This week's summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:
preamble
Diplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in... perhaps not earnest, but it's certainly started. Iran's very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump's (and therefore Iran's) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to "mellow out" and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don't believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he's really quite stupid, with "Israel" being in its worst position in decades under his rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn't stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn't bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump's threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there's essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.
Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it's now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there's going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it's going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn't going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.
However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): "In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed." Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they'll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn't an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran's strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn't have complete dictatorial power unlike how he's conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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'm not going to stop. They are germans, and I will keep calling them what they are. I already had a discussion here with some indignant German about it, at first I thought it was a "not all Germans" thing and I was about to apologize, turned out he was defending the little German colony in the middle east.
They aren’t Germans though.
You’re making a point about Yiddish being a basically a dialect of German and Ashkenazi having more European genetics than Semitic genetics but it comes across as really silly and confusing.
Also most of them are not Germans. Most of them are from Poland, Ukraine, and Russia.
Like, your argument seems to be “Yiddish is basically a German dialect, therefore they’re German” and that is…
It’s dumb.
And it was a British colony, now a US possession. Zionism had some degree of alliance and even ideological compatibility with the nazis but it isn’t a German colony.
It’s not a German colony. They aren’t Germans. It’s just kind of annoyingly idiosyncratic and confusing to call them Germans.
If anything you’re absolving the US of its current role, and absolving Israel since by pretending it’s a direct German action, you’re saying the US and Israel aren’t the primary actors who deserve blame by choosing to entirely center Germany which is playing a supporting and not a primary role in this genocide.
This is such a petty individualist approach to discourse. Nevermind that it's completely counterproductive to the goal of effectively communicating important things — the important thing is that you feel like you're the best cleverest most correct person because of the word substitutions you use.
No. I think the important thing is to make emphasis in that they are not native to the land and should get the fuck out. Calling them Israelis obfuscates this, and calling them Jews associates Jews living elsewhere with them, wich benefits them. Both lend legitimacy to their colonial project. In this sense not calling them Germans obfuscates what they are, German colonists.
In any case, you're also just factually wrong. Most Ashkenazi Jews didn't even live in Germany before the Holocaust. Call them colonizers, call them Zionists, call them Europeans if you really insist. But there really aren't even that many Israelis of German descent.
Also Germany was occupied when israhell was established and danced from British to Czechoslovakian to French to American patrons, so isn't even a good simplification of complex political dealings.
You could very easily avoid all of this confusion while more accurately describing the issue by simply calling them "colonizers"
But it is inaccurate. The largest proportion are from Eastern Europe. Calling them European settlers encompasses a broader range and is objectively more accurate.
Now calling them Nazis on the other hand that would be perfectly fine and accurate.
I think a comparatively larger part are from the old eastern bloc than are from Germany specifically, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I feel like calling them Germans is just needlessly obfuscating, but I'm not offended by it.
People from the (former) Warsaw Pact states comprise 70-80% of Ashkenazi Jews, who in turn are half of the Jews in Israel-Palestine.
But this is a moot point anyway: Mizrahi Jews are arguably the most voracious Zionists. From Likud to Kach, the Zionist (far) right has grown primarily thanks to Mizrahi support, capitalising on their lower economic status and their personal vendetta against the Arab states they left. Itamar Ben-Gvir is of Mizrahi descent.
Israelis are spiritually USians first and foremost owning to their common history of being Anglo settler-colonies that rebelled against the UK for not allowing them to be genocidal enough. Many of them have dual citizenship with the US, so calling them off-brand USians isn't even wrong in that regard.
They are Nazis sure, but I think most German Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Israel is mostly American and Russian