Image is an illustration that I have made to show what each side means when they say that Hormuz is "open" or "closed", as various officials and analysts have created a lot of confusion with their statements, both intentionally and unintentionally.
I'm tentatively going back to the weekly thread format in the hopes that even if/when the conflict resumes, daily comment counts will keep us at or below ~3000 per week. If not, we'll just go back to the 3000 comment threshold being what triggers a new thread being created.
The events of the last two weeks have been the most unintelligible of at least the last four years, and on some days I took one look at the situation and decided to just not even bother and do something else until the next day.
To attempt to summarize:
long summary
Against many people's expectations, including my own, the ceasefire was not immediately scuttled upon its inception despite violations (predominantly against Lebanon), which indicates to me that both the US and Iran wanted a ceasefire more than they wanted to continue firing, at least for two weeks. For both sides, it represented an opportunity to reorganize, rebuild, and restrategize going forward.
The US has continued its rapid flurry of airlifting to and from the Middle East, and while what exactly they have brought and intend to do next is a mystery, airlifting is a very inefficient method of transferring resources en masse, meaning that any kind of massive ground invasion is still many months away (though I still strongly doubt it'll ever happen). Attempting to do more raids like the failed Istafan raid seems like the most likely option, as well as perhaps some disastrous attempts to hold Gulf islands.
Meanwhile, Iran has been excavating the entrances to their missile cities and has rapidly rebuilt bridges and railway lines. While the rate of reconstruction has shocked some observers, people like us who have paid abnormally high attention to the Ukraine War will not be surprised - infrastructure is very difficult to take out for any meaningful length of time even when it's not purposefully decentralized. It also seems extremely likely that Iran has continued to receive shipments of resources and weapons from Russia and China, though what exactly is being supplied is not concretely known.
Iran sent a highly qualified team to Pakistan to negotiate, and the US sent, among others, Vice President Vance too. After a marathon ~20 hour session, no deal was struck, and both sides left Pakistan (the Iranian team taking many precautions to not get shot down). While the nuclear issue seemed to be the major sticking point, it is very difficult to see the US - and Trump in particular - formally agreeing to a tollbooth in Hormuz or the retreat from their Middle Eastern bases even if they have already effectively retreated from most of them.
These negotiations took place in an environment of constant violations of the ceasefire on the Lebanon front. Iran initially tied their attendance of talks to a total cessation of conflict in Lebanon, though ultimately decided to go to Islamabad without a de facto ceasefire but with some sort of guarantee that we'll go tell Netanyahu to stop firing for a while. A few days after the negotiations failed, a more comprehensive ceasefire was actually achieved in Lebanon. It's still a Zionist Ceasefire ("you cease fire, we keep attacking"), and the Zionists committed several massive civilian atrocities just before the ceasefire began. After the ceasefire began, violations have, to my knowledge, been remarkably few up to the time of me writing this.
Shortly after the failure of negotiations, the US began their own blockade of Iran's ports. As the US Navy cannot get within a few hundred miles of even the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz, the blockade is taking place at some line in the Sea of Oman, where Iranian ships will be intercepted. The confusion caused by this situation has been incredible, with a few days of people tracking Iranian tankers closely, concluding that if they had crossed the Strait of Hormuz, they had successfully ran the blockade (they had not). After about a week of this de jure blockade, it was indeed confirmed to be real when the US captured its first Iranian oil tanker. This prompted Iran to fully close the Strait of Hormuz (see the megathread image), and there are reports of, as always, at best questionable veracity that in response to the US's blockade of their blockade, Iran possibly intends to 1) totally blockade Gulf State ports in the Persian Gulf of any kind, not just oil, and/or 2) talk to their ally Ansarallah and have them blockade the Red Sea (and they seem keen to do so in support of the Resistance).
Additionally, Iran has made the end of the US blockade the precondition to enter into new negotiations. The short term and even medium term effect of the US blockade will be minimal - China has a colossal strategic petroleum reserve which will last them several months even with their economy at full steam even assuming all Middle Eastern imports are cut off overnight, and Iran itself is not wholly reliant on oil exports for basic survival like other oil states (though it'll certainly hurt the economy if prolonged). There are also certain ways that the blockade can be subverted, like potentially some advanced shadow fleet tactics with the cooperation of allied countries, or, in the long term, the construction of overland oil transportation routes (a significant railway route was constructed in the last few years between Iran and China).
