Image is of destruction and damage inside Israel, sourced from this article.
Iran and Israel have struck each other many times over the last few days. There has been a general focus on military facilities and headquarters by both sides, though Israel has also struck oil facilities, civilian structures and hospitals, and in return for this, Iran has struck major scientific centers and the Haifa oil facilities.
Israel appears to have three main aims. First, to collapse the Iranian state, either through shock and breakdown by killing enough senior officials, or via some sort of internal military coup. Second, to try and destroy Iranian nuclear sites and underground missile cities, or at least to paralyze them long enough to achieve the first and third goals. And third, to bring the US into a direct conflict with Iran. This is because the US better equipped to fight them than Israel is (though victory would still not be guaranteed depending on what Iran chooses to do).
Iranian nuclear facilities are hidden deep underground (800 meters), far beyond the depth range of even the most powerful bunker busters (~70 meters or so), and built such that the visible ground entrances are horizontally far away in an unknown direction from the actual underground chambers. Only an extremely competent full-scale American bombing force all simultaneously using multiple of the most powerful conventional (perhaps even nuclear) bunker busters could even hypothetically hope to breach them (and we have seen how, in practice, American bunker busters have largely failed to impair or deter Ansarallah). There are several analysts on both sides who have concluded that it is entirely impossible to physically prevent Iran from building nukes.
I fully expect the US to join the war. I believe the current ambiguity is a deliberate invention of the US while they work to move their military assets into position, and as soon as they are ready, the US will start bombing Iran. After that, Iran’s leadership must - if they haven’t already - harden their hearts, and strike back with no fear, or risk following the path of Libya, Syria, and Iraq, either into either surrender, occupation, or annihilation. Every day where they do not possess a nuke is a day where lives are being lost and cities are being bombed.
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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.
See this NYT update for a glimpse into the genocidal glee of the average “civilian” Israeli. You’ll have to put up with the regurgitation of state propaganda. NYT tries so hard to make the most privileged and sheltered people on earth into victims it would be funny if it wasn’t part of their genocidal propaganda campaign
The greatest “suffering” these genocidal fucks have ever experienced is being deprived of their fucking lattes for a few days, and the NYT is already doing wall-to-wall coverage about the poor widdle genocidal land thieves, waaaaaaahhhhh
An Israeli woman who returned from abroad on Wednesday grinned for the television cameras as she knelt and kissed the floor of the airport terminal. Sidewalk cafes in Jerusalem were filled with people excused from work because of the war, sipping lattes in the sunshine.
Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered prime minister who was fighting for his political survival just a week ago, was getting a break. Some of his fiercest critics were giving him full credit for daring to take on Iran, Israel’s most feared enemy. The danger from Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile strikes aside, morale among Jewish Israelis, at least, appeared to be soaring on the sixth day of the war.
Israeli warplanes continued to operate at will in Iranian airspace, pummeling targets, and many Israelis were getting their hopes up that the United States would join the bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, long viewed by Israelis as a threat to their future.
The war with Iran is far from over and the outcome is unclear. But with Israel’s initial successes, the sense of unity and national pride represented a sharp turnaround for a country that was deeply traumatized by the deadly, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative and a political phoenix, has risen again, seemingly imbued with a renewed confidence and a sense of his historical significance.
“We are getting rid of the evil Iranian empire that threatens our existence,” he said in a television interview on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 on Tuesday night. “Within five days we’ve turned the tables,” he said, having opened what he called “an aerial expressway to Iran.”
“This is an enormous moment, a moment of pride for the nation of Israel,” he added.
Matan Kahana, a centrist lawmaker in the opposition and a former fighter pilot, said, “There is unity from wall to wall in Israel over the campaign to remove the Iranian nuclear threat.”
“Now people are asking ‘Why didn’t we do it earlier?’” he said, adding that Israelis see this as “a war of no choice” and that so far, Iran is enduring the worst of it.
The newfound unity has not erased older political and social rifts that have plagued Israel, including over exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox religious seminary students, the security lapses that enabled the October 2023 attack, and the fate of hostages still held in Gaza.
But some of Mr. Netanyahu’s veteran detractors are reassessing him.
“The decision to go to war was entirely Netanyahu’s,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a leading political columnist, in the popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper this week. He noted that Mr. Netanyahu had become known as risk-averse over the years.
“We shouldn’t downplay the importance of the decision,” Mr. Barnea added, comparing it to the kind of decision that Israel’s revered founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, might have made.
“Maybe we misread him; maybe he’s changed,” Mr. Barnea wrote of Mr. Netanyahu.
To be sure, many Israelis are sleep deprived. Air raid sirens have sent millions of people rushing for protected spaces and bomb shelters in the middle of the night day after day. At least two dozen people have been killed so far by Iranian missiles that evaded Israel’s air defenses.
Some people are spending the night in approved underground parking lots and train stations.
Many citizens are anxious. Sales of tranquilizers are up by a third, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.
And before ordering their coffee, customers can be heard asking shop staff members where the nearest fortified shelter is. Israelis generally get a 10-minute warning for incoming missile fire.
Still, Israeli television pundits brag that whereas residents of Tehran are fleeing their city, tens of thousands of Israelis who were stranded abroad after Israel abruptly closed its airspace on Friday have been clamoring for seats on the special flights arranged to bring them home.
