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A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is a still of an Ansarallah drone heading to blow up Saudi-backed forces in the port of Al-Mokha in southwestern Yemen.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleIt's once again been a relatively slow week, with "only" quite a few oil tankers being struck in the US's attempt at an oil corridor in Hormuz. I've seen several analysts speculate on just how leaky Hormuz might be despite Iran's attacks, and if it is leaky, then why and to what extent. Now that we're firmly in August, we have noticeably passed the predicted July ETAs on the physical oil cliff (the paper oil price manipulations notwithstanding), and so analysts are trying to find explanations for the current situation, in which various factors are being considered, of which I'll list a few I've seen personally.

First is, as I said, a potentially leaky Hormuz, because it's been revealed that in lieu of official corporate insurance, the US is directly paying captains massive sums of money if they're brave enough to try and run the strait under US air cover - hence why Iran keeps hitting tankers practically daily without them ever seeming to get the message. Obviously, this covert operation by itself would not be enough to even approach pre-war transit levels, and so there must be other factors going on. Second is Red Sea oil redirections predominantly by Saudi Arabia; if this was a big factor, it's something Ansarallah is now actively combatting with their blockade of the Bab el-Mandab and semi-regular strikes on their pipeline infrastructure. Third is that perhaps world oil reserves are somewhat larger than first considered, especially given China deciding to go on a bit of an oil diet over the last six months, and especially especially if countries really start pumping from one-shot emergency supplies; e.g. there's been much discussion by Naked Capitalism about just how much the US could extract from the rapidly dwindling SPR if it no longer cared about the irreversible damage to the storage caverns caused by pumping out as much as physically possible. Fourth and finally, perhaps the data on stockpiles was just bad in such as way that they were being consistently underestimated by e.g. 10% or so. Ultimately, regardless of the many complicated factors involved here, the antsy and indecisive behaviour of the US, as well as some anxiety about the midterms, betrays any attempts at American confidence (e.g. by Bessent) about this becoming a stable situation for even the medium term.

We've also seen some of the fruits of the serious discussions between Iran and Oman over how exactly Hormuz is going to be governed, with one major and intriguing proposal being that Iran could have total control over what vessels enter (i.e. tolling when entering), and Oman has partial control over what vessels leave, with Iran having a veto there too (i.e. no tolling when exiting, but de jure Iranian military control). Iran has come out and said that regardless of what they agree to with Oman, the US will have to make major concessions - at least on the order of the MoU concessions and perhaps even beyond them - for Hormuz shipping to restart. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkiye have signed some kind of military alliance or agreement of some kind; I'm waiting for some big expert analyses on the many implications before I give any takes here, but it's already been dealt a rather large embarrassment by Ansarallah seeming to not really a give a shit, continuing strikes on both Saudi pipeline infrastructure and also Saudi-backed mercenaries.

And finally, over in Latin America, the Southern Spear Joint Task Force has given way to a new version which looks likely to increase inland strikes, which is a major escalation from the strikes targeting mainly fishing boats, which were presumably done to a) cause socioeconomic fractures in certain countries (largely Venezuela), and b) further the kayfabe that the US is trying to stop drugs entering the US while obviously covertly further amplifying it through friendly comprador countries. While Latin America struggles to find its way forward out of American regional hegemony due to the rather mixed results of both electoralism and warfare (guerrilla and otherwise), what greatly interests me will be how the region's domestic capitalists respond to the attempts by the US to wean them off from China's growing economic sphere. I've wondered previously about whether a potential way out of imperium, in lieu of the ability of the region's working class to take (and, more critically, hold on to) power, will be China, intentionally or not, causing major fractures between the US capitalists seeking a monopoly to loot the continent as much as possible with the absolute minimum domestic development possible to maintain profits, and domestic capitalists who want to trade with an ever-growing China and internally develop their countries for their own self-benefit.


Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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[-] Tervell@hexbear.net 104 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

https://xcancel.com/Aelthemplaer/status/2087036736572461252

It is now projected that the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore won't be rebuilt until 2030. Iran has already rebuilt every bridge we bombed.

tbf, I think the Iranian bridges were a lot smaller, but still

[-] egg1918@hexbear.net 79 points 1 day ago

(it also won't be complete by 2030)

[-] supafuzz@hexbear.net 72 points 1 day ago

I basically don't believe the USA is capable of this kind of infrastructure project anymore.

[-] jack@hexbear.net 42 points 1 day ago

Yeah, agreed. I think the bridge is never rebuilt. Huge amounts of money will be poured into private consultants and contractors, but the bridge will literally never be restored under capitalism.

[-] Rojo27@hexbear.net 51 points 1 day ago

The US isn't capable of much at all. Even the MIC, with all the billions it eats, can't seem to produce anything new, hell, not even maintain anything anymore. Its all been consumed by the obsession for profits. Fitting that the empire is being consumed by the system it championed for so long.

[-] supafuzz@hexbear.net 43 points 1 day ago

Profit isn't even the right word anymore. We're in one of those batman stories where the joker gets himself elected mayor and makes crime legal

[-] Aradino@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago

It'll be replaced with hyperloop tunnels with a max capacity of 1

[-] jackmaoist@hexbear.net 74 points 1 day ago

Apparently shit gets built fast when private companies are not involved.

[-] daniyeg@hexbear.net 52 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

it's not as big and it hasn't been rebuilt, it's been repaired because most of them only had a small collapsed section or holes in them. the truly destroyed ones won't probably be repaired for a few years at least. trust me iranian civil engineering should not be your barometer for efficiency even compared to the US.

[-] Jabril@hexbear.net 39 points 1 day ago

Crimea bridge has been bombed several times too and is always back pretty quickly

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago

I think the Crimea bridge is a lot better comparison. They built it from be in just two years or something. That is the time the US would spend just to find out who gets paid to do the over-optimistic renderings of what the finished bridge might one day look like

[-] VILenin@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In the US there would be a 5 year long process where a satanic NIMBY committee designs multiple traffic studies to try and prove the bridge isn’t necessary, and the project will be forever 1 vote short of being approved because one committee member wants to hold the city hostage to get a special exemption on permitting requirements for their airbnb. They will sue each other over a 10-year-long litigation process after which the city will pay out a massive settlement because Judge Lan D. Lord thinks that landlords should be able to do whatever they want, the lawyers will pocket millions of dollars in fees, and the project will eventually get cancelled 20 years down the line.

this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
124 points (100.0% liked)

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