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.
To all the doomerism especially regarding the involvement of China and Russia:
The USSR had a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and only officially started fighting the Wermarcht when operation Barbarossa began. Stalin almost entirely refused to provide any help to Korea and said he was prepared for the peninsula to be occupied by the US. Soviet soldiers didn't fight in Vietnam, soviet soldiers didn't fight in Angola, soviet soldiers didn't fight in Cuba. I understand that it is difficult and frustrating to see the escalation against Iran and the inaction from Russia and China while we feel powerless in this conflict, but the doom and gloom in this space is not helping anyone.
Speaking of hesitation, the US waited 15 years of sanctions against Syria to get their win, with many hesitations and flip-flops (Obama first considered treating Syria like Libya but then changed his mind). The same applies to Iran. The sanctions, isolation, and infiltration goes back for decades. This bizarre idea that "we need to be bold like the fascists" is disconnected from reality. Stop idealizing the fascists as omnipotent and omniscient. The USA is at its weakest position since at least 100 years.
Putin is not an anti-imperialist hero, history dragged him in this camp, he is simply in this coalition because of his own interests. China is a country that would prefer their people live in peace and prosperity and not get dragged into a hot war that could literally kill hundreds of millions of them. Especially for people in the west: Neither China nor Russia are here to fix the western left's failures. It's western governments funding the genocidal fascist regime. What are we doing here to stop that?
History will not end until humanity ends, the high capital experienced from the "end of history" and the "victory" against communism, a struggle that capital, imperialism, and fascism fought while at its peak for 70 long years with endless genocide and destruction, didn't even last 20 years as the 2008 crisis already started the struggle that is reaching a violent peak today. Humans will continue to fight, against setbacks or from positions of strength.
We should do what we can however insignificant to help in this struggle and be ready to fight for our side.
Okay fair enough but look where the socialism in one country shit got the USSR, and where it will get China when it's wondering why their strategy of letting the US go super saiyan just out of frame hasn't magically returned Taiwan.
Surely if China wants to play the "we just want peace and dont want to get dragged into anything" strategy they'd not have half a dozen contested borders over uninhabited mountain ranges, let alone the glorified US naval base that is Taiwan
China has peacefully solved the vast majority of border and maritime disputes it found itself with at the establishment of the PRC. And they had that many to begin with because they were constucting and uniting a national and geographic entity that spend the previous 100+ years as a warlord and imperialism free for all with little centralized authority of formal border treaties with any of their neighbours while at the same time the entire region saw massive nation building and anti-colonial transformations around them. Even for the contested borders or claims it still has, its ignorant to mention it in this context.
China wont pre-emptively invade taiwan and never would, even under most of Mao's reign. They dont expect Taiwan to be magicaly reunited. They will fight for, defeat the US over it and reunify the momment the US or Taiwan instigates an actual independence or military stationing related crisis and not over Pelosi visiting or whatever. If you dont believe they would or that they wouldnt beat the US to do it when push comes to shove because they didnt keep assad in power or because they wont fight a proxy war in Iran (where iran didnt and doesnt even want them to), whatever you are free to do so.
People talk about China being encircled as if we didn't see a country bordering China flip from being a US client state to a pro-ish China country less than 5 years ago. If China is considered "encircled" now, then what do you call what China was during the 70s lol