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.
New NASA study estimates that Artemis EVA suits will not be ready for demonstration until 2031, with their potential use in a moon landing being even later. The lunar suits were originally scheduled for completion in 2025.
China will be in alpha centauri before the US lands on the moon again.
China should do that thing in races between runners and people who are unfit where the runner would purposefully sandbag and trail ever so slightly behind the unfit person so the unfit person thinks they stand a chance and completely destroy their body in the process through the false hope that they could actually beat the runner.
I don't think mister piss was being serious but was using exaggeration.
You never know, space brainworms are real.
While China's space program has been less wasteful than the USA's it's still largely dickmeasuring and full of dreams of exploitation. Like getting the water on the moon first to kick off asteroid harvesting is funny from the angle of owning the usa who refused to sign a treaty making the moon common heritage of humankind, but it's still robbing the rest of everyone else.
If someone is going to start mining asteroids I'd rather it be the socialist state that thrives on equal trade rather than the orphan annihilator run by ghouls
All ~~power~~ asteroids to the ~~soviets~~ Chinese!
If humankind is going to have a future that doesn't involve cooking the earth, then manned spaceflight isn't just a necessity but an obligation
The socialist utopia if it's ever going to be found, will be realized up there
Actual, real deal space colonization would 100% require communism to have already won down here on earth, then probably several hundred years of rapid technological advancement before it becomes any sort of practical. We will never colonize space while a profit motive exists, it's too outrageously expensive compared to the reward for any government or private entity to currently justify.
My pet theory is that capitalism is the great filter and it's why no alien civilization has any sort of visible presence that we can detect. They take themselves out due to their own greed before they can travel past their planets.
It's not an either or thing, space development even under capitalist polities leads to technical developments immensely useful to socialists looking for alternatives in countless fields and applications
Obviously we'd all prefer communists lead the charge, but that hasn't been possible for the last 50 years, except now China is making it possible and are we really gonna sit here like luddites and scoff at Chinese space development and go "Yeah they're definitely wasting their time, NO useful developments have EVER emerged as a result of space development, the Soviets were wasting their time, they should've let the US win the space race harder" like really?
Also "several hundred years" is just mindless conservatism, who in the 1930s besides the futurists could've predicted the space race or the moon landings? Turns out the futurists were being conservative in their expectations, and the science skeptics were just downright wrong
Neoliberals and market fundamentalists may take several hundred years, but that's not an appropriate expectation for any communist to hold, especially in light of the unfolding climate catastrophe
Space colonisation as some way to reach a promised utopia is just the second coming for geeks.
Science fiction stories are fun but they're just stories. Earth is immensely suited to supporting human life and the overwhelming majority of it is completely inhospitable, like if you pick a random volume of earth more than likely you would rapidly die there. Realistically we scratch out a living on a tiny film that covers sometimes like 30% of the total surface area.
Here we have mild temperatures, radiation shielding, a large atmosphere, a thriving biosphere (admittedly declining currently), gravity, abundant water, fuel, sunlight, soil that isn't made of knives or chemicals that probably interfere with human sexual maturity (moon and Mars respectively).
If you've ever managed any sort of artificial environment (aquarium, terrarium, hydroponics etc) you'll have an appreciation of how suddenly these fail and how much management they require even with all of the earth sheltering and supporting it, and cities of people available for help and reasources. If giant artificial farms on earth aren't a particularly plausible way to feed people why would they be easier in space?
If tunnel digging is too expensive and dangerous to build important roads through mountains or underground cities in deserts why would it be easier in space?
We don't even know if humans can carry babies to term in low gravity environments, let alone grow safely.
Space is a fun fantasy but this earth will be the home of us and all other earthlings. It is bountiful almost beyond measure and more than capable of supporting billions of us.
