Image is Israeli interceptors trying and failing to intercept missiles over their cities.
Israel just carried out a widespread bombing of Iran, which has killed a number of senior officials inside Iran (though it seems the leadership is more-or-less intact) as well as a number of civilians. Important facilities have been targeted, but the amount of damage is unknown so far (note that many important Iranian facilities are deep underground, making them both hard to damage but also hard to determine if they are damaged from just satellite imagery, so reports of damage will be he-said-she-said).
It appears the attack took Iran by surprise, given that a residential block was targeted that contained some senior officials - if one saw an attack coming, one would imagine they'd be in bunkers. Nonetheless, like the rest of the Resistance Axis, I suspect that Iran has adapted their military structures to be resistant to decapitation strikes by ensuring that replacement figures are ready to take the place of killed officials.
Iran has delivered a massive missile barrage in response to Israeli aggression, even though Israel is continuing to bomb Iran. Iran is now aware of the location of many important Israeli sites, including secret nuclear sites, due to their recent intelligence haul, giving them a distinct edge.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 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.
I believe you don't use "an" when the pronounced sounds is that of a Y, even when it's a vowel at the start of the word
Example: A unicorn, a Ukelele, a USS Liberty
Hmm I actually did not know that
Obviously grammar and syntax is made up bullshit so say whatever you want I just thought it was an interesting English exception to the rule
in this case it's because the rule is following how native speakers speak, where the choice of article is based on the pronunciation (and so the y sound is treated as a consonant) rather than the orthography
it feels weird to say "an yoonicorn" so that overrules the vowelness of the letter u
English also has no organization to oversee it like French or German does, so the rules are more described by custom than formally defined by an organization and nothing is done to make things coherent.
I actually always wondered what the correct rule was. I have an above average vocabulary but for whatever fucking reason I was never really taught more advanced grammar and syntax in school. My understanding of it is vibes based lol. So thank you for teaching me something new
There's also conventions which contradict the a/an vowel rule, like with the word 'historical'. You'll often hear and see 'an historical' despite the /h/ sound being a consonant.
I've heard two explanations for this. The first is that it's an quirk from dialects that drop the H in historical, so the N in an is intrusive > an 'istorical. This was later adopted as standard.
The second is that it's a convention to help distinguish between antonyms historical and ahistorical. I don't personally favour this one, because it would still be easily distinguished as a historical/an ahistorical. Unless the speaker had an impediment of some kind (e.g. a stutter). But English isn't making accommodations based on disability, so it's unlikely to have become commonplace out of those considerations
yeah that 2nd one seems like complete bs, definitely the first one
Perhaps running off vibes is the correct way to approach English because of all of the damn exceptions lol. I think I can see why the second rule would make sense. Inevitably someone wouldn't recall the rule and it might make things even more confusing to some. I really have no excuse to not be fluent in another language at this point in my life
NGL, the second rule doesn't check the vibes check
if you're a native speaker you probably understand stuff like this pretty well, even if you couldnt have explained it i can almost guarantee you would always do it "correctly" because a vs an has more to do with spoken language that native speakers pick up very easily (because saying "an unicorn" makes the speech sound and feel more awkward) vs a prescriptive writing form of english that even native speakers can struggle with
Yeah, knowing what "sounds right" is a huge part of it.
Sorry it’s one of those things that is interesting to someone with English as a second language. Trying to memorize all the weird rules and exceptions to rules is a never ending challenge
Oooo ess ess liberty