My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
For the weekend of August 1-2, Trump had once again promised major strikes on Iran, which would have included crossing the critical red line of striking their energy infrastructure. In response, Iran once again essentially promised to end the possibility of modern civilization as we know it throughout much of the Gulf States and, to a certain extent, the Zionist entity, with the economic impacts radiating outwards around the world from there. The frustrating part about these threats from Trump is that while he's reneged on them before, the consequences of them actually occurring are so dire that it's difficult to ignore them; rolling a dice with even a 5% chance for complete catastrophe will always be nerve-wracking.
Anyway, as we all know, these strikes did not occur, with the excuse this time being much the same as the previous times: our regional allies begged us not to (potentially true) and Iran called us and said they were willing to negotiate/surrender (untrue). The point of these threat displays is at least twofold: first, to see if Iran is genuinely going to flinch, or, at least, if internal elements that may or may not exist will be spooked into action against the IRGC; and second, to manipulate oil prices downwards by creating constant cycles of "relief" out of an otherwise relatively constant downward trend as Hormuz stays closed and oil reserves continue to ebb. I do say "relatively", of course, given that Ansarallah now appears to be delivering a boot up the ass of Saudi Arabia by taking offline quite a lot of its refinery infrastructure.
It is into this situation that Ukraine seems to want in. For those out of the loop, the situation over in Ukraine has largely the same overall attritional dynamics as previous years, but with a few added wrinkles. Ukraine started striking Russian infrastructure a while ago, and while their effectiveness is hotly debated and I don't want to dismiss them as totally ineffectual, it's clear that the psychological effects - such as they are - are greater than the material effects. Russia's retaliation strikes have been considerably more impactful, including strikes on Ukrainian Black Sea ports and vessels, and a campaign explicitly against gas stations across Ukraine, as well as some rather impressive and disruptive explosions at Ukrainian military fairs and production sites. Zelensky has admitted publicly that they are now basically out of Patriot missiles and that Russian missiles are now landing entirely unopposed (beforehand, they were just landing largely unopposed, given the lackluster performance of Western air defences in general). He seems to have considered a possible way out: linking together the Ukraine and Iran Wars to a united front against Russia and Iran, which would then grant Ukraine more munitions to keep fighting on.
Now, for all the fear I've seen of this occurring (and, don't get me wrong, the US and Russia being in non-proxy, direct conflict is a genuinely frightening prospect for continued life on Earth) how linking together two wars which the West is quite decisively losing into a single war would help at all is beyond me. At this moment, at least, US military planners appear to agree with me. Ukraine hit a Caspian Sea vessel going to Iran a while ago, but then seems to have quickly apologised after being given a stern talking to by the US. This shows just how willing the US is to grant Ukraine more aid, as their own interceptor stockpile is running very low due to Iranian strikes. One would almost feel sympathy for Zelensky if is wasn't for... well, everything that's happened. The path of Ngô Đình Diệm is a tough one to walk.
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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.
I hate to try and be an optimist about these wildfires, but they must have a pretty limited window where there's enough fuel for them to operate, right? As is now pretty broadly understood, the American approach of absolute fire suppression has lead to a century of fuel build-up in brush, leaf litter, etc, which (in addition to heat and drought) is enabling these massive fires. But once they burn through all that accumulated fuel, they can't really do it again, can they? It's a massive ecological reset we're unable to prevent, but once it's gone through an area, is it even possible for them to repeat on any short timescale? And the introduction of a sensible managed fire regime is going to be extremely easy just about everywhere. I know those are being put in place around the country, though I don't have a sense of how broadly.
It is multiple factors coalescing. Invasive plants that dry out easier and make fires move rapidly across open spaces. Climate change making all plants drier on average and for longer periods. Rivers, natural barriers, are lower earlier and to a greater degree, also due to climate change. Land use changes mean forests are younger and have more low brush. Older forests can still burn but they burn less often and slower. Fire suppression is fighting a losing battle against all of these things. Once big fires roll through it won't even be a reset, not really, for a meaningful amount of time. Dry invasive grasses will make a roaring comeback.
There's still a lotta prblems with the recovery after.
replanting of forests - usually they spray herbicide and replant one species of tree rather than native trees and dispersal of seeds for native plants. And they'll often delay this so kill anything that has grown up since the fire.
The soil can become hydrophobic and not absorb much rainfall since it gets cooked in the mega fires, in addition to the loss of vegetation, landslides and mudslides can be a risk.
There are non-native plants that can colonize burned areas after the fires, these are also often more flammable than what was growing before.
I'm not an expert but that's a few things i remember readjng about
I too am not an expert. Let's throw our inexpertise together and see if we can figure out anything sensible.
Afaik, native fire-adapted plants generally do much better after these than non-natives do. Many natives are even fire-dependent, and the lack of fires is what's allowed a lot of non-natives to prosper in their place.
dialectical naturalism time
I'm pretty confident in the native plant life's ability to recover. I'm familiar with the area, and the native plants came back pretty quickly in similar areas as the one effected. It's very piney and the plants that thrive in that type of soil are pretty limited.
Brush fires don't need a lot of fuel to spread, and the brush comes back pretty quickly after a fire.
Right now the fires are still a major concern. They developed rather quickly and were initially sent East through a decent chunk of the town due to high speed winds. It's still not contained, it's just been redirected away from the heart of the city and hasn't been spreading as rapidly as it was Saturday.