Iran has struck Israel.
previous preamble
The continuing fall of the remains of the British Empire is pretty entertaining from the outside: an archaic royal family that is seemingly being smote with disease by God itself for their past crimes; a navy that virtually no longer functions, ramming into foreign ports and under constant repair; and an economy that cannot seem to stop sputtering, fucked whether they're in the EU or outside it. Watching the impacts on people from the inside is a little more worrying, though.
A fifth of the population is in poverty, including nearly a third of all children. These figures have barely shifted since the Labour government in the early 2000s, aside from a decreasing poverty rate for pensioners. Actually, poverty hasn't substantially shifted since Margaret Thatcher. Before her, the poverty rate was around 14%, but her catastrophic policies caused a major increase, and poverty levels since then are still 50% higher than over 50 years ago, because neoliberal economic policy since then has not fundamentally changed. Parties and corporations have impoverished the usual vulnerable groups, such as large families, minority ethnic groups (including half of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households!) and disabled people. These differences are also regional, with the North more impoverished than the richer Southeast (but some of the poorest boroughs are in London, so it's a complex pattern).
With Corbyn's defeat in 2019 mere months before the pandemic began, the Labour Party shifted back towards the right, with left-wingers purged from the party if they did not kowtow to Keir Starmer. This leaves us with a situation where the only substantial difference between the two parties would be on social policy, but it goes without saying that economic policy is the overwhelming factor that determines if minorities can have a decent life. Worker-oriented movements since then have been largely not under the umbrella of major party leaderships, such as the Don't Pay movement in late 2022 that arose in the wake of dramatically rising energy prices where 3 million people vowed to not pay them (which did lead to results).
Most notably recently is the major upset in the constituency of Rochdale - the victory of George Galloway - who is the leader of the Workers Party of Britain, which describes itself as both socialist and socially conservative. This took place both in the context of aforementioned economic troubles, as well as anger over Israel's genocide of Gaza in the British population, especially in British Muslims. It remains to be seen how much of this is an isolated event, especially as Corbyn has, understandably, refused to collaborate with Galloway due to his socially conservative stances. The UK general election will be held at some point within the next 9 months or so, and might well be a shitshow depending on what happens domestically and geopolitically before then; parallels to the current American electoral shitshow with increasing anger over Biden are pretty apparent. The Conservatives are quite likely to lose given 14 years of uninspired rule if current polling is correct, but it truly is a race to the bottom.
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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 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.
I can feel another crisis-news session coming.
Feels like it might come in the next 48 hours, maybe up to 7 days? Definitely feeling it though.
IDK things just have this heavy inertia right now. It doesn't feel like history is breaking free just yet.
I currently believe that Iran is about to act. Rumours are flying that they've threatened the US with "if the US intervenes then the US is a viable target".
We will see. I've seen quite a few breaking crises now and it feels like history is about to happen.
I keep going back and forth on this.
It’s possible the attack on the embassy was just opportunistic: “israel” saw the chance to take out a high level Iranian commander and took it, and figured they’d just deal with the blowback, maybe even deal with Iran behind the scenes like the US did when they murdered Soleimani.
Or, Israel attacked because they wanted to provoke a response. Maybe it’s to justify invading Rafah. Maybe it’s to try and escalate this to a broader regional war and drag the US into it.
Gut feeling is the most likely answer is the first one. But then again, Netanyahu really does need to keep “israel” in a state of war to avoid jail. I don’t know how much power the executive has to wage war, but if it’s anything like the US then the answer is “nearly unlimited”.
I don't see Iran acting right now since that would just be playing into the expectations of the US and Israel. Most likely, they will hold an aggressive military drill and possibly launch a major cyberattack. The US/Israel will then do a victory lap on how Iran is a paper tiger and let their guard down, which is when Iran will strike. The strike will probably have enough plausible deniability that it's not done by Iran even though it's very obviously done by Iran.
However, the uncertainty factor is that Israel is no longer a rational actor and might see apparent reluctance by Iran to attack as a sign of normalization of direct Israeli attacks on Iranian soil. Israel will then try its luck again, which will push Iran to retaliate and retaliate openly. This is weeks-where-decades-happen territory.
This is basically my prediction. Iran has no real reason to escalate massively, because the Resistance is winning. Hamas is still perfectly intact even after 6 months of brutal fighting and carrying out massive ambushes; the US is the closest they've been to being forced out of Iraq and Syria; the US is also incapable of dealing with Ansarallah and protecting critical sea shipping routes; the combination of the war and the blockade is having a massive impact on Israel's economy and social structure which is being fractured as they continue to fail in the war; Hezbollah continues to pose an existential threat to Israel just by themselves; Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, is being pulled to neutrality; and the world is the most anti-Israel it's been in decades.
Israel did the Damascus strike on the embassy because they were desperate and feel the need to escalate, because they are losing and need to force the United States into the war. Iran need only respond with missile strikes that originate in Iraq or Syria - not start bombarding Tel Aviv from Iranian territory itself. This is what a rational actor would do. The issue is that Israel, on the other side of the war, is not a rational actor. They are a genocidal Nazi ethnostate with dreams of conquering and settling the Middle East under ubermensch lebensraum, but backed up against the wall and tens of thousands of settlers displaced due to a buffer zone in their own territory, commanded by Hitler-but-farce who desperately wants to avoid going to jail and trying to control a fracturing coalition. There is nothing rational about their position.
Gold and silver are breaking new highs.
The ruling class are nervous.