junebug2 [comrade/them, she/her]
https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/22/a-river-runs-through-the-end-of-the-nato-russia-ukrainian-war/
An article discussing the future significance of the Dnieper as a defensive line in the SMO. The naked capitalism discussion linked is a good one, about how much of Ukraine is flat and so its water systems are based on pumps and dams. This means that to achieve one of its war aims (fresh water access to Crimea), Russia will need to ensure Kiev does not dump raw sewage upstream. The least desirable option there is having Ukraine (or whatever) control Kiev, and Russia has to rebuild infrastructure. Actually taking Kiev is its own can of worms. The most effective and somewhat heartless option is the Russians continue to focus on power infrastructure. This is necessary for heating and water, especially as we enter northern hemisphere Autumn. Without power, the population density that can be supported is very low. This will cause refugee flows west, but i have also seen estimates that Ukraine has already lost half of its pre-war population. War is tragic.
https://splash247.com/91-hours-left-to-avert-supply-chain-mayhem-in-the-us/
An article about an imminent (October 1st) strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association. This sounds really cool, and the US Chamber of Commerce seems very concerned. Keep in mind the ILA has pledged that cruise ships and military deliveries will not be affected by the strike. If this does happen, expect oil and gas to go nuts. The biggest hubs for oil and gas are on the Gulf Coast, and the majority of Liquid Natural Gas terminals and capacity are also there. If the US cannot export natural gas to Europe, then the EU might be forced to reach the negotiating table before NATO (more realistically they further set their economies on fire voluntarily).
An article about BRICS+ investment in the construction of Nusantara. For those unaware, Indonesia has been looking to replace Jakarta as the capital for decades, and the plan has been moving forward now that part of the city is below sea level. In theory, this will be an opportunity to correct for the poor sanitation, overcrowding, bad traffic, lack of green spaces, flooding, and depleted ground water of the much older and organically developed Jakarta. The new capital is being built on the east coast of Borneo. Hopefully, basic infrastructure gets more money than hotels and luxury secondary schools, though i do understand that the latter things make for better news articles.
the ukrainians haven’t meaningfully damaged the russian fleet, and their success in attacking naval targets is not because of the end of the age of the big boat (though i do agree with you that the age is over). the article you shared said a third of the naval assets in the black sea were destroyed. i can’t say i know every boat that’s been hit, but at one point the ukrainians “nearly destroyed a submarine” and “blew a massive hole in the hull of a destroyer”. both were fully repaired within two or three months. the ukrainians lie about the damage they have done, and the western press repeats it. but you know this, i just feel the need to correct the time article.
i think that ukrainian success in attacking the russian navy is because of three reasons. (1) the ukrainians are indeed the best or second best drone forces in the world, by natural selection if nothing else. they have material and operators that most navies would struggle to deal with. the other best or second best drone force is russia though, which leads into the second reason. (2) naval assets have not been relevant to the war since the rumors of marine landings in odessa way back in ‘22. as such, the russians are not going to put the best electronic warfare or antiair up to protect five tugboats and the black sea anti-smuggling task force. so the russians have no reason to put up much more than the bare minimum, which connects with the third point. (3) the black sea is an active theatre for nato operations. i don’t mean nato “operations” or special forces or trainers. there are regular flights of american (and lapdog) recon drones and awac planes carefully following international boundaries starting in nato bases in romania and turkey. any and all possible toys that the USA sees as too valuable or too fragile for the stupid ukrainians but still worth using against russia are being sent over and under the black sea. they’d be sailing on top it if they could too, because the US has been begging turkiye to let warships in since ‘22. there’s probably no part of russia that ukraine is getting better information on than crimea and the black sea coast.
all this combines with ukraine’s habit of PR-based warfare, and big ticket naval strikes seem to be easy (and yet further evidence of the inevitability of the brutal putler’s defeat). i’m also not sure that the rise of hypersonic missiles means the end of all naval operations. the PLA navy don’t seem to think so. they’re building up a big green water/ coastal defense fleet. in a somewhat similar vein, iran just launched its first aircraft carrier, a design based on a container ship mostly designed for drone launching. modern day fire ships, drones, and missiles are a factor that all discourage concentration of force, but they don’t discourage having force. if there is ever a modern naval war that somehow doesn’t go nuclear, i imagine we will see the naval equivalent of russia and ukraine no longer fielding multiple tanks together because concentrated armor columns are just cruise missile bait.
i think you’re spot on about zelensky and the kursk adventure. i wonder who’s got more of thirst for russian blood/ nuclear war, the banderites screaming in his one ear, or the natoists whispering in the other?
prior to a few months ago, openAI was nominally beholden to a non-profit of the same name that had a board with the mission to maintain safe AI, what ever that means. they tried to fire sam altman, sam didn’t like that, the board got dissolved, and now the nsa guy is there. this article talks about how the moral/ altruism board tried to stop the money for moral reasons, and ultimately lost out
Hello, comrades. Like many of you, i do not live in SWANA and am saddened by the death of Hassan Nasrallah. i do not have any primary sources to add, but i do think there is at least one early operational lesson to be drawn from the facts we do have.
