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.
The jarring thing with primaries is that they provide a peek into the real abyss of evil lurking under American society. They're intentionally a procedure for people a lot more politically conscious than your average voter (who may just show up and vote for x party every 4 years or whatever, not think about it); primaries are for those expressing direct support for (generally) a sub-section of an ideology. In this case, you got at least 727,000 people who voted for the AIPAC Dem candidate in Michigan Haley Stevens, vs 742,000 people voting for El-Sayed, where support for Israel doing a genocide was the central issue. That's 727k people who said yeah, not only is this genocide ok with me but actually we should be supporting Israel even more moving forward, which is the position of Stevens.
It's such an incredibly disturbing exercise to imagine the amount of just regular folks who are politically locked in enough to have seen horrific, one-sided images and stories of genocide almost weekly for several years now, and yet that wasn't enough to have swayed them. Or no, not even to have swayed them; it wasn't enough to even discourage them from simply not voting, in a primary. And it's important to remember it's a primary, which is an active, go-out-of-your-way gesture to support something specific. Try to imagine 100 people in a room, not that much. Then imagine a thousand people in a field. That's a good bit of people. Now take 10 of those fields together. A lot people. Now take 7 of those mega fields together plus some change, honestly it's really hard to imagine. It's the number of active military personnel in Ukraine. This is just the Michigan primary liberals, not even to say conservatives or other people.
The number of truly evil people in this country who support, or can't even be bothered to simply abstain from directly supporting, genocide, is unconscionable, and it's clearly not possible to change until there is widespread destitution. The entire population of the Third Reich was about 95 groups of proactive Haley Stevens primary supporters. It's hard to think about.
I think you're assuming they're more aware of what is going on than they probably are. More likely they just go
whenever Gaza is brought up and don't know anything about it beyond empty "both sides" stuff, and refuse to learn. Which is a major issue too, and probably does indicate that they know that if they did learn more about the situation they wouldn't be able to hold their position, but I would think they are deliberately and willfully ignorant on it, not aware and indifferent. It might sound like semantics, but it is important to understand so we can better address it and combat it.
Whether they acknowledge the pulsating black ball of puss in the corner of their vision and support its growth, or they dismiss it and carry on without much thought, it’s functionally the same and just as egregious. Lacking the courage or curiosity to at least investigate the central issue in the primary you voting in is just as damning as actively taking the wrong side
They get a ballot in the mail and just check off the name they've been hearing on cable most frequently. They get told there's a scary brown man who wants to destroy America running against them in those commercials and their lizard brain responds without critically analyzing the situation.
In general elections absolutely, and in primaries certainly too, but I’d say generally much less so
It is, the first time I followed a US primary closely (because I'm not American so I never had before) was in 2019 and it was a real eye opener. That shit was so dystopian to watch.
Enough time has passed since the "ceasefire" that libs now firmly believe they are fully morally superior again. Before they had to kind of dance around and try to play the "but why do you want Trump to win?" gambit but they would fall apart with any pushback. Now they are back to shamelessly punching left despite supporting genocide for years.