A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of the first nuclear icebreaker ever built, the Lenin, which entered service in 1957 in the USSR and decommissioned in 1989. It is now a museum ship in Murmansk. I just think it’s neat.


My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

The last week has had a lot of Trump admin dipshittery that isn’t important enough to be worth remarking on, so I’m just going to skip right past all that. The sanctions campaign against Iran appears to have stalled before it even left the starting line, with China saying that, nope, they aren’t going to cut off their ally for the sake of their enemy. From what I’ve gathered from Naked Capitalism’s (albeit limited) reporting on the state of Iran’s economy, the impression I get is that while inflation is running kinda wild, everything else, including state revenues, are doing sufficiently well that there isn’t going to be an economic collapse this year nor probably next year if we assume a continued no-deal situation over Hormuz.

The underlying geopolitical situation has had some interesting little developments. Iran and Oman appears to have worked out their plan for joint control over Hormuz. Ansarallah is continuing their explosive campaign against the Saudis, who are now begging the US for help. Additionally, the ever-barking never-biting Türkiye is showing some signs that they might soon, finally, after three years of witnessing outright genocide, do 1 (one) (the first numerical digit) action that isn’t to the Zionist’s direct benefit, by putting up a modicum of resistance in defence of their puppet in Syria; but, quite frankly, I’m not holding my breath on anything truly substantial happening while Erdogan’s in charge.

The state of oil flows in and around Hormuz are very hotly debated right now. Many of the oil flow numbers can be dismissed out of hand because they aren’t reflective of the reality of Iranian control and vision of the strait. Due to the narrowness of the strait, full visual coverage of the ships travelling through the channel can be achieved with technology no more advanced than a dozen people with binoculars and a not-especially-tall mountain. However, figures that are around 3-5 million barrels per day (compared to the pre-war 20 million per day) seems plausible when including Iran allowing some allied vessels out (notably Iraqi and Chinese vessels, among others). This, plus China’s rather odd actions in the oil market over the last six months, have resulted in the US’s SPR now draining at “only” 4-6 million barrels per week, compared to 8-9 earlier in the war. However, the war’s impact on fertilizer and diesel stockpiles and prices are now unignorable even to those with their heads in the sand, with anxiety steadily building in the mainstream media about food crises next year.

Meanwhile, Trump has decided to pick fights with Canada due to their strange unwillingness to graciously hand over their sovereignty to the US, with the two countries now in a tariff war. That being said, oil seems to be one product that neither side wants to fight over: the US needs a producer, and Canada needs a customer. The only other country in the vicinity with major oil reserves is Venezuela, who has been in the news a lot lately for precisely this reason, but they simply don’t have the production to do much of anything to alleviate the US’s stockpile issues and likely still won’t by the time Trump has left office, and so they can be safely dismissed as a significant player in this ongoing global energy conflict.

On the subject of naval trade routes, a fascinating development is that Russia has finally unveiled the Northern Sea Route as a regular maritime passage, with a small fleet of eight Chinese vessels taking the route as a test run in mid-August. From Shanghai to Hamburg, the route is a little over 7000 nautical miles and goes through no chokepoints (though I suppose the Bering Strait could hypothetically become one), compared to the Suez route which is nearly 11,000 nautical miles and goes through three chokepoints (Malacca, Bab el-Mandab, Suez). Russia has the world’s only nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the increased power from those reactors is necessary to provide the sheer force to break up the ice along the route, making them even more uniquely situated to benefit from the route. Many countries, China foremost among them, have identified the advantage of not being subject to chokepoints and hostile waters as the US navy continues its rapid transition to outright piracy, so it’ll be interesting to see to what extent the route is adopted in the coming years.


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

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


  • Feed_el_Castro [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    Let me preface this piece of news with a statement: it sucks having to do this cold-blooded trivialization and comparative analysis of the deaths of innocents, but it’s unfortunately a necessary exercise journalists won’t do. When talking about civilian casualties in a conflict, in order to understand the propagandistic dimension of journalistic reports, comparative analysis between conflicts is useful to determine the nature of the military action and the degree of atrocity committed. Here we go

    Some western press consent manufacturing againat Russia: Los bombardeos Rusos se ceban con los niños (Russian bombing takes on children)

    Más de 800 menores han muerto en Ucrania desde el inicio de la invasión. La suma de víctimas mortales y heridos en julio es la mayor desde abril de 2022, con ataques a hogares y escuelas

    More than 800 minors have died in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. The addition of deaths and wounded in July is the largest since April 2022, with attacks to homes and schools

    Oh, 800, sounds terrible. I wonder how many children died in, say, the invasion of Iraq. From this source “There is no hard data on child deaths, though Burnham et al. record 26 of the 300 violent deaths in their survey as being children under the age of 14” (wonder why they only count Iraqi children below 14, apparently 15 year old Iraqis were a valid military target or something). That adds up to 10% of the 500k violent deaths or so (contested figure, could be up to a million) so about 50k dead children. Seems like Russia is actually not killing that many children?

