinite quantity contract, but realistically between 1000-2000 missiles. The US plans to obtain around 200 PrSM missiles this year. As for the "Dark Eagle", they only are looking at producing 300 total for now. So I think production numbers for the proposed medium range ballistic missiles will probably be between 300-1000 total, anti ship and land attack variants combined, with a focus on quality over quantity. As for the proposed long range systems in IRBM range, easily less than 100 I'd estimate. These contracts will be worth tens of billions of dollars if this gets off of the ground. Big if though.