Confirmed Russian losses due to Ukraine’s “Spiderweb” attack on Russian tactical and strategic bombers.

Part 1, Olenya Airbase:

• 4x Tu-95 burning, severely damaged or destroyed:
• 1x An-12 transport plane burning, severely damaged or destroyed:
• In this photo, you can see that the 1st and 4th Tu-95s got consumed by flames, along with the suspected An-12 on the left

Belaya Airbase:

• 3x Tu-95s and 4x Tu-22M3s severely damaged or destroyed, 1x Tu-95 with some minor damage. I’ll upload the two SAR images once the website allows me to.

Total so far:

• 7x Tu-95 severely damaged or destroyed
• 4x Tu-22M3 severely damaged or destroyed. -1x An-12 severely damaged or destroyed.
• 1x Tu-95 with minor damage.

For a total of 13 aircraft damaged or destroyed, with 12 of them showing signs of severe damage. Ukraine initially claimed 40, but a success rate of 32.5%, or around 1/3, is nothing to scoff at for an attack like this.

Israel just carried out airstikes on Yemen, in Sana’a International Airport, destroying a Yemenia Airlines Airbus A320-200 half an hour after landing.

Yemenia has a fleet of four of these aircraft in active service (now three), two from 2011, and two that they’ve leased in 2023. The leased aircraft fly out of Sana’a, while the aircraft that they own themselves fly out of Aden. A previous Israeli airstrike this month heavily damaged the airport and it’s terminal, and destroyed three aircraft, their sole Airbus A330-200, a Boeing 727, and an Ilyushin Il-76. It was initially thought these three aircraft were A-320s before the images were released. Ansarallah/the Houthis in Yemen reopened the airport by patching up the runway and temporarily constructing a makeshift terminal. Given the state of the temporarily reopened terminal and runway (the wreckage of the destroyed aircraft was still visible in the background), it was questionable just how the functional the airport was, though it was enough for the one or two flights a day to Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net, in last week’s thread you mentioned the need to reduce wealth inequality in China, but I don’t remember if you’ve previously discussed a specific mechanism for this? Is a wealth tax feasible in China? Income taxes seem pretty ineffective at this. I don’t really know much about their current tax structure. Expropriation would also work, but that seems hard to scale (as well as disruptive).

Very good article/piece on the Pakistan-India conflict that took place earlier this month.

Highly recommend reading this if you’re wondering what happened during the four to five days of war/conflict. It’s a good overview of the timeline of events, lines up with most previous reporting and observations, well sourced and cited. I just finished reading the entire thing.

Lebanon using Israeli intel to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure: Report

The Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) has been using Israeli intelligence to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 28 May. The Lebanese army’s efforts to implement UN Resolution 1701 and enforce the ceasefire agreement are being carried out “in part with the help of Israeli intelligence,” according to several sources cited by the WSJ. Arab officials told the outlet that the intelligence is being “passed along by the US” and has “helped the Lebanese army find and destroy Hezbollah’s remaining weapons stockpiles and military posts in the south.” The army reportedly destroys some of the weapons while keeping others and adding them to its limited stockpiles.

In an interview with the WSJ, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam claimed that the Lebanese army has achieved 80 percent of its disarmament goals in southern Lebanon – referring to the area south of the Litani River, where Hezbollah has cooperated with the state in handing over military positions.

Under heavy pressure from Washington, the Lebanese government has been escalating calls for a full “monopoly” on arms. This includes a plan to disarm Lebanon-based Palestinian resistance groups, which is reportedly set to begin in June.

Hezbollah has firmly rejected disarmament, and instead calls for the formation of a national defensive strategy that incorporates its weapons into the state for use in defending Lebanon against Israel.

It says it is willing to hold dialogue with the state on this issue once Israeli forces withdraw from south Lebanon and stop their violations of the ceasefire. In a speech on Sunday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said that the resistance is giving the state a chance to diplomatically secure an Israeli troop withdrawal and a complete halt to airstrikes, but stressed that “if it fails to perform its duties, other options exist.”

Israel was meant to withdraw its troops as part of the ceasefire, but has maintained an occupation of five locations along the border in violation of the deal. […] The Israeli army unleashed a violent wave of airstrikes across southern and eastern Lebanon on the evening of 22 May, striking what it claimed were Hezbollah weapons sites.

I’m very confused by this article, there’s like at least three contradictions in it.

• Hezbollah is simultaneously “cooperating with the state in handing over military positions” and weapons but seems to be only willing “to hold dialogue with the state on [incorporating its weapons into the state for use in defending Lebanon against Israel] once Israel withdraws from Lebanon (and they have not yet done so)”?
• Hezbollah is simultaneously 80% disarmed by the Lebanon army with the aid of Israeli intelligence, but Israel is also just striking (what they claim to be) Hezbollah weapon sites instead of allowing them to be disarmed?
• Hezbollah simultaneously expects the Lebanese army to engage in combat to defend Lebanon, but that very same army is fully cooperating with Israel to the extent of receiving intelligence reports on how to disarm them, and that government is refusing to insist that Israel must withdraw from its positions south of the Litani?

