Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.
Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.
summary
The Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran’s demands.
For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran’s position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.
The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump’s announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I’m definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah’s attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.
As I’ve been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here’s a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.
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Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.
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Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).
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Situation in the Sahel: “Mysterious” third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.
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Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.
I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi’s recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
Trump ekes out a W over Nixon and Bush to be… the most unpopular president of the last 12 US 2-term presidents… on day 491 of their tenure.
The laughably specific graphic aside, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Obamna was the most popular US President in living member but - nope! he was fucking hated by the end of his career. He really fooled 'em.
Every president since the effects of neoliberalism really started kicking in has been hated, wonder why
turns out when crises mount and the rate of profit falls, people are not so happy about it
I detect a trend.
Donald “City Boy” Trump
CNN - Trump moves Camp David Cabinet meeting due to weather. President Donald Trump said his Cabinet will no longer convene at Camp David on Wednesday, citing “possible bad weather.” The Cabinet meeting will instead occur at the White House, as usual, he said. “Based on the possible bad weather conditions tomorrow, we will be having our Cabinet Meeting in the White House, and will be postponing the Cabinet trip to Camp David,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Trump has previously sounded a sour note on the presidential retreat in Maryland. “Yeah, Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it. You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes,” Trump said in an interview before taking office in 2017.
Al Jazeera - 31 killed and 40 injured in Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon. Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that Israeli air strikes across southern Lebanon have killed 31 people and left 40 others injured on Tuesday. According to the report, based on the latest figures issued by the country’s Health Ministry, the casualties followed multiple military strikes targeting the towns and villages of Burj al-Shamali, Kouthariyat al-Ruz, Hboosh, Marakah, and Salaa.
While Hezbollah posted this “coming soon” caption just now, the full video had been released earlier on Iranian TV (and is somehow better than this screenshot implies)
https://t.me/HezbollahMirror/16380
Trump ~25m ago
If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting “I surrender, I surrender” while wildly waving the representative White Flag.
And if their entire remaining Leadership signs all necessary “Documents of Surrender,” and admit their defeat to the great power and force of the magnificent U.S.A., The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal (WSJ!), Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the Fake News Media, will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America, it wasn’t even close. The Dumacrats and Media have totally lost their way. They have gone absolutely CRAZY!!!
President DJT
I edited to to be three parts.
Dumacrats I fucking can’t anymore how am I getting outposted by the president
Trump should consider etching this onto his gravestone assuming the Iranians let him have one
Trump ~25m ago
citation needed because he already posted this a while ago
Didn’t he post exactly this a week or two ago
Yup. Here’s the post today: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116642543193922330
And here’s the same post last week: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116596094940250402
It’s word for word the same.
Reheating old threats that didn’t achieve anything. WEAK!
yeah wonder how long it will take people to realize he’s caught in a loop
The China Street Journal (WSJ!)
good one!
I imagine all the yes men in the room are falling over each other telling him how clever and funny he is. Every time.
The Great Wall of China Street Journal, a nod to the most famous “Wall” of all time, would be an allusion too elusive, apparently.
If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting “I surrender, I surrender” while wildly waving the representative White Flag.
And if their entire remaining Leadership signs all necessary “Documents of Surrender,” and admit their defeat to the great power and force of the magnificent U.S.A.
But Iran did none of those things
he’s not even demanding these things from iran, he’s bitching to NYT WSJ and CNN to recognize his military brilliance. this is some of the worst cope known to man.
But they did. In his head.
Was he jerking off when he typed this screed?
CNN - [The IRGC] claimed Tuesday that 25 vessels, including oil tankers, passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours after receiving permission and security coordination from its navy. In a statement carried by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News, the IRGC Navy said the vessels, which included container ships, transited the strategic waterway during the “last day and night” with coordination and security provided by its forces. CNN could not independently verify the shipping traffic numbers.
The IRGC Navy also said it was maintaining what it described as “intelligent control” over the Strait of Hormuz and warned that “any act of aggression will be met with crushing blows.” The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important shipping chokepoints, with a significant share of global oil and gas supplies passing through the narrow waterway.
The Guardian - Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel is “intensifying” its military operations in Lebanon, with the IDF operating with “large forces on the ground” in order to take control of “strategic areas”.
