The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
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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.
This is untrue; Hezbollah alone still has the capability to end Israel's ability to function as a state, let alone Iran. Israel could, at any point in the last year, had a few thousand missiles fired at them every day for a couple months; orders of magnitude beyond their ability to intercept. Their decision (particularly Hezbollah's) not to escalate to that level will be discussed here and elsewhere for years to come, and we'll likely get dripfed information on that over time.
It obviously wasn't cowardice - you don't join or become part of Hezbollah's higher-ups by being a coward - and Hezbollah had increasingly less to lose as Lebanon was increasingly bombed, so I'm curious to know the reasons why. Perhaps Hezbollah's leadership was told that escalation to this level would have resulted in all of Lebanon and Gaza being nuked, with millions of deaths resulting. Perhaps it had something to do with Iran, or Assad.
I find it hard to believe that a bunch of missiles would destroy the state of israel. After a few days they would nuke beirut and the genocide would go back to business as usual. Hezbollah clearly had a red line at a certain level of Lebanese civilian casualties that kept their operations permanently limited. Iran is a greater question, and why they missed this opportunity is a mystery
It was not a "bunch of missiles"; Hezbollah has over a hundred thousand of them. And not Hamas' fertilizer rockets, actual entire-houses-collapse explosives. Hezbollah hitting an electrical substation near the West Bank was the threat of how "a bunch of missiles would destroy the state of Israel"; with electricity off, waterports hit by barrages, airports only occasionally functioning, and water desalination disabled, Israel's population would be reduced - either via emigration or starvation - quite quickly, and life would become difficult to impossible. The economy would certainly be in total collapse. Populations without electricity in a desert-like environment are quite vulnerable, especially ones that are used to high levels of technology (which is why Lebanon is more durable in the face of bombing raids) and frequently ignore indigenous advice that has kept those environments livable for millennia. Israel has a LOT to lose that its surrounding countries do not, which makes it vulnerable.
My biggest question for this entire conflict is why Hezbollah did not use them once the bombings throughout Lebanon were frequent and intense, and I'm 100% sure it was not cowardice, so hopefully we eventually get the answer. I'm not blaming them for anything, I'm sure their reason was very just and reasonable, I'm just curious as it'll help inform me better about the limiting factors on the Resistance and thus make better predictions. There's all sorts of very good possible reasons we can all think of and speculate on as I did above, but I am curious about the actual reasons.
What I'm most afraid of is that it was a "deal" like that Iran made with Israel to delay the response to Haniyeh's assassination, as it would indicate that Hezbollah's leadership, including Nasrallah, were still under the illusion -somehow - that Israel was deal-capable; just like Iran's civilian leadership is/was. And if that's the case - that even your greatest enemies can be convinced to make deals with you because they actually think you'll hold up your end, even if you think to yourself "Hahaha, this deal may benefit them in the short term but us in the long term, so long as they keep their word!" - then Western imperialism is gonna be a bit of a tougher nut to crack than I hoped. But my hunch was that it was some explicit nuclear threat or something similarly apocalyptic.
In my mind it's really not that much of a mystery why Hezbollah didn't go all-out. Yeah, they might have crippled Israel, but that would also entail the destruction of Lebanon, whether at the hands of the Americans or Israeli nukes. What good would that do for Hezbollah or the Palestinian people?
The only way for Israel to seize to exist, is for it to collapse under it's own contradictions. As long as it has nukes, the resistance can only push up until just shy of all-out war.
Legitimate fear of US involvement. If Hezbollah rained hellfire on Pissrael enough to destroy their capacity as a state, the US would take drastic measures.
In a real all out war, the enemy, in the US and Israel, is not going to tolerate hundreds of missiles being fired at them a day without a response. And the problem with Iranian long range missiles was their accuracy under warfare conditions, evident in post hoc analysis on the strike on Nevatim Airbase. 30 to 40 direct hits on the base, but only one F-35 hangar hit out of 20 total, and one to two large aircraft hangars hit. The accuracy for counterforce targeting is just not there, the missiles have little effect on military bases, which are quite hard targets. So then the missiles can only be used on large soft targets effectively, but these are at levels of escalation Iran was uncomfortable with hitting. This is what I suspect after reading independent analysis, western analysts, and some dripfed information. An alleged leaked voice recording of IRGC General Behrouz Esbati, in regards to this topic said:
So that is the general idea, Iranian missiles have little impact on military bases, and any resulting retaliation would not be worth it, and a regional war is not in Iran's interest.
Analysis regarding accuracy from the satellite imagery stated similar, if you're looking at the probably of a single specific Iranian missile hitting a single specific hardened aircraft shelter (single shot probability of kill), even under the best case scenario, it's a 0.03% probability. Again, this is the chance one single missile will score a hit against a single specific hardened aircraft shelter. We see better performance at Nevatim, but that’s because Nevatim has many hardened aircraft shelters distributed over a wide area. Once you account for the chance that at least one/any of the missiles fired will strike at least one/any target, your hit chances for hitting at least one target get much better. But the conclusion is simple, you cannot get results from the imagery available that suggest Iranian long range missiles are capable of economic counterforce targeting. IRGC generals would've come to this conclusion upon viewing their own satellite imagery and data. Short range missiles with electro optical sensors that were used against a US military base in 2020 could have counterforce potential, but that means only baes within a 300-500km radius from Iranian launch sites are vulnerable, and the kill chain becomes more complex. And Iran don't have tens of thousands of these missiles. The backbone of Iranian deterrence are longer range liquid fueled missiles, not short range tactical missiles.
I read an interesting piece on strategic front about deception, and how Hamas and Sinwar were able to deceive Israel prior to October 7, and how Hezbollah were deceived by Israel in the lead up to the ceasefire negotiations, not using their full capabilities, a paralysis of the leadership. I'll post it soon, along with the rest of the sources I've read.
That ending question and all the remaining "perhaps" is why I have my perspective. I believe they understood the costs of escalating and chose not to. I am also open to being wrong, but for now that appears to be the limiting factor in the equation. It seems so easy "overwhelming force = infrastructure collapse = death to israel," so the most obvious explanation to me to withhold that force would be the cost of retaliation. You're right, it is just guesswork right now and I hope we get answers eventually.
The Iran question is scary, hopefully you're incorrect, but it's certainly plausible.