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 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.
Are they fucking kidding? This old fucking chestnut? Yeesh.
There are weeks where decades happen, and decades where Iran is weeks away from building nuclear weapons.
Unserious political rhetoric works on a certain type of people that don't expect (right or wrong) to personally face real life consequences. They've never seen anyone approach politics with actual rigor. They probably don't even know that's something you can do. Anyway, I had the misfortune today of having to work with someone joking about Russians being chased down and killed with Ukrainian drones. They said 'bye bye, comrade." It's gonna be a rude awakening when the Ukrainian state collapses and they find out that Russians aren't just a bunch of hapless untermensch, except it won't be, because they somehow never understood that politics is about the real world. I'll stop my rant here.
It's been 35 years and these people still haven't gotten any new material
Me trying to explain that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore and that it's former citizens are scattered all over the world and you can even talk to them if you want to
These types of people would 100% offend some Ukrainian by mistaking them for Russians lol
Sadly with the way Russians don't have an appetite for eating losses from a massive push (which could fail and leave them in a bad way) the Ukraine war is IMO likely to drag on for another 3-5 years and by the time it does wrap up it'll be assumed a Trump betray, stabbed in the back type thing or something happened because they were previously winning. And that will be the hagiography that gets written and accepted by this type of person. Not that Ukraine ever lost or Russia won, but that Russia sucks at war, couldn't win within 5 years, Russians are mindless orcs and so on. These people will never have to face the actual sting of being wrong and that's by purpose. The west has been pressing Russia to prevent a quick win by Russia that might reach these people. A slow loss like Vietnam over most of a decade gets turned into a muddle that you can read whatever you want into.
So don't hold your breath that these people will ever have to face reality. The propaganda apparatus and foreign policy blob work hard to keep these types from ever experiencing that.
The lib's capacity for dismissing any and all information that gives them cognitive dissonance is really remarkable. They are NEVER WRONG.
One time a lib assured me that the 21st century will be "The Century of Europe™". I countered with a map showing that China is the biggest trading partner of almost every single country on Earth, and he just said "No that's not true actually" and then didn't elaborate further.
Pure denial of reality.
Honestly the worst part about having the Marxist Cassandra's Curse is that you usually have to wait years to be proven correct, and by then it's too late to say "I told you so".
Just checking and realising that the uranium they want to loot from Isfahan is only 20 to 60% purity. But Iran has never produced 90% enriched uranium necessary for a compact weapon? they really dumped their entire Imperial project in the Mariana trench over this l
American explaining the Iran situation:
“Iran is 30,000 football fields away from building a nuke”
Most Americans don't know about numbers that big
explaining Iran to Americans : imagine Iran perfecting the recipe to a nuclear burger