Earlier, we reported that a military official confirmed that Israeli forces had begun operating beyond its so-called ‘yellow line’, which marks the 10km (six miles) area deep inside southern Lebanon which Israel is already occupying. A reminder that these expanded ground operations are all despite a ceasefire that has been in place since 17 April, as Israel has continued to intensify its strikes on Lebanon while claiming it is acting to remove threats from Hezbollah.
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Edit 1
CNN - Israel repeatedly strikes Bekaa Valley, hitting road near Lebanon’s largest dam. The Israeli military launched successive attacks on a road near the largest dam in Lebanon, prompting condemnation from water authorities over potential damage to the key civilian facility. Israel “targeted the area” near the Qaraoun Dam, along the lush Bekaa Valley, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported Tuesday. “Residents fear potential cracks in the dam,” NNA said.
The Israeli military told CNN that it “carried out a strike in that area to remove a threat.” Gaping plumes of smoke rolled over a blue lake surrounding the dam, in video of the aftermath verified by CNN. The Qaraoun dam is the largest in Lebanon, providing electricity and irrigation to agricultural pastures, according to Litani River National Authority.
Lebanese officials warned that “any direct or indirect targeting” of the dam and wider infrastructure “could lead to catastrophic risks for the population.” “They are civilian and vital installations whose targeting is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the Litani River National Authority said. It came after an Israeli strike on the town of Mashghara, in the western Bekaa Valley, killed at least 11 people – including two girls – on Monday.
In total, at least 3,213 people have been killed and another 9,737 wounded since March 2, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reported on Tuesday. Hezbollah meanwhile has increased explosive drone launches on Israeli border villages. On Tuesday, the group claimed responsibility for at least 23 attacks on Israeli military posts in Lebanon.
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Edit 2
Al Jazeera - Israeli army issues new forced evacuation orders in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army has issued a forced displacement order for residents of eight towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee urged in a post on X people from Khirbet Selm, Bir al-Sanasil, Qabrikha, Majdal Selm, Qalawiya, Kfar Dunin, Touline and Sawana to “immediately” abandon their homes due to what he says were Hezbollah violations of a ceasefire agreed last month and which was recently extended. Since the April truce, Israel military operations have continued on a nearly daily basis.
Earlier today, the military issued a forced evacuation order also for Mashghara and Sahma, the Lebanon’s National News Agency reported, adding that three Israeli air strikes targeted the vicinity of the Qaraoun Dam, Lebanon’s largest dam, in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
They’ll blow that dam to hell if there’s a 23yo admiral with the guts to claim it won’t impede on the cozy lives of settler-chuds south of the UN-recognized-but-not-enforced border.
Yeesh.
The Guardian - The US and Israel are “actively working” to strip Jordan of its historic custodianship of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque complex, according to a report by Middle East Eye, citing multiple unnamed sources.
US, Jordanian and Palestinian officials, as well as western and Gulf Arab sources, told MEE that under the plan, championed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, the authority of Jordan over the site would end and a new body created by the Israeli government would declare the al-Aqsa Mosque a “multi-faith centre”.
Two US officials told MEE that Washington had drafted a paper on how they envisaged the mosque’s future. The officials said that the Trump administration would like to see the al-Aqsa Mosque stripped of its Muslim identity, with the site turned into a landmark tourist attraction that hosts all three Abrahamic religions.
Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, al-Aqsa is often a flashpoint and disagreements over access and its management have lead to unrest.
the last paragraph is pure undistilled british passive-voice.
I might just join the RAF and hope I can find a way to personally provoke Iran into ending the flow of oil to our pathetic little island once and for all
Two US officials told MEE that Washington had drafted a paper on how they envisaged the mosque’s future.
Gold panels and tasteful blue and red backlighting. Champagne service for the VIP booths and a private tunnel to the wailing wall. A 400 meter high luxury apartment villa. Each guest gets a piece of the remains of Herodian temple complex as a memento.
We are at the point where I can’t tell if this is a joke or not
Jared Kushner was not even qualified to receive a security clearance from the uS government. The buttery males crowd is oddly silent on the amount of shit he’s allowed to stick his nose into.
buttery males crowd
Strange to see this not from a .world poster
I was at work. I’m naturally in a lib headspace there. Still, it’s like everything in Washington is so serious and locked down but they had to open things up so Trump could track his main rival.
buttery males 🤤🤤🤤🤤
Wait are you telling me fascists are hypocrites without any scruples?
