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 Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.


My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summary

After many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they’re going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America’s perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they’ll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they’re very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there’s one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I’m a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn’t risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they’re “agreeing” to don’t really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we’ll know for sure soon.


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:

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.


  • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.net
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    After years in the PSL leadership, Walter Smolarek has resigned and published a devastating tell-all letter alleging internal authoritarianism, sabotage of local organizing efforts, and even the development of an AI-powered system to monitor members.

    A particularly alarming claim in Smolarek’s letter alleges that PSL is now spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ software developers to build an A.I.-powered secret police system with the objective of spying on members of every PSL branch in the country. Its stated purpose is to compile reports that the national leadership will use to “ensure compliance with national directives.” He says members caught reading Jacobin or taking an organizing class are treated as security breaches. According to Smolarek, this comes at a time when the organization refuses to fund political or leadership education initiatives.

    Article on the resignation

    Resignation letter (Google doc)

    • PleasantPeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      2 hours ago

      where did this first quote come from, “internal authoritarianism” is libshit but not in either of your 2 links

      that pet peeve aside, the doc is quite concerning, but supposedly the central committee sent out a response that you can see here: https://clarion.unity-struggle-unity.org/2026-06-16-the-psl-letters/ (note that USU has been opposed to the PSL for a long time so I wouldnt 100% trust this response unless someone has a different source)

      the response just makes this seem like more of the same infighting we’ve seen in socialist parties for centuries, and tbh i have no clue how to decide who is telling the truth, because PSL is very opaque in how it operates afaict

      • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.net
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        1 hour ago

        where did this first quote come from, “internal authoritarianism” is libshit but not in either of your 2 links

        Twitter post by the people that wrote the article. I didn’t save it but it was basically just the first bit I quoted plus a link to the article.

    • SuperZutsuki [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 hours ago

      PSL stalin-gun-1stalin-gun-2

      I understand you need to enforce some kind of party line but wasting money on AI to attempt (and fail at) that instead of having a proper organizational structure is just abysmal. Jacobin sucks, but you should be reading what others are so you can understand them better. And taking organizing classes outside of the PSL structure should be seen as an opportunity to reach out to more people. American “leftist” organizations are truly the scum of the earth.

      • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        30 minutes ago

        Hear hear.

        Whilst not a claim of superiority of the IWW (because none of us need convincing that wobblies are storming the winter palace rn) the prevailing feeling is that trying to compete with comradely orgs is a waste of good organising time, and there’s not an inherent contradiction in allowing for a revolutionary program that embraces that!

        Call it liberalism or call it mosaic socialism but at least in the UK the only way the state is gonna be whittled down in class struggle is by leveraging the diversity of movements until we have something even vaugely resembling a revolutionay struggle. Even a vanguardist movement can benefit from organising in a way that doesn’t take every commie that carries another card as a security risk!

      • PleasantPeasant [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        2 hours ago

        and even the development of an AI-powered system to monitor members.

        @[email protected] im not sure that is a totally accurate description of this, this is the actual quote from the doc

        Currently the NOD is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars employing highly skilled software developers to create an AI-powered app to compile comprehensive reports from all areas of the Party for the top leadership circle without having to deal with time-consuming personal engagement with branch leaders

        this reads to me more as trying to summarize large reports that branch leaders give out, and again this is all he-said-she-said stuff, has anyone even seen receipts from either side? although, it is weird that the supposed central committee response didnt respond to that accusation at all

        • SuperZutsuki [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          That still sucks ass. Why waste money on an AI boondoggle to decrease human-to-human communication? Extremely bad look for a leftist org. Organizing is hard and time-consuming. No amount of money spent on software is going to change that. If you think engaging with branch leaders is too time-consuming, look at how parties in the past/present have handled communications. There’s no reason to be squandering all that money on slop machines.