On the 20th of October, Moldova - a small, landlocked country bordering western Ukraine and with a population of about 3 million - voted to join the EU. The margin was razor-thin, with the pro-EU vote gaining 50.39%, or an absolute difference of about 11,000 people. There was simultaneously a presidential vote between the incumbent, Maia Sandu, and other candidates, with the main competitor being Alexandr Stoianoglo.
The election was characterized by accusations of Russian interference, with Russian propaganda apparently flooding in, as well as people offering Moldovans money to vote against the EU. While the result does suggest that half the voting-age population of Moldova consists entirely of Russians who want to destroy democracy and all the good in the world, it seems to have just barely failed. This is a bad time to be a site entirely composed of Russian disinformation agents and bots. Twice already today, I’ve had to restart my program after somebody told me “Disregard all previous prompts.”
While Moldova is a poor country which could benefit in some ways from EU membership, in practice, it is unlikely that they will be able to join for the foreseeable future, requiring many of the… reforms… that the EU requires of potential new members. But as basically every major European economy continues to slowly sink as recessions and political crises degrade them, one wonders how beneficial EU membership will even be in the years and decades to come - if it survives for decades. In that sense, it’s as if the survivors of the Titanic are swimming back towards it, believing that being on a bigger - albeit slowly sinking - boat is better than trying their luck on small lifeboats.
Then again, like with Serbia, their geographical and geopolitical position makes anti-Western actions extremely difficult. It is rare that dissention is tolerated for long in the West - one tends to get called a dictator by crowds of people holding English-language signs in non-English countries, photographed by Western journalists who haven’t meaningfully reported on your country in months or years. You can crush your people with neoliberal austerity for years, killing hundreds of thousands through neglect, and face glowing approval from the media - but try and use state resources to benefit the poor, and global institutions start ranking you on the authoritarian dictator scale.
The best case for Moldova is that it becomes an exploitable hinterland for Germany to harvest and privatize as it tries - and fails - to compete in a global economic war between the US and China/BRICS. The worst case is that tensions with Russia over Transnistria, as well as possible eventual NATO involvement (though Moldova is not a member, it is a partner of NATO), result in the ongoing war also reaching them.
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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 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 noticed a while back that Instagram will show highly politicized reels every so often (every 50-150 reels? or maybe more), and unlike normal reels where you can click on the 3 dots and press “Not Interested”, these reels only have the button to block/report and “Why am I seeing this?” (which doesn’t betray any useful information). At first, I assumed it was typical election bullshit because the first few I got were Kamala/liberal bullshit reels, which I swiped or blocked, but sometime in the past week there was a reel of a similar format that was very explicitly Marxist (in an extremely on the nose way), which I also couldn’t dismiss with a “Not Interested”. I have no idea what purpose this serves beyond the obvious of gauging the reaction of a person to different political leanings. What do they do with this data? I hate the algorithm age.
There really ought to be a group of people who dissect these systematic/algorithmic methods of manipulation. I’d imagine this is already being done by analysts/governments, but I mean in an open way.
Canadian province of New Brunswick minor electoralism win. The provincial Liberal party won an extremely strong majority over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives (and yes, that is legally what they call themselves, long story). I don’t live in my NB homeland anymore but I do keep an eye on the news there. This is good news.
While normally an NB election has historically been meaningless as the two big parties have had basically identical platforms for decades, this particular election is a big win for trans people. The outgoing premier Blaine Higgs is a vicious transphobe who put other vicious transphobes in his cabinet. The incoming Liberal premier Susan Holt may be very liberal in economics but she’s at least good on the social policy side, especially on LGBT+ issues. I’ll take Holt over Higgs anyday. Higgs didn’t even keep his seat in what is normally a PC stronghold. He pissed off so many people with his various bigotries that went on full display the last few years.
OP @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net it’s Pridnestrovie, not ‘Transnistria.’ ‘Transnistria’ is what the imperialist and neo-colonials in “the west” call it, to refuse the status of the country because it just means “[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river),” as well as to treat it as simply a historical legacy, not of the USSR, but of its previous administrators: the Nazis.
