Image is of one of the six salvos of the Oreshnik missile striking Ukraine.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that appears to split into six groups of six submunitions as it strikes its target, giving it the appearance of a hazel flower. It can travel at ten times the speed of sound, and cannot be intercepted by any known Western air defense system, and thus Russia can strike and conventionally destroy any target anywhere in Europe within 20 minutes. Two weeks ago, Russia used the Oreshnik to strike the Yuzhmash factory in Ukraine, particularly its underground facilities, in which ballistic missiles are produced.
Despite the destruction caused by the missile, and its demonstration of Russian missile supremacy over the imperial core, various warmongering Western countries have advocated for further reprisals against Russia, with Ukraine authorized by the US to continue strikes. Additionally, the recent upsurge of the fighting in Syria is no doubt connected to trying to stretch Russia thin, as well as attempting to isolate Hezbollah and Palestine from Iran; how successful this will have ended up being will depend on the outcome of the Russia and Syrian counteroffensive. Looking at recent military history, it will take many months for the Russians and Syrians to retake a city that was lost in about 48 hours.
Even in the worst case scenario for Hezbollah, it's notable that Ansarallah has had major success despite being physically cut off from the rest of the Resistance and under a blockade, and it has defeated the US Navy in its attempts to open up the strait. Israel has confirmed now that their army cannot even make significant territorial gains versus a post-Nasrallah, post-pager terrorist attack Hezbollah holding back its missile strike capabilities. In 2006, it also could not defeat a much less well-armed Hezbollah and was forced to retreat from Lebanon.
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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 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.
China is dengist, there is no reason for them to care about the ideological abortion that is baathism. It is more than possible that each faction just sinks into its preferred version of fascism and cuts off proxies in favor of new spheres of influence. Iran killed its leftists long ago, they don't really care about baathism either.
China being dengist is the issue, I understand the whole "we need to build our productive forces" but honestly, I've come to view capital as almost a biblical evil. It is a corrupting force.
Anyway, yeah they don't care about Baathism, but my concern was more with the allowance of the Palestinian genocide. The USSR would've put troops on the ground.
And that is an anti dialectical world-view.
I'm religious so I do believe in biblical evils, I might view capital that way and that might be (I don't really care) "anti-dialectical". There are plenty of Marxists, usually Maoists, who opposed Dengism for the same reasons. If me calling Deng a capitalist roader is more digestible then there you go.
Truly the fall of the USSR marked us as being in the bad timeline. What a devastating blow to humanity that was.
Good thing we dont think of anything as biblical evils as dialectical materialists. If china put troops in palestine they would have given the US the greenlight for the whole west to begin war with china
China would win that war.
"Win" is relative to a 1 year ground war in china setting the economy back at least to the 00s.
So I've always believed I was a dialectical materialist but I DO believe in biblical evils. I didn't realize that my belief in God suddenly disavowed me as a materialist.
We would have more likely seen the genocide escalate into a proxy war, something that would have more than likely saved lives. Let's remove troops from the equations, how about some fucking navy support hm? Anything to help even the odds for Hamas. Russia is controlled by Putin, someone who so badly wants to be part of the western club, and they STILL do more than China.
Usury is a sin, you're not wrong
Dengism ended in 1996 with China’s first economic crisis with an unemployment rate never seen before under Mao, and when it joined the WTO in 2001. 2001-2013 was just neoliberalism. That’s when China got rid of the last vestiges of its labor protection (an even worse deal than India’s WTO terms). The number of Chinese students who went to study in the US and other countries exploded after 2001.
Xi came to power in 2013 and has been trying to steer the country back to Marxism since. You can consider the 13th FYP (2016-2020) as Xi’s first actual term of enacting his preferred version of economic policies. If you’ve been following the news from China from the past 3 years, there has been a concerted push to get rid of the libs, especially during the 20th Congress in 2022. That effort appeared to have failed (I don’t know, just speculating from the recent turn of events). If anything, I consider the end of Zero Covid in December 2022 the first victory for the liberals and they have been turning the tide toward their favor since.
And if you ask me why China chose to join the WTO in 2001, remember the bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the Hainan Island incident in early 2001. China was far weaker at the time (and the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 taught them how stability must prevail at all cost), it was a strategic decision to hug the US economy as tightly as possible under the illusion that the US would not turn hostile toward China if both countries have already been so deeply intertwined (你中有我，我中有你 - you are inside me, and I am inside you). A decision that would have lasting consequences in the decades to come.