The intensity of the Iranian missile strikes has waned in recent days and the Israeli authorities slightly relaxed restrictions on Wednesday evening, permitting small gatherings and allowing people to go back to work — so long as their workplace provides easy access to a bomb shelter.
visited
Because they’ve taken out a large portion of Iran’s launchers. Combine that with much of their leadership being dead or in hiding (including the Supreme Leader), you’re getting very weak responses at this point.
I honestly don’t know what the point is now in launching. If I’m the rocket guy, I’m fucking right off to the house and waiting for the new regime to take over.
That was enough
Not news, but highly important for us oldheads in the news mega. Where would you sit?
The resistance every once in a while
There are rumours that the latest missile launch from Iran was an ICBM test. Pic below.
Supreme Court decided 6/3 to ban medical transition for minors.
We really have reached the point where Tucker Carlson is the voice of reason, huh
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/18/ted-cruz-tucker-carlson-fight-00411980
At first, Carlson launched a softball at Cruz, asking how many people live in Iran. Cruz didn’t know the answer.
“You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asked, later pressing, “How could you not know that?”
Cruz sloughed off the interrogation, replying: “I don’t sit around memorizing population tables.”
But the interaction began to get heated as Carlson got increasingly frustrated by Cruz’s apparent lack of knowledge.
“Well it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government,” Carlson shot back, before suggesting that Cruz doesn’t “know anything about the country.”
“I didn’t say I don’t know anything about the country,” Cruz said.
“Okay, what’s the ethnic mix of Iran?” Carlson asked, prompting a pause from the senator.
“They are Persians and predominantly Shia,” Cruz offered, getting defensive as Carlson cut in to ask “What percent?”
“You don’t know anything about Iran!” Carlson said, as the two men began yelling over each other. “You’re a senator who is calling for the overthrow of the government and you don’t know anything about the country!”
Muslim Brotherhood Acting Leader Salah Abdul Haq in a message to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei:
• “Israel seeks through these strikes to retaliate against Tehran’s support for the Palestinian resistance, alongside strategic goals aimed at weakening centers of power in the region, with direct backing from the United States and other Western countries stunned by Israel’s defeat on October 7, 2023.”
• “The occupation’s fire does not discriminate between the nation’s ethnicities or sects. Expanding the aggression to include the Islamic Republic is an attempt to eliminate the resistance’s support base, whether states or movements, foremost among them the Muslim Brotherhood.”
• “Our enemy is one — the Israeli entity — and our primary weapon must be the unity of the Islamic nation.”
• “We should overcome internal differences and focus efforts on confronting the occupation.”
• “We praise the sacrifices of the nation in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran,” stressing that these sacrifices “impose on everyone a historic responsibility to strive for unity and comprehensive joint Islamic action.”
You know the situation has deteriorated when not even the culture war can distract people anymore.
I can’t find a single recent post on
seething about idpol.Glad Lukashenko was smart and got nuked-up in 2023.
Important news, folks: according to some short-form videos my dad was watching on facebook yesterday, Isreal has been completely flattened by Iranian missiles so numerous they filled the sky.
Apparently Iran just fired a new missile, or one that looks new. Just a single missile, they’re testing something. Obviously was intercepted, but it was just one launch and it left some seriously pretty designs in the sky. Take a look: https://t.me/me_observer_TG/554402?single
Chinese cars and factories flooding EU market, and blows up protectionist tariff system Substack
In the US, the tariff schedules on Chinese EV’s were 100%. In Europe, the tariff rates varied, from 17% to 38%.
The EU tariffs, it was believed, were too high for Chinese companies to profitably sell cars in the EU markets, and analysts expected Chinese brands to pivot to more friendly countries.
But China’s carmakers doubled down in Europe instead, and exported record volumes of hybrid vehicles, which were exempted from the tariff systems. They also broke ground on major factory projects, which will come online beginning next year. At that time, all that production will be tariff-exempt.
Regulators in Europe face two major problems: they need mass-market adoption of new-energy vehicles if they hope to meet their strict emissions standards, and it is only Chinese cars that build at price points that will attract millions of new buyers.
But they will do so at the expense of European and American and other Asian automakers, who cannot compete with Chinese brands on price.
Good read. This is what I have been saying all along: the US is unleashing the Chinese industrial capacity to start a mercantilist warfare to kill off European industries. Expect to see US finance capital harvesting Europe like they did the USSR.
This is because exports have to go somewhere if a portion of demand is suddenly curbed, and all the exporters now find themselves embroiled in a dog-eat-dog competition to lower their costs to capture an ever thinning slice of the market.
The only way out of this is for China to expand its consumer base and create an alternative source of demand, otherwise most exporters will get killed simply for not being able to compete with Chinese products in both quality and price.
quick break from Iran for a second, update on kneecap
Trump rebuffs Putin’s offer to help mediate Israel-Iran conflict
The US president urged his Russian counterpart to resolve Russia’s war in Ukraine before stepping in elsewhere.
“He actually offered to help mediate, I said, ‘do me a favour, mediate your own. Let’s mediate Russia first, OK?'” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Sad breakup between the two. It also signals that war is now imminent.
