Image is of Gazans breaking their fast with the Iftar meal during the ongoing Ramadan.
Due to a request by @miz@hexbear.net, this thread’s COTW is Qatar.
The ceasefire deal broke down early last week after Israel unilaterally changed the terms of the agreement and then blamed Hamas for not meeting them. Violence against civilians has rapidly accelerated to pre-ceasefire levels, with many hundreds dead already, aid once again cut off, and Israeli soldiers once again entering and occupying the attritional labyrinth that is Gaza.
I’m not yet in a position to make any solid predictions or analysis, as the geopolitical situation in and around Israel has changed fairly substantially over the last 6 months; in some ways benefiting Israel, and in other ways not. We know for sure how Hamas and Ansarallah are reacting (thankfully, with open hostility to both Israel and the United States), but the state of Hezbollah has been a giant question mark for months now, and precisely what Iran plans to do (beyond the usual level of supplying weaponry and intelligence to all the allies it can) is unknown. Syria will be almost certainly be a big wildcard, and we’ll have to see if the compradors in Damascus can weather the storm.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
In my experience, those who say Israel and Palestine are both bad tend to really fucking hate Palestine but not mind Israel all that much.
Trump: I haven’t heard that term in years. I don’t know anything about it… this country is going to boom. We’re going to have boomtown. We’re going to boom
its going to boom nerds
US airstrikes continue on Yemen for the 16th night in a row, with multiple airstrikes targeting Sana’a Governorate.
Quite a few more strikes reported in Sana’a Governorate.
Al-Mayadeen reports more strikes in Sana’a Governorate.
Lots of bad information circling around. The pictures of the “USS Harry Truman sinking” that are circulating on social media are six years old and of a different ship. Claims that the US Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye AWACS aircraft has been shot down are also highly unlikely, nothing in Yemen’s surface to air missile arsenal has the range to hit US assets in the rear like that, and with active SEAD operations going on from EA-18G Growlers, Ansarallah haven’t shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone over the past 16 days, yet alone a target as far away from the frontlines as an AWACS aircraft. They could try with some Jerry rigged anti radiation ‘Hormuz’ missiles to home in on the massive radome on the E-2, but such an attack is highly unlikely to succeed.
The Yemeni Armed Forces have announced two operations in two separate statements:
Cruise missile, naval and aerial drones launched at US Navy warships. No Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles. A Zulfiqar/Rezvan ballistic missile was also launched at Israel, a ballistic missile with a conventional ballistic flight path, no Palestine-2 missiles launched. Debris from the missile and an Israeli Arrow 3 interceptor landed in Israel.
Israeli news site N12 revealed that the US operated THAAD air defence system has intercepted 6 Yemeni missiles already. If anyone is wondering why this is, it’s because Israel don’t really have a terminal phase intercept system for MaRV (Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle) capable ballistic missiles. THAAD is the only system that fits the bill and can plug the gaps. Arrow 3 is a midcourse interception system, it does not intercept ballistic missiles in the terminal stage of flight. So if Yemeni ballistic missiles bypass Arrow 3, and they are MaRV capable missiles, Israeli air defence systems are not adequate. I’ll explain below:
Arrow 2 has a maximum flight ceiling/altitude of 50km, and a range of 100km, and uses a fragmentation warhead, not a kinetic one. David’s Sling has a longer range up to 300km and a kinetic warhead, but a flight ceiling of only 15km, allowing for only last second interceptions. These flight ceilings are all problems when intercepting MaRV capable missiles that can perform glide phases within the earth’s atmosphere, gliding above or near the limit their flight ceilings in the terminal phase. A MaRV could perform two glide phases, first one above Arrow-2 and one above David’s Sling. So THAAD is brought in to plug the gap. THAAD can engage targets at altitudes between 40-150km, and at ranges up to 200km. So MaRVs cannot glide above the engagement ceiling of THAAD. The way to defeat THAAD would be to perform an extremely long glide phase below 40km under the engagement envelope of THAAD, but that puts the MaRV firmly within the engagement envelope of Arrow-2. Arrow 2s minimum altitude is 8km, so gliding under that would put the MaRV firmly within the engagement envelope of David’s Sling. Also, with thicker atmosphere/air at lower altitudes, long glide phases become increasingly difficult as drag increases.
