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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.


My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summaryAfter many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they're going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America's perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they'll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they're very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there's one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I'm a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn't risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they're "agreeing" to don't really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we'll know for sure soon.


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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 83 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

not sure if this is fully appropriate for the newsthread, but it's neat doggirl-smart and if we can have American electoralism discourse, we can have some Chinese provincial politics too https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2066832718542012681

A local people's congress in Zhejiang Province, China, rejected a major government investment project with a total investment exceeding 1 billion yuan (RMB, same below, equivalent to 189 million SGD) with more than half of the votes against it. Chinese media pointed out that in the past, people's congress representatives in various places in China rarely participated in decision-making on major government investment projects, and cases of rejecting projects were even rarer.

This is a very good example of how democracy works at a local level in China 👇

To explain succinctly, at every administrative level in China, they have a "people's congress" (人民代表大会 - rénmín dàibiǎo dàhuì). At the county, district and township level, representatives are directly elected by voters in their constituencies. Above that (prefectural cities, provinces, and the National People's Congress) - representatives are elected by the congress one level below. Depending on the location, local people's congresses have more or less oversight power on local spending, appointments, and policy. Zhejiang province is one of the places in China where people's congresses have the most power after an official named Xi Jinping - you may have heard of the guy - established a framework called "do practical things for the people" (为民办实事 - wèi mín bàn shí shì) when he was provincial party secretary in the early 2000s.

more

What "do practical things for the people" established was a principle that local people's congress representatives should have a direct say in how local public money got spent. Over time, this evolved into a formal voting system where representatives vote on proposed government projects. They just exercised this power in a major way: the Huangyan District People's Congress (黄岩区人大) in Taizhou, Zhejiang voted on 16 major government investment projects for 2026 but killed two of them on the spot - a sports center and an irrigation megaproject, totaling over a billion yuan - with roughly 80% voting against. This doesn't mean these 2 projects are dead forever but they're sent back to the drawing board. The responsible departments have to address whatever concerns representatives raised, bring in experts for further review, and resubmit when they're ready.

This is a level of local democracy that many people will probably be surprised exists in China: it's genuine democratic oversight, they can actually block government spending, and the executive has to go back and try again. It's also - and this is where China is complex - something that surprised many people in China. As I mentioned above, not all people's congresses have this sort of power and the story generated a lot of national interest - with many national outlets writing about it, such as Guancha (https://guancha.cn/ChengShi/2026_06_10_820005.shtml) or The Paper (https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_33345743). So much so that the Zhejiang People's Congress deleted their original WeChat post about it. We don't know why - the story wasn't suppressed since so many state media outlets carried it - but the Zhejiang People's Congress probably didn't love being the face of a national debate about why other provinces aren't doing this too, as it amounts to throwing shade on their peers. I genuinely don't know, just a hypothesis.

Anyhow, that's China in all its complexity and why sweeping narratives about it are always wrong: a country where elected local representatives can genuinely exercise oversight power over the government thanks to reforms initiated by Xi Jinping himself, and where mainstream media boast about it, but where the provincial organ that broke the story would rather avoid the publicity.

[-] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 44 points 3 weeks ago

If you ask me this is newsmega gold.

I greatly appreciate the included characters and pinyin when introducing a Chinese phrase/slogan.

Final paragraph summary is chef's kiss

[-] joaomarrom@hexbear.net 28 points 3 weeks ago

inb4 Gordon Chang publishes an article on Radio Free Asia talking about how the fragmentation and balkanization of China is inevitable

But seriously, I can definitely see the value of this while at the same time fearing what this kind of local power could do if put in the hands of a particularly provincial and reactionary set of people in a small rural city anywhere in the West. Vaccine mandates, anti-discrimination laws, abortion rights, you name it. As long as you can get a big enough Evangelical church going, you could start little self-ruled conservative fiefdoms.

So I guess the question is how to implement this sort of very valuable local oversight in relation to national interests, without allowing local wannabe oligarchs to tip the scales in their favor? I'm interested in knowing more about this policy and how it balances the national and local agendas.

[-] Jabril@hexbear.net 28 points 3 weeks ago

So I guess the question is how to implement this sort of very valuable local oversight in relation to national interests, without allowing local wannabe oligarchs to tip the scales in their favor?

Step 1. Have a communist revolution that establishes a dictatorship of the proletariat

[-] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 23 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Step 2. Pull some anti-corruption campaign, if not a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

[-] nohaybanda@hexbear.net 22 points 3 weeks ago

Good post

I wèi mín my bàn until I shí shì

[-] HoiPolloi@hexbear.net 16 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks for that it's really interesting.

this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
137 points (100.0% liked)

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