Title is a reference to Resistance imagery about how Israeli soldiers will enter Gaza alive but leave it in coffins - the same is true for American soldiers in the Middle East if the regional war expands.
The image is of the Fattah-1 Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile, which its creators boast can overcome any missile defense system on the planet, has a range of 1400 kilometers (and thus Iran can strike Israel), and has a terminal impact velocity of Mach 13.
Dozens of American soldiers have been injured and 3 have been killed on a base in the Middle East. There has been confused reports about whether the attack was on Syrian territory or Jordan’s - the Al-Tanf base is in Syria, but Tower-22 in Jordan is another base that helps supply Al-Tanf, and Tower-22 is the one that is alleged to have been hit. These is the first confirmed deaths of American troops since the conflict began, though it’s not likely that this is actually the first deaths after hundreds of drone/missile strikes throughout the region on American bases, unless you think American soldiers are having extremely timely heart attacks just after a missile hits.
The attack is certainly impactful, though it does also have considerably symbolism. Courtesy of John Helmer:
The operational success of the strike for the attackers is strategic. Tower-22 is a logistics, supply, and rear guard post for the Al-Tanf base which US troops are operating thirty kilometres north across the border in Syria. The attack demonstrates that both Tower-22 and Al-Tanf, Jordan and Syria, are newly vulnerable to weapons which the US forces have failed to detect and neutralize. Just as significantly, the massive US airbase called Muwaffaq Salti, 230 kilometres west across Jordan, is also vulnerable now.
It indicates that Iran now possesses Russian expertise in countering American equipment:
“This is a significant accomplishment,” one of the sources said. “Was the bypassing of the US air defence system at Tower-22 pulled off with Russian assistance? US bases generally rely on the C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery and Mortar] system. It was sent to Ukraine last year where the Russians have been learning to defeat it. What now of American EW [electronic warfare]? They’ve been doing a fair job of knocking drones down up to now. It seems a ‘coincidence’ that, not a week after the meetings in Moscow with Arabs and Iranians, we see this success. It’s a success the circumstances of which, we can be sure, Biden and Austin are not keen to advertise.”
I am putting my take on the table right now: I am 99% certain that the US won’t attack Iran directly. I think we are still quite a while away from that being a possibility. Much more likely is that Iranian officials in Iraq or Syria will be hit by a retaliatory strike, as Israel has done recently. It is a significant escalation nonetheless. And it comes as Israel seems to be gearing up for a suicidal war with Hezbollah.
The Country of the Week is Iran! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Updates continue to be AWOL - but I am cooking something. Hopefully.
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 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.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/01/your-man-in-the-hague-in-a-good-way/
how the hell have I never heard of craig murray, ive been reading his work for 5 hours now.
Iran, the only more-or-less decent new BRICS+ member.
Also, UNRWA has announced a possible suspension of humanitarian aid into Palestine is now looming on the horizon. According to liveuamap, it is likely by the end of February. The primary cited reason is funding cuts but even if hypothetically, China, Ireland and South Africa stop pissing about and pick up the slack, there’s the matter of military and “civilian” rioters going out of their way to prevent the delivery of food and medicine.
The
is of course, celebrating it. There is also no longer any functioning fire engines, with Civil Defense and medical functions all but collapsed. This in an area where the population density may have swelled to at least 20,000/km2.
Allegedly, the Gaza Civil Registry has also been destroyed. There is no more record of degrees, birth/death certificates, addresses, families, etc. essentially declaring the 2.3 million people nonexistent, save for maybe a refugee in Johannesburg who still has their papers. Of course, the destruction of any legal documents will also throw a spanner in the works for any prospective asylum seekers. If they manage to flee the strip, then what? Hoof it for over 6,000 kilometers across the entire continent to South Africa?
along with Finland, Italy, Austria, Romania, Netherlands and Estonia have cut funding as of writing this.
So…. Is America going to attack or what? They’ve been going on about how “powerful” their response will be but they haven’t done anything?
