Image is of smoke rising after Iranian missiles impact a US military site in Bahrain.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
After a few weeks of both diplomatic and military manuevering - mostly over Iranian control of Hormuz - we have hit the hottest phase of military exchanges since at least the MoU period began. The US has generally focussed on striking southern Iran, although they have also sporadically hit transportation infrastructure elsewhere, which was repaired in less than 24 hours. Meanwhile, Iran has struck a wide range of targets, with an interesting focus on Jordan, but has, up to the time of me writing this, so far relented on striking the Zionist entity. The US and Iran have had little periods of mutual military strikes during the "ceasefire" before, and so it's hard to tell for sure whether this yet another temporary spat or if it represents a full return to the pre-ceasefire conflict.
A complicating factor in this conflict is that Ansarallah has become increasingly active, and seems eager to start to break the siege it has been put under by threatening to attack Saudi Arabia and Saudi-aligned forces. This has put Iran in a somewhat awkward spot. On the one hand, it has greatly helped Ansarallah resist foreign attackers and has even recently sent civilian airplanes into Sana'a to begin to break the siege. On the other hand, Iran has, with China's help, generally desired to improve its relationship with the Saudis over the years. While in this latest war there have been a major dispute between them over whether Iran is "allowed" to strike US military infrastructure located in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis strike me as considerably less anti-Iran as the UAE, let alone the Zionists, and did send a delegation to Khamenei's funeral. I guess we'll just have to see what happens next, but I strongly suspect that Iran is going to help Yemen over the Saudis.
And finally, Lindsay Graham has died of a sudden heart attack a suspiciously short time after visiting Ukraine. He was a true enemy of civilian populations all the way to the end of his life, and he seemed to particularly despise children. He advocated for using nukes against Gaza and the total annihilation of anybody and everybody who had even the meekest criticism of Zionism. If God (and, more pertinently in this case, Satan) does exist, I hope Graham is extended the exact same level of courtesy and respect in the afterlife that Graham extended to all Palestinians.
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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:
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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BTW Theres literally zero news about this in English. I vaguely remember when the SocDems/Peronists were in power there was always news updates about the Economy in Argentina, is the US media still trying to sell Milei's goverment as an example?
Feels like they aren't, but I'm also not constantly checking on the news. There's only so much propaganda you can do, although the average American probably isn't going to fact check news on Argentina (hell Americans don't even really fact check news on their own country).
I've seen some Argentines and LA on social media still pushing the Milei miracle bullshit though.
because if you look at real graph (pesos in dollars), it’s not too unexpected as it’s been thereabouts for half a year (and i heavily suspect they are dumping dollars from swap into forex at 1500, when it crashes past through when dollars run out, and goes to 2000 i suspect it will become newsworthy, maybe)
Yeah, if people can't save money then isn't there very little point in them buying into the current political economy?
Mi hijo, your family's fortune is in this bored ape NFT, make sure not to lose it.
. The IMF bailout from last year has done nothing to restructure the economy besides inject cash upwards and impoverish the working class.
And when the "stable coin" is pegged to a failing empire undergoing hyperinflation.....
did they run out of swap money? it seems bouncing near 1500 pesos for half a year
Swap money was "only" $20 billion, IIRC.
didn’t they double it? or they just floated doubling it?
This is kinda bullshit neoliberal economics though. Inflation doesn't result from monetary expansion, the EU and the US had massive monetary expansion between 2008 and 2020 with very contained inflation.
The solution surely is MORE neoliberalism and austerity, that's worked GREAT everywhere it's been applied. Fuck the priest class called economists
Inflation results from capitalists deciding to raise prices in order to increase profits. Both the housing crisis and COVID monetary expansion resulted in increased financialization. It did not end up in the pockets of everyday people. Therefore, consumers would not actually have been able to pay much higher prices, so capitalists decided not to raise them much higher (though there was inflation). If the mass in circulation actually increased significantly, Inflation could not be contained by the burgoise state (that's a wrong assumption by MMT), only by capital.
Also from supply shocks but yeah
This is mostly false because it assumes that public expenditure is just "creating money and giving it as handouts", as opposed to "investment in sectors of the economy which raises production and has the potential of increasing supply of goods and services". E.g. public expenditure in mass social housing programs has the effect of driving housing prices down. You can also observe the reverse phenomenon, where European countries performing austerity policy in healthcare and education have led to big increases in expenditure per capita in healthcare and education due to the private sector profiteering from a previously largely public sector.
The bourgeoise state chooses not to do it but it does have the power, for example through outright price capping. Minor examples of bourgeois democracy doing this could be for example Spain capping the prices of facemasks to 0.6€ during COVID, which lowered inflation without affecting supply because there was still plenty of profit to be made.
Yes, but this wasn't done in these instances 2008 and 2020, was it?
Otherwise I agree. A socialist state could do a lot of good.
Yeah yeah I'm not arguing that bourgeois states WILL do that, of course they won't and the only country where we see housing prices drop is China. I'm arguing that the fact is states do have the power to do so and they simply choose not to because it benefits the profits of the rentier class, and it's an important distinction to make IMO because it directly puts the blame on the ones who are to blame
Yes, you're right