Things you do when you want to convince the rest of the region to sign a nonagression pact.
Anyone looking to keep track of SpaceX’s future ought to keep an eye on Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO. She’s the one who really runs the show there, she’s been the brains of that operation for decades.
This is to pump up the hype ahead of the IPO. The SpaceX fundamentals are really terrible, so they need some news to juice up all the marks to buy up the stocks before the music stops.
starlink is the only thing that makes money, the rocket stuff is what made them famous and xAI is burning all of the money and then some. their goal is to get fast tracked into NASDAQ and automatically sell their IPO based on that. the victim of all this delusion will be the stock bound pension system that everyone thinks is such a great idea.
They plan to raise $75bn with the IPO, their cash burn is around $15bn per year. So this should help them survive for a while. Just what you want from a $2tn company!
i yearn for the day iran (or russia) enters a joker mode and launches a bucket of bolts into the orbit to kessler musk bullshit. smdh, for a price of 100 million you can explode 1 trillion evaluation, this is untapped market arbitrage opportunity
That would create so much space debris and it would put back every countries space programs
At a certain point, it would be a necessary sacrifice to stop the imperialist world conquering bloodmongers. If we enter WW3 I don’t want to see Iran or Russia or China pulling any punches because the fascist axis will not
Full disclosure: I know next to nothing about this topic and just googled things so I’m commenting in the spirit of wanting to be corrected to help me understand it better.
I googled the Kessler syndrome in low earth orbit and it says it would be about 5 years to clear up, since there is still reasonably significant atmospheric drag at that altitude which would bring all the trash down.
The second thing that appeared in my google search was that Starlink satellites themselves are already posing a threat to future launches, with one example being a chinese satellite launch that came within “200 meters” of hitting a Starlink satellite, implying that the risk is already there anyway.
My question / idea being that a 5 year kessler syndrome seems like it’s potentially acceptable to a state engaged in war. Five years that they can’t launch satellites, ok that sucks, but their enemy can’t either.
I am going to keep googling to find out why what I just said is fucking stupid because it probably is, but if someone already can tell me why i’m dumb then i’d appreciate that.
There’s also the changing of atmospheric chemistry due to so many LEO satellites burning up.
Planned increases in the number of low earth orbit satellites within the next few decades could cause up to half of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles to contain metals from reentry. The influence of this level of metallic content on the properties of stratospheric aerosol is unknown.
i receive: space nerds can talk about iss
you receive: unlimited color revolution attempts and drone strikes with coordination from langley
and real science programs (telescopes) fly much higher than starlink anyway, in earth l2 or geosync
Good, focus on our own fucking planet.
I don’t care for space colonies. But willingly polluting the planet’s orbit is detrimental for development on our planet, too. Such as hindering programs like China’s idea for Space-based solar power
The good news about low Earth orbit (“LEO”, up to roughly 500Km altitude) is that it’s self-cleaning. There’s enough trace atmosphere that anything without the ability to re-boost itself from time to time will slow down and fall out of orbit, usually in a few years. This is where Starlink lives thankfully. If something happened where the entire Starlink network failed and all control was lost over all the satellites permanently, it’d be safe and clear again within a decade max, and probably a lot sooner.
Geostationary orbits (“GEO”, up at roughly 36000Km altitude) are also not really a concern for debris because the sheer volume of empty space, and the relatively tiny number of satellites out there compared to LEO. It is super expensive to put a satellite into that orbit, you need a very powerful rocket.
The really scary debris issues are in Sun-synchronous orbits, in practice around 800 to 1000 Km-ish altitude. It’s a very useful orbit for science satellites monitoring Earth for weather and long-term climate change studies. Orbits there don’t decay naturally for thousands of years. Fortunately it’s also not nearly as crowded as LEO.
Fair
Musk is really squeezing money out of the Pentagon. It’s a great article filled with quoteable stuff. I’ll share just this.
No other company provides a comparable alternative to Starlink, which has become an increasingly critical tool in modern warfare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The satellite network provides global coverage, enabling battlefield communications and precision targeting even in remote areas. SpaceX’s constellation of roughly 10,000 satellites accounts for more than 60% of those in orbit - dwarfing the constellations being built by other companies, including OneWeb and Amazon Leo.
