this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Bulletins and News Discussion from June 16th to June 22nd, 2025 - Iran, Harden Your Heart
(hexbear.net)
Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran's leadership must - if they haven't already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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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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Guardian article - emphasis mine
These fucking ghouls want to legitimize the use of nukes so badly. For what? You think you can really stop Iran from refining uranium forever without causing a 100 million person humanitarian crisis by bombing Iran into the Stone Age? They’ll have their nuke, especially if you legitimize using them, and then you will reap what you have sown. The U.S. should consider itself blessed to have sat itself atop a geopolitical world order that HASNT legitimized the use of nuclear weapons beyond deterrent.
So if the MOP can't reach Fordow (in their own words!) even though it's nominally 80 meters underground (excl. the entrance that's 800M up a mountain), while the MOP itself has a rated penetration of 60 meters... then either one or the other is vastly different to our current realities.
The MOP is also only rated for 8 meters against reinforced concrete, not 60, so maybe the reality is that we've been eating the propaganda for a weapon that might be the ultimate paper tiger in this whole ordeal.
Depending on its density 60 m of soil seems about right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_depth
Yeah, its just that we only ever see the 60m claim from the media whilst omitting that it probably wont have the power to then go another 20 meters AND then into however many meters of reinforced concrete.
And that's if they even strike the right the right fuckin' point... because they've dug the facility horizontally from the entrance !!! They might just hit some fuckin dirt !!! Not even a nuke is gonna help if it fuckin MISSES !!!
The more I learn about the Fordow facility, the GBU spunkbuster bomb, the general insanity of this whole ordeal becomes more obvious! Jesus Christ lmao
/u/skeletorsass was saying this earlier and seems to know more about it.
If it isn't good for this then what the fuck is it for exactly
Funneling taxpayer money to the military industrial complex of course!
I wonder how many American weapon systems have been compromised by the profit motive
Nate Bethea once mentioned while he was deployed in Afghanistan his unit was trialing this equipment they said it could use sound to pinpoint the direction of gunshots. He said it was basically a boombox with a microphone strapped to it.
Sounds about right
I think Nate (or it might've been what's-his-face from Lions Led by Donkeys) also mentioned some biometrics kit US troops were supposed to use in an attempt to identify insurgent networks but it constantly gave false reports and misidentified people, and what was supposed to be a tool to assist them quickly became the main focus of missions (ex "go to X village and scan Y number of men).
I'm really curious how many of these grifts have been integrated. I can't wait to see American troops pinned down in the mountains trying desperately to get their gunshot identification device to tell them where to shoot
If I remember correctly, the pentagon was literally buying dowsing rods that were supposed to point towards ieds for troops in Iraq
The ADE 651
"The device features a swiveling antenna attached to a plastic grip and requires charging by a user's static electricity. Users would insert "programmed substance detection cards" to supposedly detect specific substances, which were claimed to absorb the vapors of those substances. However, investigations revealed that the product was incapable of detecting anything, essentially being a dowsing rod. The ADE 651 was used primarily by Iraqi security forces for security checkpoints. Due to the false sense of security, many critics pointed to numerous incidents where bombings occurred despite the presence of the ADE 651 at security checkpoints, underscoring its ineffectiveness."
Sorry Colonel, I left the bomb smell card at base
The ADE 651 is a descendant of the Quadro Tracker Positive Molecular Locator produced in the 1990s by Wade Quattlebaum [NAME ALERT], an American car dealer, commercial diver and treasure hunter. The Quadro Tracker was promoted by Quattlebaum initially as a device to find lost golf balls, and later as a means of detecting marijuana, cocaine, heroin, gunpowder, and dynamite using "carbo-crystalised" software cards. Like the ADE 651, it consisted of a hand unit on which a swinging antenna was mounted, linked to a box worn on the belt in which the cards were inserted to identify the "molecular frequency" of whatever the user wanted to detect. The cards were "programmed" by photocopying a Polaroid photograph of the target, cutting up the resulting copy, and pasting the pieces between two squares of plastic. Quattlebaum sold the devices for between $395 and $8,000 for a unit claimed to be capable of detecting humans, using a Polaroid photograph of the individual concerned for the "programming." A cheaper variant called the Golfinder or Gopher was available for $69.
Holy shit, this is even better than I remembered 🤣🤣🤣
"Capitalism promotes innovation"
The innovation:
no fucking way did people convince themselves this device could smell bombs through photographs 😭😭😭😭😭
I seem to recall some bri'ish guy got done for selling "ied detectors" to the military that were literally a plastic box with an LED light glued on
Clownworld
Safe to say literally every single one since the 60s at least
Gonna be incredible when 3 carriers get smoked by hypersonics