My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
After an uncertain beginning to this second major period of hostilities, we can now see the overall plan for either side.
For the Americans, their fire has been primarily focussed on southern Iran, where they have been attempting to break Iran's control of Hormuz by a steady campaign of striking both military and civilian sites. Additionally, it looks like the US is attempting to shape the battlefield around Bandas Abbas and Qeshm Island for some kind of incursion, as we have seen bridges and tunnels in the vicinity struck by missiles. The key word there is "attempting", because there are several things wrong with this plan both tactically and strategically.
Tactically, Iran has demonstrated the ability to very quickly get their transportation infrastructure repaired, and the US simply isn't firing volleys in the required amounts - and towards the right targets (they're using several missiles on purely civilian targets, like fishing boats) - to meaningfully degrade Iranian control of even this sector of the coastline. Additionally, an amphibious assault on Qeshm Island in the style of the WW2 Pacific theater is essentially impossible unless Iran, for whatever reason, allowed it. The gauntlet that any ship holding Marines would have to run to get to the island precludes this, let alone also transporting heavy weaponry and materiel for resupply. Using helicopter-borne troops or paratroopers would be much more feasible, but runs into even greater logistical problems if the US wanted to do anything there other than a brief skirmish before withdrawing. Strategically, even if the US waved a magic wand and took Qeshm Island, it's unclear what this would do to fulfill war aims. The most obvious intention would be to trade it back to Iran in return for a major Iranian concession, but what if you take the island, you call up Iran saying "Alright, let's get this deal running! First, I want no Hormuz tolls--" and Iran just... hung up, and kept firing drones and missiles and artillery at your forces on the island until they either all died or were forced to retreat? It's not a tenable position to hold, and Iran's capabilities to affect shipping in Hormuz are obviously not all concentrated on one single island.
So, what is Iran's strategy? It's what one analyst (Amerikanets) has termed "debasification". If the first phase of the war from late February to mid-April was focussed primarily on generally destroying and disrupting the US's military infrastructure in the region, what this second phase has planned is something more like a region-wide missile advance. Starting from the Gulf states and their US bases, the plan is to push back American planes and soldiers to further and further afield bases and thereby make sorties against Iran take much more time, fuel, and use more resupply planes. Iranian strikes are, as of me writing this, concentrated on Jordan, where a recent Iranian strike caused the first admission of soldier deaths in quite some time. The Iranian goal is clearly to push back all US planes to at least the Zionist entity, by which point, unless they are withdrawn further back all the way to Europe, the planes will all be so concentrated on so few bases that it will become a physical impossibility to get them all scrambled before Iranian strikes hit. Compared to the US's strategy, Iran's is immediately bearing fruit, with US strikes already very limited in intensity compared to the first phase of the war months ago. The irony of the US breaking off negotiations - again! - to pursue a new strategy that already looks to be profoundly failing is truly some inspired stuff; the genocidal architects of American imperium in the mid-20th century are rolling in their graves.
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:
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.
Remove if this isn't top-comment-worthy, of course, but I found it to be a good analysis of what Zohran Mamdani has and (mostly) hasn't done, and the reaction of the so-called USian "left" in criticizing or (mostly) defending him. There's some juicy bits about the neoliberal and fascist programs he's continued, that some folks may not be aware of (the bits that might make it news-worthy). Examples:
The Tyranny of Vibes by Jake Fate
Five minutes of checking and none of those examples are true, not even the police one
Which isn't surprising since this is a substack by a random who doesn't even seem to know that the Mayor of New York does not have the power to unilaterally levy income and corporate tax raises, that is an Albany power
He can on the otherhand raise local property taxes, which is why he pushed through the second home tax hike.....
Tyranny of vibes indeed
It is possible to:
A: Appreciate what Mamdani’s campaign did to build class consciousness in NYC as well as appreciate that the most popular politician in the country identifies as a socialist.
B: Praise Mamdani for any good policies he enacts or statements he makes.
C: Not pull any punches and criticize him for any bad policies or statements (in fact, we are obligated to do this for any public official who calls themselves a socialist).
We can do multiple things at the same time. This black and white thinking on fucking everything that comes up in online leftist spaces is really getting exhausting. For a bunch of self-proclaimed Marxists we sure do love avoiding nuance and dialectical thinking here, don’t we?