[…]
SPACEX HAS U.S. GOVERNMENT ‘OVER A BARREL’
Unlike traditional defense contractors, SpaceX holds greater leverage over the Pentagon because it also has a large commercial market for Starlink, alongside its rocket launch and artificial intelligence businesses, said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security-focused think tank. SpaceX generates about 20% of its total revenue from the U.S. government, according to an SEC filing.
The Guardian - Israeli forces have begun operating beyond its so-called ‘Yellow Line’ in south Lebanon, which runs around 10km (six miles) deep inside Lebanese territory, a military official confirmed to AFP on Tuesday.
“The IDF is operating in a targeted manner beyond the Forward Defence Line in order to remove direct threats to the citizens of the State of Israel and IDF troops, in accordance with the directives of the political echelon,” the military official said when asked about reports that the military had begun ground operations beyond its demarcation line. “Specific details regarding soldiers’ locations cannot be provided,” the official added.
Iran pls
NYT - President Trump is expected to hold a cabinet meeting on Wednesday at Camp David, rather than the usual setting of the White House, according to the White House. The meeting comes as the Trump administration has signaled it was making progress toward a potential deal to end the war in Iran, even as tensions remained high between the countries. All cabinet members were expected to attend the meeting.
I wonder why they choose that locale. It feels weird to me. How often does Trump go to Camp David? I have no idea at all.
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Edit
CNN - The president has visited the highly-restricted Maryland presidential retreat relatively sparingly, just once during his second term and 15 times during his first.
It does feel like a strange choice… are they doing a corpo retreat that weekend with the cabinet; trust falls and a hike? Is Trump going to have some of them executed and buried in the woods? Find out in the next episode, airing Sunday prime time!
New season of the Apprentice dropping soon.
Trump posts…
DON’T MISS THE BIG, BIG, BIGGGEST REVEAL!
US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows
Among the documents in the tranche obtained by WIRED is a New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report that warns of widespread upheaval in response to AI adoption. Of particular note is a novel term for what the bureau purports to be an emerging extremism threat.
“The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City,” the report reads. The term “anti-tech violent extremism” does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category.
more behind the link worth reading
Standing at the gates of a datacenter chanting “Lud” while the lads roll up a flaming battering ram
How could you possibly look at the damage that AI and tech companies more broadly are doing to everything around them, and then say that the people concerned about it are simply “extremists”? JFC
How much of this is to ratchet up legal consequences for disabling flock cameras?
Calling this extremism when big tech is muscling their way into communities, in spite of opposition, by paying off politicians is just hypocritical. But of course, just par for the course as always when it comes to popular resistance against corporations and institutions.
Oh yeah it’s luddite time
Can’t wait to join a neo-luddite group storming data centers
74 Percent of U.S. Air Force Aircraft Missed Depot Maintenance Deadlines — Up from 31 Percent In 2019
A new Government Accountability Office report found that 74 percent of U.S. Air Force aircraft missed their depot maintenance completion deadlines, up from 31 percent in 2019. The GAO concluded that the Air Force has masked the true severity of these delays by revising target timelines after unplanned work is discovered, making depots appear to meet goals they have not actually met. The service’s three major maintenance depots — Hill in Utah, Robins in Georgia, and Tinker in Oklahoma — cannot compete with private-sector pay for skilled technicians. The Defense Logistics Agency has also lost roughly 22 percent of its vendor base.
more
The U.S. Air Force Has a Maintenance Problem
The Air Force is experiencing surging maintenance delays, with 74 percent of aircraft missing their depot completion deadlines—up from 31 percent in 2019. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report reveals that the true extent of these readiness delays has been masked by officials altering target timelines after discovering unplanned maintenance. The unplanned surprises found when aircraft are in the Air Force’s depots for maintenance aren’t being reflected in the statistics that the service uses in the assessments of depot maintenance.
