Image is of a protest in San Diego against ICE.
On January 7th, 37-year-old Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. While a considerable amount of the discussion online has been about the direction her wheels were turning and things like that, truthfully, I think it's just fundamentally bad to shoot a person to death with a gun if you happen to be a state mercenary enforcing an incredibly racist federal policy, regardless of the circumstances.
The murder has since prompted a wave of vigils and protests, not only in Minneapolis, but also in virtually every major city in the country. The demands are justice for Good in particular, and the abolition of ICE in general, to avenge its many victims. The Trump administration has done all they can to inflame the situation, designating Good a "domestic terrorist" and saying that the agent who shot her will be immune from prosecution.
Protests and resistance to this administration's policies have, encouragingly, had an element of international solidarity - not only are flags from countries throughout Latin America (and also Palestine) present, but speakers in protests have even been actively condemning the recent imperialist actions against Venezuela. For it is, of course, one joint struggle. The imperial boomerang always returns - and in the modern day, it returns rapidly.
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.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Both the New York Times and Fox News are now reporting that we will see a large military build-up against Iran in the Middle East in the coming weeks, including a an aircraft carrier strike group (NYT states the USS Abraham Lincoln), air defence systems, fighter aircraft, strike aircraft, and mid air refueling aircraft. Similar to the previous build-up against Iran and the build-up against Venezuela.
If this does end up happening, if the US strikes, and if the US does not strike well before the build-up is complete, it would mean that the US has decided an only cruise missile strike with no overflights into Iranian airspace is insufficient, and that any planned operation requires flying into Iranian airspace with large scale offensive counter air operations (suppressing air defences, fighter escort and sweep, stand in attacks). Lots of "ifs".
The USS Abraham Lincoln air wing does operate a Marine squadron of F-35Cs and a Navy Squadron of EA-18Gs with NGJ pods (not all US aircraft carriers operate this), in fact the air wing of this particular aircraft carrier was the first to deploy the F-35 and EA-18G NGJ combination in combat, against Ansarallah/Houthuis in Yemen in 2024. It was also the first combat operation of both the F-35C variant and NGJ pods independently. These are what the US military uses to suppress and destroy advanced air defence systems, also referred to as double digit SA systems, based off of the NATO codenames for these systems (examples: S-300PS= SA-10, Buk M1 = SA-11, S-300V = SA-12, Buk M2 = SA-17, S-300PMU-1/2 = SA-20, S-400/S-300PMU-3 = SA-21, S-300V4/VM = SA-23, Buk M3 = SA-27). Iran does operate systems in this class, domestically made or from Russia.
For fighter escort and sweep, the US usually uses F-22 Raptors, and because they are the most expensive fighter aircraft for the US to operate, they only deploy right before US military action, a day or two before last year's Iranian strikes, and hours before the strikes on Venezuela. If F-22 Raptors deploy, that's usually a big signal.
Other aircraft that are usually involved are the EC-130H Compass Call, one of them deployed days before the Iranian and Venezuelan strikes.
Additional F-35As and F-35Bs, and F-16CJs for more AGM-88E AARGM shooters, are often deployed.
NYT excerpt
The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and some of its escort warships were steaming toward the Middle East from the South China Sea — about a weeklong journey, according to two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.In addition, an array of warplanes, likely to include a combination of fighter jets, attack planes and refueling planes, were expected to start flowing into the region soon, many from Europe, the officials said. Some of these aircraft had been scheduled to replace units in the Middle East, and could have their tours extended depending on the severity of the tensions.
If the United States strikes Iran, leaders there are expected to retaliate. So the Pentagon is also dispatching more air defense equipment, including interceptor missiles, to better protect bases in the region, particularly Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the officials said.
Fox News excerpt
At least one U.S. aircraft carrier is being moved toward the Middle East as tensions with Iran continue to build, military sources confirm to Fox News.It is not yet clear whether the carrier is the USS Abraham Lincoln, currently operating in the South China Sea, or one of two carriers that departed Norfolk and San Diego earlier this week. Transit to the region is expected to take at least a week.
U.S. military assets from air, land and sea are expected to flow into the region in the coming days and weeks to provide the president with military options should he decide to carry out strikes against Iran, sources said.
This implies Iran needs to strike immediately, because not all the defenses are up yet.
What's the plan here by publishing this? To bait Iran into triggering the war?
Is Israel behind these Fox and NYT articles?
Strike what right now? Empty hangars and pavement? US military assets aren't in place yet, Iran could cause a lot of damage with a pre emptive strike to US military bases, kill a lot of people potentially, but ultimately they wont be taking out the planes that would fly into Iran, because those planes are still in the United States currently. Or in the South China Sea onboard an aircraft carrier.
These kind of movements are impossible to hide, and news organisations always want a scoop, even if it's only a few hours or days before the movements are evident.
I was thinking strike Israel.
With US assets in place, they could use them to do early detection and interception.
Without them, their hit rate should be higher.
Not sure if premtively striking anyone would discourage or embolden the anti govt movement.
Without internet, I think discourage.
With internet, I think encourage.
Economic assets with significant Western investment in countries that have previously participated in defending Israel. Specifically any infratructure that would be used to resupply US naval vessels.
I think the problem isn't so much going in, it's having the resources to handle the Iranian missile counter-attack. True Promise II took everything they had and they still weren't able to knock it all down.
A big part of that usually involves left of launch defeat, striking ballistic missile storage facilities, launchers, command and control, before the missiles launch, to reduce the amount of incoming fire air defence systems have to deal with. (The cliche about the best defence being offense applies here). It's not the Gulf War anymore, left of launch defeat can be done to some degree. While modern cruise missiles have two way datalinks and can hit relocatable targets and/or act as loitering munitions, doing left of launch defeat just with cruise missiles would be incredibly difficult. If left of launch defeat requires overflying Iranian airspace, that requires large scale offensive counter air operations, which requires the large military build-up.
Iran invested in some new Chinese-made air defences after last year's war.
How capable do you think they are against The Burger Reich? Or do we not have a lot of details on the specifics? Or is it a "only one way to find out" situation?
Depends more in this case on Iranian intelligence and their willingness to actually use them. Depending on the HQ-9 variant and the FCS/Radars paired with them, they can have the capability to detect and lock stealth aircraft, albeit at a shorter distance and therefore smaller response window than conventional. This means ideally your military intelligence needs to know their potential strike routes and can preposition your systems to intercept. Also, American EW planes have shown to work on older Soviet SAM systems, we'll see how hardened the more modern Chinese systems are against it. Finally, its a numbers game, did Iran purchase sufficient numbers of systems to tolerate attrition and ensure redundancy if SEAD takes out a few? How much coverage can they provide for important sites and air corridors? And who's to say if they won't just strike a deal with the US like before where they do some face saving strikes back and forth with no real damage and leave the SAMs out of the equation.
Did they actually get these? Is there evidence of their deployment? I haven't seen any.
The earlier versions of the HQ-9 are basically the S-300PMU-2/SA-20 with US and Israeli style command and control. The later versions of the HQ-9 are a whole different thing, many improvements.
Please never stop posting
Couldn't the withdrawals be to prevent retaliation in another round of B2 bombings?
B-2s need all of the above assets to fly into hostile airspace and back out again, the only time they'd fly without protection is if it's an existential scenario.
Wasn't that same aircraft carriers pulled out of the region so they could patrol the Caribbean? Or am I thinking of a different one?
Different one
Are you going to acknowledge posting disinformation about "Iranian support for Pahlavi" the other day?
What is the reason F-22s are so expensive?