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 of the first nuclear icebreaker ever built, the Lenin, which entered service in 1957 in the USSR and decommissioned in 1989. It is now a museum ship in Murmansk. I just think it's neat.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleThe last week has had a lot of Trump admin dipshittery that isn't important enough to be worth remarking on, so I'm just going to skip right past all that. The sanctions campaign against Iran appears to have stalled before it even left the starting line, with China saying that, nope, they aren't going to cut off their ally for the sake of their enemy. From what I've gathered from Naked Capitalism's (albeit limited) reporting on the state of Iran's economy, the impression I get is that while inflation is running kinda wild, everything else, including state revenues, are doing sufficiently well that there isn't going to be an economic collapse this year nor probably next year if we assume a continued no-deal situation over Hormuz.

The underlying geopolitical situation has had some interesting little developments. Iran and Oman appears to have worked out their plan for joint control over Hormuz. Ansarallah is continuing their explosive campaign against the Saudis, who are now begging the US for help. Additionally, the ever-barking never-biting Türkiye is showing some signs that they might soon, finally, after three years of witnessing outright genocide, do 1 (one) (the first numerical digit) action that isn't to the Zionist's direct benefit, by putting up a modicum of resistance in defence of their puppet in Syria; but, quite frankly, I'm not holding my breath on anything truly substantial happening while Erdogan's in charge.

The state of oil flows in and around Hormuz are very hotly debated right now. Many of the oil flow numbers can be dismissed out of hand because they aren't reflective of the reality of Iranian control and vision of the strait. Due to the narrowness of the strait, full visual coverage of the ships travelling through the channel can be achieved with technology no more advanced than a dozen people with binoculars and a not-especially-tall mountain. However, figures that are around 3-5 million barrels per day (compared to the pre-war 20 million per day) seems plausible when including Iran allowing some allied vessels out (notably Iraqi and Chinese vessels, among others). This, plus China's rather odd actions in the oil market over the last six months, have resulted in the US's SPR now draining at "only" 4-6 million barrels per week, compared to 8-9 earlier in the war. However, the war's impact on fertilizer and diesel stockpiles and prices are now unignorable even to those with their heads in the sand, with anxiety steadily building in the mainstream media about food crises next year.

Meanwhile, Trump has decided to pick fights with Canada due to their strange unwillingness to graciously hand over their sovereignty to the US, with the two countries now in a tariff war. That being said, oil seems to be one product that neither side wants to fight over: the US needs a producer, and Canada needs a customer. The only other country in the vicinity with major oil reserves is Venezuela, who has been in the news a lot lately for precisely this reason, but they simply don't have the production to do much of anything to alleviate the US's stockpile issues and likely still won't by the time Trump has left office, and so they can be safely dismissed as a significant player in this ongoing global energy conflict.

On the subject of naval trade routes, a fascinating development is that Russia has finally unveiled the Northern Sea Route as a regular maritime passage, with a small fleet of eight Chinese vessels taking the route as a test run in mid-August. From Shanghai to Hamburg, the route is a little over 7000 nautical miles and goes through no chokepoints (though I suppose the Bering Strait could hypothetically become one), compared to the Suez route which is nearly 11,000 nautical miles and goes through three chokepoints (Malacca, Bab el-Mandab, Suez). Russia has the world's only nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the increased power from those reactors is necessary to provide the sheer force to break up the ice along the route, making them even more uniquely situated to benefit from the route. Many countries, China foremost among them, have identified the advantage of not being subject to chokepoints and hostile waters as the US navy continues its rapid transition to outright piracy, so it'll be interesting to see to what extent the route is adopted in the coming years.


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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[–] 89 points 2 weeks ago* (10 children)

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/03/ukraine-war-zelensky-corrupton-scandal-cabinet-election/

But now, after more than seven years in office, four and a half years of war with Russia, and a series of scandals involving his leadership team and close friends, Zelensky appears to have lost the nation’s political support. Indeed, polling published in early August points to a major mood swing among Ukrainians, suggesting that many of them have lost faith in Zelensky and would vote him out of office at the earliest opportunity.

You know Z-boy's days are numbered when a NATO think tank posts this. zelensky-pain Rumor has it that they'll probably replace him with Fedorov, who recently met with the CEO of Palantir. The people in Ukraine are tired and want peace even if it means territorial concessions, but the Great Satan has other plans.

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  • [–] 74 points 2 weeks ago* (8 children)

    I think we might see two verry funny & depressing news cycles in Western state media (=almost all media).

