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 USS Abraham Lincoln arriving at Thailand, looking worn after a very long deployment to the Arabian Sea.

My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.

preamble

To start briefly with Iran, there’s been two significant developments over the last week. First is that Iran is now beginning to put into practice its policy that allows preemptive strikes - a policy which was authorized by the previous Khamenei a while before his death but has so far gone unused - to strike at Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan without a corresponding American aggression immediately beforehand. The second development is that Iran is now taking a firmer stand against the US Navy in the waters of the Arabian Sea, beginning by testing anti-ship ballistic missiles against the US fleet - so far without confirmed hits as of me writing this sentence - as it is obviously disadvantageous for Iran to simply not do anything against the blockade even with US logistics under strain. The US has attempted to dissuade these new strikes by striking Iranian oil tankers, to which Iran has responded by striking oil tankers aligned with the West. This is very much not a shooting war that the US wants to get into as oil stockpiles continue to decline and diesel prices are at all-time highs (though if adjusted for inflation, we still have a little more time before we hit absolute highs). The overall picture is of an Iran growing in confidence.

There’s also been some encouraging news out of Yemen, where Ansarallah has been conducting a ground offensive weaken the enemy occupation of the western coast, including some breathtakingly precise drone-drop operations combined with using recon drones to guide ballistic missiles at enemy formations. As far as I’m aware, the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi tankers has been very successful, although stopping Saudi tankers from heading north towards Suez has been understandably trickier. I suppose if push comes to shove, they can continue to strike the very immobile coastal oil facilities rather than trying to hit moving ships at a great distance.

The news out of Russia/Ukraine has been quite miserable for particularly Ukrainian civilians over the past month or two, with Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian logistics and warehouses being met with much greater Russian responses on Ukrainian civilian logistics and warehouses. Ukrainian ports are now effectively blockaded, making exporting agricultural products in the same quantities as before essentially impossible, and within the cities including Kiev, food suppliers are scrambling to find smaller warehouses to place goods in so that they aren’t as easily destroyed like the larger warehouses have been. I find it sincerely upsetting that the war has progressed to this point, though it’s always worth noting that, first, Ukraine had a few opportunities to sign pretty good negotiating terms with Russia; and second, in comparison, Western wars begin at the step of making a conflict about hurting civilians, even to the extent of it being a detriment to strategic goals by not solely hitting military targets (most famously in Gaza, but also e.g. during Obama’s term by bombing weddings and hospitals).

I will confess to not being as up-to-date on the situation in Europe, and especially Germany, in regards to the Ukraine War as I would like, but as a general statement, nothing I’ve seen over the last few years has demonstrated to me that Europe is capable of fielding a conventional force which would provide a formidable, let alone existential, threat to Russia at this stage. There’s been lots of embarrassing stories about European missile, drone, and shell production being well below standards in both quality and quantity. My thoughts are now that I think the age of the US/NATO posing an existential conventional threat to China, Russia, and probably Iran (and perhaps others like the DPRK?) is now conclusively over, with Western bases proven to be indefensible with existing missile defence programs, their logistics very vulnerable to disruption, and their aircraft not being safe to use over airspace at least as well-protected as Iran’s. The US can still do cataclysmic, nation-destroying damage to smaller, less defended countries like those in Latin America and Africa, but for the anti-US squad in Eurasia, the vast majority of the threat from the US is now a combination of financial/debt offensives and covert intelligence. We still have a long way to go on both those fronts, however - a minimum of a decade or two, I believe, even with Trump’s inadvertently anti-imperialist accelerationism.

Lastly for this preamble, the annual SCO summit took place on September 1st in Bishkek, with the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, and others in attendance. A lot of the usual statements were made: down with hegemonies, down with militarising space, down with unilateral sanctions, up with local currency exchanges, up with cooperation, up with peace, etc etc. The big proclamation this time around was the Bishkek Declaration, which reiterated all those points I just mentioned. Overall, it’s one of those documents where the content is mostly cool and indirectly jabs a lot at the US, but I find that paper is a generally ineffective barrier of protection against bombs and missiles, which is a pretty major avenue of… let’s say, “international communication” in the current day. And I would like to see some real contenders to the World Bank and IMF taking shape soon if we’re gonna truly start fighting hegemonism, but I digress.

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.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    54 minutes ago

    The US’s official wounded and dead was updated…

    • 820 wounded (26 added)

    • 18 dead. I think that’s accurate but the update didn’t mention it.

    CBS News - 26 more U.S. service members reported wounded in action since early July. The U.S. military on Tuesday reported 26 additional service members were wounded in action in recent months.

