Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan’s - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it’s not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won’t attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
My fucking god Chomsky has become so donkey-brained these days. Watched a video in which he says Democrats (as in the party, not voters) have soured on Israel, and that it’s all Republicans who support it now. Meanwhile, the fascist you obsessed on telling people to vote for in swing states because lesser-evil is actually perpetuating the genocide as we speak, Noam, and even bypassing Congress to do it. Fucking hell.
chomsky… that’s the guy from the epstein flight logs right
One of many but yes
Nothing suggests that Chomsky knew about the elite pedophile ring Epstein was running, let alone that he took part in it himself. For all we know, Epstein was just an acquaintance of Chomsky’s who had no reason to think the guy was anything but an average finance pervert.
This of course still raises the question of what the hell a supposed anarchist, an icon of the left and, I swear to God someone actually called him this, “America’s conscience” was doing socialising and rubbing elbows with the very oligarchs they’re supposed to be the enemies of.
Chomsky being on the Epstein logs doesn’t show that he’s a nonce, it shows that he’s a fraud.
Nothing suggests that Chomsky knew about the elite pedophile ring Epstein
yeah and after Chompsky found that out, he banned Epstein from ever coming to mar a lago again… wait
The man’s ancient, his brain is cooked by entropy
I wish he had retired entirely. He’ll keep spouting his opinions until his last breath. He was a brilliant guy but time catches up with us all. His brain is fried. He’ll be 96 in December.
I’m replying to your comment here because I can’t see your original comment from my instance.
I feel that the state of queer rights is actually getting worse and that Singapore as a whole is getting more reactionary. The stuff below are what got me to this conclusion.
cw for homophobia, transphobia and ableism
2021
Someone made a post on reddit identifying herself as trans student (she/ her pronouns). She was barred from transitioning and that her principal told her ‘due to your presentation, you would be as disruptive to the school environment as a student with severe autism’. link
2022: I felt that Singapore’s anti-LGBTQ community got more active and aggressive in this year.
There was a school counselor who hijacked a sex ed to spread homophobic stuff. After the incident the counselor was barred from teaching sex ed. Explanation they gave was that the counselor showed un-vetted material with no acknowledgement of the homophobia. link
Then there was this protect Singapore/ families townhall organised by Jason Wong (he seems to be super-active in anti-LGBTQ movements). Police did not consider this hate speech. link
While it’s true that Section 377A was repealed in 2022, at the same time the constitution was changed to define marriage as between man and woman, completely invalidating the reason people wanted it removed. link
Around this time the Singapore politicians were whining about protecting homophobes from cancel culture. Yup. The type of stuff you expect from anti-PC comedians in the US or kid’s show writers in Japan is parroted unironically by local politicians. Instead of changing themselves they accuse LGBTQ for taking away their citizens. It’s pathetic and scary in the same way an incel school shooter is.
Also Singapore has been infiltrated by a lot of anti-LGBTQ talking heads from foreign countries. This is one article on transphobic foreign interferance
The book ‘The Aware Saga: Civil Society and Public Morality in Singapore’ also has information on how the christian right managed to ban official sex ed from ever being able to acknowledge or properly educate on gender and sexual minorities.
They constantly call LGBTQ foreign interference yet allow anti-LGBTQ talking heads into the country.
The work continues. Even if we get some solid wins it’s always fights against the lies. It’s like they only know one playbook. Thank you for the info and the links.
Read them all.Hopefully wiser leaders can prevail through the tired repeated junk. They know visibility kills lies and they are doing their best to try to put the queers back in the closet. It is going to require some bravery - especially in the trans community to be public.
There’s a phrase we used before and I think it needs to make more of a come back.
“We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” So to the haters I’d say
Read this response first if you want full context.
Before I start, I want to preface this by saying that even though it may not be obvious to foreign observers, believe me when I say that the rhetorics and contentions you all have has already been extensively discussed and debated by anti-imperialists in the Global South. It may not be in English, it may not be available in neat and easily read blogs, essays and articles, but it has been discussed and taken into account.
Have a little faith in the Global South, okay?
Starting with the first article, it’s a reddit post. I am not bothered enough to even begin to engage with that. It’s reddit.
Second article - okay so some random guy swooped in and said some wrong things about sexuality and got barred as a result.
To chalk this incident up to the actions of one rogue counsellor ignores systemic issues of inadequate sexuality education, the group [Pink Dot SG] added.
Okay so no one here denies discrimination exists and sex education is lacking. What I am against is the use of this unforunate circumstance for psyops and NGO infiltration. We don’t need an NGO to say that we lack good sex education policy.
Third article - that is all completely true.
Fourth article - random culture war bullshit that was imported into Singapore by the West in which the article itself notes that the chances of any law proposal coming into fruition amounting to zero.
Fifth article - this is where it gets more serious and has some interesting stuff I want to highlight.
Firstly let’s talk about the website. “Express your heckin’ LGBTQ+ identity.” Ok some random company that profits off LGBT suffering by selling LGBT themed pins and apparrel and then funnels it into some other LGBT NGOs (more on this below). Yeah, seems about right.
