Image is of a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.
As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there’s been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.
In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia’s runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda’s 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn’t risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.
Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America’s ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.
Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.
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
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:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
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.
the negotiations do seem like a waste of time, but the alternative of resuming hot war isn’t great either. this grey area middle ground mutual blockade is hurting the US, but the israelis are benefiting as well, since they are currently able to prosecute their war against lebanon and ethnic cleansing/genocide in gaza/west bank without being interrupted by iranian missiles. Iran said that they’re done negotiating until israel knocks it off, but I question whether not being willing to negotiate is sufficient to get the americans to reign the israelis in.
to expand on this, I’m aware of ansarallah, but their attacks against israel previously were not sufficient to bring israel to heel. the US is more extended now than they were before which is to their advantage, but unless they have some real new tactics I question whether their activation is enough pressure. hopefully hot war doesn’t fully heat up again, there is a real risk of world famine should the gulf really get blown apart.
I don’t personally see many paths right now to bring this conflict to a more complete halt.
The first is somehow managing to shut down the BTC pipeline. Israel isn’t substantially hurt by the blockade of Hormuz because the majority of their oil doesn’t transverse it. But Iran can’t attack Azerbaijan without stoking a more dangerous ground war with Azerbaijan and likely Turkey, and Turkey has yet to grapple with the contradiction of its “pan-Turkic” relationship with Azerbaijan against he fact that it’s supposed client state is actively fueling the war machine of a country that is now saying “Turkey is next”.
The second is somehow getting South Africa to stop sending coal to Israel. For all of its work with the ICJ, South Africa remains one of the main suppliers of Israel’s most needed fuel source for electricity production: coal. If Israel starts having rolling blackouts in the middle of summer, or they have to decide between domestic fuel consumption or fuel for the war machine, I think the domestic situation gets increasingly untenable in a way that could force Israel to the table.
The third, most powerful and also seemingly least likely, is China realizing that they are going to have to actively get involved and throw their economic weight around if a deal is to both get done any time soon and actually be enforced such that this war doesn’t immediately start up again. That likely involves a Chinese embargo of Israel or at least severe economic sanctions, plus making some tough threats and ultimatums to some of Israel’s regional and weaker global allies. Its been my opinion for a while that China could end this entire conflict in a few months by using their economic leverage, but it’s strategy the country seems to want to avoid at all costs to maintain their current foreign policy strategies.
Maybe there is enough strain on the American capitalist class to force Trump’s hand, but I have trouble seeing it right now.
me waitin on xi
Agreed that’s possible and could even work if it was globally coordinated, but 0% chance they’ll do this. China doesn’t seem a big fan of unilateral sanctions.
Wasting time during negotiations does help iran by given them to regroup their forced and repaired whats damage, so it not a complete negative to engage in negotiations
agreed, I think it’s probably a positive for Iran itself, but lebanese/palestinians are really taking it on the chin in the meantime.
That and every day that passes reduces available oil inventories. Iran seems to be in a position to benefit from every day there is no significant opening of Hormuz. The US blockade changes the equation but I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest it’s imposing unbearable costs on Iran. It looks like the Iranian stock market is showing confidence and while there are limits on what is trading it seems to suggest that locals believe things are economically on the right track. I don’t believe that exchanges are perfect proxies for the economy but it’s certainly relevant.
Caveats: I’m definitely not an expert and am relying on machine translations for Farsi language articles.
We also got to remember that Iran like the DPRK are Autarkies due to the International sanctions so they dont really depend from the global economy