    Not one word about Ukraine hiding ammunitions in civilian-populated areas as we saw on this past week’s large explosion in the ammo storehouse. Just tear-jerking UNICEF statistics and mentions of a few events in which a house or a mall was hit by explosives.

    All in all a hit-piece to manufacture consent and hatred of Russia, but it exposes the much more violent nature of western intervention

  • SexUnderSocialism [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Xi is about to head to Egypt, and this could be an interesting visit.

    President Xi Jinping says China ready to deepen comprehensive strategic partnership with Egypt

    Although the article itself doesn’t say anything about the specifics of the trip except for the usual diplomatic language, there’s a potential deal here that would be big and make the US seethe.

    Last week Huawei offered to sell their AI chips to Egypt, and to help build data centers there. That would help boost Huawei’s status as a global contender in the AI accelerator space, and to benefit Global South countries who don’t want to be dependent on the empire’s closed models. This predictably caused the ghouls in Washington to panic, who immediately started working on a counteroffer, at least according to Bloomberg.

    Then two days later, the US sanctioned an Egyptian bank for supposedly doing business with Iran. The timing of that is interesting, and no doubt was an opportunity for the ghouls to send a message to Egypt, to let them know what they think about the sin of even entertaining a possible chip deal with China.

    Now Xi will head there after attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kyrgyzstan. With this happening so quickly after Huawei’s offer, I’m thinking that if any chip deal is going to be signed, it could be during this visit. Of course it’s anyone’s guess whether or not they’ll take the offer, because at the end of the day Egypt is run by Zionist-serving compradors.

    @Wakmrow@hexbear.net you posted a comment here earlier about a rumor you saw that the US is secretly sending guys or whatever to Egypt, but deleted it because of the lack of a source. I wonder if that rumor was in any way related to this. I wouldn’t put it past Amerikkka to try and start shit if they don’t get their way.

  • red_giant [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    OilPrice - Canada Tariffs Deepen North America’s Steel and Aluminum Squeeze

    U.S. manufacturers remain heavily dependent on Canadian aluminum, which supplied 60% of U.S. unwrought aluminum imports in the first half of 2026.

    Tariffs alone are unlikely to rapidly revive U.S. aluminum production, as new capacity requires years of investment, affordable electricity, infrastructure and policy certainty.

    Didn’t Texas alone recently approve new data center energy consumption that represents 40% of the entire US energy grid?

    The AI boom could complicate the aluminum buildout—data centers use aluminum in power cables, cooling systems, server racks and buildings. They also compete with smelters for electricity supply, which could delay the targeted massive boost to domestic U.S. aluminum production.

    So not only does the power-consumption needs of the AI boom prevent the aluminum industry from restarting in the USA, but also the aluminum-consumption needs of the AI boom constrain the AI boom.

    Which way, American man? Oh? Nowhere? Ok. I guess that’s an option too.

  • SovietCollie [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2094614976329560219

    Prior to his resignation Monday, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll brought his concerns about the future of the Army under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to President Trump, during a closed-door meeting last week at the White House, four people familiar with the conversation told The Atlantic.

    According to one of the sources, Trump was surprised when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth. Driscoll told the president that the Army could not transform itself the way it needs to, because of the departure of so many leaders, before informing him of his intention to resign from the Pentagon.

    Driscoll’s spokesperson declined to comment, but a person familiar with his resignation stated that Driscoll had “brought up concerns with the administration surrounding Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the Generals who were responsible.”

    JDPON Hegseth

    Referenced Article

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Three Iranian launches reported, three hits. They really wanted to get this one.

    A fully laden Saudi VLCC which had been dark for the last ten days suddenly turned its AIS on about two hours ago. It is currently drifting in the Omani route.

    UKMTO reported a vessel struck by three projectiles

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    Sand Branch Fire Burns 10 Acres In Community Without Hydrants

    A 10-acre fire burned for more than a day after igniting August 29 in Sand Branch, forcing evacuations and requiring firefighters to haul water into an unincorporated Dallas County community with no fire hydrants.

    spoiler

    Fire suppression remained underway Monday morning, and personnel were expected to stay at the scene another 24 hours to prevent the fire from rekindling, according to a 7 a.m. Monday update from CBS Texas.