If you want an industrial civilization on earth that doesn't also collapse the biosphere, then space absolutely has to be in play, a cottagcore solar punk communist revolution is not around the corner and its not an either or thing, both developments need to happen simultaneously
Space development by either China or even the haphazard capitalist funded orgs are necessary for the emergence of novel innovations and technical refinement for the space and earth bound technologies that will be needed to negate the climate apocalypse
It's almost like solving these technical hurdles in space has massive implications and applications for mass scaled "billions supporting" agriculture here on earth and maybe the overarching reason we would want to move agriculture and industry to space is that so we don't collapse the fucking climate!
The conservatism and luddism that scoffs at these developments like these can quickly morph into climate denialism
We already have the technology. This is not an issue
A technology that negates apocalypse has to scale and be realized socially, economically and poltically on a macro global scale
Thanks to the state subsidized efforts of China and its diffusion and transfer of some green tech, CERTAIN elements of the apocalypse have been delayed....while other markers are accelerating, so we're nowhere near negation by way of the mere existence of certain extant tech
This is why I find these reactionary luddite sentiments so contemptible; aside from spitting on the visionary history of socialism it also advances magical thinking in regards to tech, ignoring its difficult maintenance and integration into a world dominated by capitalism
We desperately need more development in every field, particularly space, not less, it's utterly bizarre for a group who considers themselves socialists to entertain reductionist and reactionary takes like the kind displayed in this thread
I get it, the imperialist Americans went around the moon, ouch oof
You know what China should do? They should land on the moon, build a fuckin base and give the world more critical novel innovations from the results
Space is our vision, not the capitalists
you are the one claiming we need to do more innovations. its like wunderwaffe for climate change. what magical innovation are we lacking? degrowth and reforestation is dead simple.
i am not anti tech or anti space. your other points are not arguing with anything i've said. my point is purely that climate change is a solveable issue. we have all the tech we need. it is a problem of controlling the means of production. to say that more tech would solve climate change is a reactionary talking point. this is literally the Bill Gates-ian vision of the world. i am not sure why you are trying to spin it as the opposite.
How on earth are you gonna realize degrowth without the necessary super scalable technologies that can manage it socially and economically that doesn't result in the deaths of billions and emergence of further fascism?
And sorry to burst your bubble but we could reforest all of the sahara and it would still be too late to prevent the coming catastrophe, also you have a poor idea the amount of labor and resources required for reforesting to yield significant climate postive results, it's mega structure levels of logistics and energy expenditures
No we don't, I don't know what subreddit put this idea in your head, but not even China is carbon neutral and the rare earth supply line is not an infinite pool of resources that can be gureenteed to scale to the levels needed for a climate secure globe
Both those points are true and mutually reinforcing, the means of production ARE a technology! The development of the means of production to guarantee their usage doesn't collapse the biosphere we rely on isn't simply a desirable afterthought that we can fudge, its a existential, civilizational, socialistic obligation
Like are you all Owenists now, is that the idea? Are we all supposed to buy some farmland in Ohio, build a greenhouse and plant some trees and sing kumbaya happily ever after?
no, we should also vote for zohran mamdani
Space exploration certainly has it's place as an engine for technological development but I remain sceptical about it becoming this Deus ex machina that solves our problems as a species.
Earth is perfectly capable of supporting its current population and quite a lot more given our current level of technological development. People going without the material resources they need for a dignified existence is primarily a political and economic problem, not a technical one.
No matter how much we manage to fuck up earth, making it inhabitable for more people than today is going to be orders of magnitude easier than making long-term large scale human settlement in space viable to be.
Why do people keep saying this as if we're not in the middle of a global climate collapse and the Great Holocene Extinction?
Yes in a vacuum conception of earth tens of billions of human beings could stand on the earth's surface and presumably not starve to death
But I would think people who subscribe to a communist view of reality would inherently understand its not simply a matter of physics but a question of politics and social organization
We want and need an industrial civilization with high standards of living, meanwhile the earth is dying; there's a potential synthesis here that is begging the attention of people who claim to subscribe to socialism, and that synthesis is pointing toward the path of least resistance, where the biosphere isn't brushing up against human development, and that path is called space
I get the sense that you are an enthusiast rather than an expert, or even an expert in any related scientific field.
It is easy to make sweeping claims of possibility from a place or pop science but the realities are so much more technical. If you are interested in this stuff then I'd encourage you to check out zach weinersmith's book "a city on mars" which is a very even handed, and to my mind far too optimistic, examination of a small percentage of the barriers to human space colonisation.
