My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The situation in the Middle East remains very tense, with the two major points of speculation being 1) whether the war will resume at all, or if the US is bluffing to try and get Iran to concede on their demands, and 2) assuming the war will resume, whether the US will conduct strikes on Iran before or after the elections within the Zionist entity; the point being to try and further delay the elections by citing the war they started as an emergency and therefore keep Netanyahu in power. Quite frankly, if Netanyahu wants to risk destroying the whole Zionist project just to save his own skin, then I have no objections - aside from the part where he might do immense damage to the world economy in the process by prompting Iran's promise of regional retaliation, of course. Meanwhile, the Saudis keep getting pummelled, with Ansarallah landing missile after missile on pipeline pumping stations, airbases, military officials, and troop accumulations. Even the Western media is becoming dour about MBS's prospects. Attempts to isolate Iran economically are becoming rather spotty. Pakistan briefly halted their border exchange with Iran, but once Iran splashed cold water on their face by restricting their fossil fuel exports into Pakistan - which is already in a politically unstable situation - they wised up quickly and reopened them.
Next up, we have the surprising victory of Lula in the second round of the Brazilian elections. A loss in the first round into a victory in the second round hasn't happened in Brazilian history since 1989, and the president winning a fourth term via a democratic vote is unprecedented - and I fully confess that I went into this thinking Bolsonaro was gonna scrape by with a ~0.5% lead, so I will publicly and gladly admit to being wrong. The regular suite of electoral irregularities and not-quite-illegal tactics took place to try and prevent Lula from gaining the requisite votes, including a swathe of widespread interruptions to public transportation in cities that typically vote for Lula, as well as Meta putting a thumb on the scale by apparently reducing the visibility of Lula's online campaign. However, countering that was an upsurge of people who were otherwise unengaged who presumably went "oh shit" when they saw the first round results, as well as an emergency two hour extension to voting in order to counter the aforementioned public transportation interruptions. The next year or two will determine if Lula's victory is a curious aberration or instead a breakwater to the rising tide of conservatism in Latin America, fueled somewhat by explicit American intervention but mostly by the populace themselves finding little hope in lukewarm social democrats and instead finding community in, among other places, right-wing evangelical religious groups. I recommend RedSails 2023 piece, Reformists, Revolutionaries, and Social Liberals, which delves into the broad contours of the Latin American and particularly Brazilian political landscape, and how even reformism has been essentially abandoned in many countries in the region (and, therefore, why ground has been ceded to the right-wing lately).
It remains difficult to keep track of global events as the crisis worsens. The Hormuz oil glut prophesized by the US military and its quislings is still yet to show signs of being founded in reality, with Brent oil prices now reaching highs resembling those in the period of outright war in April, and emergency fuel supplies in the US being increasingly dipped into. While the biggest cause of this price increase is obviously the literal scarcity of oil, some of this trend is due to comically high tanker rates (which are that high due to a number of factors but which all still ultimately stem from Iranian strikes on tankers trying to slip through the strait), and some of it is due to China amping up their oil imports just in time for the US midterms, which puts further stress on world supplies. All of this pressure continues to feed protests and riots, of which those in Europe have received the most attention. The pressure on populations is coming at the exact same time that broader financial conditions reach points that usually prompt austerity measures, creating a pressure cooker of contradictions which governments will have to attempt to survive. Some have already failed to do so, such as Serbia's - however, as I said last week, the root cause of the dissatisfaction is typically another factor that the economic problems are merely fueling (i.e. in Serbia's case, a student movement).
As a more positive final note, Kim Jong-un visited the Chinese border city of Dandong to commemorate the 76th anniversary of Chinese troops marching to help northern Korea during the Korean War, with both countries reportedly seeking to deepen their industrial and trade cooperation. The New Yalu River Bridge between the two has finally formally opened after a 12 year delay, shortly after a bridge between the DPRK and Russia was completed last month.
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
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.
