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 depicts the aftermath of a Yemeni missile impacting King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preambleIt's been a much slower week than last week, consisting mainly of consolidation and (so far, empty) threats.

In Yemen, Ansarallah continues to battle Saudi-backed mercenary groups. Gains have been relatively slower compared to the lightning offensive earlier that took the western coastline, which makes sense with all the new territory they have to administer and generally sort out, including fortifying towns and cities against potential Saudi assaults from the north. The biggest news so far has been Trump apparently being on the verge of striking Yemen over the weekend due to Saudi insistence, to the extent that embassies across the region issued alerts warning that they might soon be attacked, but then deciding not to when people in his administration told him not to. I haven't cared for Trump's theatrics for several months now, so I won't care to speculate whether this is a bluff or a double bluff and so on; all I will say is that a couple years ago, a significantly stronger US military tried and failed to dislodge Ansarallah's control of the Red Sea, and that this time, they even seem willing to hit Saudi oil facilities in response.

On that note, diesel continues to break new price records, and gasoline isn't too far behind it. Outright shortages haven't yet become systemic, as tempting as it is to look at a couple gas stations running out and drawing trend lines from there, but it's certainly going to be where we're headed if there isn't a diesel export ban eventually, which Russia and others have already implemented. A ban would somewhat alleviate US price hikes, but would cause major instability throughout the rest of the world due to the ubiquity of diesel in transportation infrastructure, and if you've created a favourable international order over the past century or so, you really don't want to blow it up.

Next up: Poland's been amping up their anti-Russian rhetoric to new heights lately, joining Germany and others in advocating for further aid to Ukraine and the creation of modern national armies in Europe to send into Ukraine to battle Russia directly. This type of thing would have been rather frightening to me back in 2023 and 2024, but at this point, all I can do is shake my head. We all saw how the US military, which is more powerful than yours, has faired against Iran, which is weaker than Russia - and you want to arm yourself with largely American weapon systems, or at least systems heavily inspired by the American MIC? Lol. Lmao, even.

Lastly for today, Trump seems to have taken a victory lap over their more-or-less annexation of Greenland after Denmark permitted it. As I and many others noted back when this was all over the media initially months ago, the US has had a military base there for decades already and has been investing in mining there too for a while, so this is more of a formalization of the de facto status quo. Denmark previously technically had a veto on US military activity there, but now seems to be gone; after all, there is little chance that Denmark would ever have the courage to actually use said veto anyway at this point. So, geopolitically, it's a fairly minor news item that serves mainly as yet another humiliation for Europe in a long chain that stretches far into the past and continues to stretch into the future. For the Greenlanders themselves, however, this does seem like pretty catastrophic news, with any and all non-US foreign investment (such as by China) likely to be cut.

(and as a postscript here just before I hit post: yes, the Iranian president physically travelling to the US is embarrassing for Iran and very embarrassing for him. at least Araghchi going makes sense given he's the foreign minister. the silver lining of this debacle might be a further discrediting of the non-hardliner side?)


Last week's thread 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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[–] 69 points 4 days ago* (15 children)

CNBC - 10-year Treasury yield rockets to 19-year high: 5.104%. Here’s what’s driving the spike

Treasury rates spiked on Wednesday to multiyear highs in what was the biggest one-day move for the 10-year Treasury yield in nearly 18 months. There were a number of reasons cited for the sudden move higher:

  • Much stronger-than-expected surveys on U.S. economic activity, especially in the manufacturing sector

  • Hawkish commentary from a top Federal Reserve official

  • A U.S. Treasury auction for five-year notes that was met with poor demand

  • Stubbornly high oil prices with WTI crude rising 2%

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  • [–] 45 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    Stubbornly high oil prices with WTI crude rising 2%

    weird, i wonder what's causing oil prices to be stubborn

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  • [–] 17 points 3 days ago (6 children)

    For the uninformed, what is this an indicator of? US debt is a good investment (paid 5% returns)? A weaker dollar for ppp?

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  • [–] 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    One complication is with the petrodollar, you may need dollars to buy oil. So with oil prices high, lots of people have suddenly found their need for dollars expanded and they keep US treasuries as a way to keep dollars and earn some interest. If everyone is being forced to sell, then buyers can get lower prices and therefore higher yields. So it could just be an issue of too many sellers and not enough buyers rather than being a commentary on perceived riskiness of debt.

    Also, interest-rates are pre-inflation. So if inflation is 4%, then 5% yield is effectively ~1% real yield. So it may make riskier investments seem better by comparison.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 days ago* (2 children)

    good in the sense that return is higher, but the return is only higher to entice buyers because the underlying product is perceived as worse

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  • [–] 16 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Ty, yep I'm reading Pew's explainer on govt bonds. Just got to this part (emphasis mine):

    Let’s say the federal government issues $10 million in new bonds to cover some of its deficit. Each bond pays 5% interest annually (half every six months), and they start trading in the bond market as soon as they’re issued.

    If traders think the bonds are good investments, they may bid the price up – paying, say, $110 for a bond with a face value of $100. The yield on that bond falls from 5% to 3.79%.

    But if traders get worried that the government’s debt load is becoming unsustainable, or that higher inflation may erode the value of their interest payments, they may be only willing to pay $90 for a $100 bond. In that case, the yield rises, to 6.37%

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago*

    It's worth noting that - from what I understand - the bond market in many ways functions as the kind of the "floor of safety" (and thus interest rates and other related phenomena) for the broad range of all other investments and debts in the US.

    Everything else (all other investments and similar) essentially tacks on additional risk and reward (and cost for borrowing, etc) from that floor. And from what I understand this is a primary mechanism for inflation in general, as well as lots of other trickle-down effects (the real kind lol).

    For consumers it just means borrowing for anything - the borrowing itself - gets more expensive even while the prices for the "bought" things themselves just get higher and higher.

    For "investors" and the immensely complex house of cards that all gets built on top of that floor, the financial "industry" in all its facets and facades - things get riskier and riskier, I think. Mix in the weird ass side channels of private debt and various other shiny new fuckery that's been growing and growing in the dark, and shit looks pretty dicey. Looks pretty "unprecedented surprise systemic failure no one saw coming but lots of people got wildly rich throughout", yet again, even.

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