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.
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https://xcancel.com/YuriPodolyaka/status/2055673508458381733
I mean, it was already essentially admitted by Victoria Nuland back in like 2022 and all the liberals just ignored it (with all the online astroturfers making endless excuses for why it was actually justified and No Big Deal™).
This is a knee-jerk reaction, but I'm extremely skeptical of any story using Tulsi Gabbard as a source.
She's the head of an organization doing an internal audit. She's the only source you're gonna get, for better or worse. Still, I don't get the benefit to admitting this if it wasn't true.
Sometimes rightwingers do that. I don't get it either. The mitigating factor is that this isn't even really news. We already knew a little about this.
This alone would be reason enough for all the world to declare war against Ukraine (and the US, obviously). It's like the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program, except it's biological weapons and it actually exists. There are already plenty public labs, where scientists from all over the world collaborate, under international oversight, in virus research, including about what makes them more dangerous. These additional 120 secret labs are obviously working on illegal bio weapons of mass destruction. They can't claim this has anything to do with the democratic right of self determination and self defense. All the world should be asking right now:"What do you need all those killer viruses for?"
Seriously, what do they need them for? What's the use case? Capital did not benefit from COVID, right? (wait, of course the big players did, but that's beside the point). Did they already use them? Is it all just a scam to make money?
In many very interesting fields of science, there are like 3 labs in the world, total, that work on it. Why do they need 120 labs? How did they keep them secret so long? Do the hundreds of scientists meet at secret cartoonish conference for evil science? What are the conversations like? "What are you working on?" "Oh, you know, trying to make the bubonic plague deadlier." "Again?" "Well it's an evergreen. Unless those hip new buzz epidemics".
What's the goal of the project? Being ready to kill every multicellular organism on the planet 50 times over, just in case?
If this is true why haven't the ones captured by Russian troops released more documentation? Are Russia holding it as leverage in negotiations and this investigation is essentially the US' way of removing that leverage from the Russians by bringing it to light on their own terms?
Tbf, I doubt rank-and-file Ukrainians troops would know much about this, especially given that at this point, the vast majority of Ukrainian soldiers are ones who were conscripted after 2022
You'd probably need to get your hands on some real high-up Azov sickos. And honestly, it's not really even necessarily the case that anyone in the Ukrainian government would know much - that's the thing about being a vassal, sometimes your overlord just does weird fucked up shit in your territory, and there's nothing you can do about it. Like, we already have a historical example of US biowarfare - the Korean War. Did the South Koreans know? They probably wouldn't have been particularly cool with what they considered to be their own land getting poisoned, but what could they do?
Awoo is referencing the illicit biolabs here, not Ukrainian soldiers. back in 2022 we heard about Russian seizures of documents from illicit biolabs and the story was denied and buried in the west
I believe Russia did publish evidence and everyone just ignored them and said it was "russian propaganda".
Aha, I misread that, thanks for clarifying. Well, even with how brazen the Americans are, it could be that they were still cautious enough to keep the real scary research in further westward labs (or just nanaged to clear out the actually important documentation and the Russians only got boring bureaucratic stuff or something)
anti vax Americans have gone so far into the china biolab theory of COVID that they're suddenly exposing their own role in bioweapons
Two things are happening with the labs. Mostly not related to each other:
A purely anti-science power grab among fascists. Many legitimate research programs will be sabotaged
Exposure of American crimes that did occur in research labs.
Russia's misinformation campaign.
America's information resilience campaign.
I'm a bit surprised that the CIA would let this investigation get this far along.
They're limiting the hangout before our eyes
the cia does not have the juice anymore
We'll probably never know for another 50 years, but I'm wondering if CIA leadership is now as high on their own supply as other US government agencies. Once upon a time the TLAs were run by realists who understood that the propaganda was just a tool.
What happened though? It's happened quickly, at least compared to other empires at the height of their power. It must be something special about American culture that allows it to crumble in such a farcical manner.
The empire builders are dying.
I would love a non-tabloid source to shove in every
lover's face
here's Newsweek and MSN, but I think technically the NY Post is actually still the original source being cited in either case, since that's the outlet Gabbard picked to speak to for some reason
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-investigating-us-taxpayer-funded-biolabs-in-over-30-countries-11947173
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/gabbard-launches-probe-into-120-us-funded-biolabs-abroad/gm-GMF1268A9D