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.
I agree with most of what you said but not this:
I mean this isn't the same at all? Hezbollah and Iran are popular governments/movements. They have broad support of their people. The Kiev regime is an illegitimate Nazi coup regime that came to power via western meddling, its people are not at this point to my knowledge as die-hard Nazi fanatic as the leadership. Yes there are lower level Nazis and you won't collapse it but they don't have the same broad base of support as far as I know as Hezbollah and Iran do among the people in their areas. If you kill off 70% of the western comprador Nazi leadership you're putting a real dent in western control and Nazi comprador control of the country.
Decapitation strikes don't work against broadly popular movements that are more than a small amount of top guys holding it all together. That's the lesson to take away.
I think the real problem is the US built Ukraine deep secret bunkers and that is where the real decisions are made. There was a NYT puff piece about them traveling to one such location, very well hidden. So bombing SBU headquarters would probably most days just kill a bunch of lower ranking Nazi clerks who do deserve it but the problem I think is Russia hasn't been able to locate these hidden bunkers and if they have they don't have weapons capable of penetrating and destroying them like the US due to mainly using long range missile and drones due to not having air dominance and uncontested ability to move in and bomb (not even to the extent the US did in Iran).
Fact is Russia HAS done decapitating strikes. That one meeting of officers including western ones that some Ukrainian leaked to them at a hotel or something, it was a conference and they hit it hard and killed a bunch of them. They do it as much as they're able and as much as it makes a difference. They just understand that the targets they have like SBU HQ probably do more harm than good to bomb because it drives the enemy underground. Right now their intelligence can track people moving from that building and maybe hope one day to get lucky with one of them slipping up and leading them someplace more interesting.
Also "decision making centers" as I understand it has mostly been a veiled threat to the west. Because the real decision making centers are in London, Poland, Germany. And Russia is constantly doing this dance with the EU NATO that they're becoming members to the conflict, they are members to the conflict, they're totally legitimate targets and Russia wants to bomb them. But Russia isn't willing to risk a wider war by bombing Rammstein airbase in Germany or Mi6 HQ in London though hitting either with an Oreshnik would assuredly seriously hamper the Ukrainian war by hampering intelligence supply, killing analysts and throwing their enemy into disarray. It's just that the consequences leading from that of the west getting directly involved or otherwise upping the ante (giving Ukraine a nuke) doesn't warrant that risk.
Hence the campaign of attrition. Russia said from the beginning it understands it is essentially at war with NATO and that it is prepared for the war to go on as long as needed. Russia knows the head of the snake isn't in Ukraine which is why it said demilitarization is the name of the game. They're just going to grind the fighting capacity of Ukraine to oblivion until Ukrainians themselves refuse to fight any more. Decapitation strikes on any meaningful command structures aren't really an option.
Fair critique, I agree that the Kiev government is not quite comparable to Hezbollah and Iran. However, I also feel that the regime having come to power through a coup doesn't necessarily equate to them being that unpopular in the current territories of Ukraine - they were unpopular in 2014, so unpopular in fact that this led to a civil war. Except what that means is that the people who actually hate the government and disagree with the Ukrainian nationalist cause basically ejected themselves from the country, leaving the population in the remaining territories much more supportive of the government. And with the Russian invasion, what was left of the pro- or at least neutral-on-Russia populace either became part of Russia, with the integration of the separatist republics, or because they just fled there as refugees, or they fled to some other countries altogether - leaving the population actually left in Ukraine even more pro-government than before.
So, I don't think the government is really that unpopular in practice - or at least not unpopular enough to see extensive organized resistance from the population. This has been changing though, with there being more and more attacks on "recruitment" (that is, kidnapping) officers, but it still seems like Ukraine's pretty far from any sort of revolt against the current government, unfortunately - and unpopularity doesn't mean much if the populace isn't willing to actually take any sort of action, Western governments are consistently unpopular among their own populations and yet this does not lead to much meaningful change in the policies being carried out.