Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn't an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia's oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that "align themselves with BRICS." Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I'm not sure what exactly "alignment" means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It's easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I'm cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it'll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn't impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
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news
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Putin urges Iran to take "zero enrichment" nuclear deal with U.S., sources say https://www.axios.com/2025/07/12/putin-iran-nuclear-deal-uranium-enrichment
According to this Putin has told Trump, Macron, and Iranian officials he supports a nuclear deal banning uranium enrichment in Iran.
Edit:Moscow dismisses the claim https://www.rt.com/russia/621413-russia-rejects-iran-nuclear-claims/
Taking a zero enrichment deal could be smart if, and only if, Iran is able to secure conventional deterrent and military forces capable of preventing a future Israeli air campaign (in other words, an advanced integrated air defence network against ballistic and aerodynamic targets, and modern fighter jets from China and possibly Russia). The problem is, if China is willing to do this, and if Russia is able to spare any military equipment.
I honestly don't think nuclear weapons are an immediate answer to Iran's deterrence issues. There is no immediate answer. In a best case scenario, Iran currently has enough enriched uranium for 10 implosion type devices, which they can then install on Fattah-1 and Khorramshahr 4 ballistic missile re entry vehicles, which they'll then distribute and disperse across the east of the country, to keep out of range of Israeli airstrikes. Let's say 2 missiles per IRGC company/squad, at 5 different locations. Is this enough to establish deterrence, given the performance of Israel's integrated ballistic missile defence network, failure rates of Iranian missile, Mossad assets/infiltration into Iran, and most importantly vs Israel's nuclear triad of likely over 100 warheads? I don't think so. Tel Aviv may risk getting nuked, but that's a risk that Israeli military planners will take at these odds. Iran needs at minimum dozens of nuclear warheads in a breakout scenario to establish adequate deterrence, and that will take longer than a few months, unless there's some hidden cache of enriched uranium no one knows about.
Iran could just fire two waves of missiles and include the nukes in wave two.
Enough missiles in wave one to deplete the air defences and force them to reload. And enough missiles in wave 2 to defeat any spares kept for emergency.
They're very capable of ensuring the nukes land in my opinion. Demonstable ability to fire 200 missiles in a single wave makes it impossible to defend.
Considering they had a 92% impact rate just before the ceasefire, I think you'd be correct.
Anti-air missiles are too expensive to keep up with a barrage. It was good against the stuff Palestine and Yemen cooked up, but the second a country with more firepower came along they can't keep up.
I am wondering if the future of air defense will use EMPs or RF-Interference instead.