A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of the USS Abraham Lincoln arriving at Thailand, looking worn after a very long deployment to the Arabian Sea.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

To start briefly with Iran, there’s been two significant developments over the last week. First is that Iran is now beginning to put into practice its policy that allows preemptive strikes - a policy which was authorized by the previous Khamenei a while before his death but has so far gone unused - to strike at Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan without a corresponding American aggression immediately beforehand. The second development is that Iran is now taking a firmer stand against the US Navy in the waters of the Arabian Sea, beginning by testing anti-ship ballistic missiles against the US fleet - so far without confirmed hits as of me writing this sentence - as it is obviously disadvantageous for Iran to simply not do anything against the blockade even with US logistics under strain. The US has attempted to dissuade these new strikes by striking Iranian oil tankers, to which Iran has responded by striking oil tankers aligned with the West. This is very much not a shooting war that the US wants to get into as oil stockpiles continue to decline and diesel prices are at all-time highs (though if adjusted for inflation, we still have a little more time before we hit absolute highs). The overall picture is of an Iran growing in confidence.

There’s also been some encouraging news out of Yemen, where Ansarallah has been conducting a ground offensive weaken the enemy occupation of the western coast, including some breathtakingly precise drone-drop operations combined with using recon drones to guide ballistic missiles at enemy formations. As far as I’m aware, the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi tankers has been very successful, although stopping Saudi tankers from heading north towards Suez has been understandably trickier. I suppose if push comes to shove, they can continue to strike the very immobile coastal oil facilities rather than trying to hit moving ships at a great distance.

The news out of Russia/Ukraine has been quite miserable for particularly Ukrainian civilians over the past month or two, with Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian logistics and warehouses being met with much greater Russian responses on Ukrainian civilian logistics and warehouses. Ukrainian ports are now effectively blockaded, making exporting agricultural products in the same quantities as before essentially impossible, and within the cities including Kiev, food suppliers are scrambling to find smaller warehouses to place goods in so that they aren’t as easily destroyed like the larger warehouses have been. I find it sincerely upsetting that the war has progressed to this point, though it’s always worth noting that, first, Ukraine had a few opportunities to sign pretty good negotiating terms with Russia; and second, in comparison, Western wars begin at the step of making a conflict about hurting civilians, even to the extent of it being a detriment to strategic goals by not solely hitting military targets (most famously in Gaza, but also e.g. during Obama’s term by bombing weddings and hospitals).

I will confess to not being as up-to-date on the situation in Europe, and especially Germany, in regards to the Ukraine War as I would like, but as a general statement, nothing I’ve seen over the last few years has demonstrated to me that Europe is capable of fielding a conventional force which would provide a formidable, let alone existential, threat to Russia at this stage. There’s been lots of embarrassing stories about European missile, drone, and shell production being well below standards in both quality and quantity. My thoughts are now that I think the age of the US/NATO posing an existential conventional threat to China, Russia, and probably Iran (and perhaps others like the DPRK?) is now conclusively over, with Western bases proven to be indefensible with existing missile defence programs, their logistics very vulnerable to disruption, and their aircraft not being safe to use over airspace at least as well-protected as Iran’s. The US can still do cataclysmic, nation-destroying damage to smaller, less defended countries like those in Latin America and Africa, but for the anti-US squad in Eurasia, the vast majority of the threat from the US is now a combination of financial/debt offensives and covert intelligence. We still have a long way to go on both those fronts, however - a minimum of a decade or two, I believe, even with Trump’s inadvertently anti-imperialist accelerationism.

Lastly for this preamble, the annual SCO summit took place on September 1st in Bishkek, with the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, and others in attendance. A lot of the usual statements were made: down with hegemonies, down with militarising space, down with unilateral sanctions, up with local currency exchanges, up with cooperation, up with peace, etc etc. The big proclamation this time around was the Bishkek Declaration, which reiterated all those points I just mentioned. Overall, it’s one of those documents where the content is mostly cool and indirectly jabs a lot at the US, but I find that paper is a generally ineffective barrier of protection against bombs and missiles, which is a pretty major avenue of… let’s say, “international communication” in the current day. And I would like to see some real contenders to the World Bank and IMF taking shape soon if we’re gonna truly start fighting hegemonism, but I digress.


Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ 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.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

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.


  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    29 days ago

    Drone questions

    • Have all the drones the Iranians used so far been suicide drones?

    • What’s the best estimate of the percentage of their drones that are not suicide drones?

    I post in the war megas all the times but I realized I have put entirely to sleep by the very extraordinarily sloppy use of language used by the American MSM. They use terms like “Iranian strike” without details. This is typical…

    U.S. forces in Jordan launched more than 30 Patriot missiles defending against the Iranian strikes in Jordan.

    The word “drone” didn’t even appear at all in that update. All of this is great PR for the Pentagon being that the context is shit. There’s no mention of how crazy expensive Patriots are and how crazy cheap the Iranian drones are. I bet many normies think the Patriots are shooting down expensive Iranian missiles.

      1. No. Iran does have other drones which have seen use. The F-15 kill was apparently a Shahed kitted out with anti air missiles, and the IRGC has used drones in a surveillance role over the SoH as radar coverage has been poor. The UCAS (like your typical Reaper) usage by Iran so far has been minimal, if at all, although they do have access to mature models in that category - my guess is that they’re better used over Iraq where their return is more likely.

      2. No idea. Likely very small - the nature of one way attack drones is that they’re cheap and plentiful. If it was over 90% I wouldn’t be surprised.


      As for your suggestion of the weapons used on Jordan - It’s almost 100% likely to be ballistic missiles.

      Jordan is too far away. Shahed 136 movez at around 160mph - less than a third the speed of a commercial airliner. At best a Shahed 238 (more expensive so lesser used) can cruise at 300mph.

      The base would have been emptied well before any drones arrived, and we’d have seen reports of drone launches plus civilian footage. Instead, we saw reports of ballistic launches and the arrival of Iranian fast-moving projectiles into Jordan a few minutes later. You can check fhis mega for a selection of videos of the incoming missiles and it’s absolutely ballistic missiles.

      The MSM is sloppy at reporting because it doesnt know anything about the weapons being used by Iran beyond the Shahed - which itself is a family of drones so that’s reductive in itself. They only know what the Tomahawk and Patriot missiles are because the MIC gave them marketing-friendly names that are notorious, even when both represent families of weapons with massive ranges in their capabilities - A Patriot PAC-2 is barely capable of splatting a soviet era MiG. PAC-3 MSE can intercept (with varying degrees of success) all but Oreshnik.

      And yeah, I’m sure some folks think these missiles are intercepting 99% of these hyper advanced missiles, but the material conditions at the feet of your Langley Virgina briefcase hitler is: even the most expensive Iranian missiles are cheaper, more plentiful, and deadlier, than anything the US can counter with… beyond digging bunkers 200ft underground…

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      29 days ago

      they did use missiles on jordan, the drones are sort of neutralized by f16 with small rockets, they have to truly use them 24/7 1 drone per hour to blow through in flight defense. they did use a lot of them on the gulf bases, cause they are nearer

    • tocopherol [any]@hexbear.net
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      29 days ago

      They use language so carefully to imply a certain narrative while still being technically correct, there should be mandatory lessons on how to read between the lines of US news media to all kids at young ages.

      U.S. forces in Jordan launched more than 30 Patriot missiles defending against the Iranian strikes in Jordan.

      In addition to what you mentioned about this statement, it’s funny because it could mean they had to use five missiles per interception or that dozens of missiles still struck the base, it really doesn’t say anything other than they spent millions of our dollars burning Patriot missiles.