My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
Aside from the virtually daily Iranian strikes on the Oman route, the main threat that the US is facing in this newest phase of the war is logistics. With Bahrain and the UAE unsafe, the closest safest port in the theater is Diego Garcia, which is over 2000 miles away. Either the aircraft carriers would have to go to Diego Garcia to restock, which would be even less planes and missiles available should hostilities restart suddenly, or goods have to be shuttled to the aircraft carriers from Diego Garcia. This latter option appears to be too much for the US to handle, with widespread reports of dwindling supplies and morale on the USS Abraham Lincoln (and, to a lesser extent, the USS George HW Bush). These reports have culminated in the USS George Washington being sent from the Pacific to replace the Lincoln, which was the sole aircraft carrier in that whole theater. There are six more carriers in maintenance, leaving two carriers left that could even hypothetically be called upon should the USS George HW Bush need replacement; both are currently undergoing training, and of these two, the USS Theodore Roosevelt might be available soon; perhaps even as soon as September. I'm unsure whether the Roosevelt will be sent to the Pacific to replace the Washington, or if it'll be sent to the Middle East to replace the Bush. Nonetheless, that the situation has deteriorated to the point where we can speculate on how very limited naval vessels are going to be distributed is yet one more indication among many of the decline of US naval power. The symbolism was too much for me to ignore, hence the title: the last aircraft carrier in the Pacific being forced to leave, and not under military pressure in some hypothetical war against China, but to try and relieve logistical burdens elsewhere in a war of the US's own making.
This joins Trump's statements that the US will only be taking a very limited part in the South Korean military exercises. This is nominally because of the "great ties" the US shares with the DPRK, but this is an embarrassingly transparent face-saving statement. The DPRK is an increasingly major potential threat to South Korea, a major regional power and economy, but are also helping Russia with both manpower and materiel and getting military experience and data on their missiles' effectiveness in return.
The US's Under Secretary of War, Elbridge Colby, recently visited the Philippines. There, he gave a speech that promised to continue the construction of a defensive network that would deny China the possibility of militarily advancing through the Pacific by stationing US forces inside friendly countries. This is the NATO approach: our mere presence will deter the enemy because they would not want to start a direct war with us, and in exchange, you have to hand over billions upon billions of dollars. Colby gave the Philippines that most backhanded of compliments, the "model ally", and stated that the US was “definitely not disengaging from Asia”. My "We aren't pivoting away from Asia" shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are already answered by my shirt.
If you're a US-friendly country in the Pacific and possess even the slightest sense of self-preservation, you are surely feeling nervous. The US is moving its aircraft carrier out of the theater. Overseas, you've seen how Iran - a very strong regional country, to be sure, but not as powerful as the industrial juggernaut and nuclear superpower that is China - has nonetheless crippled several undefendable US bases, has exhausted a very large amount of American air defense missiles, is holding the global economy hostage, and the US can seemingly do nothing to stop them. You have to be looking at your own US bases, likely expensive and unpopular, and all the money you're handing over to the US, and glancing at how the Gulf states are bickering of being betrayed by their ally who promised them protection and immediately retreated. You have to be looking at your economy and its dependence on China. You have to be looking at Ukraine, and the unenviable state of destruction it has been driven to as a puppet of the US. You have to be looking at China itself, and how its military is rapidly developing in all fields, and how it's even catching up on microchip development. In all, you have to be really hoping that China is serious that they only plan a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, and that the US will not do something incredibly, stupidly reckless in their decline.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
view the rest of the comments
news
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Yeah this crazy to see even though it's not that surprising. Venezuela is never getting their gold back since this is straight up daylight robbery. As resources run out, climate collapse gets into higher gear and capitalism falls apart, imperial powers are becoming blatantly genocidal and ruthless (which they have always been, but tried to disguise at the very least).
On a bit of a tangent it blows my mind that Russia started the war without using up all their foreign reserves held in western countries. Maybe the liberal propaganda worked and people, including the not very liberal Russians, believed in the horseshit that was the rules based order.
Probably there was no way to use up their foreign reserves in clearing houses without stopping trade or clearing with the west which would have sent klaxons and red lights blaring and screaming in alarm that Russia is about to invade Ukraine like the US earlier claimed they were thus undermining any element of surprise and perhaps allowing NATO to move troops in. I would say for the limited element of surprise it was a necessary sacrifice.
One must also remember Russia didn't see this spiraling into this long conflict. They expected and hoped that their special operation would pressure Ukraine into signing a deal and they'd pull back, Europeans would be angry but normalize in a short time. And the Ukrainians nearly signed that deal, Boris Johnson stopped them from doing that and convinced them to turn this into a war that Russia didn't want and hadn't committed itself to but was forced to undertake so as to not back down and assure its security.
The Cold War, while still full of genocidal violence, was also a period of one sort of imperialist restraint imposed by three factors: the power of the socialist world, liberal internationalism among the bourgeois ruling class, and the strong organization of the imperialist working class. These all combined to limit, but not eliminate, the imperialist world's ability to carry out horrifying global violence relative to the old era of inter-imperialist struggle, where the US and European powers could wield their colonial apparati against each other at a scale that would never be repeated again. The horrors of WWII in Europe created a liberal internationalism that was focused on white people getting along through subordination to the US while playing dipolomacy and aid with most global south states. The USSR posed too tempting an alternative to most of the world. The US and European working classes were still highly productive, and neoliberalism hadn't yet introduced a new period of hyper-extractivism of the Global South.
Then, after the illegal dissolution of the USSR, other forces also combined for a new sort of restraint. Liberal internationalism evolved into neoliberal overconfidence, and the empire was so certain of its power that it never needed to resort to violence at a scale like in Korea or Vietnam. Of course, every single one of these restraints created the condition for its own undoing, and that imperialist overconfidence has created an empire vaster than any in human history and just as riddled with destabilizing contradictions as any late-stage empire. The impending Chinese Century has compelled the empire to re-institute heavy handed violence that it thought it didn't need anymore. It's only really effective at 'Venezuela Ops', where the spec ops super soldiers that are genuinely terrifyingly effective and powerful can carry out precise and devastating moves. Sanctions are still powerful, but they're the most clear example of a tactic exhausting its strategic value the more it gets used. So now this world-spanning empire is slipping into the Old Ways, which it never really forgot, but which it had imagined itself too civilized to ever need again.
This is a great breakdown on how imperial strategy changed and then never really changed.
I do think that resource scarcity and climate collapse are also playing a role in this reversion to the old tactics and will be even stronger driving force in this change. Not to imply you don't think that, but more of a prediction on how things will go in the future. China though is investing massively in green energy and also is able to imho completely neutralize (even if at big cost) any imperial impositions the west might try to employ. But this will set back human progress a lot if you consider China with it's beneficial technological development in some areas (green energy in particular) as opposed to the death cult capitalism of the imperial west.