The frigate Iver Huitfeldt has departed for the Red Sea to be Denmark’s contribution to Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US-backed attempt to violently evade sanctions against the illegal zionist entity’s genocide in Palestine. For the first time since the 19th century the Royal Danish Navy are facing a real risk of getting shot at instead of just being a glorified coast guard. And already now, the armaments of the frigate are being criticised for being insufficient.
The surface-to-air missiles of the frigate has a range of just 18 kilometres but back in 2018 the Danish regime decided to acquire so-called SM2 surface-to-air missiles with a range of 80 kilometres. The missiles were ordered in 2021 but they have not yet been delivered.
A frigate of the Iver Huitfeldt class has fired a SM2 missile exactly once. That missile was a loaner from the Dutch.
The current armaments as well as the back-ordered SM2-missiles are only effective against cruise missiles and drones, making the frigate virtually defenseless against ballistic missiles and it will have to rely on the air defenses of nearby American ships for protection.
In addition to the frigate, the American puppet state has sent a single staff officer to take part in the illegal aggression against Yemen.
Wow so Biden has decided not to nuke Iran, further showing the world how the USA is the sick man of the americas. The states are now solely in the hands of Xi who controls everything.
From the “fucking horrifying news” section, several LGBTQ+ support nonprofits here have recently revealed that France has now started discreetly keeping a registry of trans people (article is in French, sorry).
They’re alimenting it by snooping on the civil process that allows one to change their gender officially; and it’s specifically aimed at being accessed by cops - and transphobia is unsurprisingly rampant among police in France.
Divorced Fetterman is going to be an interesting arc.
🏛️🏦🏢💸
The DOJ’s Incestuous Relationship with Jamie Dimon Is Captured in a Graphic from an Historic Lawsuit
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 18, 2024 ~
On February 10, 2014, the non-profit watchdog, Better Markets, took a bold and historic action... [🙄 Never big on the tone from the Liz Warren book club, but Jamie Dimon's corruption is very notable.]
…it filed a federal lawsuit against the highest law enforcement agency and officer in the United States – the U.S. Department of Justice and the man who sat at its helm, Attorney General Eric Holder.
The lawsuit challenged a $13 billion out-of-court settlement that had been agreed to by the Justice Department and the Wall Street mega bank, JPMorgan Chase, over its sale of toxic mortgages. Better Markets wrote on its website that this was at the time “The largest settlement in U.S. history from a single entity by more than 300%” and that it “granted JP Morgan blanket civil immunity for years of alleged, but undisclosed, pervasive, egregious and knowing fraudulent and illegal conduct that contributed to the 2008 financial crash and the worst economy since the Great Depression.”
Among the many eyebrow-raising allegations in the Better Markets’ press release, these three stood out:
“The Attorney General and other senior DOJ political appointees negotiated directly and entirely in secret with the CEO of JP Morgan Chase [Jamie Dimon], someone who was considered a possible Treasury Secretary just a few years ago.
“The cellphone of DOJ’s third highest ranking official rang with the ‘familiar’ phone number of JP Morgan Chase’s CEO [Jamie Dimon], who called to offer billions of dollars to stop DOJ from holding a press conference and filing a lawsuit in just a few hours. The call worked, and the press conference and lawsuit were both called off.
“DOJ gave complete civil immunity to JP Morgan Chase for defrauding thousands in exchange for $13 billion, via a contract that was negotiated and finalized in secret without any review or approval by a federal court.”
Attorneys for the Justice Department asked the federal court to dismiss the Better Markets lawsuit on the basis that Better Markets lacked standing to file the lawsuit. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia did just that in a longwinded decision that effectively stripped Americans of their ability to fight back against the increasingly corrupt nexus between Washington and Wall Street.
We reached out this week to Better Markets’ President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher, to explain how federal courts can get away with this type of cronyism. He responded as follows:
“Unfortunately, the U.S. legal system is an unlevel playing field tilted in favor of Wall Street’s banks/Corporate America and against Main Street Americans/the public interest. That’s because judges require anyone bringing a lawsuit to show ‘standing’ to file a case, which almost always depends on a plaintiff showing quantifiable, concrete, and specific if not unique harm. Because banks/Corporate America can always show or make up some dollar amount of injury from a government action or rule, they virtually always have standing to sue. But Main Street Americans/the public interest almost always cannot because public harm usually is not quantifiable, concrete, specific or unique to a particular plaintiff.
