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.
Very interesting interview of President Traoré (Burkina Faso for the unaware). Some interesting bits that stood out to me:
He once again basically accuses the west of allowing terrorist groups to run wild in the AES, and on top of that actively hindered their efforts to build up their own military. It honestly seems like he might have been implying that they're the direct agents of the west at one point lol, or at least that's what the talk of the "sleeper cells" activating and his wording around it made me think that.
He emphasized more than once that the AES can be entirely self sufficient in the (near?) future, and they are currently doing lots of experimenting on that front (i assume meaning to increase crop yields in particular). He uses this to kinda just brush aside the concerns of the AES leaving ECOWAS, he honestly barely spent anytime elaborating on them lol.
He glazed up Russia quite a bit in this interview, really emphasizing that they give access to any weapons they ask for, and will even commit to sending troops to help Burkina Faso if asked, although he vehemently denied they were currently in the country. He also mentioned that Iran and China also give access to their entire market of weapons. He also made sure to shit on the west again here lol.
I havent read (or at least dont remember) anything about this, but apparently there was concerns that they had given entire mines to Russia? He denied that, although he did say something about giving them a liscense that they have to pay a tax on? idk the english seemed kinda unclear there to me.
another thing that seemed like a potential breakdown of the english was how the government intends to pay for all this, especially the weapons. I couldnt tell if he was being evasive or the translation was just bad lol. Part of it was him saying that the previous government was extremely corrupt and inefficient (which is also a part of the whole self sufficiency angle he's going for, they have almost everything they need to be self sufficient, they just need to utilize it). There's something about saving ~800 million US$ in subsidies in 2023 alone, although once again the english seemed unclear to me and I'm not sure if he's saying that they've made sure the subsidies arent just being pocketed and are actually being efficiently used, or if this is him bragging about austerity, or some other 3rd thing.
he addresses the coup situations in a kinda funny, kind of sad way: he basically says he's not gonna get got by sticking to friendship like Sankara did, which is definitely a good thing, I mean we've already seen several coup attempts against him already, but also just makes me sad thinking about how good of a person Sankara genuinely was.
Overall, pretty hopeful interview. Also, makes sense since he has risen to be a very powerful person at such a young age, but he is a quite charismatic person. Nothing obviously marxist that I noticed, but I do think they're definitely taking a very materialist view of the world, he really hammered down that every decision they're making is only made after careful analysis, and I havent really seen anything to contradict that (although I haven't been looking at news from the Sahel all that much so i could have easily missed stufff...). One last thing to leave off on is that he also mentioned his desire to "awaken the people". He framed it in a nationalistic, patriotic way, but a quote someone posted in here a day or 2 ago popped in my head while watching the interview. “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living," and in Burkina Faso the shadow of Sankara looms heavier than anyone, and I honestly wonder even if Traoré doesnt become a communist like I've hoped he might, by raising this patriotism in burkina faso, it might also raise their class consciousness just because of Sankara's legacy.
oh yeah i forgot i was gonna tag you in this cause i thought you would find it interesting @frauddogg@lemmygrad.ml, i know you've mentioned finding him quite inspiring before.
Very deeply, big ups for the tag. All in all, I think we're in the same place w/rt Traoré; he may not be explicitly marxist now, but with the strong adherence to materialist viewpoints, and the mandate of the people, coupled with their own development of productive forces and attempts to keep the fruits of the motherland out of the hands of the colonizers, I genuinely think it's only a matter of time; but it's not the most important thing right now. Right now, at least from my novice point of view, the more important point to hammer on is opposition to AFRICOM's beachheading. There, I very much believe Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso will serve as the first dominos toward making that opposition an organized reality-- especially if Traoré's desire to "awaken the people" bears tangible fruit.
No problem!
Note to readers that Troare refers to Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali here as the "AES"
Yes thank you forgot to add that explainer. It’s the french acronym for their alliance/potential future federation, because the english one is ASS and so I think everyone has collectively agreed to use AES instead lol
They're literally sitting on a gold mine. Just running the numbers from that recent PR on the home grown processing plant shows it gives insane income. Self sufficiency is the answer to their problems, because (as Parenti puts it) the country is rich.
Yes, I believe him when he says they can be self sufficient, what I mean is unclear is that when the interviewer asked him that question, the answer as far as the finances of the whole thing goes was unclear. Maybe Traoré himself doesnt know the exact funding mechanisms they will use yet, but that is what was unclear to me (and could have just been a translation issue like i said!), not the idea of their self sufficiency
Edit: remember, the fr*nch control their currency at the moment which is a huge problem for trying to set up the financial side of this. I believe they want to start a new currency for the AES but that will take awhile to sort out, and the next few years will be crucial as each government tries to secure their control of the country and set up their future plans.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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