Image is from this Bloomberg article, depicting world oil inventories plunging towards the operational floor at which pipelines and refineries cease operating, which is expected to occur in September at current rates.
A pretty short preamble below, in spoiler tags.
summary
The conflict continues to be kept at a relatively low level despite Iran's fiery encounters with US destroyers. I think it's only becoming increasingly obvious that the US is trying to cobble together some major clandestine operation mixing special forces, the air force, and naval destroyers to either seize Iranian uranium, take control of Iranian seaports, or both. Given a) how the Istafan op went, b) further Iranian preparations around sensitive sites, and c) a seeming strengthening of Iranian air defense around the Persian Gulf (multiple drones and manned aircraft have squawked emergency codes and potentially been shot down over the last few weeks), I find it difficult to imagine this operation fulfilling its objective, and even if did somehow work, why the removal of uranium would necessitate Iran ending the blockade and the war. On that note, I've seen reports that Iran is saying that if the US attacks their oil tankers again, they will resume firing on US military bases.
Additionally, Aragchi has stated that not only has Iran's missile/launcher stockpiles not gone down from pre-conflict, it has actually increased by 20%. This is unsurprising given the total war that Iran is now in; all resources within reason must now be funnelling towards drone and missile production.
Atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon are continuing. The toll that FPV drones are taking on the common Zionist soldiery are quickly becoming apparent, as we are receiving ever-increasing amounts of footage of vehicles and gatherings of soldiers being struck by Hezbollah's drones. The casualty situation is, as expected, being hidden, but any kind of serious occupation of even the border villages of southern Lebanon (let alone up to the Litani) seems unsustainable.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Fascinating thread on the new Democracy Perception Index.
Some key points:
China remains one of the world's most vibrant democracies, enjoying overwhelming support from its citizens across all metrics, and broad positive perceptions around the world
The USA and Israel are absolutely despised by an overwhelming majority of global citizens
The wholesome chungus darling of the West Ukkkraine is one of the 5 worst ranked democracies on Earth
Anglo democracies in particular, even when their overall score is considered good or fair, have abysmally low "transparency" rankings
Lots of good information in that thread.
EDIT: Also, this is so much better than those idiotic "good country vs. bad country" maps that the glue-huffing dipshits at The Economist crap out every year. This actually appears to be based on a tremendous amount of actual data and analysis not just "I don't like China so I'm going to say that they're bad because I said so"
good thread. only a few libbrained "but democracy is when vote, only good country have vote, bad country doesn't have vote!" in the comments.
Objective Freedom of Press and Democracy Index, compiled by the journalists and think-tankers at Obective Western Values Institute, Switzernavia (Funded by Alliance for Europe and Institute of the Americas): North Europe and Switzerland Most Democratic. Taiwan, Japan, Australia and Canada Very Democratic. East/South Europe and USA Mildly Democratic. South America and South Asia Worringly Undemocratic. West Asia, Belarus, Iran Very Very Bad. China, Russia -1000 Democracy
Makes you think
The civic education score for the US is baffling. No one outside of leftists and wonks knows how the government works but they sure as fuck think they do.
It's gotten worse too. I remember the concept of swing states and electoral college used to be common knowledge before 2016. Now I never hear it mentioned amidst the libs screaming at someone in California or Idaho for not voting kkkamala lol
The average person has zero original thoughts and learns nothing on a daily basis. Actually, they consume hours of brainrot and lies and think they learned something, so they somehow achieve negative learning.
Germany in top freedom of speech is wild.
It's the country with more people imprisoned for posting.
I mean, all Germans are completely free to say how much they love and unconditionally support Israel and Zionism, how is that not free?
What I got from this index is that Germans are completely high off their own farts
Really comforting to have trends felt backed up by actual data. The last time this was done, similar results were achieved but with a more pro-west, anti-China slant. Now, this has continued to reflect the downfall of western imperialism and the rise of China. It backs up what we can observe.
Seems like bullshit, Sweden and Denmark at the top?! Israel in the middle? If the top is not Iran, Korea, or Yemen, the index is bullshit.
Denmark having positive scores in transparency and separation of powers is baffling to me. The legislative and executive power has essentially been identical for the past 4 years and most judges are recruited from the police or the ministry of justice, and rule accordingly.
As for transparency, Danish intelligence agencies are incredibly secretive, much more than in neighbouring countries, the courts don't want to publish rulings (or even to write down their reasoning for arriving at many decisions) and campaign financing is de facto completely unregulated. Not that it matters much, Danish journalists are incredibly lazy and most often parrot official press releases without doing basic research of the claims made.
I don't think this is because Danes are afraid to give honest answer. I think this is due to Denmark's internal propaganda apparatus being extremely effective in convincing the Danes that they live in the most perfect of democracies, kind of like how Americans are convinced that their military is invincible.
You have just described almost all "journalists" on Planet Earth
Also external propaganda. For some reason those countries are always pushed as the ideal half way between capitalism and socialism. When to me they sound like large prisons, for example Sweden anti cash policy.
My country is also a shithole, but at least, I don't have some guy constantly watching over me.
It's even more baffling to me that the narco-terrorist state of Sweden, of all places scores high on rule of law, when it not only hosts every terrorists organisation, but openly and unapologetically colludes with them, it's even worse than albania.
Also wasn't Denmark an actual oligarchy for decades, I don't think any Russian or even American billionaire has had the power over their governments, old man mersk had back then.
The "Alliance of Democracies" is a weird organisation. It was founded by a right-wing ideologue, war criminal, NATO ex-leader who is most likely deeply involved with the CIA. The name alone is insufferable. You would expect some of the worst propaganda from them but then they go and make surprisingly honest reports like this.
Their publications are not widely reported, certainly not as much as the Economist's, which might suggest that they're not there to communicate to a general audience. They might be there because the elite needs to know what is actually going on. It might be worthwhile to look into some of their other publications.
I think you might be on to something here. I too was suspicious that these seemingly accurate reports come from a group founded by a former leader of the world's most prominent and distinguished terrorist organisation.
That also gives credence to my impression that this Bertrand bloke is very, very smart (since they give him advanced copies of the reports for review before release).