Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan’s - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it’s not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won’t attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
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 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.
I love how the EU just pledged €54 billion in aid to Ukraine and nobody is talking about it.
Leave it to the Europeans to start throwing money at a war when the US basically already pulled out and nobody gives a fuck about it anymore. Pure self-destruction.
Has anyone done the proper journalism and looked into where did all those billions of euro end up?
One explanation I like from Michael Hudson about the billions of US dollar spending in Ukraine is that they were simply laundered back to the US politicians and their beneficiaries, so it’s a money making scheme for those who are well connected.
Accordingly, the Democrats have a much more extensive network in Ukraine (even Hunter Biden is involved in it) and the Republicans are missing out a lot of the gravy train going on in Ukraine, which explains why the Republicans are more opposed to the war but are OK with Israel in Gaza, since AIPAC lobbying (who also took money from the billions of US spending) work for both sides of the aisle.
It’s plausible. I personally looked into funding recipient projects/companies for DFC (one of America’s counterpart to the Belt and Road initiative) and I couldn’t see a single legit large-scale infrastructure project for an entire year with the possible exception of one.
All of the money when traced was being funneled into American banks (Goldman Sachs being the biggest beneficiary), Ukraine (black box), and other projects that awards funds to entities when peeled back a layer turns out to be American firms.
That is the level of corruption for a fund that is far more transparent. For Ukraine, I assume that the majority of financial assistance just ends up right back in the US.
Afaik a lot of it went right back to US arms firms to produce weapons that may or may not have actually ended up in Ukraine. We should unironically ask Hunter, he’s probably got a good working knowledge of how US government grift works on the ground in Ukraine.
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It’s called austerity and it’s going to come from the budget cuts that’s going to happen in the EU this year, which was probably allocated for social welfare or some other programs before. If what I’m thinking is correct about this being a money laundering scheme, some very rich people are going to become even richer from this.
The worst part of our is how the ruling class of Europe is acting like they’re doing something good and moral. In their sick minds they have “risen to the occasion” instead of shamefully mooching off the benevolence of the yanks. They refuse to see that the yanks are fucking then over and that by loading money into three black hole of the Kiev regime they’re not just beating a long dead horse, they’re also adding thousands saved thousands of innocent Ukrainians to the pile of corpses by needlessly prolonging the war.
who knows what their angle for even continuing this. there wouldn’t even be fall out from dropping funding at this point. fucking joke
They finally got Hungary to capitulate? Damn
they threatened to fuck up Hungary’s economy if they didn’t say yes
haven’t read this article but it’s probably about this: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/i-went-wall-hungarys-orban-says-after-agreeing-eu-deal-2024-02-02/
Yeah I knew about that I was half expecting orban to say fuck it we ball lol
So Hungary folded? Weak. Leave the EU dude
Didn’t they recently change a bunch of rules to allow for this even if Hungary said no? Something about now they only need 2/3s of member states rather than unanimity (you know what i mean)
Im not sure, i vaguely remember reading something about that in the news mega but im not sure if it actually went through or is relevant to this particular instance
Nawh they still needed unanimous votes. They were recently trying to change the rules to remove Hungary’s voting rights. Slovakia blocked them from doing that, so instead the blackmailed Hungary by threatening to destroy the entire country’s economy and that seemed to have worked.
I would leave the EU. Blackmail, threats to destroy the economy, freezing billions of euros you are owed, trying to remove voting rights. Like what the fuck.
It certainly appears that way, and I thought so too until a read a story about how Trump was really screwing up the GOP’s negotiations on a “deal” for border security (not the same thing as the razor wire / SCOTUS standoff thing) with the Biden admin. The GOP has said they won’t sign off on more money for Ukraine without Biden giving them a ton of what they want vis-a-vis fascistic border and immigration policies. It appears Biden’s willing to give them what they want, so it’s still possible Ukraine gets a major cash infusion from the US soon.
I don’t think the GOP are going to give Biden a “border win” given that it’s one of their biggest messaging tools in the upcoming election. Biden’s offering them more than they asked for, as far as I can tell, but culture war shit is more important to them.