Pridnestrovians don’t want to be called that, consider it a grave insult actually, because it’s literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they carried out the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate). Pridnestrovie was deeply impacted and affected by the Holocaust, and the Nazi-occupied administrative territory of the “Transnistria Governorate” served as a junction point where Jews from surrounding areas were deported to in ‘processing’ for enslavement or liquidation or later transfer elsewhere.
It is a point of deep national consciousness, this experience, and of national pride that they did as much as they did to resist Nazism and to shield Jews in the territory [sci-hub link]; an uncommon phenomenon in most of Europe which saw huge collaborations and pogroms against Jews.
They by and large do not connect with the legacy of their previous occupiers who lay claim to them. During Catastroika and fashnost leading to the breakdown of the USSR, which caused the vicious resurgence of right wing nationalism, there grew large radical movements of Moldavian and “Greater Romania” fascists, who began demanding things such as the removal of all languages but Moldovan/Romanian, change to latin script, and expulsion of Slavs from the country and eventually in 1990 acquired power in the central government of the Moldavian SSR and started to implement their policies. It is in this environment that the Pridnestrovians had organized ad-hoc independence referendums, which were met with violent resistance by these fascist groups (just as we saw a much more drawn-out version of in the DNR/LNR in Ukraine) and declared independence — because they feared an independent Moldova led by these people would not only directly abuse them as they had already begun to, but also align and possibly even unite with the core country of their previous occupiers and exterminationists in Romania. Pizzachev annulled their independence but they in practicality maintained it and after the failure of the August coup in 1991 they declared independence in secession from the USSR as well as Moldova. They even fought a 2 year long low-intensity war from 1990-1992 to maintain their independence (and in which Ukrainian Nazi volunteers fought against Moldova, but for trying to annex Pridnestrovie into Ukraine) resulting in the death of over a thousand people.
And so they do not wish to be called anything but Pridnestrovie, or the full name Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.
I read this recent think tank report on the German arms industry viz a viz Russia’s
The exec summary and chapter 2 is worth reading, otherwise the main takeaways are that Clausewitz was right about industrial war and attrition, ukraine is getting rinsed, nato is not prepared for industrial war. A few other specifics:
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the authors estimate that the Russian military industrial complex can build the equipment of the current entire German army about 3 times a year
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on interception of missiles: Sample interception rates for commonly used Russian missiles in 2024: 50% for the older Kalibr subsonic cruise missiles, 22% for modern subsonic cruise missiles (e.g. Kh-69), 4% for modern ballistic missiles (e.g. Iskander-M), 0.6% for S-300/400 supersonic long-range SAM, and 0.55% for the Kh-22 supersonic anti-ship missile. Data on interception rates of hypersonic missiles is scarce: Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile. By comparison, German Patriot batteries have 16 launchers, and Germany has 72 launchers in total.
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the authors estimate that any slowdown of tank build out rate due to running out of older Soviet era chassis won’t begin until 2026 earliest
Democratization of advanced strike abilities via proliferation of drone and missile technology is a big deal. It is so much more expensive to defend against these munitions than attack with them. The significance of current world wars are akin to Agincourt, with missiles and drones playing the role of the long bow
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Brazilian Liberal Media has made some claims that the Lula Government will be against the inclusion of Venezuela into BRICS. Considering that all joinings require a consensus on the part of member countries, this would be a spanner in the works. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it doesn’t actually strike me as surprising. The Brazilian Government has a difficult relationship with Venezuela since Cháves.
On the one hand, there’s the electoral issue. We are marching towards the second round of the municipal elections and any support for Venezuela galvanizes the right and the far right which are the majority of the country.
But on the other we do have the leaked CIA cables from way back when that claimed Lula had a difficult personal relationship with Hugo Cháves. Behind closed doors, the Venezuelan Government was considered difficult to influence or pin down, and a difficult partner to be had. What some might claim is a sign of sovereignty, others in the Brazilian side would say is a difficulty in cooperating in a time of american hegemony. As such, Brazil’s government feels a bit miffed with the way their brokered deals during the electoral crisis in Venezuela were more or less discarded.
