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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[–] 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Sounds impressive but doesn't mean much per se besides the fact the Russians have a larger Soviet era reserves and production capacity which no one ever really disputed. It's a little helpful clearly but it hasn't yet resulted in dramatic gains due to the way deployments have unfolded there.

The US dropped a lot more pounds of bombs on the Vietnamese than they did on the Americans yet they ultimately won. As we're seeing with Iran mere air power and dropping tons of bombs on an enemy doesn't automatically equal a victory. Russia isn't even practicing something like leveling Ukrainian cities (ala WW2 style) to totally destroy their industry and society which would have practical effects on the type of war they could wage. (Not that I believe they presently can do that as Ukraine has too much anti-air defense for Russians to get even glide bombs close enough to say level Kiev to say nothing of more western cities without taking unacceptable and un-replaceable levels of loss to their air force)

Russia still faces a deeply entrenched and committed enemy that is using escalating terrorist tactics which has successfully prevented a breakthrough or front collapse for years now and which even now is being transferred advanced British/EU missile weapons knowledge to produce more advanced weapons for more spectacular (and painful) rear of lines attacks on Russia. Short of Russia doing something dramatic like a general mobilization and rushing troops to the front to press and push a breakthrough or front collapse or something wild like using nuclear weapons I think it's fair to say this war is going to continue burning for quite a while and things are going to get worse for Russia in terms of the hits its taking for probably years before they get better. I don't dispute a limited breakthrough to secure the Russian oblasts could occur though even that doesn't look particularly likely based on past results.

Western goal is pretty clearly to keep Ukraine in the fight until 2030 when Europe "plans" to be "ready" to "defend" against a Russian attack (aka defend against Russian retaliation to them attacking Russia). Given they're repatriating Ukrainian refugees in the west who number several million draft eligible young men their pool of fodder to keep the slow grind going stands a good chance of sustaining them there. Russia may very well free the oblasts it claims before that point but that won't stop the war. And Ukraine can still draft women of course in a zionist entity style. They already make use of the most Nazi women as volunteer drone pilots murdering Russian children as well as soldiers.

Russia keeps issuing final warning type vague threats but the British now believe with good reason they carry no weight given their increasing boldness and the hundred year partnership which may just be a confidence con measure but says something of probable intent to militarize whatever Ukrainian state Russia leaves by the time fighting does stop. In the meanwhile the west benefits immensely from the battlefield data and drone experience and tech and tactics they are learning from Ukraine and will put them to good use in a future hot war against Russia or China so they're definitely getting their bang for their buck. Most likely they're most interested in refining AI autonomous drone systems and targeting as they see those as a wonderweapon which can even the playing field against China. Those could also be used as a great terror weapon which the Nazi west loves. Literal hunter-killer robots unleashed on civilian populations to chase, seek and murder civilians is right along western terror tactics playbooks and they are salivating at the possibility of having such a system to unleash on the Chinese.

Overall it seems logical more slow grind continues. Russia makes small advances, takes this or that region exceptionally slowly but no end to the war, no Russian victory, no great issues for Ukraine continuing terror attacks on Russian civilians and resisting and making Russia struggle for every collection of hamlets and/or city it takes. The question is what kind of victory can Russia reasonably hope to achieve and how. Battlefield successes need to translate eventually to either a totally destroyed enemy or one that signs and upholds your terms of surrender and the problem is Ukraine doesn't cost the west anything. It is a money-printing machine for American and European arms makers in fact and other people (Ukrainians) die to keep it and their battle test lab open which they use to refine and advance the tactics of the new age of warfare. As such the west has no reason to let Ukraine surrender and every reason to keep stringing it and its die-hard Nazi leadership along. So this is going to be a major pain for Russia for years to come I think.

(As an aside thank you for following rule 4 and providing sources when so many do not, it's really a credit to you)

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  • [–] 6 points 12 hours ago

    It really depends on what the goal of the Russian military actually is, which we can speculate on but not actually know.

    The many benefits of war from the Western side also apply to Russia itself, with the only bad part being that Russian are losing their lives. However, from the Russian government's perspective (as it is a bourgeois government that doesn't necessarily value peace for the sake of the proletariate), it provides a chilling effect on any political or unorganized criminal opposition within the country. Bourgeois countries love to have a meat grinder to throw some of their excess population into.

    In this way, I doubt it is going to get worse for Russia in the long run here, but rather it will just muddle along continuing to develop even more advanced weapons tech than the West, while Europe will have a fairly precipitous fall off of living standards due to having to buy weaponry as opposed to manufacture their own. Basically, there doesn't seem to be any real incentives from either side to draw the war to a decisive conclusion, outside of the direct benefits to the proletariate, but who the hell cares about them in this day and age?

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  • [–] 16 points 1 day ago

    Absolutely. it is always logistically more expensive to be the attacking side in any war, and Ukraine is no different.

    I would say that the drone volume is misleading as Russia's air defense network (on average) much more effective than Ukraine's, including agsinst drones. The tonnage of explosives hitting their targets is still disproportionately in Russia's favour.

    But even if the maths favour Russia, unless they want to mobilize the predictions of defeat August-December this year seem to be... optimisitic. Fewer caskets coming home makes for fewer resources to use on replenishing the front

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