It's very easy reading, and a good jumping off point if you want to learn more about any of the potential problems.
We can do cool hydroponics research without building rockets btw, and actually many solutions to earth problems are probably surprisingly low tech. Stuff like bamboo reenforced concrete, or the green circles claiming the sahara are cheap, terrestrial, and humanity transforming innovations just as two examples.
You couldn't even immediately clock how closed system technical innovations in space could have applications for hydroponics systems here on earth where the most important issue is environmental pollution potential
Like don't even front
Space development is not confined to idea of colonizing Mars, dispersed and diffused rotational habitats is where the real science is pointing toward and the barriers in that field are primarily economic, which is why communists are obliged to contest this ground and show up the capitalists who are more concerned with marketing and profits than the further development of worldchanging novel innovations
We also do cool hydroponics research in space and the applications that result have transformed hydroponics multiple times
Again, it's not either or, those innovations are useful but they're not enough to secure the climate or support billions on their own
Are you an expert then?
You aren't, and you're annoyed at me for poking holes in your fantasy instead of taking this as an opportunity to learn.
Learn what? Pretentious luddism and some rustic utopian fantasy about r/Offgrid low tech bullshit that's somehow going to overcome the capitalist world order all by its lonesome?
I have no patience for reactionary takes concerning critical technologies, we need super charged development in all fields, particularly space development if we're going to survive the next centruy without a million species deaths and dozens of holocausts
Alright buddy
There's value in human scientists being on-site for space exploration. Robots can only get us so far, especially with transmission time lag. Colonization is certainly pie-in-the-sky fantasy with current technologies but we can do science bases.
Could you be specific? I have done scientific research as a job and it's not obvious to me what robots couldn't do. Research must justify itself, researchers are burdensome on society and in using the resources you have to do something more worthwhile than just play time for elites.
Sometimes satisfying human curiosity is enough, and when things are as cheap as ground based astronomy we can justify it that way but humans in space are staggeringly expensive vs robots. The ISS hasn't really justified itself on scientific grounds for example.
If you want to know if mars ever had life robots can do that, want to search titan's methane waters? Robots. Want to characterise the asteroid belt, maybe investigate the viability of asteroid defenses? Robots.
Robots can't take qualatative experiencial shit down but that's play time.
What a vile and ignorant statement.
What? I have been a researcher, being a researcher means that someone else toils to feed you, someone toils to get the materials you use, someone toils to build and maintain the place you work, someone toils to manage logistics of it all etc etc etc.
Every hour on a machine you use is an hour someone else can't, is an hour of the lifetime of expensive and often hazardous components. Every square meter of a lab is a place someone else can't work.
How is it vile or ignorant to acknowledge that, and that you are being endowed with public trust that you are using these resources for the betterment of all and not wasting them recklessly.
Have you ever done research? Every grant you get is one someone else didn't. You absolutely better not be wasting that, or standing in the way of someone who wont.
I see the second half in that researchers, like all humans, have needs that must be met, but it's a very bad way to posit that concept.
And the whole point of research is that you don't know if it will be justified until you've finished it! You have to research the thing to determine what the answer will be!
This is false. While you don't know whether something will work out you do have a whole pile of work that suggests it might.
It's difficult not to dox myself here if I try to give concrete examples but you might know that some material has some behaviour which is interesting, and you might know that said behaviour could be bent to xyz purpose via some mathematical models or other people's work.
So you propose to investigate whether you can reliably trigger said behaviour, and you justify this based on the above and that said material is affordable and readily made.
The revolution is happening here on Earth. There's really nothing much up there.
Nothing up there besides an infinity of resources and space, definitely two things that have no application to the development of communism
Also a revolution is decidedly NOT happening on earth at the moment, perhaps a lack of vision among those who advocate for revolution is part of the explanation for why not?
There is an infinity of resources in the same way that there is a staggering amount of iron in the sahara or as much lithium as we could dream of using in the waves that break on the shores of the world.
The presence of material is rarely the issue.