We know that a block of Beirut was destroyed by a number of missiles and bunker busters. Several hundreds if not over a thousand innocent people were killed and injured. But what is a bunker buster? In short, it is a bomb with a very thick shell (and so they are often very heavy relative to the payload size) and a remote delay or altitude based fuse. The ideal is that it smacks into the ground, keeps going forward for a certain depth or time, and then it goes off. And what kind of bombs are the USA and its lapdog using in their depraved spiral of carnage?
First, the GBU-28. Designed and produced first in 1991, there is actual technical information available. I have a deeply biased source, which gets a little too cutesy with the story of USamerican ingenuity. The relevant information here is “penetrated 22 ft of reinforced concrete and then kept flying for half a mile [of air]”. This bomb has a warhead containing roughly 675 kilograms of explosives. It’s also worth thinking about the fact that this bunker buster was designed with Iran, Iraq, Libya, and the DPRK explicitly in mind.
Next, consider Al-Jazeera reports of 5000 pound bombs and also this article from three years ago. The GBU-72, released in 2022, was designed with advice from IDF experiences with the 28. This is a JDAM conversion, which is the US military term for how the Russians are slapping basic guidance kits and two wings on surplus ordinance to create modern precision weapons on the cheap. So it has a larger warhead (though we don’t know how much) and it’s more accurate. Accuracy should mean hitting the street or ground in order to not waste the penetrating power, but who knows with the zionist entity. It’s worth noting that these are technically laser guided munitions. But how do you think the West determines where to put the laser if not via satellite imagery? And if they are figuring out a location from satellite imagery, what would they use if not GPS, which was put into space for this purpose?
Now we can talk all day about tunnel design and where we should be meeting with important diplomats. But the big point here is that JDAM, and all other dumb bombs with smart targeting, are wholly reliant on GPS. there are no USamerican bunker busters (that i can find info on) that do not use GPS. i, with all my authority as an armchair analyst, think that the Axis of Resistance needs to start working on spoofing and hardening devices against GPS (i am certain they already have). Spoofing refers to setting up a transmitter to feed a false stream of data into the environment, which makes it an obvious target but also creates a sort of bubble protection. Hardening can mean several things, but in this case i mean double checking communication devices for tracking bands (many chips can be built to only transmit at certain frequencies), reducing all GPS interaction in the area, and literally covering the walls of certain areas with aluminum foil if it comes down to it. i say reduce because i don’t know if you can stop all civilians in the area from using map software. If anyone wants to scream from the rooftops about Iran, don’t say you want them to launch anything. Iran needs to deploy every piece of electronic warfare it has, at home and in Lebanon, and then it needs to put in an order for twice as many more from China and Russia.
An article looking back at the last few days by the editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar, translated by Resistance News. According to wikipedia, Al-Akhbar is a left wing, anti-zionist, leaning pro-syrian Lebanese daily newspaper. They also call it a semi-tabloid without a source, which makes me think that it reports facts that some wikipedia editor doesn’t like. So not to replace analysis with contrarianism, but i don’t feel compelled to verify further. Resistance News is a good source. The mention of Western and comprador nations trying to stir up Syrian and Lebanese groups “in an uprising to demand a ceasefire from the Resistance” is interesting, since I haven’t personally seen anything about that before now on my side of the language barrier. The latter paragraphs underscore one of the lessons of post-Vietnam military thought: the USA (and friends) have developed a theory rich and deeply analytical conception of how best to apply massive terror bombing and mechanized shock and awe against opponents without air defense. They have now taken the existence of complex theory as evidence that this must work, which is a blindness that can be exploited. Unfortunately, this blindness does not change the mass death and destruction the “Western way of war” will bring.
i have an early shift today, so i will be posting the other articles later.
