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.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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.
🚨 BREAKING: Keir Starmer has told allies that he will fight Wes Streeting if he triggers a leadership contest
https://nitter.net/PolitlcsUK/status/2054599848528064840
in this zioweight bout, it's undisputed centrist champ vs up-and-coming trans-hater 📯📯📯
largely irrelevant, but funny how brits treat this seriously
the bitter hatred and vicious squabbling between almost identical people is the funniest thing about British politics. They all feel SO strongly about centrist placeholder A that they practically revolt, and then put in centrist placeholder B and do it all over again.
Do the Brits truly never realize how much of a circlejerk they are caught inside? That their PM they just sacked with 8% approval has literally identical policies to the new one they just elected with 80% approval rating, and that approval rating will plummet over the next 6 months? It's honestly like watching a bunch of babies or goldfish try to do a government and getting caught in a loop because their memory is measured in hours. At least American politicians pretend to have different policies than each other, and we have 4 year cycles to forget how bad the other side is, the Brits have 1 type of politician and their lifespan is measured in months.
yeah. i mean look at the council elections from a week ago
the results are wild unprecedented gains to reform, lib dem, and green. both 2 party state type parties lost out massively and i don't think we've ever seen this. the public fucking HATE both centrist parties (spoilers, lib dems are also centrists but whatever), but they don't quite seem to realise that its socialism or barbarism and bourgeois liberal democracy will not let them choose socialism. although seems like they're voluntarily voting for barbarism and just hoping it'll be barbarism with patsoc characteristics (it won't)
neither the labour party nor voters will learn anything from this
Reform is centrism with Trumpian characteristics, they will be functionally identical to the Tories. The public will sour on them too once they realize they too are Zionist warmonger neocons who will drive up the price of everything and bend the knee to America.
tories, except with extra racism
Only the English actually vote for the "British" PM, and attempting to understand the mind of the average Anglo voter will drive a person to madness.
nope we do not. The same cycle of bullshit over and over. I've seen people viral posts a fellow Brits circle jerking over wishing Jeremy Corbyn to be the next labour leader, as if he hadn't just torpedoed his own potential mass movement because he couldn't bare to share his toys with anyone but the slimeiest opportunists and temporarily embarrassed labourites.
The same will happen for the greens, the same will happen for every pseudo revolutionary white guy who can convince the left libs that he will be the one to finally end the years of electoral failure for the "socialists" (by which they mean social treatlerism)
Only labour could find a way to replace Starmer with someone worse than Starmer
Starve kids harder?
If Streeting gets leadership literally nothing will change at all about existing policy. The only difference is that Streeting has a stronger personality and voice. He's a more impactful figure when he speaks. A total fucking asshole but Starmer has no personality at all compared to him.
How the British managed to conquer much of the world is still beyond me.