Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
It's kinda funny watching everyone argue with phantoms in their head; I'm talking about the long term, yes the US can't decouple in the year of our lord 2025, but I hate to break it to you, by ten years time it will, even if it has to give the global economy a long term stroke to achieve it
The Americans are not gonna settle for the status quo with China because Trump's dumbass tariff policies failed in the first six months of his second dumbass term
Also you can't have an overproduction crisis if you're not activity building productive forces, you kinda contradicted yourself in that first sentence
You can be in an overproduction crisis because you've overbuilt. You can remain in an overproduction crisis after you have ceased to make capital investments for some time.
The "China overbuilt" take is a dumb neolib take, it assumes the main drivers of the Chinese economy are speculation and fictitious capital casing after imaginary consumers
The problem in China is under consumption, which can appear to the untrained eye as the textbook narrative on overproduction, but in reality it only remains a problem because the Chinese believe some very liberal and silly things about markets and inflation
Please read Capital Vol. 3 Chapter 13.
Overproduction is a very real problem that is happening in China right now. The increase in productivity has not translated into wage growth, exactly as Marx predicted.
The property market is imploding, the solar panel industry made record losses last year as investors fled, and the price wars in EV and cell phone sectors are causing the manufacturers to devour each other that threatens to kill off the entire supply chains. In fact, the systemic risk can no longer be ignored as even state media including the Global Times are starting to warn exactly what many people have been warning for the past couple years.
It is not just under-consumption. There are literally not enough people in China to purchase (and actually dwell in) all the housing that have been built over the past decade. Similarly, the solar panel industry is pumping out dirt cheap solar panels at twice the global demand in just a single year!
The most fascinating part is that Marx predicted all of that nearly 150 years ago! And the irony is that it turns out to be socialist China that will become the first industrialized country that embodies Marx’s principle of “the tendency of the rate of profit to fall”.
First of all that chapter has nothing to do with anything, you're confusing the tendency of the rate of profit to fall with the artificial constraints of an export led economy
Again the problem isn't profit-seekers chasing imaginary consumers, it's the fact hundreds of millions in China need a consumption stimulus to complete the transition from export mindedness to domestic consumption
Huh? The 2024 statistics from the Chinese government claim that GDP grew by 5% and purchase power grew by 5.5%