my best guess would be that this weekend is the swiss peace summit where they invited like ninety countries but not russia. putting out the barest, most basic sounding demands is an easy play when you aren’t even invited to the current version of peace talks. it’ll make ukraine’s demands for crimea, belgorod, kaliningrad, and billion dollar annual reparations look ridiculous in a few days, if the talks even get that far. you’re right that the west isn’t done, but the west is the one cooking up this swiss conference
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-u-s-navys-missile-production-problem-looks-dire/
An article from the Burger Eagle Freedom Center American Enterprise Institute from a few months ago about the Imperial Navy’s missile production. The two USA ships that attempted to intercept Iranian missiles on Monday launched 12 missiles between them. The 2025 military budget, and allocations for the next five years, will produce 12 SM-Block IIA missiles annually. While about a hundred of another missile type has been ordered, this is apparently 10% of the number ordered in 1985. This year, the White House has passed several budget cuts for USA Navy missile production. Point and laugh.
Warning for Haaretz, but it’s the absolute other end of perspective on “20 F-35s destroyed”. And they give satellite imagery of the Nevatim base after Monday. The cope about missile interception might be entertaining for some. While the destruction of 20 F-35s is probably exaggerated, the F-35 has something like a 30% mission capability rate. So while the warning from Iran likely let them get some of their F-35s in the air, at most a third of them were actually capable of missions. Now i am not a plane person, but i believe a plane that isn’t fully mission capable can still be flight capable. So if we very generously flip that ratio and say only 30% of F-35s could not fly, there were at least 6 planes grounded when the missiles hit. The red circles in this top image are a bit strange to me, because the entire top row of cubbies (?) is covered in what look like blast marks to me. It’s possible only one plane has been destroyed, but individual F-35s fail all the time. Maybe “israel” has too much invested in its reputation to come up with a training accident story, but it seems likely several were damaged if not destroyed.
good morning, comrades. several comments in the rules request thread were about solid links and substantive main comments in order to build discussion. while i am not sure strict rules are required (there is something to be said for making sure people aren’t so concerned over self-esteem or “real leftism” that they stop talking), i do enjoy discussion based on links from good sources. also, there are people who post very good links and videos from telegram and twitter of primary events, so i am going to try and link analysis of things that have happened in the past few days.
as such, for at least this week, i will be posting what i think are the top three-ish naked capitalism articles of the day, along with some commentary. think of it as a bootleg and abbreviated rip-off of comrade 72T’s bulletins. if it looks like i have time for it with work and people like it, i will do my best to continue.
A breakdown of the recent German state elections in Brandenburg, as well as a general picture of the German economic and political trajectory (bad). i think it is worth extending some mental sympathy to BSW, since unlike many other ‘patsocs’, they wish to RETVRN to the GDR, a real and decent place, instead of purely nationalist fantasy. Many of the people involved, including Ms. Wagenknecht, were adults when the Berlin Wall came down. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/09/atlanticism-or-sovereignty-fight-in-germany-continues-with-latest-state-election.html
A good explanation of how the ocean is getting warmer, and also a good example of runaway warming/ climate feedback loops. i will say that i think arctic-news’ estimation of up to 18 degrees celsius warming is a bit sensationalist, but sources i prefer suggest 7 to 10 degrees if no mass action is taken and we actually get worse at emissions (the current trajectory), which is still “we all die” territory. https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2024/09/high-temperatures-despite-la-nina.html
A very brief report about Ukrainian military activity in Syria. Interesting to think about in context of “is this World War 3 yet?” Also a clear sign of Ukraine lacking a plan for victory (in what universe does a base outside Aleppo effect anything in the Donbass?). Since we know that all Ukrainian ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) is USamerican, you have to wonder what Uncle Sam wanted destroyed in Syria last week (and what the entity was doing to that Iranian base). https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/ukrainian-special-forces-syria
It’s essentially just a shopping list that right wing cranks have wanted since at least the nixon administration. the heritage foundation was founded in ‘73, and it is heir to a tradition that includes things like the john birch society and the federalist society. the american far right has been advancing a plan of judicial capture for decades, and it’s finally coming to a head. the democrats argue we can either have it in 2025 or delay it to 2029.
the democrats are broadly not wrong to say that the contents of the project are bad. they will kick a lot of protections down to the state level, where obviously the red controlled state govs will gleefully strip away everything they can. the reason the democrats are bringing it up so much is because, rhetorically, they only have fear and negative claims to support them. there is no democratic platform, or anti-2025 project, or coherent vision of the future, or anything. the only pitch they have is the same pitch they’ve had for decades, except now it’s more tired than its ever been: the other guy is really bad, this is an important election, you have to vote blue. hunter s. thompson wrote about being tired of holding his nose for unpopular candidates in the 70s.