A GAO Report States The Air Force Isn’t Meeting Deadlines
This latest report shows that the Air Force “is not reporting the full extent of depot maintenance challenges and may not be able to make accurate comparisons across the fleet,” the GAO says. Air Force maintainers have masked the delays because officials often revise their target timelines after unplanned work is discovered. These unplanned delays are hurting the service’s aircraft availability for training and operations. Air and Space Forces magazine reports that, “Depot maintenance is the highest, most intensive level of military maintenance, covering repairs requiring the overhaul, upgrading, or rebuilding of parts or structures, according to U.S. law.” The Air Force has three major maintenance depots:
- Ogden Air Logistics Complex at Hill Air Force Base, Utah
- Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia
- Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma
What Are The Primary Factors In The USAF’s Maintenance Delays?
Several systemic challenges drive this Air Force maintenance crisis. The Air Force has an aging aircraft fleet, with age-related wear and tear on highly complex aircraft making them more susceptible to unplanned repairs and a critical shortage of skilled technicians. Making matters worse, the Air Force has masked the true severity of these bottlenecks by shifting target deadlines to match the actual, slower performance of its maintenance depots.
An Aging Aircraft Fleet Presents Constant Challenges
Surging unplanned maintenance is a direct result of the aging of its air fleet. As aircraft age, depots routinely uncover unexpected issues like corrosion or structural stress cracks during routine maintenance. This unplanned work has increased significantly, making it difficult to stick to the original schedule. The masked metrics in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that nearly three-quarters of Air Force aircraft experienced delays. However, the scale of the problem was hidden because officials regularly revised target timelines after unplanned work was discovered, making it appear as though depots were meeting their goals.
The Air Force’s Losing Battle Against the Private Sector
Workforce shortages are reaching critical levels. Maintenance depots struggle with critical staffing challenges because the Air Force can’t compete with the private sector on pay and benefits. The Air Force’s challenge of recruiting and retaining engineers and mechanics has been constant. The GAO Report highlighted, “The depots have taken some steps to mitigate this challenge by selectively using incentives and emphasizing the nonfinancial benefits of a federal career. “However, the Air Force has not fully addressed pay competition with the private sector because DOD has not conducted a comprehensive assessment of pay gaps for occupations affected by private sector competition. “Such an assessment would enable the depots to make informed decisions to address competition with the private sector for occupations critical to aircraft readiness.”
Creating A Pathway For Recruitment
A recent article in War on the Rocks suggests that to address maintenance workforce issues, the Air Force should launch a targeted recruitment campaign in high schools and technical schools that emphasizes service career opportunities and benefits. “Streamlined pathways for obtaining certifications, such as an Airframe and Powerplant (A&P), can make the Air Force more appealing in an increasingly competitive hiring field. Tying these certification programs to service commitments can ensure a steady influx of qualified maintainers.”
Supply Chain Issues Plague All Of The Services
Supply chain and parts delays aren’t just an Air Force problem but a Pentagon-wide issue. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) lost thousands of vendors (roughly 22 percent of its total supplier community) over recent years, which has drastically increased pricing and lead times. However, complex aircraft, such as the F-35 and F-22, require highly specialized parts, technical training, and logistical support systems, and these systems have struggled to keep pace. Primary factors include contractor shortages, reliance on foreign-sourced parts, and cyber vulnerabilities. The USAF is actively mitigating these risks using AI
and predictive logistics frameworks.
Lots of op-eds coming out of Orinoco Tribune, significant Bolivarian news outlet, on the state of Chavismo in the wake of Alex Saab’s illegal extradition to the US. There’s a wide variety of takes here, ranging from sympathetic and supportive to what is best described as the @InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net revolutionary defeat position. I’m going to post a bunch - the headlines alone say a lot, but they’re all worth reading and all raise valid points to support their analysis. Clearly, even among supporters of Rodriguez, confidence is shaken. Some of them are obviously responding to each other.
Chavismo Has Not Been Overthrown; It Is Wounded
The Silence Has Been Broken in Venezuela
The Return of the Repentant Dog: How the Purist Left Judges Venezuela From Afar
On ‘Betrayals’ and January 3: A Non-Linear Reading
Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Solidarity Movement
Venezuela and the Perils of Ceding Sovereignty
The Post-January 3 Minefield in Venezuela
I strongly encourage all comrades to read this collection of pieces with an open and dialectical mind to develop the best understanding of the state of the Bolivarian Revolution, the PSUV, and Venezuelan sovereignty.
I appreciate the “dynamism of historical processes” perspective of the fifth article (On ‘Betrayals’).
