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.
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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.
Don’t laugh:
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says ‘new world order will be built starting with Europe’
Commentary:
spoiler
Whatever the opposite of “read the room” is, it’s this. Pretty sure China and BRICS have already been building the “new world order” for the last decade already.
Europe is deindustrialised and demilitarised, and the only way they will be able to reverse that is through crushing austerity against the working class. Not to mention they no longer have access to cheap Russian energy (and would refuse it even if offered) and have started to treat Chinese green tech as a “national security risk” lmao. Their economies are basically just treading water at best.
Europe seems to be stubbornly committed to their own failure. How anybody in their right mind could determine that they’re going to lead a “new world order” is beyond me.
Motherfucker, you and your Eurocuck buddies just spent the last 2.5 years carrying water for a live-streamed genocide. Don’t you dare talk about “human rights”.
I genuinely think that these people just cannot imagine nor accept a world that isn’t lead by white people.
What no global systems theory does to a mf.
“The Albanians, along with the Chinese, make up 1/8th of the world’s population.”
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It’s funny because everything that was/is associated with the EU (which just means european institutions) is in decline, worldwide AND in the EU itself.
For example “democracy”: as the eu defines it which is just stability of a centrist political system of pro-eu parties, plenty of eu countries have insurgente, now leading in polls, far-right parties that are not centrist and likely have a different interpretation of what being pro-eu is. Other countries have collapsing centrist systems too.
Free-markets: Obviously worldwide the biggest powers are embracing protectionism, not so much smaller countries, and the EU has indeed made progress in a free-trade deal with mercosur, but you can tell from some european debates how they really want to find a way to protect the german car and other industries from competing with china.
Multiculturalism and freedom of movement: I don’t even need to say anything
Peace: Plenty of wars worldwide where the EU is not playing a constructive role at all, and it literally has its self-inflicted war going on that it can’t get out of.
AI: If the future is AI like these people believe then europe has nothing
So if the new world order will be based on where europe is going, that will not be better than what we have now.
Honestly Carney’s statement just feels like the mindless north-american pro-EUism you get from either institutional centrist types who love the eurocracy or progressive leftists who like the EU’s socially liberal consensus.
I like the way you put this, because this is something I’ve struggled to convey before. Especially to european right wingers, who are so formally defined by euroskepticism. The way I see it, if the european far right takes over the EU and holds all the institutional levers of power, they become the status quo. Their response to Europe Being Bad and Woke will not be to end Europe. It will be more Europe.
That’s the thing with the far right in Europe. They will cry about lost sovereignty and pan europeanism and then they’ll emit hitler particles all day about how they must defend white, virginal europe from a legion of palestinians. They fully buy into the superstructure of pan europeanism while calling themselves nationalists. In truth, they are every bit as provincial as a Texan who thinks themselves as Texan first and American second.
Yes though I do think they’re generally more “confederational” than centrist pro-europeans and aren’t willing to integrate as much as then, or cede much more sovereignty to brussels than their countries already have. So a “far-right EU” would be genuinely different, but it would still be the EU, at least it would still work almost exactly as it does now and at most it would de-integrate some aspects.
Or they’d fully convert to mainstream pro-europeanism, after seeing what happened with Meloni I think that’s more probable than before, although if they held power if several states at once rather than just one they might attempt something more radical.
They’re just states rights republicans with a euro veneer. And by that I mean they want to close the door to any collective progressive action like consumer protections, workers rights or minority protections. Oh but they’re all in on forcing fash immigration policy etc
We are all trying to gauge a future, right? My guess is that the end result depends on two things. One) That there’s not a whole lot of difference. Seriously, its like Republicans and Democrats fighting to be who’s the most neoliberal and austere. And Two) How much institutional pushback there is across Europe. The American Federal Government is something that can just be dismantled. The European Union technically doesn’t have to be dismantled, it can just be politely rendered into a museum piece as the different countries all do whatever they want.
And yet, 27 countries held by duct tape and more or less dependent on each other’s futures? Where there is no clear regional hegemon because the Germans are morons? I can’t imagine the far right is brave enough to burn it all down.
A far right Europe might see more explicit power block struggles.
France leading the southern European states and Germany at the head of a bunch nordic and central European states.
Maybe some states fall through the cracks, maybe some throw a hissy fit and become actual US-american protectorates.
The AFD is also a party with a lot of different horses pulling the reins in their direction.
Ah, so Carney wants to keep reminding people of his embarrassing speech at Davos. Canada and Europe are still very much in step with their puppet master Uncle Sam outside of a few minor disagreements. There is nothing that indicates that they are actually moving towards a “new world order” independant of the US.
I mean, taken at face value it was a very good speech, problem was (in typical liberal fashion) it was all just words and meaningless rubbish. Not even weeks after that speech Canada could muster only tepid criticism of the bombing of Caracas and kidnapping of a head of state. Then, shortly after when the yanks bombed Tehran, we stood together with Europe to condemn … checks notes … Tehran.
If Ottawa was genuinely willing to help carve out a new future with other “middle powers” then we would have to indicate some willingness to work with countries different than us and treat them as equal partners. But of course, what he actually meant was that capital accumulation for western businesses must continue and the 500 year long global nightmare of colonialism must remain unobstructed from the reckless Trump administration.
But, no matter. China will continue winning by virtue of both being the global centre of the economy and not being insufferable twats. The best time to start learning Mandarin was ten years ago. The second best time is right now.
will not work. the only way to re-industrialize is using state capacity. that isn’t possible given ‘sound’ finance so all they can do is shit on China.
Also I thought the eurolibs hate pluralism now? And are defending “democratic” values by kicking out all the immigrants.