it’s closer to the fascists telling us what to do then agenda 21, but they’ve been telling us for eighty years. the recent emphasis on it is a combination of it playing well on tiktok to young people who are critically looking at the character of USamerican civil society for the first time and the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the democratic party.
many news heads have rightly said that this pager (and now radio) attack makes sense only as a direct prelude to invasion, and the zionist entity seems to have wasted this opportunity. i also saw a comment, before the relevation that two hezbollah fighters had discovered the pagers, that “israel” has a tendency to pull the trigger on operations as soon as they are technically feasible. this sort of strategic flailing seems odd, but it also lines up with the conclusions of a US army analysis of the 2006 “israeli”-hezbollah war.
it’s about 60 pages of actual content, and it’s interesting for a number of reasons (there’s a good section on the missiles hezbollah used for people into that). now there’s a two decade sized grain of salt that should be taken here, but i doubt i could get access to current “israeli” planning, let alone in english. the biggest conclusion for recent events is that the zionist entity has focused on counterinsurgency and air power, degrading its combined arms capabilities and doctrine to the point that it does not have them.
specifically, “israel” has fallen for the US air force’s greatest lie - that air power and bombing can stand as a combat arm independently from ground operations. as such, the head of the military at the time was an airman, and the doctrinal changes created were both confusing and biased against ground combat. additionally, the long time focus on ‘counterinsurgency’ in Gaza (the phrasing is not mine) has led to reserve mechanized equipment not being replaced, tank and mechanized crews not being trained, and minimal training at the division or batallion level. the lack of training in large formations and the fact that doctrine became more confusing as the formations got larger led to failure, broadly.
to provide an illustration, i’ll run through the actions of two divisions in the last act of the war. the UN had passed a ceasefire resolution, and for reasons that are not completely clear, “israel” planned a last hurrah offensive. the symbolic goal was the litani river. division 91 of the iof was meant to be driving towards the mediterranean, but stalled out completely. In an inquiry after the war,
The investigation concluded that commanders within the division “did not fully understand their orders” and “were not present with their troops during important battles and even failed to fulfill basic missions.” The investigation also found fault “in the way tactical orders were composed, sometimes without a time element. Since the orders were not clear, they were changed, in some cases, on an hourly basis. Brigade commanders did not properly understand their missions. . . . They didn’t know what their goals were and how long they had to fulfill their missions.” Remarkably, according to the report, “an entire battalion sat in the same location for several days without moving and when the commander finally received orders to push deeper into enemy territory he was confused and failed to fulfill the mission.”
division 162 was looking to take Ghandouriyeh, a town that sat on a crossroads and high ground. they had to cross a valley, Wadi al-Saluki, to get there. first, the general sent air assault elements to secure the high ground over the valley. the air assault successfully landed near two towns, cleared several occupied buildings, did not take the high ground, and then reported that they secured the high ground. 24 tanks were sent up the road, and a collapsed building in front of them and an ied behind them had them trapped. each merkava had a smoke screen to make missile aim harder. dozens of anti-tank missiles then struck the column. not a single tank deployed smoke, and 11 tanks were hit. what infantry that was near was pinned by fire, and tank crew requests for artillery or air support were denied out of fear of friendly fire. the advance stopped at that town.
to me, this paints a clear picture of modern military material (tanks, electronics, aircraft, artillery, and infantry) manned by people who don’t know how to use them. there is no feature of the actions of these divisions where their equipment failed them. moreover, i would expect any competent force with air assault, artillery, and armor elements to be able to seize a lightly defended town 10 kilometers from their border.
so the iof is made up of a large number of uncoordinated small groups, and collectively has little sense of how to put these pieces together. and you might say, “well maybe they fixed some of that in the last twenty years”. i think the fact that modern merkavas have the trophy system answers whether or not that happened. it’s a very cool toy, designed to blow up an oncoming anti-tank missile mid air. strapping sensitive explosives to the front of your tank means that your infantry cannot be anywhere near it. so we see dozens of unaccompanied merkavas and bulldozers parked somewhere that a resistance fighter can run up to, unopposed. we also might see a hot shot intelligence officer cook up some pager plan, report it to his commanding officer, and have it approved without anyone thinking that operations are only effective in sequence and with support.