Image is sourced from this Economist article.

Most of the information in this preamble is from the Cradle; notably here, here, here, and here.

The features of an effective American war (proxy or otherwise) is that it is a) against opponents with much less military power than you; b) with very low American losses; c) with victories you can visibly show off from time to time to justify involvement, and d) with a profit margin beyond merely giving money to military corporations. The war against Yemen was none of those; airplanes tumbled off aircraft carriers, and the navy complained of the hardest fighting conditions in decades. Conquering Yemen for its resources was inconceivable given the terrain, lack of good intelligence, and the strength of Ansarallah, and all that seemed to be visibly harmed were empty patches of desert and civilians.

Apparently, the ceasefire last month merely stipulated that they stop attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea; it said nothing about attacking Israel. Therefore, Yemen is absolutely free to create a new blockade of Israel by just striking their airports and seaports, and all Israel can seem to do is try and bomb them in retaliation, a futile strategy which has failed to produce a military or political change in Yemen for the last decade when many other countries have tried it. And if America directly attacks them in response to attacks on Israel, the ceasefire is off, and expensive equipment will continue to be lost.

Across the strait from Yemen is an interesting array of countries. Egypt’s position in this war is well-known, and Somalia is under a kind of US occupation under the guise of fighting terrorism (Trump withdrew most troops, but they were then sent back under Biden). The other three are Sudan, Djibouti, and Eritrea. All three are increasingly being drawn into the anti-imperialist camp, as they cooperate with Iran, Russia, and/or China. Sudan is undergoing a civil war, but the rebels fighting the government are famously backed by the UAE. Djibouti has refused to allow themselves to be a launchpad for US strikes on Yemen.

Eritrea has a fascinating history of flip-flopping between West and East over the past few decades, but has, since 2020, sided with the East. It was one of the five countries to oppose the 2022 UN resolution condemning Russia’s war with Ukraine. Eritrea sends two thirds of its exports to China, and Iran has reportedly supplied them with military equipment. If a stronger link could be reforged, then Iran would have significantly less trouble sending military technology to Ansarallah, and to other friendly groups throughout the region.

Naturally, the lidless eye of the imperial core is shifting its gaze onto Eritrea. Meanwhile, Ethiopia - a country that has experienced frequent conflict with Eritrea - is part of BRICS+ and their economy is increasingly reliant on China (as is most countries’ economies nowadays). If a permanent resolution between the two could be created, it would be a victory for themselves and the Resistance, and a defeat for America, which thrives on conflict and destabilization.

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.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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.

  • BreathThroughTheTube [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    64·
    14 days ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_attack

    Look at this shit from NATOpedia. Just straight up lying and confidently saying:

    On 8 April 2022, a Russian[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] missile strike hit the railway station of the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The strike killed 63 civilians (including 9 children) and wounded 150 (including 34 children).

    All of their sources are CNN, The Atlantic, Institute for the Study of War, BBC, etc. (People who are not present at the location of reporting and all pro-west rags).

    They even give up the whole game a little later…

    The missiles were initially misidentified as Iskander ballistic missiles.[20] Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Donetsk oblast, later specified that they had rather been Tochka-U missiles armed with cluster munitions.[15]

    Huh, no mention of the fact that Ukraine still used Tochka-U missiles in its active service while Russia retired them in 2017. Nor any mention of the fact that video evidence and the various booster wreckage shows that the missile came from the west, all Ukrainian controlled territory at the time. Interesting how Russia managed to launch a missile they don’t use from a place where they don’t control.

    The remnants of one of the missiles had the Russian words ЗА ДЕТЕЙ (za detey), meaning “[in revenge] for the children”, painted in white on its outside.[21] It also bore serial number Ш91579, which investigators said could potentially help trace it back to its original arsenal.[22][23]

    Blacks rule.

    Most obvious false flag shit i’ve ever seen. Nazis were mad they keep dying and losing, so they perpetrate a false flag to try and wave the bloody shirt and get America more involved. Funny how these investigations from the west never went anywhere and dried up instantly. Huh, why would that happen? Something they don’t want to reveal about who owned the missile? Oh wait, they give up the game again later…

    Russian media also said that the serial number of the missile was in the same range as one used by Ukrainian forces. Serial numbers cannot be used to prove which side fired the missile, however, since all Tochka-U’s were manufactured at a single site in Russia and distributed from there across the Soviet Union. As a result, there was, for example, a close serial number match between a Tochka-U used by Russia in Syria and one used by Ukraine in Snizhne.[39][40][41] Moreover, both Russia and Ukraine have made extensive use of munitions captured from the other side.[42][43]

    Oh suddenly it’s useless I guess what are ya gonna do.

    • CascadeOfLight [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      13 days ago
      If anyone wants to see more evidence

      Here is the wreckage of the missile

      Here is its travel path and the railway station that it fired its cluster bombs at

      Here is a projection of its possible origin points, which just so happens to include Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian rocket artillery park that they used to shell Donetsk for eight years (note that the only Russian-controlled area it could have originated from is open fields on the very front line, you know, the typical place you would find long-range missile launchers).

      Here is Zelensky’s official telegram saying it’s a Tochka-U, at the exact same time western media was calling it an Iskander, plus the follow-up of “Uh actually Russia is using Tochkas as well!” using an image of an entirely different vehicle.

      Just in case there was any confusion, as you can see the Iskander and Tochka missiles look completely different, so there’s no honest way for western media to have seen a photo of the missile wreckage and mistaken it for an Iskander, meaning they lied on purpose

      (Forgive the origin) Here’s a compilation of every briefing given by Russia that mentions Iskanders, Kalibrs or Tochkas - the latter of which they never claimed to use once, only referring to times that Ukraine used it, meaning for it to be Russian they must have pre-emptively scrubbed every mention of using Tochkas, and somehow never given the Ukrainians the chance to retrieve a single other Tochka missile body, all so they could conduct one atrocity against civilians, as a false flag of a Ukrainian false flag - which western media obviously wouldn’t believe anyway

      This also happened immediately after the Kiev regime issued an evacuation order across the area after their lines had started collapsing (waiting until the absolute last moment, instead of advising civilians to evacuate ahead of time), so there were a lot of civilians on the move trying to escape - and suddenly a main transport route is attacked, leaving those civilians milling around panicked and scaring others away from using the train stations, right as the Russian forces try to advance through the area.

      If one were being cynical, then based on the way Russians had been treating the civilians in the areas they’ve occupied, one might think Kiev had intentionally waited to issue evacuation orders, then sowed fear and confusion as soon as they did so, to create a ‘smokescreen’ of their own citizens knowing that the Russians would be forced to divert time and resources towards getting those civilians to safety, and preventing them from advancing rapidly in a way that might risk civilian casualties.

      But the Ukrainian state would never use its own citizens as a disposable resource for inconveniencing the enemy of the west, right?

      • hotcouchguy [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        15·
        13 days ago

        I don’t even think the western media is technically “lying” in cases like this. I think they never even look at the evidence and just repeat what they’re told, at most maybe they’ll email an ideologically-safe source for an additional quote or something to pad out an article. They might even toss in one line of “A Russian MOD statement says X” and then immediately dismiss it without further thought, as the source itself implies it shouldn’t be taken seriously.

        Lying implies more intention and independent thought than goes into this, instead they have a systematic indifference to the truth, more like an LLM.