    The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office issued an alert around 10 p.m. for the 200 block of Burns Drive. Deputies evacuated nearby residents as multiple departments responded and asked the public to avoid the area.

    The fire burned tires, recreational vehicles and construction materials. Multiple abandoned RVs burning at the site ignited what county officials described as an unpermitted dumping site, WFAA reported. Fire crews had responded to previous fires at the location, according to the report.

    The Sandbranch Development and Water Supply Corporation says the historic community has no water or wastewater system. Residents rely on wells or transport water from outside sources.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather-news/articles/sand-branch-fire-burns-10-065540032.html

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Branch%2C_Dallas_County%2C_Texas

    It is situated between the Trinity River and Hickory Creek, southwest of Seagoville. Sand Branch is the only unincorporated settlement left in Dallas County, as the vast majority of the county lies within incorporated cities.

  • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    Angry red rectangle strikes again: NASA wildfire satellite has picked up a fire at the US Prince Hassan base in Jordan

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    USS Abraham Lincoln is due to dock [in Pattaya] after more than 200 consecutive days at sea

    They’re taking them to a sex tourism location for a morale boost.

    I’m not joking or exaggerating, Pattaya has 60,000 sex workers.

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      obvious disgusting sexpestry aside, Pattaya doesn’t have a port for them to carry out resupply and repairs at. Theres not even a dock for miltiary ships there.

      There is no commercial or military port at Pattaya. US Navy ships anchor in outer Pattaya Bay within the limits of Pattaya Harbor. Pattaya has no port facilities that are commonly available at other ports. Liberty parties from visiting US Navy ships are ferried to/from ship/shore by local commercial boats, which normally make the run in 15 to 18 minutes.

      Typically they would go to either Sattahip or Laem Chabang, which honestly they could very well be planning on doing regardless of what the drunkard says in the media. If they ARE actually going directly to Pattaya that really will be some Nazi-level logistics planning. The ship is moldy, falling apart and out of supplies and what, they’re gonna contract some Thai taxi boats to run them spare parts and fresh stores out to the carrier and all its escorts sitting the middle of the harbor? lol, lmao, very efficient.

      I don’t supposed the imperialist sailors are going to be doing much work either since they’ll be ashore terrorizing the local population (definitely not good for discipline either). So I suppose they’ll also be paying the locals near-slave wages to fix and clean everything for them. I’m not an admiral, but I have a gut feeling you can’t run as nuclear powered aircraft carrier like a fucking 16th century landsknecht company and still be combat effective. Real imperial decay hours.

      • orlando [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Nazi-level logistics planning. The ship is moldy, falling apart and out of supplies and what, they’re gonna contract some Thai taxi boats to run them spare parts and fresh stores out to the carrier and all its escorts sitting the middle of the harbor? lol, lmao, very efficient.

        that’s the miracle of markets, competition drives prices down you’re welcome for my economics lesson.

    • companero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Extremely on-brand for Hegseth. They just gotta “blow off some steam”. Maybe they can get some perfectly innocent and Buddhist swastika tattoos while ashore.

      • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netM
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        yeah right they’ll be allowed to get wholesome swastirinos. say what you want about the finnish air force, but they have higher entry standards than the US navy

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Female Ukrainian soldiers march during a parade in honor of Ukraine’s independence day in Kyiv. Western hawks are pushing Ukraine to draft its women. The proposal threatens to further undermine the country’s dire demographic prospects

    This idea is a sign of the bleak situation facing Ukraine because of the decision to prolong the war. The fact that conscripting women is being floated at all indicates that Ukraine has suffered enormous casualties and suggests that the manpower shortage and recruitment crisis that have plagued Kyiv’s military campaign and led to deep social divisions and popular resentment may be even worse than we realize.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine is still under constant drone & glide bomb attacks. There was talk about Russia starting to focus their attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid next. One thermal power plant was hit today, but it is too early to tell if that is part of a larger campaign to hit energy infrastructure.

    • hello_hello [hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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      In a reasonable political climate, this sorry situation would lead us to rethink our definition of being “pro-Ukraine.” The war’s most ardent cheerleaders charge that the worst thing that could happen to the country is to be forced to cede territory in negotiations that end the war. Such a result is, of course, profoundly unfair to Ukraine. But is it truly worse than a future of perpetual crisis and dysfunction brought on by the eradication of vast swaths of its able-bodied population?