I’m welcome to other viewpoints, but this doesn’t seem like a tenable position. My prediction of how the Lebanon conflict proceeds is something along the lines of:

1. This disarmament process proceeds and is completed (to an arbitrary extent; the tunnel networks probably won’t or maybe can’t be dismantled and perhaps Hezbollah retains fighting ability in certain regions)
2. Israel continues to refuse to retreat, and indeed insists on taking more territory ala Syria
3. The Lebanese army, both infiltrated and cooperative with Israel, is quickly crushed to the extent that it resists at all
4. Guerrilla tactics to repel Israel (with the support of the population) will resume, basically taking us back 30 years; perhaps Lebanese soldiers desert to join or rejoin Hezbollah
5. As this is unacceptable to a comprador Lebanese government, some sort of internal unrest up to and including a civil war takes place (I have no idea how this would go, but I cannot imagine that the population of Lebanon would rise up in support of a government that is explicitly saying that they must fight the people who are protecting them from Israel, the country that has both been extensively bombing them and has killed hundreds of thousands of people)
6. An increasingly powerful Iran (backed by China and feeling gradually less pressure by the US/Israel as those countries continue imperial decline and neoliberal internal rot) is able to exert more influence and get more weapons shipments through an increasing unstable Syria

It’s been long enough that I can safely conclude that the plan by Israel post-Nasrallah appears to be to try and achieve what they have failed to do militarily by instead doing some good old-fashioned deals. For whatever ideological and material reasons, several people and groups, including Lebanon’s government, Syria’s government (though those guys are just outright compradors put in power by Israel), and perhaps Iraq (at least, I haven’t heard much about the Iraqi resistance groups in a while) seem to be going along with those deals, not understanding that the US and Israel cannot be trusted and will break those deals whenever they want, if it benefits them to do so.

I don’t think this work in the medium-to-long term, Israel’s existence is now fundamentally on a timer because of the declining military and economic power of their backers in the imperial core and without them, the country just does not have the military strength, economic power, or just outright geographical area to exert its whims on the region for decades to come. It might work in the short-term though, perhaps long enough for them to complete their 2.4 million person genocide.

We shall see if Hezbollah, Syria, and Iraq can reassert themselves in time to save the remaining Gazans; but for now, Hamas and Yemen are the lone warriors left. Yemen is still striking Israel with missiles despite Israeli return strikes (I doubt Israel’s strikes will be remotely effective if the US Navy couldn’t do shit to them), and Hamas has recently posted new videos of ambushes on Israel forces, so we can conclude that despite the occasional death of Hamas leaders or commanders, their military structures remain intact and effective. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re gaining more soldiers than they’re losing; many people in there must be making the calculation that it’s better to fight back and very possibly die, rather than just accept certain death by either bombing or starvation.

Hamas responds to the offer, requires permanent ceasefire

https://t.me/hamaswestbank1/8224

Allegedly the terms the SDF has presented to the Jolani government

https://t.me/Alomhoar/62726

https://t.me/ASSYRIA11/48593

Skulls of 19 Black people once subject to racist study in Germany are laid to rest in New Orleans. (Hexbear link)

The skulls of those 19 patients have now been repatriated to Louisiana after more than a century abroad. On Saturday, they were honored in a multi-faith memorial and laid to rest in a jazz funeral rooted in New Orleans tradition.

The remains were returned by the University of Leipzig, which in 2023 contacted the city archeologist in New Orleans, acknowledging the skulls had been acquired in a “colonial context and unethically.” The two-year return process involved city, state and academic institutions. It culminated in a notable international restitution, a return of African American remains from Europe — with many remains still lingering in archival collections across the U.S. and abroad, at museums and universities.

In Canada, a daughter’s fight to bring her murdered Indigenous mother home. Hexbear Link

Winnipeg police were first alerted to the then 35-year-old self-proclaimed white supremacist on May 16, 2022, when the partial remains of Rebecca Contois were found in a rubbish bin. Skibicki was charged two days later, and the following month, police began searching the Brady Road Landfill, a municipal landfill on the outskirts of the city, where they found more of her remains.

Morgan and Marcedes’s families were told that their relatives’ remains were likely in the privately operated Prairie Green Landfill, a sprawling waste disposal site north of Winnipeg.

To their dismay, police refused to search the landfill, believing they had enough evidence to convict Skibicki without the remains of his victims.

Utah lawmakers said gender-affirming care is harmful to kids. Their own study contradicts that claim. Hexbear post

SALT LAKE CITY — When Utah Republicans passed a ban on gender-affirming health care for children and teens in 2023, they argued it was needed to protect vulnerable kids from treatments that could cause long-term harm.

Years later, the results of a study commissioned under the same law contradict that claim, and the Republican-led Legislature is facing pressure to reconsider the restrictions.

Second round of Russia-Ukraine negotiations ended after an hour, Turkey says “non-negative” outcome.

Looking into it more - Ukrainians presented completely unworkable demands that would effectively constitute Russian surrender. Including allowing them to join NATO, no limits on army size, and usage of Russian funds to reconstruct. Not surprising it was over so soon.