“For example, even if it was objectively true that the DOJ/Eric Holder sold out to JPMorganChase/Jamie Dimon, Better Markets’ case would have been thrown out because the harm from that sell out would be to everyone in the country and not a quantifiable, concrete, specific, or unique harm to Better Markets. The same is true if an agency like the CFTC or SEC knowingly enacted a rule that unlawfully favored the financial industry. Public interest groups or just ordinary citizens would likely get thrown out of court if they sued unless there was some unique harm inflicted. Put differently, while there are some exceptions, as long as the harm is to the broad public interest you basically cannot sue to protect the public interest.”
If this sounds like the Kafkaesque court logic of a vast wealth transfer conspiracy, you’re thinking along the right lines.
Better Markets’ Graphic from Press Conference Announcing Lawsuit Against the DOJ
Take a closer look at the graphic that Better Markets presented at its press conference announcing the lawsuit. What it effectively shows is a money laundering operation where a recidivist bank pays $13 billion to a federal agency in the executive branch of government; bypasses the judicial branch of government; and walks away with immunity and no questions asked. If that feels more like a banana republic form of justice than that of a thriving democracy, welcome to the new world of kleptocracy in America.
Nine months after Better Markets had filed its lawsuit, its worst suspicions about the secret backroom deal materialized in the pages of Rolling Stone under the byline of Matt Taibbi. The Justice Department had silenced the perfect eyewitness, Alayne Fleischmann, a former attorney at JPMorgan Chase who had reported the wrongdoing to her superiors. What Fleischmann described to Taibbi was “massive criminal securities fraud” within the bank. Taibbi describes what happened to Fleishmann as follows:
“Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it’s not exactly news that the country’s biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That’s why the more important part of Fleischmann’s story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.”
The Justice Department announced its $13 billion civil settlement with JPMorgan Chase on November 19, 2013. At the time, it clearly knew that it would be bringing stunning criminal charges against the same bank just 49 days later.
On January 7, 2014, the Justice Department shocked the country with the announcement that the largest federally-insured bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, had played a key role in the largest Ponzi scheme in history – that of Bernie Madoff. And because the bank hid its suspicions from U.S. law enforcement that a Ponzi scheme was occurring and failed to file the legally-mandated Suspicious Activity Reports, the Justice Department charged the bank with two criminal felony counts.
But instead of prosecuting the case in a federal court, where the disgusting details would play out in newspaper headlines for months, the Justice Department allowed the bank to admit to the charges and walk away with a hefty fine and a two-year deferred prosecution agreement; meaning that if the bank did not violate its two-year probation, it would never be prosecuted for these crimes.
Since 2014, this kind of backroom deal between JPMorgan Chase and the Justice Department has become enshrined as the new standard for crony justice between Wall Street and Washington. JPMorgan Chase has racked up five felony counts, received three deferred prosecution agreements and two non-prosecution agreements. (See the highlights of its breathtaking rap sheet here.)
And yet, there is zero indication that JPMorgan Chase’s appetite for crime as a business model has been satisfied. The Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands last year brought credible evidence into federal court in Manhattan that JPMorgan Chase “actively participated” in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors by ignoring a decade of his money laundering inside the bank – the very money laundering conduct that resulted in the bank admitting to two felony counts in 2014 in the Madoff case. In both matters, the bank failed to file the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) despite internal communications showing it was well aware that the financial transactions were highly suspicious.
Despite the Justice Department and FBI sitting on reams of evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein/JPMorgan case since 2008, the DOJ has brought no criminal charges against the bank related to Epstein.
part ii in reply
@carpoftruth@hexbear.net commented about a video Simplicius posted on how shitty US air defense actually is, which I encourage you to have a look at. I thought I’d post the rest of his piece as it pertains to Israel/Palestine; the Russian bits are also somewhat interesting but given the slow territorial progress it’s not really as important right now.
