Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they’d be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
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.
Yeah, I very much understand the impulse @marxistheretic@hexbear.net is expressing, but it’s not sound revolutionary thinking. I basically had to receive an extended lecture version of the above from some party members very recently because I was saying “escalate escalate escalate”. That drive of action for action’s sake, action to satisfy our emotional desire for justice, is an anarchistic way of thinking. It’s not how MLs analyze or carry out revolutions.
This shit will not work if we don’t have the masses on our side. Right now, though repression is increasing, we can still operate more-or-less out in the open. They aren’t black bagging or assassinating organizers consistently or in large numbers. We must take advantage of that time to build the revolutionary organization and the broad periphery of support in our class. And things are trending well in that direction; the increase in repression and an escalation of economic warfare on the working class are producing exactly the popular results a Leninist analysis would predict. More and more people are getting wise to the fact that we need to take drastic action to overthrow capitalism and build socialism. But it’s not enough people yet. If we pressed the revolution button today and dedicated all of our resources to the military conflict, we would lose. The revolution would be strangled in its crib and the decades of work to build what we have at this point would be wasted. Is that worth the catharsis of violence against the ruling class?
No. A revolutionary must be patient. We must strike when we can win, and that will be when the masses are with us. As Lenin said, we must think not in the thousands or hundreds of thousands but in the tens of millions.
Yeah that’s pretty much what my folks are saying with an added caveat of further building and developing the consciousness of workers in both unionized and non-unionized workplaces towards anti-capitalistism with a focus on u.s monopoly capital being the key problem of our every day lives and not which political party is in the chair right now. - alongside coalition building for a popular front.
The waves of militant outbursts against the state will occur whether or not we’re a part of it - obviously having boots on the ground trying to drum up support for the overall movement and work to ensure collective safety in what little ways we can is good work. Also no fedposting. - yet the key issue communists must engage with is the absolute drudgery of rebuilding our material presence within the working class. Building an actual revolutionary base is fucking boring collective work that takes time and commitment. Something that has no appeal in our contemporary hyper-individualist society of instant gratification.
Well said, my thoughts exactly. Now is the time to engage with the working class, not engage in open warfare.
How do you know when it’s time?
There are several pre-requisites, but the most obvious are clear answers to:
As it pertains to this thread:
A larger scale movement would need to answer these same questions, and that’s just the start!
The masses will initiate actual revolutionary action themselves. It will, hopefully, be very clear. We want to incite that action, but we can’t undertake it on our own initiative. They will only do so because of a vanguard party that has sufficient political influence to cause such a society-wide incitement.