Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.
Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.
summary
The Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a "Memorandum of Understanding" with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran's demands.
For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran's position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.
The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump's announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I'm definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah's attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.
As I've been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here's a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.
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Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.
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Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).
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Situation in the Sahel: "Mysterious" third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.
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Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.
I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi's recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.
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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i yearn for the day iran (or russia) enters a joker mode and launches a bucket of bolts into the orbit to kessler musk bullshit. smdh, for a price of 100 million you can explode 1 trillion evaluation, this is untapped market arbitrage opportunity
That would create so much space debris and it would put back every countries space programs
Full disclosure: I know next to nothing about this topic and just googled things so I’m commenting in the spirit of wanting to be corrected to help me understand it better.
I googled the Kessler syndrome in low earth orbit and it says it would be about 5 years to clear up, since there is still reasonably significant atmospheric drag at that altitude which would bring all the trash down.
The second thing that appeared in my google search was that Starlink satellites themselves are already posing a threat to future launches, with one example being a chinese satellite launch that came within “200 meters” of hitting a Starlink satellite, implying that the risk is already there anyway.
My question / idea being that a 5 year kessler syndrome seems like it’s potentially acceptable to a state engaged in war. Five years that they can’t launch satellites, ok that sucks, but their enemy can’t either.
I am going to keep googling to find out why what I just said is fucking stupid because it probably is, but if someone already can tell me why i’m dumb then i’d appreciate that.
There's also the changing of atmospheric chemistry due to so many LEO satellites burning up.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120
and real science programs (telescopes) fly much higher than starlink anyway, in earth l2 or geosync
At a certain point, it would be a necessary sacrifice to stop the imperialist world conquering bloodmongers. If we enter WW3 I don’t want to see Iran or Russia or China pulling any punches because the fascist axis will not
The orbit of starlink satellites may be the only orbit where this wouldn't necessarily be the case. Most of these satellites have a short service life and return to earth quickly, so the fallout would probably be short-lived.
Good, focus on our own fucking planet.
I don't care for space colonies. But willingly polluting the planet's orbit is detrimental for development on our planet, too. Such as hindering programs like China's idea for Space-based solar power
The good news about low Earth orbit ("LEO", up to roughly 500Km altitude) is that it's self-cleaning. There's enough trace atmosphere that anything without the ability to re-boost itself from time to time will slow down and fall out of orbit, usually in a few years. This is where Starlink lives thankfully. If something happened where the entire Starlink network failed and all control was lost over all the satellites permanently, it'd be safe and clear again within a decade max, and probably a lot sooner.
Geostationary orbits ("GEO", up at roughly 36000Km altitude) are also not really a concern for debris because the sheer volume of empty space, and the relatively tiny number of satellites out there compared to LEO. It is super expensive to put a satellite into that orbit, you need a very powerful rocket.
The really scary debris issues are in Sun-synchronous orbits, in practice around 800 to 1000 Km-ish altitude. It's a very useful orbit for science satellites monitoring Earth for weather and long-term climate change studies. Orbits there don't decay naturally for thousands of years. Fortunately it's also not nearly as crowded as LEO.
The bigger downside is not the satellite debris itself, but the heavy metals and other compounds that damage the ozone layer upon the disintegration of the satellite in the atmosphere.
However, with this scheme, it would seem that the same amount of material would be injected in the atmosphere as if they were retired as normal, except all at once instead of gradually.
Fair
imagine being the guy who got to fire the star de-linker orbital flak cannon
you don't need a cannon, 50-100 barrels of packed tungsten balls with explosive core, launch it, explode it, and wait.