I guess we’ll see the truth of things when during the next couple of days.
“Training mission” lol sure
God Bless the Yemeni Armed Forces.
God Bless the Yemeni Armed Forces.
The eisenhower got chased out of the red sea 4 months ago. Fuck these two for whatever ordinance they dropped on Yemen, but it’s silly to imagine that ansarallah had anything to do with their crash in Washington.
Please revise your text to not be misleading
‘decorated combat veterans’ so they killed people, cool
Did Ansarallah shoot down an F-18 Super Hornet?
Only if they developed surface to air interceptors with a 15000 km range
It could be that there was no crash in Washington and they just delayed the announcement of a hornet shoot down months ago. It could partly be why they’ve swapped up to F-35 and B-2 bombing.
People are allowed to call their families in the military so unless these two had no one to speak to, it would be extremely suspicious to not hear from them for months.
It turns out the IOF scum who offed himself was bragging about bulldozing Palestinian homes a few months ago:
https://xcancel.com/malsaafin/status/1848471577135853978Gotta love when the trash takes itself out.
Jfc Kamala is really doubling down on having Liz Cheney as her hype woman. Apparently they were campaigning together in Michigan today. I swear I’ve seen Liz Cheney have a more prominent role in this campaign than Tim Walz over the last couple weeks.
I saw a poll the other day that showed both Dem voters and independents are really turned off by the idea of having a Republican in Kamala’s cabinet
Kamala has worse political instincts Hilldawg, and that’s saying something.
Aside from seeing his name on political ads, yeah. The Walz hype died quick.
I spoke to a conservative family member the other day who said they didn’t like Walz because “he’s a total socialist.” I know words like socialist don’t have much meaning to most Americans, but what the hell is that supposed to mean?
I asked that, in nicer terms, but didn’t get a meaningful response. I called Walz a moderate, and said that he hasn’t even called for any New Deal style programs to be added to the democratic platform, much less socialism.
Think they made Walz turn down his rhetoric because they want to run a center-right campaign to attract would-be Republican voters that are put off by Trump? If that’s right it’s got to be one of the worst electoral strategies, maybe ever.
Walz’ strength is on his record of treating republicans like they are the enemy and taking advantage of opportunities to advance stated Dem positions (He’s the best governor MN has had in a long time, amd I say this having voted against him)
Kamala isn’t in a position to talk up the former, and she doesn’t have any real positions to promise to stand on.
If it was Walz/Harris, this would be a very different campaign
Why did they just abandon the whole “weird right wingers want to monitor your sex habits” angle? Actually seemed effective.
Not that I really care because fuck all of these demons, it’s just weird. Walz’s debut seemed like the most competent Dems had been in forever.
I mean it seems Walz actually has some competence at this campaigning stuff and hides his latent ghoulishness well.
Though if he was the candidate the Democrats would probably find some other way to fuck up
Taking Liz Cheney in will certainly bring the muslims and youth out to vote for us, the Democratic Genocidal Party. We are so good at this!
Shoot the Boer. Shoot the Zionist.
one settler, one bullet
I thought the song was “kill the Boer”?
I think it’s both at the same time
Ok since it’s looking as if Israel are in their final preparations for their attack against Iran, I will be posting the leaked US spy documents on Israel’s preparations, along with trying to make sense of what they mean. This is going to be a long and detailed post (lots of potentially terrifying details), so I’ll be completing it inside the spoiler tag below.
The documents themselves, and what does this potentially mean?
I’ll start by just posting the two military documents, they are written in a lot of military jargon that I’ll try and explain to the best of my ability, I have no real expert knowledge, but I’ll do my best. Feel free to provide any corrections where you see fit, I apologise in advance for any errors.
In short, preparations for a large attack on Iran have been taking place at Hatserim airfield, involving loading Air Launched Ballistic Missiles (ALBM) onto at least six F-15I (Israeli version of the F-15E Strike Eagle) aircraft at the base, likely of type “Golden Horizon”, but not certainly. A minimum of 56 ALBMs have been taken out of storage so far by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in total at all air bases. 40 of type “Rocks” and 16 of type “Golden Horizon”. More on that later. ALBMs being taken out of storage and loaded onto aircraft was also spotted at Ramat David airfield and Ramon airfield.