Small and bizarre news, but still news:
So there’s a non-recognized nation in Africa called Republic of Annobon, which is a small island that is part of Equatorial Guinea. A small group of separatists declared independence in like 2022 or something and well, they travel around the world exposing their cause I guess. Many such cases.
Anyway, a small delegation headed by their Prime Minister visited our university, something completely random, and attended to a session of our History Assembly, which is celebrated each week or so to discuss career-related things and such. They were allowed to speak of their struggle against the Equatorial Guinean government. I failed to attend so I missed this peculiar event. Oh and Equatorial Guinea’s President, Theodoro Obiang Nguema, as been in power since 1982, so there’s that.
The world gets weirder and weirder each day.
And btw, before I forget:
death to “israel”
German Greens want to force people of all ages to serve the state in a new Freedom Service™. Either military or some community service.
“It is time to ask the question: What can you do for you country?”, Schulze said to Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The threats are growing.
“In order make our society more robust, to defend our freedom, and to strengthen cooperation, we need everybody. The Freedom Service is a collective project for Germany, by all and for all. Through the Freedom Service, we will to bring together generations and milieus, strengthen our society, and defend what is important to us.”
I’m not making this up btw.
They’re no longer in government of course, that’s just their contribution to the debate about re-introducing conscription.
Azov Brigade: Introducing our Asian comrade named [racial slur against Asians] (CW: racial slur against Asians):
https://xcancel.com/azov_media/status/1906029395501875242Racists fucks be like “um acktually it’z a common namez in Korea”
Yeah well why don’t I impart into your brain the other “common Korean name” by driving over your head with a tank and see how you feel about it
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spoiler
oh I get it. Park!
The less racist part of the double entendre
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natopedia on the term's origins, it has been around more than a century
The origin of g**k is unclear, but it may have originated among U.S. Marines during the Philippine–American War (1899–1913), where the similar term goo-goo was also used to refer to Filipinos. The Marines who occupied Nicaragua in 1912 took to calling the natives g**ks. In 1920, it was reported that U.S. Marines in Haiti used the term to refer to Haitians. Historically, U.S. military personnel used the word to refer to non-Americans of various races.
During World War II, U.S. troops fighting on the Pacific Front occasionally referred to the natives of Pacific Islands as g**ks. The term appears in the 1943 film Guadalcanal Diary, when one of the characters of the film refers to the titular setting as “g**k island”.
When U.S. troops were stationed on the Korean Peninsula at the outbreak of the Korean War, so prevalent was the use of the word g**k during the first few months of the war that U.S. General Douglas MacArthur banned its use, for fear that Asians would become alienated to the United Nations Command because of the insult. In spite of MacArthur’s early prohibition, the term was nonetheless used by U.S. troops during the conflict, and U.S. postwar occupation troops in South Korea continued to call the Koreans “g**ks”.
The term was also used by non-American troops during the Korean War as well. The posthumous Victoria Cross citation for British Army major Kenneth Muir, who was killed in action at the Battle of Hill 282, stated that his last words were “The G**ks will never drive the Argylls off this hill.”
In modern U.S. usage, “g**k” refers particularly to communist soldiers during the Vietnam War and has also been used towards all Vietnamese and at other times to all Southeast Asians in general. It is considered to be highly offensive. In a highly publicized incident, Senator John McCain used the word during the 2000 presidential campaign to refer to his North Vietnamese captors when he was a prisoner of war: “I hate the g**ks. I will hate them as long as I live… I was referring to my prison guards and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend.” A few days later, however, he apologized to the Vietnamese community at large.
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Woke MacArthur smdh
Korean war. Allegedly there’s a Korean term that sounds like it. “mi ******”
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Not a lot of people seemed to notice this lemmy post and I don’t see it posted here, but this article (computer scientist goes silent after fbi raid and purging from university website) is crazy and idk what to even make of it. Just really set off my conspiracy brain.
White House aide Peter Navarro today: Trump’s tariffs will raise $600 billion per year, or $6 trillion over a 10 year period
Seems to reflect our reporting that Trump wants to go absolutely enormous on the tariffs, regardless of short-term economic consequences
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Found this, don’t know where it should go I guess it’s news
Can’t upload the picture for some reason. No content warning, except it’s still sad in a way.
Le Pen and eight MEPs found guilty of embezzlement
