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

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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.

  • Torenico [he/him]
    ·
    10 months ago

    Looming disaster.

    Argentina court rules Milei’s labour reform unconstitutional

    Court rules that the labour reform President Javier Milei tried to implement through decree is unconstitutional.

    An Argentine court ruled that the labour reform President Javier Milei tried to implement through decree is unconstitutional, the latest blow to his plans to overhaul the nation’s economy. The ruling was posted on the court’s website on Tuesday.

    The court had already suspended the labour reform Milei announced on January 3, following an appeal from the powerful labour union CGT. Union leaders held a nationwide strike against Milei’s reforms last Wednesday. The government could have proposed the reform via Congress, as opposed to trying to implement it through an urgent executive order, the judges wrote in the ruling.

    Milei’s only recourse now is to appeal to the supreme court or push the reform through Congress. Argentina’s lower house Chamber of Deputies will hold a session to debate Milei’s so-called omnibus bill Wednesday. Milei’s labour measures centred around simplifying employers severance pay obligations and “trial periods” before a company must hire a worker to a full-time contract, among other reforms. Argentina has higher labour costs relative to worker productivity.

    Article

    Kinda wild how he can just push an unconstitutional reform, lose and then not suffer the consequences. At minimum this should call for some sort of impeachment.

    Another defeat:

    Another judicial setback for Milei as Court suspends repeal of 'Ley de Tierras'

    Ruling signed by judge Ernesto Kreplak, responding to a La Plata war veterans centre, preventively suspends repeal of Ley de Tierras, temporarily blocking limitless purchase of land by foreigners.

    More bad news for President Javier Milei. Following on from the suspension of the labour chapter of his sweeping DNU 70/2023 emergency deregulation decree, a court has now accepted an injunction and preventively suspended the president’s proposed repeal of the “Ley de Tierras’ (“Land Law”).

    Milei wants to repeal the law, which would open the door to the purchase of land by foreigners without any limit. The decision was delivered by Federal Judge Ernesto Kreplak on Monday as he accepted a lawsuit lodged against the government by the CECIM (Centro de Ex Combatientes Islas Malvinas) veterans centre in La Plata, requesting that the above article be quashed as unconstitutional for repealing Law 26,737 (“The Régime for the Protection of the National Domain”) regarding the ownership of rural property.

    In their initial writ, CECIM representatives had argued that "the repeal, by liberating the land market, would clear the way for its foreign and more concentrated ownership, thus bringing into crisis the principles of territorial integrity and national sovereignty while conditioning the availability of not only Argentine soil but also fresh water."

    The judge also criticised the government by claiming that the impugned DNU "had not complied with the essential and substantial procedures nor has made use of the permanent services of legal counselling."

    The norm in question regulated land ownership in foreign hands. Law 26,737, sanctioned during the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Presidency in December 2011, established a ceiling of 15 percent of rural land in foreign hands at national, provincial or municipal level.

    Based Cristina, as always.

    To date, there has been compliance with this law at national level, with foreign ownership currently 6.09 percent or 16.2 million of the country’s total rural land surface of 266,707,361 hectares in foreign hands.

    The potential repeal of the law had aroused a growing enthusiasm on the part of the representatives of foreign firms to invest in this country. Indeed, the head of the local branch of a well-known multinational with hundreds of thousands of hectares in the south told Perfil that Milei’s decision as enshrined in the DNU was "very positive."

    Article

    There has also been talk of the massive wave of privatizations that milei will carry out. Some state-owned companies, like YPF, will not be privatized as it is deemed illegal or impossible. However, state-owned companies such as Fabricaciones Militares (Arms manufacturer), Tandanor (Ship Building) and FADEA (Aircraft Manufacturer) are all up in the air and ready to be sold to foreign interests. This man is willing not only to sell argentinian land to whatever rich fuck, he's also willing to sell Argentina's entire defense industry, leaving us completely dependant on foreign military "aid". He's a threat to the very elements that make up this country.

    He also continued to insist with dollarization, claiming that "we're very close to fully dollarizing" (As he claimed on a Wall Street Journal interview here). He's completely going for this goal, in the next couple of months we will see more peso devaluations to fully destroy this currency and make it completely uncompetitive with the dollar, forcing people to ditch the peso and buy dollars instead. This is the thing we must avoid at all costs, we simply cannot leave our entire monetary policies and economy up to the US and it's Federal Reserve. This is just pure insanity. If we dollarize, we're fucked. You can't really leave a dollarized economy, not now at least. Ecuador, for example, can't leave dollarization, if they go back to their old currency (or create a new one), their foreign debt skyrockets and destroys the economy, same will happen to us. On the other hand, salaries will be crushed. Yes, we will get paid in dollars but how much will be the minimum, 4USD per hour?

    Still, I firmly believe this has the strong potential to be the shortest-lived Argentinian government in history. Things will get very heated after March, that's when the people as a whole will begin to feel the effects of economic slowdown, devaluation, almost 30% monthly inflation rates and so on. This government will not survive, not with this lunatic in charge.

    • Kaplya
      ·
      10 months ago

      To be fair, Argentina is already dollarized. This is simply the final nail in the coffin.

      At the amount of dollar-denominated debt, there is no way Argentina could ever repay them, so it’s perpetually seeking to earn dollars and that’s what make it a dollarized economy.

      Read these two paragraphs from Michael Hudson:

      Among the BRICS+ countries, Argentina is a case in point. Its foreign dollar debt has grown largely by IMF sponsorship. The IMF’s main political function in US foreign policy has been to enable pro-American client oligarchies to move their money out of countries whenever there is a chance of a left-wing or simply democratic reformer being elected. Convert their Argentinean currency into dollars lowers the peso’s exchange rate. Without IMF intervention, that would mean that as the exchange rate falls, the wealthy classes engaging in capital flight receive fewer and fewer dollars. To support the currency – and hence, the hard-currency dollars that capital-flight actors receive – the IMF lends the right-wing government dollars to buy up the excess pesos that the client oligarchy is selling off. That enables Argentineans to move their money out of the country to obtain a much higher amount of US dollars than they would if the IMF were not lending money to the right-wing puppet government.

      When the new reform government comes in, it finds itself loaded down with a huge foreign debt owed to the IMF. This debt has not been taken on in a way that helped Argentina develop its economy and earn dollars to pay back the loan. It is simply a result of IMF support of right-wing governments. And the IMF then tells the new government (whether Argentina or any other debtor) to pay off its foreign loans by lowering the wages of labor. That is the only way that the IMF recognizes for countries to “stabilize” their balance of payments. So the reform government is obliged to behave just like a right-wing government, intensifying the class war of capital against labor. The “cure” for their balance-of-payments deficits thus becomes even worse than the original disease, that is, its rentier oligarchy moving their money out of the country.

      I hate to be the broken record again but the only way to break this vicious cycle is debt cancellation. Nothing else can save Argentina’s economy.

      Luckily, at least according to Michael Hudson, much of Argentina’s dollar debt is actually owed to their own elites. So, any left wing government can forcibly cancel them. However, like most social democrats, most left wing governments continue to rely on economists indoctrinated with right wing neoclassical economics and so they will never dare to do anything to force the bourgeoisie to cancel the debt, as though it is some sacred pact that can never be violated. And so any left wing government that come into office will continue to behave like a right-wing government as Hudson had pointed out, and the spiral continues.