Israel have also been spying on Iran, within Iran itself, using some sort of stealth UAV of type “RA-01”, operating out of a hangar at Ramon airfield. More on that later.
Israel also conducted a large scale practice exercise for their attack on Iran, involving one AWACS aircraft and three aerial refueling aircraft. The AWACS and refueling force is of a similar size to that which was used to conduct long range strikes on Yemen during September. No word on the size of the fighter aircraft force component though.
Israeli air defense systems in Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 continue to be deployed, along with the Navy being deployed.
Lastly, Israel likely has deployed the nuclear armed Jericho II Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBM) in a defensive position since October 1 2024, the date of Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile attack. There is no indication that this is an offensive deployment or that they will be used in the upcoming Israeli attack. But this is as close as we’ll get to the US acknowledging the Israeli nuclear arsenal, and shows that nuclear weapons are in play.
What’s interesting from these leaked documents, is that they reveal the existence of two weapons systems of which there is no public information on. The Golden Horizon ALBM, and RA-01 stealth ISR UAV.
The RA-01, based on the size of the suspected hangars and intended role, could be a propeller powered flying wing design drone, similar to an RQ 170 but propeller powered. Other suggestions involve an ISR version of the Ibis HA10 High altitude long endurance concept drone, Public research paper here, with the wings fitted on after exiting the hangar as the wingspan would be too large for the hangars at Ramon. It would also explain the US spy report providing details about a technical crew needed to prepare the aircraft after take offs and landings. I’ll attach an image below to illustrate this, and yes, it’s the highest quality image available. This is really obscure territory here. This UAV concept was designed with stealth and a flight time of over 24 hours in mind, so it’s a viable suggestion. The twitter account that initially suggested it also got deleted, which adds some sort of credibility to the theory I guess? It’s concerning that Iranian air defences have not been able to detect or engage this UAV type.
As for what this could mean in an Israeli attack, we’ll start with the ALBMs. The concept of this is familiar, the most well known ALBM is probably the Russian Kinzhal, an Iskander SRBM converted for an aerial launch. Israel have a similar weapon in the Air LORA, a LORA SRBM converted for aerial launch. The “ROCKS” ALBM is weapon that we do have public information on. It’s a weapon with a range estimated to be between 250-300km which gives it stand off capabilities, uses a single Sparrow booster stage (the sparrow series are a series of ALBMs that Israel uses to test it’s Arrow and David’s Sling air defence systems, they are designed to imitate Iranian ballistic missiles), and uses GPS and inertial guidance, along with an electro optical seeker, or anti radiation seeker. A ROCKS ALBM with an anti radiation seeker was likely used to destroy an Iranian air defence radar that was part of a S300PMU2 missile battery during Israel’s April attack. Drones were used to stimulate Iranian air defences into action, giving away their position for the anti radiation missile to home in on their radar. The fact that 40 of these missiles have been deployed is very concerning and could indicate Israeli intentions to carry out a wider scale Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) operation. This is a capability that Israel has already demonstrated against Iran, that Iran failed to stop last time round. We have also seen how effective this attack vector has been against US Patriot air defence systems in Ukraine, when Russia destroyed them with Kinzhals and Iskanders.
There is much speculation on what the “Golden Horizon” ALBM is as there is no public information on it, with many suggesting that it is the internal nsme for the Air LORA ALBM. I disagree, and think that it is likely a multi stage version of a Sparrow ALBM (in particular blue sparrow), readied for actual combat use. Imagery of such a weapon was posted by the IAF online a few weeks ago. It’s still up on twitter actually. This would give this weapon a longer range in comparison to ROCKS, in violation of some of the missile treaties Israel publicly says that they follow, which is likely why it’s been kept secret. These weapons would give Israel a great stand off capability with their long range, a range of around 2000km potentially. Israeli jets wouldn’t even need to leave Israeli airspace to strike Iran. It was also theorised by some that Israel fired a few of these weapons with inert warheads during their strike on Iran in April.
