Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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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 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.
That’s literally what I said - consistency. I already mentioned that even Putin said that he preferred Biden to Trump because at least Biden’s foreign policy was consistent. And this makes it possible to formulate a plan to deter or to dissuade the other side from going through.
The problem with Trump is that his decision swings from one end of the spectrum to another, based on something that is likely not tangible. This unpredictability amplifies the risks of global instability, because you can no longer predict what he wants.
You could say the wrong thing just because it’s in the morning and not the afternoon, and that’s it for someone who has the authority to launch nukes. When countries cannot predict what the US wants, bad decisions can easily lead to other bad decisions and eventually reaching the point of no return for the all of us.
In the comment I reply to, you say:
If you agree that Harris would pull the trigger without hesitation what is the nightmare scenario here? That Trump wouldn’t pull the trigger? I doubt there is is even a chance the US will not go through with this war. Trump is not the one making the calls, Trump is just making the show. The unfortunate reality is that it’s a possibility that Trump’s instincts are at times less genocidal than the calculations of the US establishment.
But the US has the entire world under its thumb via the USD. Global instability wrought by Trump just means the US self-owning itself and destroying something that they had spend decades building. Or are you saying the current economic order is so robust that not even instability caused by Trump can ruin it?
Increasing instability means high risks of war. What do you think countries do when they run out of fuel or food because of disruption of the global trade, or deterioration of material conditions due to regional destabilization caused by American foreign policy?
Again, think in terms of contradictions. The hegemony of USD also caused massive trade deficits, large scale deindustrialization and growing dissent among its working class as jobs were exported to the Global South. The global financial crisis of 2008 further devastated the real economy and exacerbated the deterioration of material wealth of the lower/middle class, and directly precipitated the rise of populism in the form of Sanders and Trump in the 2016 election. None of this was a coincidence.
What the American capital has been doing since the first Trump term, including his first trade war with China in 2018, was an attempt to resolve these very contradictions that are inherent within the American capitalist system. Funnily enough, it is actually much easier to understand the geopolitical play when viewed through such Marxist lens, in terms of contradictions, than to see the present geopolitical conflicts as some kind of competition between US-China, NATO-Russia, US-Israel-Iran etc.
That doesn’t mean the US will always get its way. The politics and economy of the world is simply too complex to be accurately calculated and predicted. Just like how the US and Japan both miscalculated the Plaza Accord, and both countries ended up not getting what they had hoped to achieve, though the outcome still favored the US in the end. The same will happen with US and other countries like China, Russia moving forward - nobody could predict how the current policies will actually play out in the future. But it certainly won’t stop the US from attempting to play a maximalist strategy with all the advantages it still has, and for other countries to respond in kind.
Given your overall lack of faith in the current Chinese leadership to do what must be done, shouldn’t instability be welcome as far as the US losing control is concerned? Or do you see this instability as a bad thing because you predict future Chinese leadership will find the political will to do what must be done?
Not wanting millions of innocent people to die in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world is not a good enough reason for you?
Why must everything be thought of in a 100-year plan for China? You realize there are people living outside China today that are likely going to have their lives upended if Trump does anything crazy?
China had a plan 10 years ago, then Covid happened, and everything went off the rails.