Edit: as CyborgMarx has pointed out, all this isn’t even accurate.
Raise your hand if you were ridiculed, harrased, berated, or otherwise by USAmerican "socialists" for daring to criticize the Shia AOC Zioran in 2025.
🙋♀️
Are we using Shia as an insult now? lol
I wonder if the person with "Al Houthi for President" likes shias or not
Resident nasibi here reporting in
/sarcasm
Not intended. AOC is the insult and Shia is a modifier.
"She was a woman of color CIA agent": the insult would be being a CIA agent. The descriptor of identity is used to describe the particular flavor as a way to highlight the absurdity of the identity politics. Girlboss 👻
In this case, if you think the modifier is the insult then you are just revealing yourself.
Half of the planet is Islamophobic and it's somehow revealing to have seen Shia used as an insult before?
Block me. You're purposefully obtuse.
Are you unable to communicate without demeaning people? Fuck off
Grasping at straws whenever uncomfortable for even one second 👆 👆
We're gonna do it all again gahahahaha
When have I ever given people shit for disliking Mamdani?
Haaa we have houthi4prez on the group chat cyberstalking bot (friendly, I'm personally not responsible for negative cyberstalking so idk what you give people shit for) there is definitely a bias but not hard to see this is a pro-AoR account. what I mean is jumping down people's throat like this over misinterpreted phrasing to deflect from criticism of "progressives", unions, & first world leftist groups is how we got here in the first place. I don't even think it is something people do on purpose. Accounts here get killed faster than twitter, the more effort that goes into trying to explain to people why they could have made a mistake, the more technicalities you can violate. & make sure not to talk back to anyone who has carte blanche to say you should be garroted by saying they misunderstood you for some reason. Don't wanna be hostile.
As for this happening again, I was wrong. It is currently happening. Scroll down. People are being scolded for not acknowledging how zohran mamdani has "raised class consciousness", because they made the mistake of posting jack's substack instead of mine. they don't feel the need to list any examples, I wonder if those reading it can think of any, or they just let the warm feeling wash over them while palestinians starve to death.
Think my favorite one is where all pretense gets abandoned and the criticism is for being stuck up, or smug, or debating too well. My mission? Get as many awesome posts banned or dogpiled as possible to empirically prove people on the fediverse unilaterally hate fun. It's going well.
You're reading way too much into what I said. My comment was not really about Mamdani, I don't have any strong feelings about mayoral elections of all things (him not arresting Netanyahu is cringe though). I was just surprised to see what I thought was someone on Hexbear using Shia as an insult. That doesn't seem to have been the case though so this whole reply chain is kinda irrelevant
Still banned on multiple accounts
Also never point out an entertainer is spreading disinformation on here. They're not supposed to be held to standards. They're targeting a younger, more malleable audience, so they should never be fact checked, that would be taking it too seriously.
I don't know if you're referencing one particular streamer but many fit this lol
Also, I love how this stupid concept of "critical support" never extends to the cowardly compatible leftist organizations in the imperial core.
"Critical support" to Islamic Republic of Iran, but if one so much as offers a mild criticism of some of these organizations the response is intense. Don't speak bad of the ~~israeli~~ USAmerican settler left organizations or you're being unfair! Oop
Missed one saucy example which was sending cops to violently suppress pro-Palestinian groups protesting the sale of stolen Palestinian land at a synagogue. And in case there are quibbles about the cops doing it vs. him personally giving orders he openly concern trolled the protests, justified the cops, and kept a Zionist police chief.
I don't remember if he ever actually defined what "affordable" was supposed to be, but if he's going by the preexisting definition then its probably along these lines:
The thing is unless he plans on making changes to the existing 80/20 program for private development, which is on an incentive program for them to make 20% of the units "affordable", then he's not going to get anywhere close to the target he was talking about. And setting aside the fact that 80/20 isn't a regulatory program, even if it were by the definition of "affordable" in the above chart, you could still make your units with an income requirement of 80%+ of the area median income and price most people out of those units anyway and still get away with calling it "affordable".
The other option would be for the city itself to step in and build these units... But we know that's probably not going to happen.
AMI for 1 person being ~120k is insane. I believe that AMI is only actually calculated for 4 person households, and other household AMIs are estimated from that, which can be very unrealistic.