Image is of Iranian speedboats spotted by a satellite in the Strait of Hormuz.
Not terribly much has happened in the last week. The main two developments is the very much expected resumption of fire in Lebanon as the ZIonists are famously agreement-incapable, and the continuing supply of equipment to the Middle East, including the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier. This means there are now three aircraft carriers in the general vicinity, and while I'm uncertain how much of a role the burnt-out Ford and the increasingly exhausted Lincoln will ultimately play (they were rather ineffective during the first round), there are also a good ~20 destroyers and however many submarines that are carrying their own munitions. I have a couple more paragraphs of exposition below, but it's unlikely to be major news to anybody here, so I've spoilered it.
spoiler
On the one hand, it feels like a resumption of the war for the US at this point would be complete madness. We are getting article after article from even the Western media admitting to US standoff+interceptor missile shortages, as well as detailing the extensive damage to US bases. The Zionists are also getting ever more mired in Lebanon, with Hezbollah's unjammable fibre optic drones playing an ever more prominent role in causing substantial long range damage to invading forces. On the other hand, it is very unlikely that most of the US's remaining firepower is being brought to the region on a mere bluff. For its part, Iran and their allies seem to have their finger on the trigger, with their own extensive repairs, upgrades, resupplies, and adjustments having been made for round two.
Assessing the overall global economic situation is difficult, not least because of a degree of financial manipulation that is almost admirable in its sheer scale and recklessness - to quote Ghalibaf: "Their frontline is the yield curve." Multiple countries are now facing real and desperate shortages, including major economies like Japan. Diesel prices continue their record rises, and reports about the potential impacts to all sectors of the global economy are streaming in, with famines around the world now very likely. While the US is profiting from the rise in oil prices, it seems like it will be unable to meaningfully increase production for at least a year or two, and so the US will certainly not be replacing the massive oil barrel deficit to create an energy hegemony, as some have suggested. In contrary: this is the best opportunity in a generation for China, Russia, and Iran to collectively make economic decisions that could cripple entire pillars of American hegemony. However, if the response is lacking - and we've all seen before over the last four years how China's responses to crises have been on the lacking side - we could see a (albeit temporary) strengthening of the US's financial power, as this global crisis will almost certainly result in debt climbing even higher as Western financial institutions grant loans en masse to struggling countries in the developing world. It's very uncertain times.
Last week's thread is here.
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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.
Canada chosen as host country of multinational defence bank
spoiler
Canada has been selected as the host nation of a new multilateral defence bank as negotiations among the founding countries ended in Montreal Wednesday, according to two sources.The decision was made after the final of three rounds of negotiations hosted by Canada and involving the 19 founding countries of the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank.
...The other 18 founding countries have not been disclosed. Reports of some European countries such as Britain and Germany questioning the bank have surfaced since it was first announced. Critics of the bank have raised the issue of whether the institution is necessary, when other defence financing initiatives such as the Security Action for Europe program already exist.
Once established, the bank could include as many as 40 countries, all NATO members and their allies, and will provide long-term, low-cost financing for defence projects undertaken by participating countries.
Thoughts:
spoiler
I find this to be equal parts perplexing and concerning. First of all, Canada seems to be a weird location choice, and is notably both not in Europe and directly beside Burgerland. What can this new "defence bank" achieve that the NATO Extended Universe doesn't already? Are they planning something, a new and potentially large conflict? And what's with all the secrecy surrounding this? Are they keeping the Burgerlanders out of this and just don't want to anger Trump? Or something else?I've been hearing more chatter about the West re-arming and preparing for war with Russia, but I don't know how much of that is just bluster and propaganda to enrich the military industrial complex or if the white devils actually mean this shit. The king of England during his recent speech in Burgerland was wanking off Ukraine, Germany is showing all signs of re-arming, and Europe seem to have no interest whatsoever in diplomacy with Russia or ending the war (even though it's clearly a lost cause at this point). All of the
liberals that I know have an uncontrollable hard-on for supporting Ukraine and have terminal Russia Derangement Syndrome to an extreme degree. I see very little difference between the way they bay for blood and dehumanise Russians and how chuds openly called for blowing up Arabs during the 2003 Iraq War (and every war in West Asia since).
If this "defence bank" is a sign of them putting their money where their mouth is then this might be a worrying sign.
Yeah, people dont realize how reactionary the average canadian lib is. Pure ideology. They literally reject reality.
I guess the campaign to import as many Ukrainian nazis as possible really paid off
I'm wondering if Canada was picked because we're seen as prioritizing imperialism and hating Russia more than we care about nursing the tired old nationalistic grudges endemic to intra-Europe politics.
And there's no potential for Canada to go independent of the US. No country on Earth is more irreversibly and inextricably bound to the Great Satan.
Canadian independence is a formality by now.
I mean I doubt that the plan is to march into moscow tomorrow but building a massive army with faltering economies and rising fascism makes using that army faaar more delectable.
Russia is also a space which still can be squeezed dry by the west.
They've always put their money where their mouth is, problem is you can't just throw money at a problem and expect it to fix itself. They don't have industrial capacity or technically trained workforces to do any of this shit. It's conceivable that they could possibly rebuild these capabilities over the course of say, several decades, but it would take a major restructuring of society and the economy to do so not just funneling money at a different target.
Things like Volkswagen re-tooling their factories to military armaments is what they have to do, and even that will take a decade to bear any fruit at scale. Germany has started this, but it's unclear if their energy crisis will be so dire to totally make this infeasible or not