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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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 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.
No, it's definitely not. The next frontier of war is space. This frontier was officially opened in November last year, when Israel used the Arrow-3 system to intercept a Ghadr-110 ballistic missile launched by Yemen at Eliat. The interception took place in the Exosphere, over 600km above sea level. The first instance of warfare in space. There have been more exoatmospheric interceptions since, most notably during Iran's ballistic missile retaliatory attacks. This allowed us to get videos of an exoatmospheric interception. This one is from October, and this one was from April. You can see the large blue to purple plume it produces. In theory, these Arrow-3 interceptors could also be used to destroy enemy satellites.
This is not even mentioning Boeing's X-37b unmanned spacecraft operated by the United States Space Force, which can stay in orbit for years at a time, and two days ago performed an aerobraking manoeuvre, dipping slightly into the Earth's atmosphere to change it's orbit. There is much speculation around the true role and mission of this aircraft, with theories ranging from anti satellite capabilities, to being able to repair and modify allied satellites, to it being nuclear armed and part of a Fractional Orbit Bombardment System (FOBS).
China have also been testing a FOBS/Hypersonic Glide Vehicle combination system, and much has been talked about Russia's anti satellite weaponry from the Soviet era to now, from satellites that can kinetically attack other satellites or de-orbit them, to space deployed nuclear weapons that could disable a mass amount of satellites in the proximity of the explosion. Russia's new ICBM could also double in function as a FOBS, with the ability to stay in low earth orbit, before de-orbiting and returning to a ballistic trajectory. Such technology has been worked on by Russia since the Soviet era, with the GR-1 missile concept from the 1960s being the first known instance of a nation working on FOBS. They had 18 working FOBS capable missiles that were decommissioned due to an agreement with the USA.
We are so headed for Kessler's Syndrome. Its the only defence against this sort of thing.
It's actually not as bad as it sounds. It's called a "fractional" system as it never completes a full orbit of the earth. It involves launching the system into orbit, around 150km above sea level, where it stays in orbit moving towards the target, until the re-entry vehicle or hypersonic glide vehicle de-orbits and homes in on the target. It's useful for getting around early warning radars for a decapitation first strike, for instance Russia or China could target the US by having the system orbit over the South pole and hit the US on the blindside, avoiding the early warning radars in the north. Big disadvantage is the accuracy, the median error radius for Soviet era FOBS systems was over 5km/3 miles, so it was only suited for nuclear first strikes. That's why China wants to use a hypersonic glide vehicle as part of the system, to improve on the accuracy and further reduce chances of interception during the terminal phase. This graphic provides a nice visualisation:
The issue is that with todays computing power these things could just be lurking up there for years waiting for the go signal.
The X-37B unmanned orbital space craft already does that. It goes on classified missions nobody knows about and orbits the Earth for years at a time. Some Russian sources speculate that it could carry nuclear weapon. But that's quite different from a fractional system by definition, though there is also speculation that it could be used in that manner.
Exactly my point. If multiple of these systems are set up by conflicting powers we are basically living in a doomsday machine that is just waiting to kill us all. The only solution would be to make orbiting earth impossible with Kessler's syndrome.
Yeah I get it now, sorry for being so slow. Kessler syndrome would make the usage of any of these weapons impossible, I understand now.
So far only the USA has an spacecraft that can orbit for years at a time in the X-37B, the Chinese and Russian systems are very much fractional, they are incapable of performing multiple orbits from what I understand, they are based off of ballistic missiles and don't consist of an spacecraft like the X-37B.
In general the space frontier is extremely worrying and I don't see how it de-escalates, the potential for Kessler syndrome could function as a sort of mutually assured destruction? But that opens up another avenue of attack in space nukes that could deliberately be used to instigate Kessler syndrome. But that just encourages the adversary to potentially neutralise the space nuke, which then encourages the holders of the space nuke to detonate it. Which is why I don't see how de-escalation could work in space at this time. The feedback loops don't work in the same way MAD does on Earth.