(credit to RomCom1989 for the title)
A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.
Image is of an Iranian soldier exulting in the launch of a ballistic missile aimed towards the imperialists.
short summary this week: US doing pretty bad and Iran doing pretty good all things considered, Strait of Hormuz is closed and will almost certainly remain so until the end of the war, Trump has no idea what to do, global economic crisis from strait closure is basically guaranteed at this point but who will ultimately benefit most and who will ultimately lose most is still up in the air.
longish summary is below in the spoiler tags
longish summary
While there are still major debates raging about how badly things are actually going right now and what the post-conflict map may look like, as we blaze past the two week mark on this conflict, it's becoming ever more obvious to almost everybody involved that this war is not going according to plan, if there ever was one. US airstrikes are, from what I can best determine, still mostly done with relatively less powerful (but still very dangerous!) and much less plentiful standoff munitions launched from bombers, though certain border and coastal areas are being struck with more powerful and more plentiful short-range guided bombs. This indicates that Iranian air defense is still sufficiently functional throughout most of Iran that the kinds of true carpet bombing done against Korea and Vietnam in the past (and Gaza very recently) is still too risky, though their airspace is still very much under assault, as we appear to have images of small groups of Western fighters breaching relatively deep into the country. Under some kind of Iranian pressure (drones? missiles? speedboats?) one aircraft carrier has retreated to a thousand kilometers from Iran, hiding behind the mountains of Oman; the other is sitting in the Red Sea, rather pointedly out of range of Yemen. As such, the ranges that Western aircraft must travel to bombard Iran is increasing, which reduces their frequency and increases strain on maintenance and logistics in the medium and long term.
While there is tons to say about the current social, economic, and military state of Iran, I don't think I have a reliable enough picture to give a good summary beyond "they aren't close to defeat or regime change". What has instead captured much of the world's attention is the continuing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has inspired some of the most delusional statements I have seen so far in my life, which is sincerely a profound achievement. For those out of the loop: the strait is currently closed to all shipping except those going to very particular countries (I've seen China and Bangladesh mentioned, and apparently India is in the process of working something out and may succeed or fail). This is because most ships are not risking the trip due to the ~20 tankers and container ships that Iran has already struck and disabled in the strait and in the Persian Gulf. Additionally, the threat from Iran's military to Navy ships is such that attempting to create a convoy to guide tankers through it is suicidal to both the Navy and merchant ships. Right now it cannot be done, and it very well might be the case that it could never be done, simply due to the combination of Iran's naval forces (hundreds, perhaps thousands, of armed, specialized speedboats designed for exactly this purpose), their drones (in the tens of thousands), their torpedoes, and if all else fails, their naval mines.
The Western reaction to this has been so moronic that it has almost integer underflowed into being philosophical: what does it truly mean for a passage to be "closed"? Has Iran truly "closed" the strait, or is the risk of traversing it simply too high for these cowardly sailors (who, for some strange reason, seem to care about their "lives" and "families")? How is it possible for Iran to have closed the strait if, according to the West, Iran's military has been totally obliterated? All these questions and more plague the minds of those who cannot accept the now-proven fact that there are indeed military forces on this planet that the US Navy with all its aircraft carriers and destroyers and submarines cannot defeat; and one of those minds is, rather hilariously, Trump himself. His thrice-daily positive affirmations that Iran has been defeated are taking on an increasingly deranged and almost pitiable tone; the lamentations of a man who has finally found a situation where him merely stating that something is true is insufficient to change the situation one iota. Despite stating that some kind of naval compact or alliance is being established to protect shipping, every Western country so far - from the UK, to France, to Japan, to Australia - has publicly stated that they will not risk their ships to do so. All this as the continued blockade yet further guarantees a worldwide energy, production, transportation, and food crisis that will have major global ramifications for at least the rest of the decade and almost certainly beyond.
If the anti-imperialists play their cards right, the US could lose much from this crisis, and others, like China and Russia, could gain a great deal. To quote Nia Frome (co-founder of Red Sails): "An effective Marxist has to be enough of an accelerationist/pervert to treat the obviously bad things that are going to happen as the political opportunities they are."
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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 the Zionists' 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.
Honestly lots of American public transit systems have done worse damage to themselves.
Not really the point. Isn't the promise of the Israeli government that the settlers will never have to face any violence themselves.
No. israelis are heavily inoculated by being taught that unlike soft cozy diaspora jews living in the illusion of peace, they are clawing out a sort of real politik existence on the frontier. It is them vs barbarism. they know how things really work, what is really required to protect jews from everyone else who will always want to ruin and destroy them.
It's part of the ideology that allows people to square their participation in an obviously fascist project with a liberatory backstory.
And when they face violence it isn't shattering, it is reinforcing. Look at the effect the Flood had on Israeli society and its allies: all on board for genocide. Even those who wrung their hands about the excesses before, now they turn their backs on humanity.
I do not agree with this comment. Israel was promised to be the only place Jews could be safe. All the propaganda around the iron the dome being impenetrable was to make potential settlers feel safe and totally free from the consequences of their fascism. There was always the thug class of settlers who were not only willing to get their hands dirty, but itched to do so, the ones who, not even being IDF, would go and violently expel people from their homes and often murder them, yes. The ones who led pogroms. They know all too well how things really work and they relish it. But most of the settler population, as is often the case with settlers, exist in a bubble away from that (that doesn't mean they don't understand it is happening). They just want to reap the benefits of all the robbery and live carefree without fear of repercussion, protected by their torture-murder military heroes. And that was the promise Israel made to them.
Also Oct 7 definitely had a negative impact on Israel. I see u/Wertheimer has some statistics but I also suspect that accurate numbers on this aren't exactly easy to find for obvious reasons. But settlers were leaving in swathes and the entity greatly feared losing even more settlers which likely played at least some part in the motivation to ramp up the aggression of the genocide to almost cartoonishly grotesque levels, to show off how they were wiping out the "threat."
All of them were always all on board for genocide, but they saw an opportunity to go mask off, figuring they didn't need to do it slowly anymore. That doesn't mean the population isn't made up of cowards who absolutely do not want to face any sort of violence- that is what their victims are supposed to suffer, but not themselves, they are supposed to get to have raves and concerts next to concentration camps without worry.
It is also possible that they hold two contradictory views in their minds at the same time. Fascists are really good at that, after all.
I agree. But I don't think that changes the fact that the majority of the population expected to live in security without a threat that they would suffer consequences, they did not expect to suffer the kind of violence they wanted meted out to their enemies. The enemy is both weak and strong, that doesn't mean they believed they might actually face death by Iranian missile. The IDF would protect them, the impenetrable iron dome would protect them. Their false confidence in their own security is part of their contradictory beliefs. The Nazis didn't believe they would be beaten back and then destroyed by the inferior Soviets either.
This is correct, the oppressed from zionism are seen as both weak and strong. Weak because they are the only people who can be dominated to give jews a "safe place of their own". But strong because they are seen as the #1 strongest enemy of the Jewish people. Classic fascist dialectics
On the other hand:
population is 10M. It is less than ~~0.1%~~ 1%. Even if you assume they are leaving for reasons of "psychological damage" (which is possible but not certain) there is no reason to believe it will become a mass phenomena or even a significant one. From fascist zionist point of view, just shedding dead weight.
Reasonable, appreciate the take.
Your math is off, 0.1% of 10M is only 10K
You're right:
(82800/10147200)*100 = 0.82Round to 1%.Off by a factor of 10.