      Trying to communicate to liberals is like that markiplier jingling keys meme. Every second sentence has to reaffirm that this war was justified for Ukraine and not a proxy war done by Neo-Nazis.

    • TheLastHero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      former Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, who, pointing to the example of Israel, said “we can survive only if everyone accepts that they must defend Ukraine,” adding that it would “double our mobilization resource.”

      Zionifcation isntrael

      • SexUnderSocialism [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        9 hours ago

        Not only was it a major setback for the oppressed of the world, but it was also a crime against humanity that won’t be recognized until the forces of reaction have been defeated.

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    The EIA delays all of their monthly data releases for US petroleum reserves (SPR and commercial) because of a technical fault. Probably just a coincidence (we already know most of the data), but the timing is still very funny. They could also be cooking something, you can never tell with Trump.

    The more interesting thing is that currently only ~3 million barrels of the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) release are subscribed (have customers requesting the barrels). So about one week’s worth of releases. After that, team Trump will need to either do something else (declare an emergency and just sell the barrels on the market) or find new buyers. The most probable reason is that SPR oil isn’t sold directly, it is lent out to commodity traders who then have to return ~120% of what they borrowed. What is most likely happening is that no one wants to sell oil on the market at $90 and then have to buy oil at $120 or more to repay their SPR loan a year later.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    Army extends 82nd Airborne Division’s Middle East deployment to a full year. Paratroopers and other soldiers from the division will stay in the region due to “operational requirements” as the Iran war reaches six months.

    Full text

    Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division currently deployed to the Middle East will remain in the region into next year due to “operational requirements,” the Army announced.

    The extended deployment was announced by division commander Maj. Gen. Brandon R. Tegtmeier in a letter to military families, thanking them for their support of the deployed troops. Task & Purpose reviewed the letter, dated Aug. 30 and shared to social media including the Army’s unofficial subreddit. The Army confirmed the authenticity of the letter. The division’s headquarters as well as members of artillery units, the sustainment brigade and air defense troops will be in the region for a full year, while paratroopers and the division’s combat aviation brigade have had their tours extended for up to a year.

    “We now know that operational requirements will keep the Division Headquarters and elements of DIVARTY, ADSB, 3-4 ADA, and 307th Division Engineer Battalion forward for twelve total months,” Tegtmeier wrote. “Paratroopers of 1st BCT and the CAB will serve forward for up to twelve months in total as well. We do not share that lightly, and we understand that a longer tour weighs heavily on every household, including our own.”

    Roughly 2,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division deployed to U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility in March. They were part of a surge in infantry forces into the region after the war started, alongside members of a Marine expeditionary unit. They were sent as the U.S. military refused to rule out ground operations against Iran, although that has yet to happen.

    The extension of the division’s deployment comes as the war with Iran reaches six months, with more than 50,000 U.S. troops operating in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility. Units across the military have faced extended deployments, including aircraft carrier crews, such as the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln who spent eight months at sea before being ordered home.

    The Iran war remains at an impasse, with negotiations stalled. Fighting restarted in July, following an agreement made in June. On Sunday, U.S. forces hit two Iranian rocket launch sites on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz. It was the first strike on Iranian territory since July 30. The Pentagon has ordered some new units in, such as the USS George Washington, sent to relieve the Lincoln. Since the war started on Feb. 28, 18 U.S. service members have died and more than 750 were wounded in action.

    https://taskandpurpose.com/news/82nd-airborne-deployment-extended-iran/

    • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      Though it brings up another question. People say “de-base-ification” this and that. Are they in the zionist entity? Safe in western Saudi Arabia? In hotels?

      Losing radar and getting buildings blown up while very detrimental for the empire isn’t quite the same as preventing them from hosting 50k troops clearly so some regional bases must still be operating reasonably well to be able to engage in the logistics of hosting this many troops without them literally starving to death or making the kind of noise the ones on the carrier made about bad conditions.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netM
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    One incident that raised concern in recent days was the launch of an Iranian anti-aircraft missile toward a U.S. F-35 fighter jet that was providing cover to ships in the strait, a U.S. official said. While the missile didn’t come close enough to be a threat, it was a signal that Iran is trying to reconstitute its military capacity, according to the U.S. official.

    A U.S. Official to AXIOS reported that in recent days that an Iranian anti-aircraft missile was launched towards a U.S. F-35 fighter jet that was providing cover to ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

    • Middle East Spectator