I can talk a lot about the individualization, commodification and liberalization of “LGBTQ+” “identity” and it’s harmful impact on Global South gender and sexual diversity but I’ll not mention it here so it doesn’t lead to an essay.
On the article itself :
First few paragraphs, nothing of use, just the event that the first article covered and a high school level statistics course I guess.
It then discredits some pop science transphobic authors which I agree with.
The article mention two authors which is supposed to indict Singapore’s LGBTphobia because they were invited into a webinar?? Ok so some people thought these frauds had something valuable to say, doesn’t really signify much about the quality of life of LGBT people in Singapore.
And then it tries to scaremonger about “misinformation”. Hmm where have I heard this term before? Oh right, western liberal circles.
The article is very liberal because it reeks of the short-term sightedness present in all liberals, whether Amerikan or their comprador counterparts. We have been suffering with “misinformation” for 500 years under colonization and imperialism.
I do not care about the article’s scaremongering and pathetic elaboration on “muh SCIENCE!!!”. The East doesn’t really treat Science as some sort of sanctimonious and immutable ideology to bully others for wrongthink. That’s why traditional medicines still exist.
The normalisation of misinformation — including fake news and fake science — can have destabilising effects on society. We’ve seen this happen in the US with the Trump administration — fake information about the pandemic led to a weak response and loss of public trust in healthcare institutions, and made the US the country with the highest COVID-19 death rates among advanced nations.
And the article’s whole tangent on vaccines misunderstands the entirety of the US situation aswell. Perhaps the history of colonized people and US culture where large vaccination drives, quarantines and mask-wearing cultures isn’t the norm may lead to many Yankees resisting when the government forces people to do it. It is not just evil Trump ignoring ScienceTM.
In the section about Quentin Van Meter, this paragarph stood out to me:
Local transgender support organisation TransgenderSG has compiled a useful and robust list of corrections to the fake science shared by Quentin Van Meter during his webinar. We recommend reading it to understand the full scope of corrections.
Ok that’s an interesting NGO I never heard of before. Let’s look at their website.
So a random website made by some volunteers. Seems innocent enough.
Then I look at their collaborations.
On the first home page:
17 March 2021: Read the press release on the Universal Periodic Review report that we co-submitted with Sayoni and the Asia Pacific Transgender Network.
Ah the infamous Asian Pacific Transgender Network.
Some of their sponsors include the Robert Carr Fund and the Global Equality Fund.
Robert Carr Fund gets its money from:
I searched the Global Equality Fund and found it on www.state.gov of all places. Oh very nice.
It’s nice that Google also funds APTN to really drive home that the US is a dictatorship of Capital.
The rest of these orgs:
TheProjectX - an NGO that wants to legalize sex work lol. No further comment.
The T Project:
The founder and director “participated in the U.S Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership programme in 2018” and also
“ILGA-Asia”, oh you mean the sister branch of ILGA-Europe. (ILGA-Asia suspciously does not list any source of their funding…)
and ILGA World
Their Co-Secretary General: “Mexican Microfinance Institutions” (LOL), “MacArthur Foundation”, “EXXON MOBIL” <-- now that’s funnier.
Their other Co-Sec General: “Global Interfaith Network on Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (former Co-Chair)” the org in which has funding from:
Oogachaga has this to say about their own website:
Yes, the NGO is sponsored by the High Commission of Canada and is transparent about it.
The jokes write themselves. It’s like a russian nesting doll of NGO and Western fuckery.
The book ‘The Aware Saga: Civil Society and Public Morality in Singapore’ also has information on how the christian right managed to ban official sex ed from ever being able to acknowledge or properly educate on gender and sexual minorities.
Sex education is an important issue that gets hijacked by “civil society” that politicizes and polarises the people. I have not read the book and it’s use of “civil society” in the title discourages me from ever touching it.
They constantly call LGBTQ foreign interference yet allow anti-LGBTQ talking heads into the country.
I’m sorry that Singapore isn’t an Orientalist Authoritarian Despotic State that will restrict anyone from entering if they are speaking anything that someone else would disagree with. (And this isn’t even the case - it’s just a random online webinar.)
It is argued that anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is entirely imported (which I agree) but seemingly when I say that pro-LGBTQ+ rhetoric also comes from the West it is somehow belittled.
I expect that for the comprador liberals who doesn’t even know about their own colonial history but I am a bit dejected that this same rhetoric is also conveyed in an “anti-imperialist” site.
Perhaps it is a means to divide the people and cause instability like I said in my previous comments? So yes, I will call it western cultural imperialism when Christian sodomy laws were enacted that restricted Global South cultures to the Eurocentric gender binary but I will also call it western cultural imperialism when these liberal NGOs faff about “queer theory”, “intersectionality” and “lgbtqia+ rights”,.
This is because it all inevitably came from European Enlightenment epistemology (which itself stems from Western Philosophy), reeking with self-centered individiualism that can not facilitate and forment lasting gender and sexual liberation.
We survived 500 years of onslaught and invasion. We will develop our own path to liberation.