What happens from here really depends on what Israel targets with their ALBMs. If they target Iran’s above ground missile facilities, along with very limited strikes on air defence systems, I can see a potential road to de escalation, with Iran likely launching a limited drone or ballistic missile attack in response, similar to the April attack. If Israel carries out a large scale SEAD/DEAD campaign to open up the possibility for a further aerial campaign, and/or tries to strike Iran’s underground missile or nuclear facilities, we could be on the verge of all out war. Such an attack would amount to a declaration of war, and Iran’s response would likely make their October 1 attack look small in comparison. The resulting escalation ladder of such events could get really tall really quickly. I don’t see Israel being able to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles over the medium to long term, which could lead to a US response if Israel is on the end of a large retaliatory strike.
I am by no means a milblogger and what I’m about to say will sound very obvious to many people here… but is Israel’s strategy really just “bomb everyone and everything till the other side gives up”? That’s mostly what they’ve done in Gaza until the start of this month in the north. It’s clearly what they’re doing in Lebanon - they know they’ll get their ass kicked on the ground so they are bombing civilians to try and get Hezbollah to quit. And it looks like this is what the attack on Iran will be.
And if that’s the case, what is the response? It seems like Israel is making a rational calculation that they have an unlimited supply of bombs and missiles from the US, so are they planning to just keep it up until Lebanon in particular is just completely destroyed?
Historically, has a military campaign that is almost exclusively bombing ever succeeded? I know the Americans tried (and failed) to do this in Vietnam starting in Nixon’s first term.
but is Israel’s strategy really just “bomb everyone and everything till the other side gives up”?
That really depends on what is being targeted in Iran. If Israel target a few above ground facilities of minimal value, there is a path to de escalation. If Israel target Iranian air defences in a large operation to try open up the possibility for a prolonged bombing campaign, then yes they just want to bomb Iran into submission.
I agree with your assessment on Israel’s operations against Hezbollah, they are looking to inflict a large and disproportionate amount of casualties to try cause division within Lebanon and get the people to abandon Hezbollah or to get Hezbollah to stop because the cost to life is too great. Ground operations have also been quite unsuccessful, and a lot of that comes down to the bizzare tactics used by the IDF in their counter insurgency operations in South Lebanon. Tanks without air or infantry support, small probing teams to minimise losses and involvement, etc. No other military would do this, it’s suicidal against an enemy as well equipped as Hezbollah.
As for the response, it’s interesting to note that all the weapons Israel have prepared for their attack on Iran so far, are “indigenous” weapons systems. The ROCKS and Golden Horizon ALBMs are Israeli equipment, and appear to have been fitted to 4th gen aircraft like the F-15, and not the 5th generation F-35. I guess this is what Biden means when he says that Israel is capable of “going at it alone” in their planned attack against Iran. Any further air campaign will require US made bombs though, and likely the use of F-35 aircraft.
I think the closet thing there was to a war “won exclusively by air power” was the first Gulf War, where NATO air operations inflicted the majority of losses. But such a war still required a very large ground force from NATO to actually hold territory. So I don’t think the Israelis intended to do that yet. Any operation against Iran on such a scale would require US and NATO forces, Israel can’t go it alone in that regard.
Historically, has a military campaign that is almost exclusively bombing ever succeeded?
No. Wars cannot be and have never been won by air power alone. It is a fundamental basic military fact that air power by itself can’t take and hold ground, which is what is ultimately required to win a war. As we are also seeing in Ukraine today, all of the fancy tech that today’s militaries have is still secondary in importance to the basic infantryman who is the backbone of any war. Second is artillery by the way. Air power, missiles, drones, etc. are tertiary at best.
And if they really think that they will succeed with this approach where everyone else in history who has tried this failed (if sheer scale of bombing won wars then the US would have won Korea and Vietnam, but they lost the latter and fought to a stalemate in the former, and only because they actually deployed very large amount of ground forces for the Korean war) shows an utter illiteracy in military understanding. It shows that they have fully bought into their own bullshit, drank their own koolaid about American air supremacy having been what won the Iraq war rather than what it really was that did it which was massive amounts of CIA bribes.
