this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Bulletins and International News Discussion from March 22nd to Whenever We Reach About 3000 Comments - The Empire In Zugzwang
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Image is one of many rallies in Iran in support of the government and the leadership.
short summary here, longish summary in spoiler tags below: Western standoff munition stockpiles now substantially depleted, therefore Western aircraft activity directly over Iran increasing (as is footage of attempted and actual hits against them) as the US attempts to transition more to using bombs dropped directly onto targets, Iran is increasingly in the driver's seat and controlling the conflict, world economy is fucked and yet could still get much worse very soon, if you require a car to live (especially if it's not electric) and cannot work from home then you have my sincere condolences
longish summary here
While I've seen several estimates on the current stockpiles of US and Zionist missiles and interceptors - somewhere in the realm of a third depleted, perhaps even up to half - it seems like we're reaching the point at which the US does not want to commit even more standoff munitions and is trying their luck against the Iranian air defense network directly.
We have already seen footage of Iran attempting to shoot down, and sometimes actually striking Western fifth generation planes like the F-35, and more footage along those lines is appearing for other plane models (with one side claiming that they evaded interception and the other claiming they hit it, etc etc, propaganda is everywhere, you know the drill). How much the US is willing to test their planes against Iranian air defense is a matter of debate. Strictly speaking, a few fighter jets and bombers shot down would be no catastrophic loss in the grand scheme of things, as the US has hundreds. However, the narrative of such a thing would be quite bad for the US - "You're telling me an OBLITERATED Iranian military can shoot down some of our most advanced equipment?? What are we gonna do against China?!" - and given Trump's deranged jingoistic rhetoric aimed to buoy markets, it's clear that he cares very deeply about narratives. Additionally, with Chinese exports of several critical metals to the US banned, the prospect of replacing these aircraft (and indeed the standoff munitions and the interceptors and the ground radars etc) is looking questionable.
All the while, Iran continues its strikes across the Middle East. Missile and drone strikes are reportedly on the uptick again, demonstrating that Iranian military capabilities have by no means been "destroyed" as Western propaganda claim, though it's impossible to sure there was ever a significant downtick due to Western censorship and outright fabrications. People around the world are gradually realizing the magnitude of the economic disaster that is occurring and may yet occur. Refineries and factories which deal with oil and gas directly are starting to slow down or stop production, and those who make products downstream of those are starting to follow them like dominoes. Outrage at gas station prices is rising, and many countries are considering limiting civilian driving and implementing work-from-home policies akin to the coronavirus pandemic. And now, threats are being made by Trump against both Kharg Island (where most Iranian oil is shipped from) and the Iranian electrical grid - which is highly decentralized and would require a prolonged bombing campaign to completely take out -and the promised Iranian reprisal would be apocalyptic to the Middle East. It would make oil prices rise to previously unfathomable heights as oil infrastructure turned off and remained off for months, perhaps years, and set in motion one of the world's greatest humanitarian catastrophes as the desalination necessary for tens of millions of people is shut down. It would also not be a symmetrical problem, as Iran does not rely on desalination for its water supply.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on the Zionists' destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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OK effort post underway, so I'll spoiler it. Long story short is that energy transitions are almost never "economic" and are instead dictated by political and power considerations, and I believe the third Gulf War is going to solidify a broader shift away from oil and into renewables for the same reason we switched from water power to coal and from coal to oil.
spoiler
OK so with that introduction out of the way, we first turn to Andreas Malm's Fossil Capital, a really wonderful book. He shows thoroughly how the British bourgeoisie first set up factories using water wheels connected to streams across the midlands, and these water wheels provided the power necessary for the operation of various factories across the island. This water was cheap (free, really!), effective, consistent, and these factories worked great. There was a problem though: they were located very far into the countryside, because they had to be built where streams for the water wheels were. This ended up giving their labourers immense power, because they had to be housed there, far away from everything else. If those workers decided to strike, it was really hard to break it because you had to ship a shit ton of labour to bumblefuck nowhere English Midlands, and also house them, and provide food, and all these other logistical nightmares. So strikes were short and workers usually got what they wanted. This was obviously a no-go for factory owners, so they switched to coal as the power source for their factories because they could build those factories in cities, near a ton of other labour, and didn't have to provide for food or lodging. And they could utilize the reserve army of labour to keep wages down and worker power at a minimum, as they could be easily replaced during strikes. Malm does a great job of detailing how coal during the switch was actually more expensive than water wheels; the reason for the switch, as documented in lots of correspondence he goes through between factory owners, was coal allowed for factories to be moved to cities and therefore more power to the owners vs their workers. The main concern with energy in this instance was accessibility and the power it gave, not price. Of course coal couldn't be prohibitively more expensive than water, sure, but price was not the main motivation here at all.Timothy Mitchell in his Carbon Democracy also examines another energy switch, this time from coal to oil as the main source of power and energy. Contrary to "progressive" narratives of oil just Being Better, the switch to oil was again motivated by control and power rather than price. You see, the problem with coal is that it's heavy and physical, and relies on trains to be moved around. You had to physically move coal from place to place on railways, and railways require a lot of workers. You see where this is going. The bourgeoisie realised real quick that coal puts way too much power into the hands of railworkers, who could disrupt the entire economy of a nation by going on strike, blocking coal and thereby closing factories. Coal requires workers to move, and the workers in charge of moving that coal, which now powered the entire economy, had too much power. This had to be broken, and the solution was oil. Again, oil was not cheaper than coal. Oil was just less liable to disruption, because rather than rail you just needed to build a pipeline. Pipelines required no workers. Oil derricks, too, required few workers to operate, as opposed to coal mines. And a disruption to a pipeline can be fixed quickly; oil flows, it does not need to be transported via the rail network, and there's no group of workers who can go on strike and shut down the entire country. Again, this switch was about power and control, not price.