I recognise that life is, perhaps, awful, but that won’t make me give colonizers an inch when they WILL take the whole mile.
I wrote these two long effortposts with the acknowledgement that it may just be disregarded as a slight of hand and all my time invested here may just be wasted. But I’ll say this: this perspective I am saying right now isn’t fringe. It may not be directly structured into the sentences I formulated in these two posts, but it is more common than you think. I’m going to take a long break after this. This has exhausted me.
2 days after accusing the UNRWA personnel of being part of Hamas
Which was just a dumb fucking thing for anyone to accept as justification for anything in the first place. Like, what if members of Hamas actually also volunteered and/or were employed by UNRWA? That would absolutely, unequivocally be a good thing. Inane propaganda accepted by fools who don’t bother to think for two seconds about what they are hearing.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Finally (for now) in transphobic Labour-scum news, known sex-pest likely worse Wes Streeting has announced on Sky News that it’s “a priority” for Labour to segregate the NHS when it comes to trans people. He gave the example that all trans patients would be banned from single-sex wards, to wards only for trans patients.
Terf Island has gendered hospital wards? Why?
It’s most a tradition that just never changed (like so much here). I’ve heard it defending with vague ideas around privacy and comfort for people who might have to bathe or go to the bathroom etc at their beds, but it’s usally behind a curtain if they really can’t anyway. I believe some wards in newer hospitals are mixed.
If I told you what I’d do to Starmer and the entire Blairite clique, I’d be accused of fedposting.
The U.S. response to the drone attack twill be carried out “over the course of several days,” striking “multiple targets,” a U.S. official told ABC News.
“These are going to be very deliberate targets – deliberate strikes on facilities that enabled these attacks” on U.S. forces, the official said.
Also on Tuesday, the Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigades – based in Iraq – different from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon – said it would suspend its military operations against U.S. forces in Iraq.
"As we announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces – in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government we will continue to defend our people in Gaza in other ways … " a statement from the group said.
Strikes against facilities that enabled these attacks… Does this mean strikes on Iranian drone and weapons factories? That would be quite the escalation.
Also lol at burgerland news doing the whole “Iran backed Hezbollah” and having to point out to the reader that the brigades in Iraq are not the same as those in Lebanon. Americans really do have the most propagandistic and dumbed down news on earth.
Also the ? in the link shared is not a tracker, it’s the story ID for the URL.
I’ve been mulling it over for an hour and I just don’t think we have enough information to know exactly what’s going on. Some of my ideas:
Idea 1: It is literally as they claim - Iraqi Hezbollah will stop attacking American troops and bases in order to facilitate a deal between Iraq and the US that will eventually lead to a withdrawal of US troops, after being asked by the Iraqi government to do so.
Idea 2: It is a little more complicated - Iran and the US have been talking in back channels and have agreed that the US response strike will be reduced in magnitude in exchange for a cessation of strikes against the US for the time being.
Idea 3: Iraqi Hezbollah want to continue striking and nobody has asked them to back down, but they have received intel from Iran or Iraq about the intended location of the strikes and they are deemed significant enough to warrant focussing on moving equipment around instead of conducting further strikes, and are just managing expectations when strikes on US bases cease.
Given the nature of these groups and their commitment to the Palestinian cause, I very much doubt that it was because they were just really scared of the response or whatever.
For what it’s worth, it seems that other Iraqi Resistance groups have put out statements that suggest they are not backing down, so it could just be the Iraqi Hezbollah that has decided to back down.
Either way it’s not terribly concerning, the major fronts throughout the Middle East are still active and if anything getting more active by the week
I’m just more worried about the US response that’s set to last multiple days. I think they are about to do something insanely evil. As much as US says that they don’t want war, something has changed in the past few days.
They might be insane enough to try bombing Iran itself. And then Strait of Hormuz closes and maybe a carrier gets sunk
Conservatives attempting to weaponize the fact that the US soldiers that died were black on twitter is fucking making me want to tear my eyes out.
Lots of takes like: WElL I gUess TO thE Left bLAcK LIvEs ONly MATteR if TheY arEN’T AmERiCAN hERO SoldieRS
wHy Are thErE nO pRoTESTs WHEN bLAcK MEN arE mURdeRED bY mUsLiM TerRoRiSTs???
The level of cynical dipshittery is really something to behold
Denazify 👏 every 👏 colonial 👏 enforcer
illegally occupies a sovereign state
gets blown up by its allies
THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!!
The police murdering black people is bad, an occupying genocidal army being attacked by the resistance is just. Is this so hard for liberals and chuds to grasp?
murdered? they’re in the military and got killed by enemy forces. better get used to it
Global sea surface temperatures have reached an all-time record in February, two months ahead of the March-April biannual peak (when the sea is hottest in the southern hemisphere, because most of the world’s water is there)
The orange line was 2023, so already a massively standout year - sea surface temperatures were only very gradually increasing year-on-year before that point. This year may be even toastier.
I keep thinkin bout thos tippin points
Sounds like a sure fire way to have a mental break down.
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