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.
Interesting piece on Phenomenal World: Adaptation in the Sanctioned Economy: Domestic manufacturing, overcapacity, and the limits of Iran’s economic resilience , it shows how despite the belief that sanctions resilience is entirely a matter of state capacity and state policy Iran's private sector actually invested a TON to fill the space left by foreign manufactured products, like washing machines, to the point where they're even building too much of this stuff so the government can be faulted for not influencing these sectors to allocate capital appropriately.
Also interesting is how these big private firms believe that they can actually do well in the sanctions environment, so they lobby the government AGAINST lifting import bans even if economic sanctions are also lifted, so there's another point against the american sanctions regime as a useful behavior changing tool even by its own terms.
While it's not the exact same, in South Africa you often see private institutions filling in the gaps in areas of service delivery where the government has fallen short (private security, private schooling, solar panels on homes for electricity generation), and they also lobby the government against taking action (see the private education sector's reaction to the BELA Bill), because fundamentally, these firms are betting against the success of the state in these sectors.
Iran can build their own MRI machines (originally part of collaboration with Siemens) and high quality turbine engines. Their industries are going to be fine.
However, the sanctions still pose a significant toll on the economy because the lack of foreign trade still means the inability to import certain technologies and essential commodities from abroad.
How extensive are the sanctions against Iran? They obviously still trade with Russia, do they trade with China too? Is it only the West that sanctions them?
Iran was the most sanctioned country in the world (5000+ sanctions) until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 (now at 19000+ sanctions and counting).
The West sanctions any country, corporation, entity or persons who trade with Iran that does not adhere to their specific list of what they allow and what they don’t (energy, commerce, shipping, weapons, etc.).
The US and the EU represent an economic bloc with a population of 600 million high income consumers (relative to the rest of the world) and with very desirable currencies. If you want to earn those sweet money from them, you cannot do business with Iran. Most countries would steer clear of trading with Iran precisely because of that - financial imperialism. They need to earn dollars and euros by selling stuff to Western countries to keep their own economies afloat.