Yes the overarching issue is whether we collapse ecosystems and the climate by mass extracting these materials on earth
Which is why space can be a pretty useful alternative
The worst case scenario for climate collapse is that the Earth becomes exactly as uninhabitable as every other place humans could feasibly reach
except we still get radiation shielding, areas of livable temperatures, a biosphere if a degraded one, and rainfall.
Almost like I'm speaking colloquially and not engaging in technical theory crafting at the moment
Sure, but you're also talking with certainty about some deus ex machina from space that will solve the apocalypse without actually specifying what that technology would even entail so there's a lot of those "vibes" from your comments atm.
No harm tho, just want to caution against hopium like carbon-capture, lab-grown meat and fusion reactors.
Personally, Id rather they be spending money on manned space stuff and moon stuff than on weapons and bombs
They're not bound by budgets. They're wasting resources on space flight on top of wasting resources on war.
Unfortunately that's not really how it works. The budget usually comes from other, far more useful places.
?????
I don't understand why this is a sticking point or why it's so long. They already have suits that go outside on the space station?
They do have the ISS EVA suits, but:
:warhammer-40k:
it's really great how it doesn't even take us going through a massive interstellar apocalyptic civil war to end up like this, just a couple of decades of a slowdown in development in certain areas, not even an outright stop, and a whole bunch of shit becomes lostech
It's true, it is quite quite surprising and counterintuitive that a nation could just "forget" how to build something.
One lesson seems to be that once you shut down the production line (especially for aerospace tech?) it will never be restarted
The industry contract model forced upon NASA by the US congress since even the old NACA pre-NASA days really exacerbates this. A NASA spacesuit or spacecraft or rocket isn't just a NASA spacesuit or spacecraft or rocket, it's a collection of parts made by countless subcontractors assembled by contractors and then provided to NASA. Something as simple as a subcontractor going bankrupt and their assets being sold off can mean a whole new subassembly having to be redesigned from scratch and re-certified for spaceflight. It's rarely a case of "knowledge being lost" per se, it's usually more like "it would cost millions to rework the design and make new hardware, let's limp along with what spare hardware we have left until we can find a senator willing to back a redesign because there's a subcontractor in their state who wants the pork".
So basically, it's capitalism's fault.
Ironically, the reason that owned-by-ultracapitalist-shithead SpaceX doesn't have this problem and why they can keep internal costs down is that they are extremely vertically integrated. They rarely work with outside contractors, and when they do, it's usually a "job interview" for that outside contractor to be bought out and brought internal by SpaceX. If NASA were allowed to have the same vertical-integration do-it-ourselves structure that SpaceX has, US space exploration would be decades more advanced and far less expensive than it is now.
Yeah that stuff is nasty. To elaborate, It's like microscopic knife blades. Because the Moon has no weather, the tiny shards of rock that get sprayed out from meteorite impacts never get blunted down like it would on Earth from water and wind erosion. It stays jagged little knife blades forever. The A7L/A7LB suits used on the Apollo missions took a lot of damage. For the same reason it's also extremely damaging to human health if breathed in or touched with bare hands. Most sane lunar science base proposals I've seen rely on humans staying indoors (on base or in bus-sized vehicles) and controlling robots. Spacesuits would still be needed for certain tasks of course, but the idea would be to limit usage whenever possible to extend the hardware lifespan and airlock-cleanliness problems.
Spacesuits for Mars missions would actually be a much easier engineering project. The dust there has been eroded down by billions of years of wind. Even Mars' thin atmosphere has done a good job of erosion over billions of years. Mars base airlocks would also be able to do things like cleaning cycles using compressed Martian atmosphere (almost entirely very-equipment-safe CO2) to just blast any accumulated dust from the airlock. You don't need any technology more advanced than an air compressor for that. Can't do that on a lunar base airlock without wasting air.
Martian spacesuits would also be able to get rid of heat buildup from convection, something that can't be done in vacuum. Suits rated for vacuum have incredibly complex cooling systems. Honestly if the Moon weren't figuratively next door, we'd probably ignore it as a human exploration target entirely. It's a horrific environment for humans by any standard. Mars is comparatively much easier with current technology. The only hard part is getting there.
Another fun fact that neither of us mentioned yet is that the regolith is electrically charged so it sticks to everything like evil packing peanuts.
Pretty accessible rundown from NASA