History is not “ingredients in, results out,” it’s a process in time, with twists and turns. If you want to explain a chess game, you look at the moves, you don’t say “Player A won because they are the kind of person who wins.” Sure, you can talk about how Player A makes their decisions – maybe they have a particularly effective “doctrine” or “style” that helps them win. But that only goes so far to explain the course of any particular game. So I like the “how exactly did we get here” angle of the author of that article.
(I’m not a chess nerd I just think it’s a good analogy)
It doesn’t wash anymore to say that defending Delcy counters defeatism. It’s the opposite. People who defend her now have to argue that nothing but surrender is possible.
Couldn’t have put it better myself, glad other people are seeing the obvious. Pro-Delcy arguments boil down to “we’re just a smol country that cannot ever do anything against the US, we have no choice but to prostrate ourselves and hand over everything” which just ignores the decades of struggles and victories the Venezuelan people endured and earned, which were all handed over in exchange for nothing. Then they have the gall to call us defeatists for saying no, you should not do that. You should continue to struggle, or at the very least admit to yourself you’ve given up to revanchism and are no longer an ongoing socialist project.
Not all (most?) of them are Chavistas though. I do find it very telling that for all the talk about betrayal, the Chavistas haven’t risen up to overthrow Rodriquez. Unarmed Bolivians have shut down the country and are on the cusp of overthrowing the neoliberal regime while armed Venezuelans, armed by Maduro no less, can’t even muster an angry protest against Rodriquez? Trump has faced, what, his 5th assassination attempt, but not one Chavista has made a serious attempt to put a bullet into her head for her betrayal?
The only protests I’ve seen so far that are explicitly anti-Rodriquez are those led by the PCV, but the PCV have split from Chavismo since Maduro. I would say that most members either never truly supported Chavismo but saw it as a compromise or think it was Maduro who betrayed Chavismo. I don’t think there’s a lot who would specifically point to Rodriquez as when the PSUV jumped the shark.
Nobody in the CCCP rebelled against Kruschev, Gorbachev or Yeltsin (until the last moment) either for being right-revisionists and Liberals. They all sat there for decades, quietly and meekly following the party, as unprincipled revisionists destroyed the USSR, and destroyed it was.
There were protests after Khrushchev gave his secret speech and started taking down statues of Stalin. Liberals like highlighting the one in Georgia to push some dumb ethnonationalist talking point about how the Georgians only did that because they liked Stalin for being Georgian. They obviously liked to ignore the other protests because it completely goes against their anticommunist “Stalin was an ebil dictator” talking point. Khrushchev himself got pushed out of power by people within the CPSU who thought he dropped the ball on Cuba. People didn’t just sit there and take it while Khrushchev shat the bed. By the time of Gorbachev, the rot in Soviet society was too great with an entrenched apparatchik class and an intellectual class who wished they were Westerners instead. There’s a gradual process where you can see that Soviet society coming off the years of Stalin was vibrant enough to reflexively fend off against Khrushchev while Soviet society coming off the years of Brezhnev no longer had that spark.
If we’re using the same analogy, then you’re essentially following the party line of the PCV who thought Maduro sucked, so if anything, it would be Maduro who betrayed Chavismo, not Rodriquez. Rodriquez would just be continuing what Maduro started. Just like how there can’t be Gorbachev without Khrushchev, there can’t be Rodriquez without Maduro.
the rot in Soviet society was too great with an entrenched apparatchik class and an intellectual class who wished they were Westerners instead.
that’s where we are at with Venezuelan leadership too, is the point. You can’t simultaneously say “Socialist nations need our uncritical support and they have more info than us so we need to shut up and do what they say” and also say “the rot set in so deep that nothing could be done”. These are antithetical statements. The rot was so deep because nobody did anything about it! Nobody adequately pressured the state and criticized it! They let it rot in meek subservience!
So let’s imagine it’s the 80s and I’m criticizing Gorbachev for being a revisionist. Your argument boils down to essentially “well Kruschev was also a revisionist, but all of the sudden now you’re mad!”. It doesn’t actually address the rot, it’s word games and excuses.
So let’s imagine it’s the 80s and I’m criticizing Gorbachev for being a revisionist. Your argument boils down to essentially “well Kruschev was also a revisionist, but all of the sudden now you’re mad!”. It doesn’t actually address the rot, it’s word games and excuses.
