Image is of rescue efforts at a damaged residential complex in Caracas on June 25th.
Weekly preamble in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The situation regarding both Iran and global oil markets is getting even more complicated, and that’s without even including the regular injections of disinformation from people like Barak Ravid and Trump himself. In my current estimation, the negotiations are proceeding as if both sides would rather see a deal than not. At the very least, there have certainly been enough blatant violations of the MoU articles that Iran would be fully justified to end negotiations altogether, and yet they are not, which must mean that they really do want a deal. Until a few days ago, these were mainly issues that Iran has been prepared to show… “flexibility” on (others might say “cowardice”), such as Zionist aggression against southern Lebanon. Both at the start of the April ceasefire and at the start of the MoU, they made Lebanon out to be a red line issue, but ultimately seemed convinced by the US saying to them, via backchannels, that they’ll yank the leash back on their mangy, rabid dog. Therefore, it’s safe to conclude that Iran, in practice, either only symbolically cares about Lebanon as the number of buildings destroyed by the Zionists is now climbing into the tens of thousands, or is confident in Hezbollah’s ability to withstand assaults and eventually push back the Zionists to the border.
However, very recently, the fighting has once again come closer to home for Iran, with renewed, albeit limited, exchanges of fire in the general area of Hormuz. This all stems from an unfortunate contradiction that Iran has wandered into with regard to Oman. In short: their legal argument for why they should be able to extract tolls/service fees from shipping through Hormuz relies on the concept of Hormuz being part of their territorial waters and not international waters, which is literally true. However, it is also possible to transit Hormuz entirely through Oman’s territorial waters too, and, critically, Oman has not shown any serious interest in charging a toll, and is letting shipping pass freely. Oman is also much less able to seriously withstand foreign assaults than Iran, meaning their position is precarious - side with Iran, and risk a Western military assault that destroys them; side with the US, and risk Hormuz never truly reopening because the IRGC will not tolerate ships bypassing their authority. So, Iran is now legally stuck: to have a toll, it must find a way to argue that territorial waters are important when it applies to them, but aren’t important when it applies to Oman. Or, of course, to somehow convince Oman to set up their own toll, in face of the dangers.
So far, the result of this has been Iran asserting, both verbally and through drones and missiles, that transit through the Oman channels is, at least during the period of the MoU, illegitimate. This has squashed hopes by many analysts that Hormuz flows would return to normal very soon - after a very brief peak, these numbers now seem to be descending to near-wartime levels. This is happening as the US’s reserves continue to drain at a frightening rate. That being said, Iranian oil tankers are getting out in large numbers and reaching foreign markets, so it’s not as if Iran is solely being disadvantaged by the current situation. It’s even possible that Iran is waiting for enough of these ships to reach Eastern Asia before they plan to restart the war. I’m unsure if this is actually likely, but I’ve seen several others suggest it, and it does make sense to at least make the most of the current lack of blockade while you figure out if the US is actually going to give in to any of your demands.
Over in Ukraine, the situation seems to be slowly heating up. It’s always hard for me personally to figure out the seriousness of the statements of the Ukrainians and the Russians - you’ll look back on a year of exaggerated threats and bold statements and promises of grand offensives and threats of nuclear war and yet, on the battlefield, all you see is fairly standard attrition and positional warfare. Anyway: there’s been much ado about Ukrainian attacks into Russia proper over the last few months and whether it’s having an impact on their economy (not particularly), wartime production (not at all), and social fabric (kinda). However, the rumors of Belarus getting more directly involved in the war - whether they want to or not - are increasing in intensity, with Ukraine threatening that they’ll fire on Belarusian border military equipment if it isn’t withdrawn. Also, the Russian hardliners seem to really want to start attacking European military production supplying Ukraine, though Putin appears to have squashed those desires. But at the end of the day, the attrition and territorial advancements continue to convincingly favor Russia.
And lastly, the numbers of the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Venezuela are rolling in, with ~1500 dead, ~750 buildings damaged and collapsed, and many thousands of people affected and being assisted by the government. From the footage I’ve seen, it’s quite disturbing, and obviously not coming at a great time for Venezuela geopolitically either.
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.
Do any China watchers here have any inside scoop on what I am hearing is called the “ethnic unity and progress law”? The free tibet/associated ngos are making a big fuss about it and I’m interested in some nuance regarding it
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/ethnic-unity-and-progress-law/
The biggest perpetrators of ethnic cleansing are mad that china is making sure all of their citizens are literate in the national language while protecting the ethnic languages. The law also makes it illegal to promote ethnic uprisings from abroad so that’s really their problem with it. The ngos you are talking about are going to be losing more ground in their information warfare because of this law
To anyone even doubting this interpretation: the percentage of Chinese people belonging to one of the 55 recognized minorities has grown from 6.7% in 1982 to 8.9% in 2020. The number of Tibetan speakers has almost doubled over the past 50 years.
Anyone complaining about Tibetans or Uyghurs is either extremely ignorant and propagandized, or willingly poisoning the discourse. You won’t hear ONE westerner complain about Occitan language elimination in France, which enjoyed 1mn speakers just a century ago and now has about 100k total.
Helpful statistics to have! Another that I bring up sometimes is that there are more Uighur language speakers than there are ethnic Uighurs which can only be a sign that the language is quite prolific
Uyghur people were additionally exempt from the single child policy, and as a consequence became the majority ethnicity in the Xinjiang autonomous region.
Also Uyghur culture is very prominent in media.
And only the south of Xinjiang is where Uyghurs are indigenous to.
Even the 100k is very generous.
I heard it was a “Don’t be racist law”.
Which is the real racism, of course.
Don’t be racist is actually cultural genocide against anglos
I looked into this a few days ago, and basically all western sources site human rights groups, who basically don’t cite any specifics from the law. That should give you a clue about how “problematic” this law is.
Here is the law
It’s bad for separatists like the totally not terrorists
ETIM. It makes them liable for crimes committed from outside China, like planning terrorist attacks.
The other most controversial part of the law is making mandarin the default language, requiring all children to be taught mandarin as the basic common script. And making it included in signage across the country. Like in Canada, where they have english and french, in China they will have Mandarin and whatever local language common in the region.
Article 15
Article 15: The state is to fully promote the spread of the nation’s common language and script. Citizens’ learning and use of the nation’s common language and script must not be obstructed by any organization or individual.
Schools and other educational institutions are to use the nation’s common language and script as the basic language and script for education and teaching. The state is to promote preschool students’ learning of Mandarin, so that youth who have completed compulsory education have a basic understanding of the nation’s common language and script.
State organs are to use the nation’s common language and script as the official language and script. Where it is necessary to use minority languages and scripts to issue documents in accordance with laws and regulations, a version in the state’s common language and script shall be concurrently provided with the minority language version.
Where state organs, social groups, enterprises, public institutions, and other social organizations need to concurrently use the national common language and minority languages, they shall highlight the national common language in terms of position, order, and so forth.
The state respects and protects the learning and use of minority languages and scripts, promotes the regulation, standardization, and digitalization of minority languages, and supports the protection, organization, research, and use of old ethnic minority books.
Part of the “cultural genocide” they were accused of in Xinjiang was diverting people from prisons to schools and teaching them mandarin to expand their job opportunities.
here’s a summary of the law from SCMP.
Folks see it in a few Nordic countries and say “wow so cool, rehabilitative justice” and then in China it’s “scary ethnic cleansing reeducation camps”