51
submitted 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) by SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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 rescue efforts at a damaged residential complex in Caracas on June 25th.


Weekly preamble in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe situation regarding both Iran and global oil markets is getting even more complicated, and that's without even including the regular injections of disinformation from people like Barak Ravid and Trump himself. In my current estimation, the negotiations are proceeding as if both sides would rather see a deal than not. At the very least, there have certainly been enough blatant violations of the MoU articles that Iran would be fully justified to end negotiations altogether, and yet they are not, which must mean that they really do want a deal. Until a few days ago, these were mainly issues that Iran has been prepared to show... "flexibility" on (others might say "cowardice"), such as Zionist aggression against southern Lebanon. Both at the start of the April ceasefire and at the start of the MoU, they made Lebanon out to be a red line issue, but ultimately seemed convinced by the US saying to them, via backchannels, that they'll yank the leash back on their mangy, rabid dog. Therefore, it's safe to conclude that Iran, in practice, either only symbolically cares about Lebanon as the number of buildings destroyed by the Zionists is now climbing into the tens of thousands, or is confident in Hezbollah's ability to withstand assaults and eventually push back the Zionists to the border.

However, very recently, the fighting has once again come closer to home for Iran, with renewed, albeit limited, exchanges of fire in the general area of Hormuz. This all stems from an unfortunate contradiction that Iran has wandered into with regard to Oman. In short: their legal argument for why they should be able to extract tolls/service fees from shipping through Hormuz relies on the concept of Hormuz being part of their territorial waters and not international waters, which is literally true. However, it is also possible to transit Hormuz entirely through Oman's territorial waters too, and, critically, Oman has not shown any serious interest in charging a toll, and is letting shipping pass freely. Oman is also much less able to seriously withstand foreign assaults than Iran, meaning their position is precarious - side with Iran, and risk a Western military assault that destroys them; side with the US, and risk Hormuz never truly reopening because the IRGC will not tolerate ships bypassing their authority. So, Iran is now legally stuck: to have a toll, it must find a way to argue that territorial waters are important when it applies to them, but aren't important when it applies to Oman. Or, of course, to somehow convince Oman to set up their own toll, in face of the dangers.

So far, the result of this has been Iran asserting, both verbally and through drones and missiles, that transit through the Oman channels is, at least during the period of the MoU, illegitimate. This has squashed hopes by many analysts that Hormuz flows would return to normal very soon - after a very brief peak, these numbers now seem to be descending to near-wartime levels. This is happening as the US's reserves continue to drain at a frightening rate. That being said, Iranian oil tankers are getting out in large numbers and reaching foreign markets, so it's not as if Iran is solely being disadvantaged by the current situation. It's even possible that Iran is waiting for enough of these ships to reach Eastern Asia before they plan to restart the war. I'm unsure if this is actually likely, but I've seen several others suggest it, and it does make sense to at least make the most of the current lack of blockade while you figure out if the US is actually going to give in to any of your demands.

Over in Ukraine, the situation seems to be slowly heating up. It's always hard for me personally to figure out the seriousness of the statements of the Ukrainians and the Russians - you'll look back on a year of exaggerated threats and bold statements and promises of grand offensives and threats of nuclear war and yet, on the battlefield, all you see is fairly standard attrition and positional warfare. Anyway: there's been much ado about Ukrainian attacks into Russia proper over the last few months and whether it's having an impact on their economy (not particularly), wartime production (not at all), and social fabric (kinda). However, the rumors of Belarus getting more directly involved in the war - whether they want to or not - are increasing in intensity, with Ukraine threatening that they'll fire on Belarusian border military equipment if it isn't withdrawn. Also, the Russian hardliners seem to really want to start attacking European military production supplying Ukraine, though Putin appears to have squashed those desires. But at the end of the day, the attrition and territorial advancements continue to convincingly favor Russia.

And lastly, the numbers of the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Venezuela are rolling in, with ~1500 dead, ~750 buildings damaged and collapsed, and many thousands of people affected and being assisted by the government. From the footage I've seen, it's quite disturbing, and obviously not coming at a great time for Venezuela geopolitically either.


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.


you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 19 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

more

US plans IMO will probably avoid or limit kinetic direct hot war with China and rely on hybrid war as they did with the USSR

Okay, but again, I just want to see you lay out an analysis for how this could be done. How do you see such a hybrid war being carried out? What moves would they make? You can't just dismiss arguments pointing to the material limitations of US power by saying "well they'll just do a hybrid war instead". xiaohongshu used make various arguments about financial systems, which I personally didn't always find super credible, but at least they were arguments, not vague waving at some secret card the US must totally have in its deck.

but the intellect remain pondering bad outcomes and possibilities and preparing to live with them and keep moving onwards

There's a difference between pondering potential bad outcomes and just inventing them out of whole cloth. The pondering has to still be based on material analysis of what's actually possible, otherwise you'll drive yourself insane with highly improbable hypotheticals. Like, what if an asteroid hits Beijing next month and China just collapses, and it's a thousand-year American reich afterwards? I guess it could theoretically happen, but it's not very productive to spend brainpower on such scenarios.

this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
51 points (100.0% liked)

news

24810 readers
631 users here now

Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:

We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.

Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:

The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.

  1. Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.

  2. Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.

  3. Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.

  4. Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.

  5. Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.

  6. Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.

  7. American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.

  8. Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.

  9. AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS