My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
It’s once again been a relatively slow week, with “only” quite a few oil tankers being struck in the US’s attempt at an oil corridor in Hormuz. I’ve seen several analysts speculate on just how leaky Hormuz might be despite Iran’s attacks, and if it is leaky, then why and to what extent. Now that we’re firmly in August, we have noticeably passed the predicted July ETAs on the physical oil cliff (the paper oil price manipulations notwithstanding), and so analysts are trying to find explanations for the current situation, in which various factors are being considered, of which I’ll list a few I’ve seen personally.
First is, as I said, a potentially leaky Hormuz, because it’s been revealed that in lieu of official corporate insurance, the US is directly paying captains massive sums of money if they’re brave enough to try and run the strait under US air cover - hence why Iran keeps hitting tankers practically daily without them ever seeming to get the message. Obviously, this covert operation by itself would not be enough to even approach pre-war transit levels, and so there must be other factors going on. Second is Red Sea oil redirections predominantly by Saudi Arabia; if this was a big factor, it’s something Ansarallah is now actively combatting with their blockade of the Bab el-Mandab and semi-regular strikes on their pipeline infrastructure. Third is that perhaps world oil reserves are somewhat larger than first considered, especially given China deciding to go on a bit of an oil diet over the last six months, and especially especially if countries really start pumping from one-shot emergency supplies; e.g. there’s been much discussion by Naked Capitalism about just how much the US could extract from the rapidly dwindling SPR if it no longer cared about the irreversible damage to the storage caverns caused by pumping out as much as physically possible. Fourth and finally, perhaps the data on stockpiles was just bad in such as way that they were being consistently underestimated by e.g. 10% or so. Ultimately, regardless of the many complicated factors involved here, the antsy and indecisive behaviour of the US, as well as some anxiety about the midterms, betrays any attempts at American confidence (e.g. by Bessent) about this becoming a stable situation for even the medium term.
We’ve also seen some of the fruits of the serious discussions between Iran and Oman over how exactly Hormuz is going to be governed, with one major and intriguing proposal being that Iran could have total control over what vessels enter (i.e. tolling when entering), and Oman has partial control over what vessels leave, with Iran having a veto there too (i.e. no tolling when exiting, but de jure Iranian military control). Iran has come out and said that regardless of what they agree to with Oman, the US will have to make major concessions - at least on the order of the MoU concessions and perhaps even beyond them - for Hormuz shipping to restart. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkiye have signed some kind of military alliance or agreement of some kind; I’m waiting for some big expert analyses on the many implications before I give any takes here, but it’s already been dealt a rather large embarrassment by Ansarallah seeming to not really a give a shit, continuing strikes on both Saudi pipeline infrastructure and also Saudi-backed mercenaries.
And finally, over in Latin America, the Southern Spear Joint Task Force has given way to a new version which looks likely to increase inland strikes, which is a major escalation from the strikes targeting mainly fishing boats, which were presumably done to a) cause socioeconomic fractures in certain countries (largely Venezuela), and b) further the kayfabe that the US is trying to stop drugs entering the US while obviously covertly further amplifying it through friendly comprador countries. While Latin America struggles to find its way forward out of American regional hegemony due to the rather mixed results of both electoralism and warfare (guerrilla and otherwise), what greatly interests me will be how the region’s domestic capitalists respond to the attempts by the US to wean them off from China’s growing economic sphere. I’ve wondered previously about whether a potential way out of imperium, in lieu of the ability of the region’s working class to take (and, more critically, hold on to) power, will be China, intentionally or not, causing major fractures between the US capitalists seeking a monopoly to loot the continent as much as possible with the absolute minimum domestic development possible to maintain profits, and domestic capitalists who want to trade with an ever-growing China and internally develop their countries for their own self-benefit.
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:
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.
I just realised why Trump’s saying this shit about DPRK.
He’s doing it because South Korea have the only remaining THAAD and got mad when the US wanted to move them to the Iran war because they need them against DPRK.
He’s doing this DPRK shit to pressure South Korea after they refused giving such critical systems to his war. Everyone remembers that drama early in the war right? When the system was supposed to be moved and then it suddenly wasn’t being moved…
Washington Discussing Nuclear Strike on Iran - MJT
Marjorie Taylor Greene claims US officials are considering lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons
Officials in Washington are allegedly discussing the possible use of nuclear weapons against Iran as the months-long conflict continues to escalate, former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed.
Greene, once a prominent MAGA ally, made the allegation in a post on X on Sunday. She said the issue had been raised during strategy meetings, but did not identify those involved or provide evidence.
“They are discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings,” she wrote. “I’m not speculating, I know. And it’s pure evil.”
Really unsurprising. Whether they do it or not who knows but the US refuses to lose, zionist entity won’t stop and it must be awfully tempting for someone like Trump who would go down as the guy who got the US’s ass kicked faster than any other in history within half of a single presidential term. Since they’re obsessed with Hormuz and the nuclear sites including Pickaxe mountain I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to use one there and say it’s definitely different than hitting a city. Of course this is MJT so she could just be fishing for attention and there could be no serious intention behind it and nothing more than spit-balling but I think it bears considering given the empire really feels backed into a corner, is running low on other munitions and has a ton of nukes which pack one hell of a punch with I’m sure many maniacs in the admin saying it would deter and intimidate Iran into accepting US terms and that it may depending on how much power reformists have and/or how willing to play chicken with a genocidal empire Iran is once that line is crossed.
Slavyangrad (Telegram)
🇺🇸 USA and Ukraine launch deep modernization of Soviet S-300 air defense systems to produce compatible guided missiles. The project aims for operational readiness by year-end, addressing depleted Western missile stocks. Annual output will be 100–300 units, covering 16–50% of current US Patriot production (~600/year). This serves as a temporary solution until PAC-3 expansion in 2029–2032. Program extends lifespan of existing 5V55 rockets with new solid-fuel engines and electronics from US engineering solutions tested on S-300 elements acquired in the 1990s and 2000s.
TLDR just another modernization program bro we just need one more modernization program and we’ll suddenly out produce the Russians
The US Navy can’t go back to steam catapults so they’ll just humor Trump and delay.
The issue with the USN’s half-century old steam catapults is that due to mechanical limitations, they operate at roughly the same power level every time. This is acceptable if you want to lob something heavy like a fighter jet into the sky on full afterburner decade-after-decade. Consider, however, for the sake of argument, that US Navy has increasingly gotten into the business of feeding vast numbers of expensive drones to Iranian air defense. If you try to fire a much lighter twin-towers-era unmanned wedding-bomber-drone off a carrier via a steam catapult, it tends to accelerate it to mach-fuck, which causes cumulative damage to both the drone and the catapult, which ultimately deprives the Iranians of their rightful and well earned dronefeast. Ripping the landing gear off a drone, or slamming the piston of a steam catapult at full-speed into the end of the catapult track is bad for the imperial machine, right??
Electromagnetic catapults can be precisely dialed in to the perfect power level for whatever you want to yeet. Perfect for when you want to toggle between tossing a murder-drone or a chudian Tom Cruise to war. - The issue with the hexbear-famous USS Gerald R Ford - the prototype which is set to replace the entire Nimitz fleet - is that to save weight and reduce complexity, the 4 catapults have their critical electrical systems paired. If one catapult fails or needs work, it takes out the adjacent catapult. This means that if your catapult fails in a critical moment, everything is twice as bad as it would be with a steam catapult. Obviously, this is a new system with many many new parts which can experience failures in new and exciting ways. This pairing issue is the thing I can see them resolving in future Ford-type carriers. I think they’re planning to build 5 more, pending the results of the USS Fords torturous hell-cruise. The advantage of a steam catapult is that failures were isolated to the specific catapult. You could launch as many Tom Cruisesque patriotic heroes as you wanted, even if the system was determined to fail and you could only launch him one at a time; regardless of how many people it took to rescue him after he got shot down by Iranian air defense on the cheap.
The US Navy is currently undergoing a naval design and building crisis, badly (extremely badly, actually) failing two large scale attempts to design a new class of ships; including one where the successful, proven blueprints were actually provided for them by their Europeon vassals, which they mangled beyond usability to the point where they declared the project a dead-end. The US at this point is simply rebuilding the same ship with some minor improvements from the usable standard-template-construct of the Arleigh Burke class that they’ve been building for 38 years with minor improvements. This class of warship is old enough that it even has its own dedicated TV show. – Their only latest, observable success is the Gerald R Ford, a 50 year overdue project which is THE ship of Hexbear styxian poop-starvation-laundry fire fame – and that’s, frankly, if you don’t include sheer the bullshit (sorry Iran, I support you, but don’t believe you) knifefight claims.
The worlds largest navy, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy, has never used steam catapults. Instead, they went straight from buying an old Soviet ski-ramp carrier from the Russians under clandestine (it’s a casino, an alter to capitalism, we promise) means for institutional training, to building an electromagnetic catapult carrier prototype carrier (Fujian). Fujian was commissioned in 2025 and has been used by the Chinese to rapidly learn the skillset of carrier operation. The Chinese have now begun implementing the lessons learned to build two (of six “planned”) new electromagnetic catapult carriers to operate stealth drones. These carriers will be the largest in the world, exceeding US "super"carrier designs, with the same number planned as the USS Gerald R Failure. The Chinese have decided to plan/build the same number of super-duper carriers for drone operations in defensive local ocean control as the US are even dreaming of building smaller next-gen carriers to maintain their crumbling fucking empire. Thing is, you know they’ll fucking do it, because the Chinese don’t bullshit this stuff, they just do it because they’re clear headed and have real, actually existing seriously (AES) industrial capacity with actual existing seriously (AES) leaders. Naval ships and naval policy are the true herald of national trajectory on the global state. The US Navy is failing, and being casually eclipsed by China - who builds a new warship factory every time the US even tries and fails to build a single prototype warship - and I think the Chinese will actually legitimately use them purely defensively to shield their meteoric rise. The US Navy and Trump is failing to the point that they lost a war against a nation of beautiful poets, and the only successful war they’ve prosecuted recently is against the worlds most dangerous bus driver, who sits in a cell accused of bullshit charges.
Socialism. Is. Winning.
Materialism is the dominant factor on this planet. Pretending only gets you so far, and the US has reached that limit.
What a great way to slowly end this weekly megathread, I view this as a sister tweet to the famous “how Hitler could win WW2 - Don’t siege Leningrad, take it immediately” tweet. The amazing thing is that there are dozens of replies, most of the people are congratulating the poster for his “great calls”???
Unless I missed it, I didn’t see any discussion of the New Yorker article that came out in July that showed the behind the scenes of the Biden Administration’s full blooded support of Israel and the genocide. Beware, The author still has brainworms about Oct 7 and tries to portray some of the officials in a sympathetic light , but it does show the bloodthirstiness and full fucking Zionism of Biden.
Archive of New Yorker article “How Biden Enabled Israel’s Aggression Toward Gaza—and Iran”
GDF YouTube channel providing commentary of the article and further context
Some Quotes that I found notable, horrendous, interesting, or funny
“We repeatedly raised and discussed options for withholding weapons,” but, excluding the suspension of one shipment of bombs, “the President always deferred on that decision, because we kept thinking that we were close to getting a deal”… Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, his longtime adviser and emissary to Washington, kept insisting that they expected the fighting to be over very soon. “Just two more weeks,” they repeatedly promised. As one White House official told me, “If it is just a few more weeks, why have a huge fight with Israel?”
[MBS], the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had signaled a willingness to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for access to U.S. nuclear technology. He was happy to accept only lip service from Israel about the future of the Palestinians
[Biden] bragged that his experience in the region extended back to the early seventies, when he’d visited Israel as a senator, and he remained so confident in his expertise that he often patronized even his most senior advisers…
As Israeli warplanes were preparing to bomb Lebanon, Biden, in a hurried phone call, urged Netanyahu to ground them, stressing that the U.S. wasn’t yet ready to defend its forces or Israel from any blowback.
The Biden team argued that precision strikes facilitated by U.S. intelligence could kill the greatest number of culpable leaders faster and more effectively… White House dispatched a three-star general and other senior officers to share with the I.D.F. their battlefield experience.
Netanyahu feared that declaring specific end goals in Gaza would set off disputes in his Cabinet and fracture his fragile coalition.
[in May 2021], White House officials boasted anonymously to journalists that Biden’s “hug-Bibi strategy”—“I don’t agree with you, but I love you”—had ended the fighting in eleven days
The U.S. lawyer explained, “The subtlety of the language—things like ‘We don’t have definitive proof, but we are very concerned that Israel is committing war crimes’—seemed to be understood by the most senior people to mean, in effect, ‘We’re all good!’ ”
Trita Parsi: “This image was sent to me from the field. These are messages US servicemen in the Persian Gulf have scribbled on the dust of an aircraft flap.”
sounds like finance capital wants the war over and is willing to make concessions:
JPMorgan says Iran, Oman ‘legally justified’ to charge Hormuz navigation fees | The Cradle
Denmark, Sweden, and Turkiye charge service fees for vessels to pass through narrow waters in their maritime territory, providing a precedent for Iran and Oman to do the same for the Strait of Hormuz
In alchemy news.
“Scientists mimicking the Big Bang accidentally turn lead into gold”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/gold-big-bang-theory-large-hadron-collider-b3033578.html
Two sets of Iranian anti-ship missile launches in the last ~5 hours. Most of the time we don’t get any official accident reports, so it is getting harder and harder to tell what exactly is going on.
The Iranian Army has put a bounty reward for delivering an American soldier
Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army, Maj. General Hatami, says a $30,000 reward for every American military aggressor, dead or alive.
And… if a women were to hand over the American soldier, she will receive TWICE the reward.
The weapon used to kill an American invading soldier will be purchased for twice its value, and they will receive a new weapon as well.
from https://xcancel.com/AryJeayBackup/status/2089033850835865748
Centcom: “Every warfighter on the Lincoln is STRONG AND POWERFUL.”
CNN - A day after visiting the USS Abraham Lincoln amid concerns over low morale, US Central Command Chief Adm. Brad Cooper asserted in a statement Sunday that the aircraft carrier “currently has among the lowest number of cases related to mental health” out of the Navy’s 11 active carriers. Cooper said in a statement:
“This doesn’t mean that all is perfect. Find any of the nearly 4 million Navy veterans in America today and they will likely tell you that service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone. It is uniquely challenging and tough, and every single one of us, including me reacts to stressors in different ways.”
The commander visited the Lincoln during a 10-day trip to the Middle East amid rising concerns over the mental health of crew members, including suicide ideation, during a deployment that has lasted nearly nine months. Cooper said:
“I’ve long believed that mental health is another aspect of individual health and requires our attention just like physical health and spiritual health.”
He told the sailors and Marines aboard the ship to “keep up the great work and fair winds and following seas on the journey home.” The aircraft carrier reached the Middle East in January and has since supported the US war against Iran, including the blockade on Iranian ports. Its combat efforts have prevented it from making stops at friendly ports, where deployed vessels can typically renew supplies and sailors can rest.
CBS News - Iran’s military offers $30,000 reward for capturing and killing U.S. troops. Iran’s military announced on Sunday that it was offering a bounty equivalent to $30,000 for killing or capturing United States soldiers, with the reward doubled if carried out by a woman. Army chief Amir Hatami said the plan had been drawn up following a “large number of requests” to participate, according to the IRNA state news agency.
There has been no known deployment of U.S. ground forces in Iran during the Middle East war, except for a rescue mission in April for a downed U.S. airman. “Anyone who kills or captures and hands over an invading American military personnel will receive a reward equivalent to $30,000 or 5 billion tomans from the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Army,” Hatami said, using an informal unit equivalent to 10,000 Iranian rials.
“Courageous Iranian women who carry out such an action will receive double the reward,” he added. The number of US military personnel killed since the start of the war stands at 17, with the most recent deaths in July. They have all been killed outside of Iran, in countries including Jordan and Iraq.
