Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star

Image is of Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset, the Israeli parliament building in Jerusalem.

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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 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.

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2K comments

Alright, Naked Capitalism has a piece on the Israeli attack last night. I mean, "attack" almost seems too strong a word, but I can't think of a better one.

Here's my summary of it:

Still remarkably little clarity about precisely what happened, with various actors either purposefully not talking about it (or perhaps they just don't have much to say). Some US sources claimed that the attack was from Israel, and that Israel told the US that this attack would happen but the US had nothing to do with it.

The attack was on Isfahan, in central Iran. Iran claims that there were a few (probably less than 10, possibly literally 3) drones and all were shot down, which visually seems to have been what occurred - no dramatic explosions beyond that of interceptions. Some anonymous US officials claimed that there were ballistic missiles involved, but there is no evidence of this at all - which is odd if it did occur, as the missile would have had to fly over a few countries at least.

Iran briefly shut down its airports, did not close its airspace, and planes were still in the air above Iran, although some airlines redirected flights as news came in. Iran's response in general so far has been pretty muted, in stark contrast to their "Oh boy, if those Israelis even THINK about responding...!" rhetoric days and hours before the attack occurred. The official line is that this was an infiltration, not an external attack from Israel. This is a strange thing for Iran to do, and is naturally generating all sorts of theories about whether Iran has done some behind-the-scenes negotiating to allow a small Israeli attack despite officially denying it. I can't say I personally believe them but I'm also having trouble finding alternative explanations for the massive difference between rhetoric and action.

The idea is that this was a diminished response from Israel in exchange for the US greenlighting an Israeli campaign into Rafah, which I'm sure will go well for them with the remaining tatters of whatever they're calling an "army" nowadays.
- Permanently Deleted
  
  good take. they’re going to keep poking and prodding until Iran feels they have to respond, at which point the western press will lose their minds and talk about how UNPROVOKED and UNPRECENDENTED Iran’s attack was while liberals talk about “Iranian imperialism”.
  
  I can see the smug redditor posts now: all of the events between "Israel"/Palestine since October 7 were caused by Iranian meddling in the region by funding "proxies." So after the poking and prodding, Iran will attack because of course they did, they've been instigating the whole time!
  
  Hopefully the libs will at least be right this time when they say it’s “a war for the existence of [US aligned country]”. That’s absolutely not the case for Ukraine despite their repeated cries.
  
  Bold of you to assume they'll catch on this time. Iran is throwing those WMDs out of incubators to destroy the entire western world unless we stop them first!
  
  If this were the case wouldn't the pokes get bigger and bigger not smaller?
  
  The pokes don't have to follow any specific logical pattern. This is because it's not the poke itself but the fact that the poke represents a willingness to attack at any time. In fact, continuously being the one to "deescalate" can make yourself seem like the rational one. Israel just needs Iran to understand that they could attack at any time and Iran will eventually have to respond if that stance is maintained. The process/conditions that leads to the poking is the more important fact to understand. That is here destabilization and anti- sovereignty of states at the borders of accumulation
- This is a strange thing for Iran to do, and is naturally generating all sorts of theories about whether Iran has done some behind-the-scenes negotiating to allow a small Israeli attack despite officially denying it. I can't say I personally believe them but I'm also having trouble finding alternative explanations for the massive difference between rhetoric and action.
  
  They would rather not go to war with Israel (and probably the US) because odds are a good portion of their country gets destroyed and thousands of their troops die. Plus of course the risk of Israel going completely off the rails and sending a nuke. They’re (maybe) willing to go to war if they need to, but three drones that didn’t even do anything isn’t worth a massive war.
- My personal theory on this attack, and I have no evidence for this, is that this attack was "officially" done by terrorist cells or rebels within Iran, not by Israel directly. So if Iran retaliates against Israel, Israel can claim plausible deniability, and claim they are being attacked "completely unprovoked" and try to make Iran into an international pariah, and more importantly, can give the US the excuse they need to join a "defensive" war against Iran.
  
  I don't have any evidence for this position, it just seems to be where the info I've seen is pointing towards. US won't get involved if Israel is too openly aggressive, so it is to Israel's benefit to try and play the victim here, rather than do an all out attack on Iran. Iran doesn't seem to be falling for it though, and is exercising caution. Some have said this makes them look "weak" but it seems to me they just don't want to fall into a trap.

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