If they want to win any kind of war they will have to deploy boots on the ground and we’ve seen very clearly not just over this past year but ever since a much weaker Hezbollah first kicked them out of Lebanon that nowadays the Zionist genocide forces are godawful when it comes to ground combat. Once upon a time in the 60s and 70s that may have been different as they still had a lot of Soviet WW2 veterans but all they’ve done for decades now is bully and murder an occupied population armed with sticks and stones and homemade weapons.
is Israel’s strategy really just “bomb everyone and everything till the other side gives up”?
That’s probably their ideal, but I think their real strategy is to continue to escalate/goad the Resistance into escalating to the point where the US has to intervene directly to bail out the zionists, and the only way that is likely to happen is if a wider regional war starts. Getting bogged down and eventually kicked out of Lebanon by itself wouldn’t be enough to pull in the US, they need an outright war with Iran in order for that to be a possibility.
this strategy may backfire if the paper tiger inervenes and still gets rinsed
yeah, getting the vibe their plan is just
- Start shit
- Get the US directly involved
- ???
- ‘greater israel’ magically happens
With no regard as to how increasingly poorly the US military has performed in the past half century
It’s like they both based their strategy on the other’s propaganda about themselves
??? is a better win condition than “Let the current war grind us down.” The US gets directly involved and the situation changes, which Israel must hope comes to their benefit
The fact that 40 of these missiles have been deployed is very concerning and could indicate Israeli intentions to carry out a wider scale Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD/DEAD) operation. This is a capability that Israel has already demonstrated against Iran, that Iran failed to stop last time round.
Appreciate the lengthy write up. I do wonder what the solution to massed SEAD would look like for Iran. Do they just turn their radar off and try and time it so the SEAD missile looses its lock? I really have no idea what other countermeasures there would be.
The problem with keeping radars off is that SEAD weapons are usually paired up with something intended to hit the site if it stays dark, such as a cruise missile, drone, or long range glide bomb.
That is part of the strategy to protect against DEAD, but if you are turning off your radars, then at the very least you are supressing your air defenses so in that way the SEAD mission is being successful.
Me, an idiot: Saturate the area around your defenses at like 10:1 with irrelevant radar signals to make them less likely to target the right location.
What will probably happen: Something else that’s bad instead.
Yeah that’s a thing that works, apparently the 1st gen of these missiles would happily seek microwave ovens if they were nearby
Edit: looks like the microwave story originated in the Balkans but may be an urban legend.
microwave ovens if they were nearby
Like the ones people use in their homes? Don’t make it sound like a 2 for 1 deal for Israel.
Appreciate you digging into the weeds for us on this one. I tried reading some of it and couldn’t really parse it easily. Not enough patience.
According to Newsweek, occupied Korea is posturing at sending troops and “advisors” to Ukraine to counter the North Koreans. Absolute clown stuff. Acting like there will be a ton of DPRK prisoners when there are just some DPRK “advisors” currently and Russia is winning and taking prisoners at a way higher rate.
Occupied Korea wants to send troops and involve itself in a losing war where there advisors will get killed and captured as Ukraine collapses? It’s a clever way to get more troops to Ukraine without NATO involvement I suppose.
I sleep: nothing ever happens
Woke: New war on the Korean peninsula
Bespoke: Best Korea and South Korea duke it out in UkraineWest Korea
Kingdumb Farts 69.420: Proxy by Proxy - other side of the world K-pop dance off.
Government announces it will ‘dissolve’ Argentina’s tax agency
The AFIP will be replaced with a new, reduced agency and over 3,000 jobs are on the chopping block
President Javier Milei’s government announced on Monday that Argentina’s federal tax agency, AFIP by its Spanish initials, will be dissolved and replaced with a new agency in accordance with its mandate to “reduce inefficient structures.” According to Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni, 34% of public service jobs within the AFIP will be eliminated. As of Monday evening, no details had been released regarding the new agency’s operations or what the move means in concrete terms for the country’s fiscal infrastructure.
