A week ago, the Bolivian left-wing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), currently led by Luis Arce, decisively lost the round of elections against the right-wing. This comes after a prolonged period of "infighting" between Arce, and Morales, who previously led the MAS prior to the 2019 coup which briefly installed Jeanine Anez.
I put infighting in quotes because despite the nominal similarities between Arce and Morales, it is clear that this is not merely a counterproductive battle between two men - instead, the Bolivian left has arrived at a time of unavoidable conflict between two competing strategies. The electoral strategy is represented by Arce, who has aligned himself with a more middle-class-oriented campaign that is more economically liberal, whereas Morales represents a more working-class-oriented campaign that seeks to go further than tepid reform.
Such a conflict between electoralism and revolutionary action is inevitable in any and every developing country that 1) possesses a functioning left-wing party or organization, and 2) is under internal and/or external pressure by capitalists. This crisis must be resolved eventually - and this electoral failure is how such a crisis is manifesting right now. So while the Bolivian left has indeed lost the election, it is not yet defeated. The revolutionary campaign can, if it is willing, still ultimately stand triumphant. But what must be done is a real movement towards socialism, which goes beyond technocrats reforming from above, and instead transforms the state into a full political project of the working class, in which their movements, organizations, and protests are genuinely empowered. Such a project will involve repression by the forces of reaction, not least by the United States, but it is the only road left to take.
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Israel's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Ukraine long range strike capabilities, Part 1.
There's a lot of misinformation and straight up factually incorrect information here, so I thought it would be interesting to try clear that up.
The first one is Fire Point's FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. AP News had an exclusive on it recently. Despite looking similar to a V1 buzz bomb from WW2, it shares no technology with it, no pulse jet engine. The basic concept of the FP-5 missile is more similar to the Tu-141 reconnaissance drone or AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missile. There are major similarities to the Milanion FP-5 cruise missile in design, but with some adaptations for Ukrainian production, to build the missiles with the parts (warheads and engines) available to Ukraine.
As for specifications, it's a massive missile, with a wingspan of 6m, a length of 14-15m I'd estimate. The missile's maximum payload/warhead weight is 1150kg, the jet turbine engine is 350kg dry, which leaves 4500kg for the missile's carbon composite or fibreglass body and control systems, jet fuel and lubricants, for a maximum take off weight of 6000kg. Range is said to be 3000km, and a maximum flight time of 4 hours. Maximum speed is stated to be 950kph, cruise speed 850-900kph, altitude ceiling of 5km. Navigation is jam resistant GNSS and INS. As for accuracy CEP50 is estimated at 14m.
As for the warhead and jet turbine engine, that's where it gets the most interesting. The "1000+kg warhead" is likely just two FAB-500 gravity bombs shoved in the front of the missile. We can see an M-62 low drag FAB-500 poking out of the front. Ukraine has 1000s of these from Soviet era stockpiles. The jet turbine engine is the Ivchenko AI-25, an engine originally produced by the Ukrainian SSR for the Yak-40 trijet aircraft, and later for use in the L-39 Albatross jet trainer aircraft. Over 9000 have been produced, and the engine is still in production today by Ukraine's Motor Sich company. A crude solution in terms of warhead and propulsion, but it's using what Ukraine has available to them. The FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile is actually longer and heavier than the L-39 Albatross, and carries a lot more fuel.
There's a lot of questions about the range, speed, and thrust requirements of the FP-5 Flamingo missile, are the stated figures realistic? To break it down, At maximum thrust of 16.9kN (it only needs to last for a few hours in a cruise missile vs 1000s of hours in an aircraft, so it can run at maximum thrust permanently given sufficient cooling), the AI-25 consumes 17 g/(kN⋅s) of fuel. That's 1035kg of fuel an hour, or 4140kg of fuel over four hours. Given a 1150kg payload, that still leaves 360kg for engine lubricants, the missile body and control systems, and potentially even more fuel. A 1000kg payload leaves 510kg for that. 3000km over 4 hours is 750kph, coincidentally the maximum speed of the L-39 at 5km altitude. The Tu-141, similar in size and weight to the FP-5 and a better comparison than the L-39 (but with 19.6kN of thrust), had a maximum speed of 1100km, and a cruise speed of 1000km at 6km altitude. So is the range realistic? I'd say yes, given a 100kph lower cruise speed for the FP-5 than initially claimed. There's enough fuel for it. Maximum claimed speeds can likely only be achieved at the altitude ceiling of 5km, where such a missile would be easily detected and shot down.
As for the survivability of the FP-5? I wouldn't say that it's high, the first S-300 air defence systems were built to shoot down such targets 40 years ago. The FP-5 has a massive radar cross section and heat signature. It's not a low observable or stealth cruise missile by any means. An easy target for air defence. But the FP-5s. crude design and readily available key parts in Ukraine will allow for fast initial production, and if just one gets through, that's 2x FAB-500s on target. A lot more damage than a one way attack drone or even a Neptune cruise missile. Given that the main oil refinery in Rostov oblast has been burning for five days non stop, and that Russian air raid channels reported on Flamingo cruise missiles in Rostov oblast, that was possibly the first target.
As for sustained long production rates, the biggest obstacle is the engine. The construction is easy and FAB-500s are readily available. But, after the initial supply of engines that Ukraine can get their hands on are used up, they'll have to rely on new build engines from Motor Sich. Building large numbers of such big engines under wartime conditions will be very challenging, if not impossible.
Thanks for the post, been seeing a lot of talk online about these but a lot of it has been pure wunderwaffe cope so it's good to get a more even handed write up. Amazing how much of the materiel in this war still uses old Soviet technology in one way or another.
For a bunch of architects with no weapon's experience 3 years ago, the FP-5 is a solid design that makes use of components Ukraine already has, and they'll be able to make hundreds of them quickly (and likely have already done so), depending on how many engines they can get their hands on. As far as military capabilities go, the USA was flying and testing the MGM-13 Mace 70 years ago, which has a comparable range, payload capacity, and speed to the FP-5. Then the US AGM-28 and Soviet Kh-20 came along and could fly at Mach 2. So it's not as if this is some massive engineering leap by Ukraine, it's 70 year old technological concepts, the first cruise missiles after the V1, combined with modern guidance so that conventional use is possible. The lightweight and fuel efficient engine (by comparison with these 60-70 year old systems) is what gives the FP-5 such long range, even if the thrust is a bit low.