    The locations and dates of the injuries were not reported, but they were categorized in the military’s casualty database under “Overseas Operations,” a term the Pentagon has used for injuries and deaths in the Middle East and the Iran war since July 7.

    According to the Pentagon’s database, 403 people were wounded in overseas operations between July 7 and Sept. 8. In a separate listing in the database under Operation Epic Fury, the military’s previous term for the war with Iran, the Pentagon said 417 people were wounded from February to July.

    Operation Epic Fury’s exact end date had been unclear for months, until the Pentagon told CBS News last week that it formally ended on May 5. However, the military still lists five injuries in June and one non-hostile death in July under Epic Fury.

  • Socialism_Is_The_Alternative [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    41·
    4 hours ago

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the decline of Western imperialism:

    “In historical terms, the West – and Europe in particular – is a severely wounded beast. It is becoming far more dangerous. There is less stability today than there was in the 1970s,” he said in an interview with the online project “Sama Menshova.”

    He pointed out that there can be no artificial preservation of Western dominance, which has lasted for over 500 years. The West must defend its position in fair competition – something it has never known how to do throughout its history, just as it has never lived honestly or succeeded independently, having always survived at the expense of others.

    “The West’s loss of its objective capacity to run the show is leading it to seek dominance through completely unscrupulous methods: sanctions, or even direct intervention, up to and including military action. They are simply clinging to the last opportunities to maintain their dominance,” Lavrov said.

    https://tass.com/politics/2183941

    • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      29·
      3 hours ago

      What is fair competition in this context? What a fucking lib

      As clausewitz says, matters of geopolitics are always decided final destination, fox only, no items

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        13·
        1 hour ago

        I think the fair competition means that mono western hegemony and extraction of resources for no actual trade is ending, i.e. Iran now wants money for trade going through it’s region which the west would say is unfair but then powers like the US treat the open seas as their own territory. The thing is that these moments have been here before but it was the cold war and so the violence and methods were ever numerous and far more effective. Now however the west is dealing with nation states that can project some form of military power that burns their paper tigers which are some of the only means of government graft left. It also doesn’t help that the west is now severely crippled and broken since it has let capitalism fully decimate it meaning it’s industrial capacity and means of power projection do not exist in any capacity like they once were (Cold War).

      • VComrade [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        18·
        2 hours ago

        Could be meant in terms of the west has never been able to tolerate an opposing equal (or superior as is the case with China now) and has historically had to drag the entire world into devastating wars to eliminate competition.

  • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    57·
    5 hours ago

    The US hits three Iranian oil tankers, Iran warns all sailors in Bahrain and Kuwait to leave their ships ASAP. Iran should just go for the Fujairah port instead!

    First reports of IRGC launches just now. AD reportedly active in the Muwaffaq base in Jordan. @squatsons is saying that over 30 missiles have been launched. That would be a very big wave!

    Impacts confirmed at Muwaffaq Salti Airbase, Prince Hassan Airbase, and Aqabah Jordan. @squatsons

    A direct Iranian missile impact on Jordan, filmed from the occupied West Bank.

    • Parzivus [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      5 hours ago

      I said that if OpenAI released its result in the way proposed I would go public with what happened. The reply was, “Why would you ruin your career?” I replied that I am an academic, and asked why he thought going public would ruin my career. The reply was, “If you don’t want me to be nice, then I don’t have to be nice.”

      Quote from one of the mathematicians claiming to have found this before OpenAI. He is claiming that he discovered a partial solution using a mix of several different AI models, but OpenAI got wind of this and threw a ton of processing power at it to beat him to the punch, essentially.

    • subversive_dev@lemmy.mlEnglish
      32·
      6 hours ago

      I would have been impressed with “here is how our solution can be applied to open questions in turbulent fluid motion” but it seems to be “we found this vortex thing that we claim technically addresses some of the millennium prize criteria”

      Can the physicists in the chat explain if this is actually an important result?

      • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        1 hour ago

        i think at this point navier stokes for physicists is largely curiosity, cause you always trust full simulation anyways (more relevant for air which is compressible), and water, while being largely samey as navier, produces cavitation, so the point is moot.

        on the outside of the field, however, i think some plasma physicists might try to do something in the spirit of searching for singularities to compress plasma (combination of magnetic/electric fields which will explode some equation/approximation they currently think is correct), completely different equations, but spiritually same.

        • subversive_dev@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          49 minutes ago

          So even the NS equations are “too simplified” for real world use because they neglect cavitation and compressibility?

          • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            27 minutes ago

            no, they sit at the heart of cfd in the simplified form but with some added stuff for domain (supersonic, water, whatever), but it is good enuff™ for practical applications (let 100000 shit navier-stokes simplifications with some additions bloom, instead of one big equation), and finding failure in them doesn’t make simplification any more simple or harder. or, on the edge case, you might simulate 100 million particles for something like earth moon collision or some microscopic flows.

            • subversive_dev@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              24 minutes ago

              Would it be more accurate to say it’s a whole big family of equations depending on what terms you include for the application? In the field they would all be called NS equations?

              • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                1·
                34 seconds ago

                yep, compressible liquids/gases also have their own navier stokes set of equations.

                no i more meant, navier stokes is inherently “friendly” to simulation cause you make some assumptions about small points in space (flow in equals flow out (if it’s non compressible that it is), mass doesn’t disappear, momentum doesn’t disappear), and say some stuff about near points in space (speed cannot change dramatically, temperature cannot change dramatically and so on), and then you express this in terms of friendly to mathematics (gradients, tensors etc) and get equations. or you throw out stuff irrelevant to you, and go to computer.

                i don’t think current result will help with turbulence problems and people will still pray at the cfd altar, but i might be proven wrong in 5 years

  • somename [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    75·
    8 hours ago

    I normally try to avoid Falklands posting on Hexbear, but this is such a funny development that I couldn’t resist.

    Israeli ministers call for sanctions on Britain over Falkland Islands

    Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, called for the expulsion of the British ambassador to Israel and said: “We will not be a trampled doormat of an antisemitic government, in a country conquered by radical Islam, trying to save itself from economic and social decline by attacking Jews and the State of Israel. The British Mandate in the Land of Israel is over.”

    Ben Gvir wrote: "It’s time for the state of Israel to publicly recognize that the Malvinas Islands [the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands] are Argentine territory under occupation, which the British violently steal from the Argentine people.

    Ben Gvir added: “I call upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognise Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands and to impose sanctions on Great Britain as long as the occupation continues.”

    The comments by Ben Gvir and Smotrich are understood to come in response to Britain’s plans to unveil a raft of policies targeting Israeli settlements on Tuesday, including a trade ban.

    • pleiades@lemmy.mlEnglish
      16·
      5 hours ago

      Didn’t the british colonize the falklands before argentina even stepped foot on it? The island didn’t have a native population either iirc so I think i’m actually on the UK’s side for once

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        22·
        4 hours ago

        It’s a colonial outpost to project power. It shouldn’t be British territory and we’ll never be rid of colonialism or imperialist interference around the world without settling these outposts. The simplest way to do that is handing them over to the local power.

        This is the position of the UN decolonial commission and pretty much every single global south country recognises it as the malvinas islands rather than the falklands. It is pretty much inevitable that it will eventually go to Argentina.

        • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          3·
          1 hour ago

          The UN isn’t cool enough to call for a first world country ceding colonial territory. Their position since the 60s has been “Work it out peacefully amongst yourselves please and thank you”. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2065 quite obviously did not demand an end to British possession of the Falklands, as evidenced by the text in it, the fact that it is non binding, and the fact that the UK didn’t vote against it.

    • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      7 hours ago

      "It’s time for the state of Israel to publicly recognize that the Malvinas Islands [the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands] are Argentine territory under occupation, which the British violently steal from the Argentine people.

      Pot calls the kettle black.

      Also did I imagine that Milei threatened to take some sort of action against an Israeli oil company operationibg in the Malvinas? Pretty sure none of this is going to become anything significant, but for now itslet-them-fight

    • supafuzz [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      57·
      8 hours ago

      lol the royal air force has flown actual missile interception sorties for “israel” and this is the thanks they get.

      what does argentina even bring to the table? I guess it’s the traditional place for fascists to flee to when shit hits the fan

      • somename [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        20·
        7 hours ago

        Did that season have a connection to the Falklands? I listened to the main part, but don’t remember one. Did I miss a bonus episode?

        • Wakmrow [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          25·
          7 hours ago

          No.

          It centered around the Angola wars but a lot of it was south Africa doing all sorts of arrogant actions not only to the region around them but also toward their benefactors in the west.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    58·
    10 hours ago

    The Silicon Valley funded international far right has spent the last 7 years working to destroy Brazil’s only branch of government capable of regulating crypto, AI, and social media - the judiciary. This is what the anti-Supreme Court rally looked like in S. Paulo yesterday.

    • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      60·
      9 hours ago

      Theres another coup happening in Brazil right now by the way. Far-Right justices inside the Supreme Court are removing cops who were investigating Flavio Bolsonaro, and they are trying to sabotage Lula’s election.

        • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
          41·
          9 hours ago

          One of the two justices appointed by Bolsonaro, Andre Mendonça, is now the president of the Electoral Justice, he decided by himself to accuse Justice De Moraes, the Chief of the Federal Police (that was investigating him) and the Attorney General of corruption and abuse of power for investigating both Flavio Bolsonaro and Andre Mendonça’s link with corrupted banker Vocaro. He also accused the son of Lula, saying that he was corrupt, then he blocked any attempt to properly investigate it, saying that the Federal Police should wait until after the election to investigate it (yes, he’s accusing a guy, and then blocking any invesgation so the media can have a narrative against Lula). It was also leaked that Mendonça was payed by Vocaro, with Vocaro sending money to a organization Mendonça owned. De Moraes got pissed with this and accused Mendonça of crimes agaisnt democracy, today Mendonça got with his buddies in the supreme court and voted to remove the chief of the federal police and blocked any attempted by other justices to reverse that. He also has no support within the court besides three other justices, so he leaks stuff to media to astroturf support against Lula.

          To my surprise Lula have been ahead in this election from the very start at least by 5%, now the media is saying Lula and Flavio are tied in the runoff. Though theres still a long way to go until the election and theres a chance Lula can reverse all of this if he plays his cards well. The only real problem is Trump’s reaction to an eventual Lula victory.

            • ☂️-@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              22 minutes ago

              lula was always a lib, especially in his third term. his admin arrested some leaders and the january insurrectionists.

              the rest of them spent this time openly regrouping and preparing for another coup, meanwhile lula was mostly doing neoliberal austerity.

          • TreadOnMe [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            21·
            5 hours ago

            How anyone take any of this seriously is beyond me. The idea that a couple judges can just up and do shit like this and people will actually listen to them is a complete farce of a system.

            • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.netMEnglish
              15·
              5 hours ago

              Remember, these same judges voted to arrest Lula and take away his political rights all because the Army “suggested”, even though the UN said that was illegal. They only reversed everything when it was leaked that Bolsonaro planned on killing these judges. De Moraes himself was chosen by the 2016 coup leaders. Besides, that already happened in the past, the Judge who arrested Lula literally got elected as a deputy and became Bolsonaro’s minsiter, and is now running as governor of his state with support from tthe media. Mendonça was known for being a radical evangelical and for making a “list of enemies of Bolsonaro who should be investigated and arrested”.

  • RobnHood [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    63·
    10 hours ago

    2 MQ-1 Predator drones have been intercepted in the Straight of Hormuz. The MQ-1 is the predecessor of the newer MQ-9 Reaper and were actually taken out of active service in 2018. These aren’t the first MQ-1 shootdowns of this war, but it does show how complete the ‘Reaper Genocide’ is now that they have to put obsolete drones back into service. MALE drones have basically become expensive one-way attack drones.

    • companero [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      48·
      10 hours ago

      MQ-1 variants are still operated by the US Navy, who just had their new Dive-LD naval drone get captured by Iran. MES speculates that they are trying to destroy it to prevent it from being reverse engineered.

      • Rojo27 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        30·
        10 hours ago

        You would think they’d have some sort of remote kill switch. Or maybe that’s more difficult to implement than I’m thinking it would be. Its just surprising they wouldnt plan for this and have something on device to do the job.

        Oh well. Patiently waiting for the IRGC to post pics of their haulpicard-excited

        • aanes_appreciator [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          38·
          9 hours ago

          The argument against it is that almost any feature to safely operate a drone is exploited by adversaries.

          Slop source aside this is a good selection of case studies on unconventional drone warfare. Even mentions when the IRGC captured another American drone by using GPS jamming to trick it into landing in Iran rather than returning to its home base.

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@reddthat.comEnglish
          31·
          10 hours ago

          Presumably they are preventing it from communicating with the outside, so unless it was a “I explode if I haven’t received the don’t explode signal within the last 24 hours” type thing, it wouldn’t work. And not sure how often that would interfere with its missions given 6km of water or land above it in conflict areas with jamming could lead to extended outages during intended use.

  • Sasuke [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    82·
    12 hours ago

    Reporting in from the Totalitarian Kingdom of Norway 🇳🇴🔥

    Tomorrow we’re doing a mandatory mourning session for King Harald. At the high school I work at, we’re sitting our students down to watch a two hour funeral service. Attendance is mandatory. No one is allowed to leave the classrooms. We’ve even been directed to tell our students to go use the bathroom before the broadcast starts, so that we can keep it Proper and Respectful.