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.
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I think it's mostly selection bias on behalf of the media. Photographers are more likely to take pictures of attractive young women than of other people and media outlets are more inclined to use these pictures as illustration to stories about movements they like.
until it's
There's a similar phenomenon in crime reporting, and it's common enough that it even has a name: "Missing white woman syndrome."
two layers of consent manufacturing machinery here: a) photographers that need to sell pictures of events are incentivized to snap photos that look good, which very often means attractive looking people--with other considerations of course like blood and action. there is no psy-op that photographers have produced thousands of pictures of protestors in the process of a good throw, it's just a dope photo and something that happens a lot.
b) news organizations that purchase and publish the photography have the same bias for striking images, plus the narrative that aligns with the interests they represent. right wing US rags love hot women protestors against [state enemy], they don't publish photogenic members of demonstrations in the US, who also very much exist
100%. Who is Fox News going to pick out of the crowd for an interview at an event like Occupy or "CHAZ?" First of all, they wouldn't even cover it if they had the choice, but if they must cover it, their objective is to portray the movement as a bunch of fuck up losers. They will actively seek the most disheveled looking, inarticulate spokespeople. Likewise, when the western media is invested in the success of a color revolution, they will seek out attractive, well dressed, well spoken representatives. All of a sudden, instead of whining about Millennials and their avocado toast until they're 50, they will be telling you the youth has their finger on the pulse, and an indispensable vision for the future . This is the driving impulse behind which images go to print, what B-roll plays during television coverage, what thumbnail gets slapped on an article shared on social media, who gets invited for a studio interview with Jason Muir, and so on.
99% of it gets left on the cutting room floor. What we see in media are the pieces which are deemed most useful in constructing a narrative.
Entirely sampling bias, you remember most strongly the most visually striking (and thus most photographed) protesters.
Well yes, but that's probably not what they're thinking when they're protesting - instead drinking the koolaid on the EU's promise of autonomy, equality, rule of law, economic progress etc.
Or for Zionists, they're just zionists who happen to be younger women who are more likely than not to be conventionally attractive because they're young.
A lot of the places subject to these kind of NGO industrial complex color revolution techniques are legitimately socially conservative (legitimately as in, socially conservative in reality, not just western propaganda). If one is a 18-30 year old woman in Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, or Bangladesh, and you are educated enough to speak English, you probably are in a class position where you already materially benefit from the NGO-industrial complex in some way and would potentially materially benefit more from deeper entrenchment of the NGO-industrial complex in your country. In short, I certainly believe that there's selection bias in terms of which protestors are most photographed and used in media stories. In addition, I speculate that there is selection bias that makes it more likely for young english speaking women to play an active role in agitating against governments in socially conservative countries.
The NGO complex also recruits those women through social events/friendships. It happened to my stepmom through the belarusian/ukranian diaspora in the west.
It's the same strategy as the Ukrainian fascists accepting Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine. It's harder to attack, and if it is attacked it's much more fiercely opposed due to patriarchal attitudes of protecting the poor weak women(from the patriarchal perspective) being horribly oppressed.
Even discussing this issue candidly like this makes me sound horrific. To put it into those words I had to hedge multiple time because otherwise it sounds awful.
Fronting women in revolution (colour rev or not) is extremely powerful.
EDIT: Throwing this in here because
No offense comrade, but if that theory came from the mouth of a lib about leftist protests, I'd be on the floor laughing about the cope.
Having said that, yeah, you're probably on to something, it would not surprise me at all. It's an easy way to manufacture consent for western audiences. Women might conflate those images subconsciously with women's liberation, straight men might be more likely to support because horny.
half of the women-focused gaming spaces are full of "Look how they censored Arcane (or other) in China/Russia/North Korea/Iran" and full of comments pushing for military actions due to, this weird misery porn series about a girl living in iran or afghanistan is also getting constantly shoved down my throat as well.
It's always very funny when they're like "omg, the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party is unwilling to display images that are even mildly critical of their regime, hence the censorship in this film" when almost every large cultural product in the West is produced by tightly-controlled American media funded and advised by the military and similar organizations. There's no post-production censorship in America because it's pre-censored, nothing gets made which is genuinely critical of the US, its armies, its police, and/or intelligence agencies.
The best you can do is satire and everybody-here-sucks cynicism where the "subversive" message is that a plucky CIA agent is actually only a little less of a scumbag than the terrorist leader (inevitably named something like Muhammed al-Islam Jihadi) using that classic trope where the villain talks about how they and the hero are the same deep down. If a film got made where 1) the CIA/FBI/police/whatever are unequivocally bad guys and 2) the "terrorists" are actually genuinely freedom fighters who are ideologically motivated towards liberation and not stochastic violence for the sake of being evil, it would be either cancelled or US state media would be like "this is a film that is propaganda against our brave soldiers and agents, it's anti-democracy and anti-freedom, we must cens-- I mean, restrict access to this so that our precious children don't get brainwashed by Russian-Iranian propaganda. this isn't censorship, it's keeping the world safe for democracy."
I know protests are fake when its all of a sudden every other tiktok in my feed despite me having no interest. This happened with georgia, all of a sudden every other tiktok was about it from a obviously pro eu biased stance
don't think it's an industrial complex more than the natural self interest of western media companies wanting to dumb down any protest movement for its audience.
There's a lot at play, such as the general subconscious sexism that portrays women as meek and caring over the violent, selfish man. On average (talking out of my ass here) this means media will naturally bias towards using women in imagery portraying protests to evoke positive emotions, the same way we often see women being used to evoke something being a tragedy. Men may be used to make a protest seem scary or violent, or to make a tragic event look menacing - Just think of how we see women Vs men used in news articles about immigration/refugees!
There's also just the sex appeal. Young women with features appealing to white western audiences are going to be featured in protest photography more than the men. This bias is likely at every level - photographers will likely photograph women more, whilst editors will likely select women from that already biased selection of photos. It's compounding; Especially if these choices are actively biased rather than unconsciously so.
There are loads of interacting social forces behind what is filtered down and slapped on an article designed for clicks rather than any amount of deeper thought. You're more than likely picking up on one of the many ways we're fed a skewed version of reality from almost all fronts.
That hair is a work of art for sure