SITREP 1/28/24: US Troops Suffer Fatalities in Strikes as Escalation Grows
From Simplicius’ substack. I am generally not going to post the photos there and won’t be quoting the full article.
I get tired of saying “things are heating up” but…things continue to really heat up. The first direct troop deaths have finally begun rolling in as warhawk voices in the US cry out for total war…
There seems to be some major disagreement or deliberate obfuscation on US’ part as to where the troops were hit, exactly. The above resistance statement says multiple bases were hit. Most are assuming the fatalities were in al-Tanf base in Syria—the illegal base the US uses to facilitate ISIS and train terrorists to agitate against Assad, as well as to block the all important Syria-Jordan border-route to keep Syria isolated and economically stifled. But in fact the US claims the hit was not at al-Tanf, but just over the border at a base called ‘Tower 22’ on the Jordanian side.
It’s understandable how things could get so confusing, what with so many illegal American bases strewn about like candy wrappers, and all. But in reality, this is likely an attempt to downplay and conceal US’ al-Tanf activity and give the appearance of legality by misdirecting everyone to the Jordanian base which US actually has legal permission to be in—unlike al-Tanf. But before we go on, I’d like to remind everyone of this report. I may have posted it long ago—it’s from an Iranian attack in 2021. But it is an absolute must watch. I strongly, strongly urge everyone to watch this below and see if you don’t come away with a different opinion of the ‘invincible’ US military as portrayed by Hollywood.
Not only are there no working air defenses to speak of, but the troops and generals themselves leave much to be desired. Can you even imagine these people on the frontline against Russia in Ukraine? The majors and generals in the video are brought nearly to tears by a few Iranian bottle rockets, with the base commander desperately urging his troops to abandon the base and spread out in the desert. A lot of people clinging to the old Hollywood stereotypes of American supremacy are really out of date and have no idea what the American military is currently like—nor have ever had any idea of what some of America’s most vaunted weapons truly performed like in real combat settings: [Headline from 1992: New Study Cuts Patriot Missile Success Rate To 9 Percent]
And for those who think “How could this be? The US was invincible during the Iraq War in 2003”—well, I have some news for you. There was no war, it was a total sham pysop operation, which I covered in depth here… If that wasn’t bad enough, US troops are even taking casualties on the Texas front…
Now there’s “rumors” that Israel is gathering on the Lebanese border and is getting ready to launch a huge invasion up to the Litani River, of which we wrote about here long ago. If there’s any truth to that, then we can surmise any such escalations with Iran as this new strike could potentially even be a falseflag—whether of the USS Liberty variety, or of the Pearl Harbor variety where something is “let through” on purpose. Or it could simply be Iran drawing Israel and the US into a war it wants because it knows it can win it through its vast proxies. There are many possibilities as yet. Hard to imagine, though, that Israel really wants a piece of Hezbollah given their inability to even put a dent in Hamas:
The only thing that’s certain is election year has just begun and things are already melting down faster than anyone could imagine. To be quite honest, it’s difficult to imagine how this situation could resolve without either a total US withdrawal from the Middle East or a new major war. The problem in both scenarios:
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If the US withdraws, it will be viewed as the mother of all failures and weaknesses for the Biden administration, akin to the Afghan withdrawal x 100. I have no idea why it should be viewed that way, when in reality it’s a giant win for Americans to disentangle their country from globalist and MIC pursuits, but that’s how it will be spun by the totally compromised media which is the enemy of humanity. Most Republican warhawks will of course agree and stoke this interpretation as well, as they’re on the MIC payroll.
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If Biden escalates and orders major strikes on Iran itself as Lindsey Graham and others are now cheerleading for, it could lead to an escalatory cascade that would shut down the entire region by engulfing it in flames, crashing the world economy to new levels, which would be a massive shock to any establishment re-election chances this year.
Don’t even bother thinking about boots on the ground, if such a thing was possible it would take a year or more of preparation. Remember the Iraq invasion required 6 months just of transporting materiel and assets to the region, staging them, etc. But Iran wouldn’t let you stage them because it has far more sophisticated modern ballistic systems than anything Iraq had, which means large troop concentrations and armor/materiel staging areas could be hit and wiped out long before zero hour. Don’t believe me? Just watch the video at the beginning, the US army general says it himself toward the end: he states the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles was shocking and they hit “pretty much everything they wanted to hit.”
