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 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.
how's the mighty european industry doing?
https://www.ft.com/content/b68964c9-f3d0-48e8-8873-8f463834936c (immune to archiving unfortunately)
more
"voluntary" redundancy, truly, euphemisms are one area of the economy in which capitalism remains unmatched with its innovation, no
evil communist dictatorship could ever come up with this shit
critical support to Comrade Trump
in his heroic effort to crash what's left of the Western economy
honey, new
just dropped!
The only manufacturing Germany still has is the PR machine in pushing out how good German manufacturing still is.
Yep. For the last 50 years or so, the only thing that's really needed to be manufactured is consent. I guess we'll see how long that lasts....
IIRC Finland is doing even worse. But at least they got FinlandNATOized or something.
Found an Archive link for you: https://archive.ph/Scyr4
oh shit, are those important?
Very 'easy' solution to all this, financially and economically very possible, politically not so much. Nationalize VW, BMW etc. keep everyone employed, sell the cars at whatever price needed to earn maximum foreign currency while maintaining productive capacity. Long term, invest more in EVs and possibly, small inexpensive (factor cost wise) cars.
There is no China threatening European market, only bad economics.
There is no solution to this that does not address the energy crisis. Even nationalization would not solve it unless we get back to importing cheap energy from Russia, restarting the nuclear reactors, and building up the renewable sector with Chinese green tech (which will take years if not decades because we also need to modernize the infrastructure). None of these things will happen, so the de-industrialization is structurally baked in.
I meant as a stop gap measure to keep employment and output high. As for energy, the Euro can take a bit of hit (via depreciation) and compress other imports as needed to maintain energy for the time being.
Its the same thing I recommend third world countries do, setup a state import agency for fuel (many countries have it), stabilize key prices while compressing less essential imports and capital flows via exchange rates (eg rich may not able to afford as much foreign treats). This should work as long as the country earns sufficient foreign currencies needed to maintain imports in real terms.
Note: I'm not saying its costless, the cost would come from lower real imports for non fuel goods due to Gov crowding them out.
But i do agree, restarting nuclear power will lower real factor costs.
Since the Euro is controlled by the European Central Bank that is not interested in stopping the de-industrialization but in pushing further neoliberal financialization, and the individual national governments do not have the power to depreciate their currencies (if they use the Euro or even if their currency is just pegged to the Euro, which is most of Europe) that is not going to happen either.
The first step that any European country needs to take if they want to actually be able to employ the full range of economic policies that could save the situation is to exit the Eurozone and reinstate a sovereign national currency.
Second step is if you are in the EU, get out of the EU, because the EU explicitly forbids member states from having anti-free market policies, it makes nationalization or state control of any major industry extremely difficult if not impossible.
Even subsidies that are considered "anti-competition" are not allowed. The whole thing is a neoliberal prison. Germany could literally elect a communist government tomorrow with 99% of the votes and that government would still be incapable of doing what it needs to do because of EU rules and the lack of sovereign control of its own currency.
True, but the exchange rate will move automatically if Germany is able to borrow and buy foreign currencies for fuel or whatever.
The issue with Eurozone is the member countries can't borrow without risking interest rate going up. At extreme, the market won't accept any rate due to default risk. Or that was the case before Draghi did "whatever it takes". But even after, the members have been reluctant to spend since it all depends on the ECB, an organization most members have limited control over (combined with ideology).
Germany, I'm not sure. It's debt does have lowest spreads compared to the ECB floor rate. But even here, the market can threaten a left leaning Government wanting to move away from neoliberalism, and ECB itself can refuse to provide credit.
But yep, moving away from neoliberal policy for any Euro user would require leaving the union and setting up an actual central bank that has the obey what the sovereign says.
So let me get this straight. The European car industry is dying because the Chinese car (and battery and renewable energy) industry out-competes them on the free market, and the EU's solution is to ban the importing of these for European customers so that the locals can basically only buy from the Europeans, and these are all downsizing production and shedding workers to cut costs? I don't believe they intend to start pumping out affordable EVs – which clearly is what most potential buyers would prefer – because otherwise ain't nobody got money for that. Or at least I never will. Euroleaders keep shooting the workers on whose back they are standing upon in the foot, and at the moment those imperial core workers seem to be interested in idk cultural warfare, identity politics and being casually racist ig