I don’t agree with this at all. A reasonable analysis should be able to pinpoint to Khrushchev instead of waiting until Gorbachev. Like, to continue using the analogy, even Brezhnev wasn’t that great either. The qualitative shifts are Stalin to Khrushchev and Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev are largely cut from the same cloth. It’s fine to start out with critiques of Gorbachev as a concerned Soviet citizen living during the 80s wondering what’s going on, but more in-depth research and study should lead to an a-ha moment where one recognizes Gorbachev as representing a rot that started with Khrushchev.
I don’t really get what your distinction or point is. We are both seemingly in agreement that Venezuela is in a similar state of rot and falling apart and revisionism as late era-USSR was, but quibbling over who to place blame on? It’s apparently OK for a soviet citizen to criticize Gorbachev’s revisionism, but Marxists outside of the USSR have to keep their mouth shut? That shit is stupid and anti-scientific positionalist nonsense, and we all know it. The western Marxists criticizing the USSR for going revisionist were entirely correct, and it’s completely acceptable for them to say objectively correct things regardless of where they live.
I don’t care about the blame game or pointing fingers, I care about accepting the current state of reality and doing something about it instead of all lining up to defend Gorbachev 2.0 on a communist forum where the users here should know better. It really proves to me that there is a huge chunk of “communists” who know very little about Marxist theory and don’t know how to recognize or criticize revisionism, and will defend it when it comes to ruin any project we ever happen to succeed with (if we ever do).
The most dramatic - “Delcy Has Overthrown Chavismo” - is from a Canadian, but he’s not exactly a random Venezuela hater. His opinion clearly changed post-1/3; in the immediate aftermath his writing was defending the continuity of Bolivarian power with Rodriguez inheriting office according to constitutional procedure and being a trustworthy figure. The response piece - “Chavismo has not been overthrown; it is wounded” is by the EOC of Anticonquista, who claim to be a diasporic anti-imperialist organizaton, so I don’t think on-the-ground Chavistas. It’s worth looking at who each of the writers are, because I think the trend you’re noting is generally true - criticism is harsher from the outside.
The military says it’s ready to ‘fight tonight’ in the Pacific. Can it sustain that fight?
“We cannot win if our supply lines are 5,000 miles long,” says U.S. Forces Korea commander.
more
Having the “right stuff at the right place at the right time” in the Pacific theater is “a little bit of a maths problem,” says U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s strategy director for logistics and engineering. “Hawaii is 3,000 miles from the West Coast. Guam is 5,000 miles from Hawaii, and the first island chain”—which includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines—“is 1,500 miles from Guam,” Brig. Gen. Jim Bliss of the New Zealand Army said this month during the Indo-Pacific Security Forum. It’s “a vast ocean,” with “very, very little in the way of logistics nodes on land forward available to be used,” Bliss said. If troops and materiel aren’t “forward when the fighting starts,” it will be difficult to get them there in time, he said. It’s a problem that preoccupied many U.S. military leaders in the region. “Here in the Indo-Pacific, a robust domestic base is a hollow shell if we cannot project that power across the tyranny of distance,” said Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, during a keynote speech at AUSA’s Land Forces Pacific conference. “We cannot win if our supply lines are 5,000 miles long.”The U.S. Army’s “delivers foundational sustainment capabilities to the entire joint force. And I’m fervent in my belief that nobody knows or senses or feels viscerally the scale of sustainment than our nation’s Army,” Indo-Pacific commander leader Adm. Samuel Paparo said at LANPAC.
Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, commander of the Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command, reiterated that point later in the conference. Pre-positioning equipment forward, with partners like the Defense Logistics Agency and Army Materiel Command, and building what the Army calls joint interior lines, “quite frankly, demonstrates our ability to overcome that 7,000-mile distance” from the continental United States to “where we think we need to operate.” Noting that he’d “rather get a root canal” than have to import things into Australia, Gardner said the Army has been prepositioning equipment there on a significant scale. Still, he said, the issue is not just “storage and distribution,” it’s also about the ability to repair things when they break—without sending them back to the continental United States. “We don’t want to” send it back, Gardner said. “We want to repair it forward. We want to repair it forward now, in what I call ‘competition’” so it’s ready when a conflict or crisis emerges. In the past, he said, the unit had to send a broken Army watercraft to the U.S. West Coast. But because of expanded contracts, “now, I can fix it in South Korea. I could fix it in Japan. I could fix it in the Philippines. I could fix it in Australia. I could fix it in Singapore. “That may sound like a small thing, but you know, that towing of a ship—two years in a row—all the way back from Australia—two years in a row—it takes a long time. That’s a 30-day sail in order to get it back,” he said, referring to the annual Talisman Sabre exercise.
