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.
As Le_Wokisme pointed out - it's a step before the "real" elections were the pols actually get voted in. The primary season is much loved by believers of American exceptionalism. They think it shows shit like "democracy in action". Not suprinsingly - over time campaign finance laws became 100% broken. The Citizens United legal case is just one example. The amount of money is basically unlimited.
AIPAC spent 10s of millions of dollars to try to make El-Sayed lose a primary. Libs love to talk about campaign finance reform but they'll never do anything about it. The broken system is a great boon to them because it hinders or cripples the ability of leftist candidates. Being a candiate requires money, money, money.
Garry Trudeau is the Doonesbury cartoonist. An example of primary season fetishism his miniseries from the 1980s.
I started to watch it for shits and giggles but it was such nonsense and so goddamned boring I bailed just a few minutes into episode 2. But the ending of episode 1 has a fantastic lib monolog. It's breathtaking in its libness. Tanner says he needed to run for president as a generational change candidate because Joe Biden didn't have a favorite Beatle and he did. Tanner namechecks Copernicus, Darwin, Thomas Jefferson, etc.
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The monolog
Jack Tanner: You know, T.J., just before you called me last spring, Lexy and I went down to the Democratic Leadership Conference in South Carolina. The last night, we were sitting aroud with Kirk O'Donnell, and Hart, and Biden, a couple of the other candidates, who were shooting the breeze about how much the party had changed since the Sixties.And suddenly, out of the blue, Lexy turned to Hart and she asked him who his favorite Beatle was. Now, at first, Hart laughed, and then he stumbled around trying to remember a name. Then she repeated her question for Biden, and Biden said, well, he'd never been a Beatles fan, he was into jazz.
And Dukakis answered Paul, 'cause he liked his wife or something. Now, I don't know if Lexy knows the names of all the Beatles herself, let alone the answer to her own question, but it suddenly dawned on me that I sure as hell did. And I knew for sure that anybody who didn't had absolutely no claim to generational leadership. Now I must have, what, uh, ten years on Joe Biden; but, dammit, he wasn't paying attention back then, and I was.
And one of the things I figured out very early on was the singer mattered as much as the song - that ideas were only as valuable as the people who got behind them. I mean people that wouldn't settle; people unafraid of honest inquiry; people who didn't mind asking the impertinent question. God, the impertinent question. Where the hell would we be without it? It's the glory and the engine of all human experience.
Copernicus asked it, and shook the foundations of his world. Darwin asked it, he's repudiated to this day. Thomas Jefferson asked it - so invigorated by it he declared it to be an inalienable right. I'm not smart enough to know all the answers. But I do know we've got to keep asking the questions. That's what the American experiment is all about. It's at the very core of our character as a people. We owe our vigor to its constant renewal.
You know, I don't have much patience for these guys who go around saying the pride is back in America. For some of us, it never left. Vietnam may have covered some patriots in shame, but not this one. We got in there for moral reasons, and, by God, we got out of there for moral reasons. Where else on this Earth does such debate settle on anything other than expediency? Only in America. Watergate - triumph of the system.
How could anybody watch Barbara Jordan thunder away at those House hearings and not feel a surge of pride in the miracle of this country? And then there are those people who tell you that our noisy dissent, our raucous squabble, weakened us as a country - caused us to lose our supremacy. Don't you believe it. We are the envy of this world.
Why? Because, throughout our history, we have always maintained that we could do better. We have insisted that we could do better. We've always been willing to reinvent ourselves for the common good. And in our darkest hour, leaders, real leaders, have always stepped forward to hold the American people to the responsibility of citizenship. Well, it's time for that kind of leadership now, T.J. And I'm not sure that it's me, but I'd like the chance to find out.
[He starts to leave the room, then turns back].
Jack Tanner: Oh, and if you young people are still wondering, the right answer is John Lennon.