One year on. Hundreds of thousands are dying or dead, millions are displaced, the Middle East is undergoing its greatest changes in a generation, Iran has directly attacked Israel twice in one year, and Yemen has proven that the US Navy ain’t worth shit. We are the closest we have been to nuclear war (discounting accidents) in decades, but also the fall of Israel.
Because one day, the prisoners of a concentration camp paraglided over a wall.
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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.
Why did America try to overthrow Assad, and why did Russia step in? I’ve heard vague things about Americans guarding oil fields in Syria. Was the operation in Syria mostly motivated by oil or is the picture more complicated?
Syria is an old russian ally since the USSR, the syrian civil war was an important break in relations between Russia and the west because of those relations
I haven’t really gleaned this from reading anything, but just by looking at a map, Syria, along with northern Iraq, forms a land route straight from Iran to Lebanon, and the Yanks probably wanted that locked down.
i once read a while ago, that there was a plan to connect europe with saudi oil via an oil pipe that went saudis-iraq-syria that either connected with turkey or a mediterranean port in syria and that way cut europe’s reliance on russian oil and i think azeri/turkey too. So that was also a reason russia entered the civil war
To destroy Russia. Same playbook with Afghanistan to force the USSR into entering a war that it cannot win.
By 2015, Russia was already embroiled in the Ukrainian Civil War and on the receiving end of unprecedented sanctions after Crimea annexation and the downing of MH17 airliner over eastern Ukraine.
Obama’s doctrine was to hit Russia through crashing the oil price (Shale revolution) and give them endless wars by dragging Russia into fighting on both fronts at the same time.
It was an exceedingly difficult period for Russia that pretty much wiped out its economic growth since the early 2000s. It didn’t collapse Russia but the damage was done.
The broader strategic goal was to prevent Russia from forging economic ties with the EU. The US has already set on destroying the euro currency as a competitor since the very first days it was formed, starting with the Balkan conflicts that sought to discredit the Maastricht criteria of 3% GDP deficit, by forcing EU into unnecessary military spending by creating conflict zones at its periphery. Then Iraq was invaded when Saddam wanted to sell oil in euro. The Maidan coup happened when Nord Stream 1 came online. The strategic plan has to do with the EU being a large economic bloc that (especially when allied with China) could pose an unprecedented threat to US hegemony.
No. Syria was a net importer of oil. The goal was to destroy Syria to affect the stability of the region, make it harder to arm Hezbollah, and maybe to create a power vacuum were turkey and Israel can move in. And to make an example of the enemies of the empire.
Syria’s oil output was midling, the occupation of the oil is more to deprive it from Syrians than it is the goal itself.
The goal itself is destroy all remnants of secular or socialist aligned nations in the Middle East. Sunni extremists are easier puppets
I think part of it was to cut off the supply line from Iran to Hezbollah.