    First one will be about Zelensky, where all the huge Zelensky supporters will suddenly turn around and be like "he is just a comedian, obviously he was the wrong person to lead Ukraine during a war, maybe he was even planted by Russia". The second one is about the Ukraine war in general. They will all go from cheering on the inevitable Ukraine victory & speculating when Russia falls apart or surrenders, to suddenly saying that of course Ukraine is losing, look how much smaller the country is compared to Russia.

    The sad thing is that this will all be frictionless. It will happen over a couple of weeks, everyone will just start repeating the new narrative and that will be it. And of course, there should be no elections. The new guy gets the role and we all support him and that is the end of it.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    There's no way this is going to happen, they would rather militarize the entire country, than let go of control. The aim is still to crush Russia and make it obedient to USA. Okay we're still seeing concerts in major cities and night-life, they would rather end all that and cause a full scale mobilization, than ever allow for normalized relations.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 weeks ago

    That was the case to begin with, yeah. Isolate Russia via "harsh" economic sanctions and use Ukraine to bleed it out militarily. In the hopes of forcing regime change to allow a puppet government to be installed. But even in that sense the wider aim was to isolate China and it came at an awkward time as US foreign policy underwent a hard pivot to focus on the Pacific under Obama in the mid 2010's. Once it became clear Russia wasn't going to capitulate and China declared it wouldn't abandon Russia the west shifted to a more blatant neo-colonial agenda in Ukraine and began implementing severe austerity measures on the Ukrainian economy as well as securing mining and resource concessions for western companies. In essence, they pillaged Ukraine for all it was worth. This is where we see the biggest contradiction between Ukrainian nationalists and the EU and the US. They genuinely want to fight Russia to the end. For the EU so they don't become the second rate power in their own neighborhood and Ukraine because Nazis but the US is actually attempting to address more severe threats to its hegemony at Ukraines expense. The erosion of the petro dollar dominance via Iran in the ME and China. The western bourgeosie know that Russia isn't the rabid beast they are spinning in the media and for the US the war in Ukraine is proving to be an unnecessary drain on military hardware it can no longer replace. The US Will abandon Ukraine entirely very soon simply because it has to if it wants to be able to confront China on a bigger scale. An objective it has already failed at.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Yes, but have you considered that the current government in the US is actually that stupid? They have shot themselves in the foot several times out of sheer incompetence. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump wanted a propaganda victory in the form of a peace deal before the midterms.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Maybe, but the internal contradictions in the empire have boiled to the point where I vager a "New New Deal" is basically extremely unlikely, because any such actor would be put down, by fascist infighting. Which is why we don't see them emerging. There's number of ways to make concession here and keep the imperial project going, but that involves a Multi-Polar world view. Empire wants to be 1 pole.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 weeks ago

    A New New Deal is definitely impossible, I agree with you on that, but some we'll-leave-you-two-to-it tipe deal where Trump leaves Ukraine holding the bag isn't out of the question, in my mind. The only things thing required for that is fatigue on the part of the yanks (be it supplies, political or economic). We've seen Trump get bored of dealing with these situations before. The man just wants to build ballrooms and look strong by blowing someone up from time to time. It isn't impossible for them not to know when it's the right time to call it quits. I don't think that requires anything special except for shifting the propaganda machine into a higher gear. The world order needn't change for that, they will still maintain a grip over Europe, on account of them being a bunch of Nazis who would rather die then cooperate with Putin.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 weeks ago* (1 child)

    It's depressing, sure, but I have no belief in the mainstream west. Revolutionary optimism and all that, sure, I believe in it, but most in the west and especially those still in the "liberal" camp are genuinely devoid of morals or principles, and in a time when the great mass of humanity- the entire global south including Russia- is on the upswing, I see converting them like converting Puyi- nice, if possible, and a worthwhile effort, but not a main goal or necessary obstacle to the success of the proletariat and humanity in general.

    They can stew in their delusions if they want to, of those who are worth saving, they are already coming to question the narratives around Ukraine (and have already come to wholly disbelieve western narratives around Palestine). They have brains of their own, they should learn to use them for the first time in their lives (for non-malicious or opportunistic reasons, anyways). And if not, I'd say I wish them the best, but I really don't... they'll create their own, wholly self-inflicted punitive conditions, that's all I'd say (and I would actually wish them "the best" in that regard if not for the fact other innocents will as always also suffer). Meanwhile humanity will move onwards, they can get with the program or not, but I'm more than fine with leaving them behind and I think most of the world is too.

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