So ground invasion is out—that’s not happening. The only thing they could possibly attempt is a long-spanning aerial campaign. But to even remotely scratch Iran’s capabilities would require a vast campaign lasting minimum 6-12 months and probably much longer. Remember, all of NATO mustered for 3 months against little Serbia with 6 million people and barely managed to destroy anything of worth. Iran has a 90 million population and a country probably a hundred times the size of Serbia, not to mention a far larger military. How long do you think it would take NATO to even put a dent in that from only an aerial campaign?
In short: it would take years, and during those years, Iran would shut down every major maritime and economic chokepoint in the region, crashing the global economy. If you thought a few ships being hit now was bad, wait til you see the nominal Iranian forces rather than Houthis hitting everything in sight—it won’t be pretty. And I’ve beaten the point before about how difficult it would be to even find targets in the decentralized vastness of Iran, just like in Yemen.
Here’s a photo of a secret Yemeni launch site as an example. These can be strewn by the hundreds or thousands throughout the deserts, and no amount of advanced “ISTAR” will locate them.
And as of this writing, rumor has it there are some assets en route:
At least 6 U.S. Air Force KC-135 Aerial-Refueling Tankers, most from March Air Reserve Base in Southern California, are heading Northeast across the United States and preparing to Transit the Atlantic towards the U.K. and Europe. I wonder what kind of Aircraft they are Refueling?
So there is potential for some escalations, though it could merely be precaution as always. I think US will continue looking for a diplomatic solution, as it knows how indigestible both of the options above really are. It will continue looking for ways to de-escalate, perhaps even advancing the talks of withdrawal from the region so as to signal to Iran that it’s backing out, though perhaps dragging their feet in the process to make the ‘pull out’ as drawn out as possible and more symbolic in nature.
The US looks weaker than ever so of course a token strike of a kind is possible, to signal some impotent brawn to its now demoralized partners. But this won’t accomplish anything and will only put US troops in the region in increasing danger. The truth is, the entire current framework looks highly orchestrated between the resistance axis, particularly of Russia, Iran, and perhaps China. The reason is that just as Russia tied up the Empire in Ukraine, Iran began its strangulation maneuver in the Mid East, and look how ‘elegantly’ it’s all working out: Europe is being entirely cut off from cheap energy while Russia and BRICS gain not only some of the most powerful energy producers but also the countries responsible for the most important maritime chokepoints; i.e. Egypt and the Suez/Red Sea; Ethiopia and the Red Sea; Iran and Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, etc.
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The U.S. response to the drone attack twill be carried out “over the course of several days,” striking “multiple targets,” a U.S. official told ABC News.
“These are going to be very deliberate targets – deliberate strikes on facilities that enabled these attacks” on U.S. forces, the official said.
Also on Tuesday, the Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigades – based in Iraq – different from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon – said it would suspend its military operations against U.S. forces in Iraq.
"As we announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces – in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government we will continue to defend our people in Gaza in other ways … " a statement from the group said.
Strikes against facilities that enabled these attacks… Does this mean strikes on Iranian drone and weapons factories? That would be quite the escalation.
Also lol at burgerland news doing the whole “Iran backed Hezbollah” and having to point out to the reader that the brigades in Iraq are not the same as those in Lebanon. Americans really do have the most propagandistic and dumbed down news on earth.
Also the ? in the link shared is not a tracker, it’s the story ID for the URL.
Removed
Venezuela back on the blinky shitlist
Yet again the central committee of CPUSA states it is rallying the whole party to participate in the presidental election and endorses the democratic party and stands behind Joe Biden while playing word games and dancing around with sophistry of “we’re not actually openly endorsing the DNC, we’re just against the Republicans and any independent presidential candidates”
When you tear out all the fluff they use to pad out the article to try and make what they’re doing look good and sound appealing, they’re tailing blue maga again.
Can anyone else just not do the 9-5? I hate working in the morning (or doing anything in the morning) and also hate capitalism