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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 79 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

https://archive.ph/dsNWD

Navy Carrier’s Problems Are Tied to Attacks on U.S. Base Early in War

Diego Garcia, a tiny island 2,200 miles from the Gulf of Oman, took over as the Navy’s logistics hub after Iran damaged a base in Bahrain.

more

The aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln’s supply problems began soon after the first day of the war, as Iranian missiles and attack drones fell on a Navy base in Bahrain. The Iranian attack, retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli assault on Tehran, destroyed much of the base. And as it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades. The Navy needed a Plan B to continue feeding the sailors working around the clock to keep warplanes flying strike missions, and later to maintain a blockade of Iran’s ports. With the threat of Iranian attacks at other ports in the region, the Pentagon looked to a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub, which is south of the Maldives and roughly 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier strike groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman. The loss of the hub in Bahrain has contributed to a host of reported problems on carriers supporting operations against Iran, as Democratic senators raise concerns about the Lincoln’s 5,000 sailors and their nearly nine-month deployment.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the reported problems included shortages of basic supplies and the deteriorating mental health of its crew members. On Friday at a military air base in Maryland, Mr. Trump dismissed those concerns. “That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another, very similar, ship,” he said. The Lincoln’s replacement is the Japan-based carrier U.S.S. George Washington, which earlier this week was heading west through the Strait of Malacca in Indonesian waters en route to the Middle East. Another carrier, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush, has been operating in the Middle East for months since deploying from Norfolk on March 31. When asked if the carrier deployments were too long, the president said, “No, no, no, not nearly long enough.”

Mr. Hegseth had a similar response on Thursday when a reporter asked how long the United States could maintain its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. “We can hold it as long as we need to, indefinitely,” he replied.

guy who runs out of steam in 10 seconds of fighting: "no dude I could totally keep bobbing and weaving around here all day"

At the war’s outset, Keir Starmer, then the British prime minister, denied the Pentagon access to Diego Garcia for use in the operation against Iran. That decision drew Mr. Trump’s ire, and Mr. Starmer ultimately relented on March 1, granting the U.S. military access to the island for what he described as a “specific and limited defensive purpose.”

ukkk imagine how quickly the US empire would basically disintegrate if any of these vassal fucks grew a spine

A U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive logistics, said the Navy began using Diego Garcia as the main shipment point shortly after the Navy’s base in Bahrain was heavily damaged. The use of Diego Garcia as the Navy’s new logistics hub may explain why Iran fired two medium-range ballistic missiles at the island on March 20. One of the missiles fell into the Indian Ocean short of its target. A Navy warship shot down the other.

The San Diego-based Lincoln has been at sea for nearly nine months without what the Navy calls a “liberty port” — where sailors can get off the ship for a few days. Bahrain is one of the two ports where U.S. aircraft carriers in the region have typically moored so their crews can get some downtime. The other, the Emirati port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, is also well within the range of Iranian missiles.

whoopsie!

The Trump administration relied on yet another carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, in the Caribbean for its pressure campaign against Venezuela and later extended its deployment to the Middle East to launch airstrikes against Iran. So far the war has seen the commitment of a significant portion of the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers, which will go down to 10 with the expected retirement of U.S.S. Nimitz next year. While six months is the typical length of a Navy deployment at sea in peacetime, some carriers have done far longer stretches following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Ford’s 326-day deployment, however, broke the record for the longest by a carrier since the Vietnam War. But in that war, carriers assigned to Yankee Station, a section of the Pacific off the coast of Vietnam, would often head to the Navy base at Subic Bay, Philippines — a short two-day transit away — where sailors could take a break from running nonstop flight operations and the ship could load up on ordnance, food, fuel and other necessary supplies. By tradition and Navy regulation, the commanding officer of a warship can request a “beer day” for their crews when they have been at sea for 45 straight days or longer. Given the Lincoln’s time at sea, the crew would have been eligible for five beer days already. A spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which covers naval operations in region and would authorize beer days, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about whether any of the ships participating in the Iran war had requested them. In an interview, Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, said that his constituents included sailors aboard the Lincoln, and that their family members had reached out to express their concerns about the deployment. “It gets back to that big picture, which is: What is the mission here?” Mr. Levin said. “That’s what the families want to know.”

say it with me bridget-vibe DE-BA-SI-FI-CA-TI-ON bridget-vibe

[-] AlHouthi4President@lemmy.ml 7 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

What happened to the people like "Iran is so weak why arent they attacking harder right now. I can't believe they are talking about more negotiations. I am smarter than IRGC because I just learned geography of Iran 18 months ago. Iran should be sinking the US carriers and if they do ill convert to Shia islam but if they dont they are cucks."

[-] AlHouthi4President@lemmy.ml 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)
[-] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 7 points 19 hours ago

Those missile range maps always remind me of this "A small state threatening Germany" shit

[-] demeritum@lemmygrad.ml 32 points 1 day ago

Btw according to international law, the British ownership over Diego Garcia is as legal as the Ukrainian oblasts annexed by russia.

[-] Budwig_v_1337hoven@hexbear.net 41 points 1 day ago
[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[-] Tomorrow_Farewell@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago

say it with me DE-BA-SI-FI-CA-TI-ON

Debasement!

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

Webster's should make debasification the word of the year. They won't, those cowards. But they should

[-] culpritus@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think there could even be an alternate meaning related to "debasement".

Trump's Department of War has catalyzed the debasification of the entire US military and the petro dollar financial hegemony via blunderous ineptitude in their war of choice against Iran and the Axis of Resistance.

dee bah see fee cah tea on!

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

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