Such a delay is untenable, USFK’s Brunson said. “We cannot shuttle broken equipment across an ocean for repair while an adversary evolves on our doorstep,” he said. On the Korean peninsula, Brunson said, “we’re already fixing forward and improving the concept.” Korean dry docks have “successfully overhauled” three U.S. ships, with two more in the queue. And by “leveraging special repair authority and weaponizing advanced manufacturing, we’re transforming our theater blueprint into a permanent deterrent.” Resilience “is no longer a support function, but has to be a warfighting function,” said Marine Maj. Gen. George Rowell, INDOPACOM’s director of strategic planning and policy. “It means sustaining combat power, command and control, and logistics, and being able to take hits in a degraded environment.” The way forward, Rowell said, is to “supercharge our defense industrial base,” and “innovate with non-traditional primes.”
[“prime” is in reference to “prime contractor”, the traditional ones would be your major MIC companies like your Lockheeds and Boeings, so this would be about looking into other companies - and of course, classic business bro bullshit of believing that enough “innovation” is going to magically solve your deindustrialization]
“China possesses over 50 percent of the global commercial shipbuilding capacity, while the U.S. has about 0.1 percent, making it imperative that we accelerate capacity through both established and emerging industrial partners.” A day after Rowell’s keynote at the Indo-Pacific Security Forum, Paparo told the audience at LANPAC that Allied forces won World War II “because industry built combat power at scale, a scale that the Axis powers could never match. And American sustainment delivered, from the factory floor to the fighting positions across the globe.” Now, Paparo said, “we set the theater,” by posturing forces and pre-positioning sustainment, and creating “a network of distribution centers” throughout the Indo-Pacific. But, he said, “we’ve got to be smart about how and where you’re pre-positioning ammunition stocks, because in this 21st-century warfare environment, you must [protect] those things that can’t be moved, and you must always be moving the things that you can.”
MOVE THEM TO WHERE, FUCKING AQUAMAN’S CELLAR!?
and also, protect them with what, all the air defense missiles you just used up against Iran?
Marine Maj. Gen. Matthew Mowery, deputy commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said the Marines set a goal of being able to sustain their own forces for 45 days within the first island chain. But he can’t build up an “iron mountain” of equipment and supplies. And ultimately, Mowery said, “If we think that…if and when deterrence fails, and a crisis goes to conflict, we think we’re going to have 45 days to bring in, you know, all of our equipment sets and bring those forces in—we have not been kidding ourselves, but we would be kidding ourselves. If you don’t have those forces here when the shooting starts, you’d better plan to live without them.” Maj. Gen. Ash Collingburn, commander of the Australian army’s 1st Division, echoed Mowery later that week. “If it’s not forward when the fighting starts, then it’s really hard to get” needed supplies and people forward, he said. “I see sustainment as the key challenge in the theater—across time, across distance, across contested lines of communication. If we want to campaign at the edge, we need to be able to sustain.”
China possesses over 50 percent of the global commercial shipbuilding capacity, while the U.S. has about 0.1 percent, making it imperative that we accelerate capacity through both established and emerging industrial partners.
Assuming that’s true, if China kindly stops doing anything today, and the US doubles their ship building capacity in just one year, then doubles that again the next year and continues doubling every year, they’ll catch up in only just under log2(50/0.1)≈9.0 years of exponential growth at a rate of 100%. Shouldn’t be a problem for the wonders of a free market, right? /s
Who has the remaining 49,9%??
South Korea and Japan are most of it, and then there’s a bunch of sub-1% countries (plus the Philippines which is at 1% exactly)
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-dominate-global-shipbuilding/
Crazy that the US has so little despite having so much coast and such absurd military spending.
It was always a union threat I guess. Same idea as exporting everything else, namely breaking working class unions and power and reaping profits from outsourcing.
im ready to fight tonight too, if my opponent agrees to give up immediately