The resistance detonates an explosive on a force of what I believe are collaborators, although the text calls them “undercover,” I’m not sure if they’re actually Israeli due to the Yasser Abu Shabab reference

Cw gore in the last 15 seconds, a guy gets his head blown off

“ Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades:

Scenes of targeting a number of musta’ribeen (undercover) of the occupation army east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

https://streamable.com/myhpr2

seems like new isntreal-adjusted (from permanent to allegedly 60 days) proposal is circulating (screenshot from al jazeera):

doesn’t seem like it’s permanent tho

upd from https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/trump-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-hamas-israel-witkoff

Most concerning to Hamas, according to officials who spoke to Drop Site, is that the proposal contains substantive amendments to an “understanding” Hamas announced it had reached with the U.S. on Monday. On Tuesday, Hamas issued a statement it had reached “an agreement with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff on a general framework that achieves a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, the flow of aid, and the appointment of a professional committee to manage the Gaza Strip’s affairs immediately after the agreement is announced.”

The new Witkoff proposal, however, includes only vague language on whether the agreement would lead to a complete end to the genocide and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. “The President is serious about the parties’ adherence to the ceasefire agreement and insists that the negotiations during the temporary ceasefire period, if successfully concluded with an agreement between the parties, would lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict,” the document states. “The United States and President Trump are committed to working to ensure that good faith negotiations continue until a final agreement is reached.”

“There are a lot of reservations on this paper as a framework. There are a lot of loopholes. There are a lot of ambiguities,” a Palestinian source close to the negotiating team told Drop Site. “Israel will never agree to end the war under this framework. The number of aid trucks are not mentioned. There are no specifics about where the Israeli forces will withdraw to. All of these are problems which will probably impede this. Witkoff tried to accommodate Israel much more than what was in the earlier paper. It’s going to take some time before a deal gets approved by the movement.”

Soon after the Witkoff draft was circulated, Israeli officials told several Hebrew language news outlets that the vague language in the draft would allow Netanyahu to resume the war after 60 days. A senior Israeli official, according to Ha’aretz, suggested that “U.S. officials deliberately crafted ambiguous language around the issue of ending the war to make the deal acceptable to both sides,” pointing out that the proposal “does not include a demand for Israel to end the war or withdraw from Gaza.”

An update on the F-15E Strike Eagles conducting Combat Air Patrols (CAP) and Defensive Counter Air (DCA) at Diego Garcia and also in the Middle East and West Asia in general, called the CENTCOM area of responsibility by the United States.

A few days ago, the US Air Force trialed a new anti drone and cruise missile loadout on one of their testbed F-15Es, equipping it with 42 APKWS laser guided rockets. The APKWS laser guided rockets offer a cheap and high magazine capacity firing solution to drone and cruise missile swarms (they cost 20K USD each and work by equipping a guidance kit to unguided Hydra rockets, kind of like equipping a JDAM kit to an unguided bomb), as seen by equipping 42 of them on one aircraft, with three seven shot pods on each wing. I did a more detailed post on APKWS here. What’s interesting is that the positioning of the rocket pots still leaves eight hardpoints open (that can be used by missiles or bombs), four on the conformal fuel tanks and four next to the rocket pods.

Now this similar loadout appeared on an F-15E at Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan, in active service. In addition to the 42 APKWS laser guided rockets, 4 AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared guided air to air missiles are mounted on hardpoints next to the rocket pods, and 4 AIM-120 radar guided air to air missiles are mounted on the hardpoints on the conformal fuel tanks. This allows for a potential of 50 engagements per aircraft.

With this capability going from testing to active use in a matter of days, with it being publicly posted on social media platforms, it suggests that the US is signalling towards Iran, that they’re making preparations to defend from a large scale drone attack from Iran should that occur in response to an Israeli/US attack on Iran, or as a pre-emptive strike.

Multiple industry insiders are starting to complain that their inventory of rare-earth minerals and magnets is starting to run low. Watch this space!

Still about Portugal’s recent election and the rise of the far-right Chega.

By now pretty much everyone is correctly blaming the media for promoting the far-right. There was a recent article on a lib website that had some quite materialist takes and very illustrative graphs

In Portugal, journalists are ‘the armed wing of Chega’s narrative’

André Ventura has become one of the most frequent special guests on television. Between the last two elections, he was interviewed 108% more than the leader of the largest opposition party. Researchers and journalists warn of a dangerous concession to commercial interests that, instead of curbing populist narratives, amplify them.

“television stations know that they can expect higher ratings with André Ventura in the studio than with any other political figure.” The audience figures provided by the responsible entities CAEM/MediaMonitor confirm this.

More than 85% of television interviews with André Ventura increased the average audience for the time slot in which they were broadcast. Inviting the leader of Chega attracted, on average, around 39,000 more viewers than the average for the last four broadcasts at the same time slot on the same day of the week. The presence of the radical populist right meant a 15.4% increase in the average audience.

Look at the image attached, I didn’t even realize how crazy it got because I don’t watch TV.

Votes from abroad will start being counted today, so tomorrow we’ll know wether the far-right or center-left will take second place.

https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/read-elias-rodriguezs-leaked-chats?r=1v5ls9

That shooter reads to me like he browsed here