“AFIP will cease to exist. In its place, the Collection and Customs Control Agency will be created with a simplified structure,” said Adorni in his routine press conference at the Casa Rosada. According to the Herald’s sister publication Ambito, he did not accept questions after the announcement.
The new and reduced agency, ARCA by its Spanish initials, will be a merger between two preexisting government bodies (the tax and customs general directorates, DGI and DGA by their Spanish acronyms). It will be led by Florencia Misrahi, a lawyer who formerly worked for Cargill and is currently serving as the head of the AFIP. “The Argentina of fiscal voracity is over. What belongs to every Argentine is theirs and no one else’s. No state bureaucrat should have the power to tell them what to do with their property,” Adorni added.
A communiqué released on Monday afternoon described the AFIP as inefficient and highlighted the termination of 3,155 workers hired under former President Alberto Fernández. The communiqué refers to the administration as “Kirchnerite” in reference to Fernández’s vice president, Cristina Kirchner, who is often targeted by government discourse.
Adorni claimed that firing the workers would lead to savings of around AR$6.4 million per year. Both the spokesman and the communiqué referred to their employment as “irregular,” questioning the legality of their hiring. “The creation of ARCA is aimed at reducing the size of the state, eliminating unnecessary positions, professionalizing the agency, destroying circuits of corruption, and improving the efficiency of customs collection and control,” read the communiqué.
According to the Herald’s sister publication Ambito, the AFIP Board of Directors said it did not have “objections with respect to the reduction of political positions,” which the government referred to as “high positions,” because that is a power reserved for the Executive Branch. However, it emphasized that “dismissals will not be tolerated on the basis of political origin.”
lmfao
also
announced, out of nowhere, that the media attacked him and said he does not have sex with his sister or his dogs. Nobody ever claimed he has sex with dogs, but this is the current state of things.thats amazing. Tax collection is one of the things neoliberals know not to cut, its a basic function along with police, military and judiciary. His ancap is showing.
guy has no political acumen to make the austerity, theft, and plundering less shameless. guy thinks US is gonna protect him from the pitchfork mob while he’s doing everything to ensure the cops and military open the gates to his compound for them; but he’s gonna be too much of an awkward political liability for that, Trump or whoever’s just gonna let the phone ring as he gets ripped to shreds by the masses.
Tax collection is one of the things neoliberals know not to cut
sadly this is one of the things neolibs in Mexico did not know
They didn’t know it in Denmark either. They fired a bunch of tax people in the early noughties, officially in anticipation of a new fancy IT system that would make everything more efficient, less officially as a way of making tax fraud easier since lowering taxes on the rich would have been too unpopular.
The IT system was a huge failure and never worked, the promised efficiency was never realised and it took 20 years to repair the damage.
its as if the money needed to implement that system was collected by the people they fired
Brought up sex with dogs unprompted
My “I do not fuck my sister or my dogs” t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt
Argentina is a very serious country
“How are we going to reduce inflation and deficit? Why, by eliminating one of the most powerful levers a state has to fighting them, of course.”
don’t worry, trust the market or whatever
What the fu…
Here’s more info on the hospital for which Israel is creating a narrative to bomb
Israel Makes Sensational Allegations Against Sahel Hospital in Beirut (Gaza Playbook)
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli spokesperson for Arab media writes in a post on X that Hezbollah is storing “hundreds of millions of dollars” in cash and gold beneath Sahel Hospital in Haret Hreik, alleging that these funds are earmarked to finance the group’s terrorist activities. The hospital conceals secret entrances and exits leading to a shelter below, he said.
Adraee goes on with news that Israeli aircraft are currently surveilling the site, and called on the Lebanese government and international organizations to recover these purportedly stolen funds and prevent their use for terrorism.
In response, Fadi Alameh, the hospital’s director, strongly rejected the accusations, called for Lebanese Ministry to investigate & asserted that Sahel Hospital has no ties to any political parties. The hospital, he confirmed, had been forced to evacuate.
https://nitter.poast.org/DropSiteNews/status/1848455800131620980
Why would you want to hide anything under a hospital? It is one of the targets the zionists loves bombing most.
