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 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.

  • Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.

  • 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).

  • 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.

  • 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.

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:

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.

  • carl_marks_1312 [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    3 小时前

    https://www.wsj.com/world/china/what-readers-found-when-they-asked-their-chatbots-about-china-229e4203

    https://archive.md/1kScc

    Follow-up cope on the “US has Sweeney” cope article lol

    highlights

    Last week, this newsletter asked whether you’d noticed differences in how AI chatbots answer questions about China. The replies—from a private-equity investor in Texas, a Hollywood screenwriter, and dozens of others—suggest the academic finding I described is already visible in the daily working life of bilingual readers and anyone comparing what a chatbot says on one side of the Pacific with what it says on the other.

    The most striking response came from Jeff He, a reader in California.

    Jeff had translated a recent Wall Street Journal opinion column—Matthew Hennessey’s “The Future is Not Chinese”—into Chinese and forwarded it to a WeChat group of his old high-school classmates back in China. The pushback was instant. One friend, Jeff told me, asked DeepSeek, China’s leading homegrown AI model, to write a rebuttal in the same style as the Journal piece. The bot obliged. According to the text Jeff forwarded me, it produced an essay titled “未来不属于美国”— “The Future Does Not Belong to America.”

    China has Huawei, Tencent, ByteDance, BYD, DJI and CATL, it argued; America has produced little besides “a search engine that’s a bit chattier than the old ones, running on Taiwan-fab’d chips.” Could you name an American film star whose box office doesn’t depend on China? An American soccer player at a top non-English-speaking club? “Frankly,” it concluded, “you can’t name one.”

    xi

    Then Jeff did something interesting. From his office computer in California, he went to deepseek.com—the same web address his friend in China had used—pasted in the rebuttal, and asked the bot to verify each claim.

    The DeepSeek Jeff accessed from outside China dismantled it. Across eight points, it flagged “selective use of data,” “false dichotomies” and “denigrating the opponent.” Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” it noted, earned nearly $1.5 billion globally in 2022 without ever opening in China. Christian Pulisic plays for an Italian team in Serie A; American Sergiño Dest plays for a top Dutch club. Its verdict: the rebuttal was “emotionally charged, selectively using data, with multiple factual errors and logical fallacies.”

    I’d have to cope with AI too to find answers to defeat these rhetorical questions too lol

    There’s also a section in the article where they ask ChatGPT if China is democratic, but have to tell it has consumed Chinese propaganda for it to give an answer they like data-laughing

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    52·
    6 小时前

    Bolivia’s general strike is GROWING. The Chuquisaca region, that hadn’t joined the strike, has now joined and built workers barricades surrounding city. Also, valley roads to Santa Cruz are all blocked off now for first time.

    Week 1: 20 highways blocked

    Week 2: 40

    Week 3: 60+

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    41·
    8 小时前

    So I just looked into some numbers on the shipment of rice from China to Cuba.

    The shipment was 15,000 tons of rice.

    The ship used for this was the Sunny Hong. This ship has a deadweight tonnage (DWT) of 33,847 tons.

    Only half of the storage space of the ship was used for the shipment? Or was there something else on board?

    • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      7 小时前

      Is this tonnage rating for rice specifically, general solid particulate matter, or generic weight?

      Solid particulates often behave like a liquid when subject to vibration and will likely vary based on the specific properties of what is being shipped.

      Liquifaction can cause ships to capsize when the once solid grain-like material behaves like a fluid and flows to the other side of the hull, shifting the center of mass to one side or rapidly back and forth.

      So a ship that can carry say 30,000 tons of bauxite may only be able to carry 15,000 tons of rice if the resonance properties of rice result in stability being lost earlier.

      Just a hypothesis

    • tocopherol [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      7 小时前

      Is there anyway to see how much it typically hauls? Maybe they don’t max the weight for fuel efficiency or speeds sake, I have little knowledge of ship transport practices though, just guessing

  • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    83·
    12 小时前

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    55·
    12 小时前

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    51·
    12 小时前

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    63·
    13 小时前

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    47·
    13 小时前

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    60·
    15 小时前

    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.

    -–

    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.

    -–

    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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    81·
    16 小时前

    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.

    • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      47·
      15 小时前

      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.

    • culpritus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      55·
      17 小时前

      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.

      • daniyeg [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        10 小时前

        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.

      • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        29·
        16 小时前

        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!

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      46·
      17 小时前

      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

        • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          7 小时前

          The orbit of starlink satellites may be the only orbit where this wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Most of these satellites have a short service life and return to earth quickly, so the fallout would probably be short-lived.

        • InexplicableLunchFiend [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          16·
          12 小时前

          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

        • red_giant [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          26·
          15 小时前

          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.

          • culpritus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
            25·
            14 小时前

            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.

            https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120

        • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          25·
          16 小时前

          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

          • Hestia [she/her, fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
            34·
            16 小时前

            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

            • someone [comrade/them, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              31·
              15 小时前

              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.

              • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
                4·
                7 小时前

                The bigger downside is not the satellite debris itself, but the heavy metals and other compounds that damage the ozone layer upon the disintegration of the satellite in the atmosphere.

                However, with this scheme, it would seem that the same amount of material would be injected in the atmosphere as if they were retired as normal, except all at once instead of gradually.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      17 小时前

      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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    53·
    18 小时前

    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.