Now, with Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, we see that one country can control the flow of oil to the entire world, and this makes the global economy far too vulnerable. You might be thinking wait, didn't this already happen in the 70s? Yes, the oil shock of OPEC already demonstrated this, but during that time there was no alternative to oil at all. Regardless of price, you couldn't buy another energy source besides coal, but at this point coal can't power cars and jets and all sorts of other things. So this kind of energy transition didn't happen. But now you can get cheap renewables and electrify everything. China will sell you solar panels at low cost with no issue. You can buy EVs, you can electrify factories, and thereby take energy control back from oil. Long term I think this kind of trend is inevitable, just like the above two cases. The third Gulf War is highlighting this path, and many countries will take it. Whether the West does so however remains to be seen...
Before I read this i was gunna' mention the water wheels in Britain and the industrial revolution. It really expanded my view how capitalist oil technology is.
Nuclear was just too prohibitively expensive for all but the most advanced economies, I guess?
It's also a matter of energy density. Fossil fuels are more energy dense than batteries. This means we're not going to get electric cargo ships and aircraft soon. Or electric trucks for now (though those should come sooner than ships and aircraft, there are already prototypes and developments). The following is the backbone of the world economy and logistics.
You could make a nuclear cargo ship, but no private entity or state wants to be held liable and responsible should something go wrong there.
Another idea for a carbon-neutral energy-dense fuel is synthetic methane. There's a well-understood chemical process called the Sabatier reaction that takes carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and electricity as inputs, and with a nickel catalyst outputs oxygen and methane. It's been the basis of all non-stupid Mars human exploration plans as a way to provide breathing oxygen, rocket propellants, and a backup electricity supply via fuel cells or Stirling engines in the event of large scale dust storms, all in one. Mars has easily-accessible water ice just under the surface basically everywhere to provide the hydrogen. Carbon dioxide makes up 96% of the atmosphere. And Mars is close enough to the sun for solar power to be very practical.
Of course the process is a net energy loss start-to-finish, there's no getting around the laws of thermodynamics. And there's always the carbon footprint of manufacturing the equipment in the first place. And it would never happen under a free market as it would be more profitable to just sell the electricity directly. But it is an option that's based on well-established real-world science and engineering.
China is already producing a bunch of EV semis and a few EV cargo ships. Of course, that can't do any of the heavy lifting. We could have thorium powered cargo ships, that would be sweet!! And probably safer for the environment in case of an accident than current bunker fuel. I think that on average, Russia makes one nuclear-powered (u235) icebreaker ship every 3 years or so.
[edit]
Yeah you nailed it on the battery/storage—fossil fuels are transportable, electrification needs infrastructure to deliver or comparable ways of making it transportable. To add to your point with a lesser importance point, the energy grids in most countries are designed to deliver for existing loads—lights, appliances, some building conditioning, etc. but if you want to take substantial portions of the energy currently delivered by fossil fuels out of your energy makeup, you need to account for that same energy flow in the Grid. In most cases the grid can’t handle that capacity of flow, and also doesn’t have the generation. Which is why we’ve seen the Chinese so impressively scale up their national grid in ways that seem unimaginable in the western world.
There is some skepticism that we have enough fossil fuels and key inputs like copper to actually make that switch—because for the moment you still have to use fossil fuels in the extraction of materials and manufacture of renewables, and the cost of that rises inexorably as we exhaust the easiest to access energy sources. Or rather, there might be enough fuel and material physically in existence, but we will run out of economic ability before we can access it, barring major energy paradigm shifts that currently don’t exist.
Lighter-than-air craft and sailing ships are an option, they're just slower and their speed is less predictable.
Another issue with sailing cargo ships is that they require a lot of very skilled labor, even with all of the advancements that have been made.
I read about molten salt reactor ships that China was running. Where does that fit into the nuclear risk?
Molten salt reactors can either be U235 powered (same as power plants and submarines etc.), or they can run on thorium. Thorium is great, sinking a thorium-powered ship is probably less bad for the environment than sinking a ship full of bunker fuel. Everyone neglected thorium because a U235 nuclear reactor sit neatly in the chain of producing nuclear weapons, while thorium is more of a useless side-branch when it comes to nukes.
You can still have thorium breeder reactors where you are making U233 that still does go boom tho, but it is currently just easier to enrich U235 for that anyway.
Another option for cargo and larger craft is hydrogen fuel cells.
it could have substituted for power generation plants but without enough electric vehicles, particularly cargo trucks, you still have a serious problem
in related news electric market share of heavy duty trucks went over 50% for the first time in 2025
Conceivably rail lines could be electrified and cargo could be shifted there with local distribution handled by electrified trucks (which is more technically feasible than long distance hauling).
This would never happen in the US because it would require shifting from the decentralized contractors and petite bourgeois owner operators in trucking to the centralized and easily organized labor in the rail industry
China's EV industry is addressing the long distance range issue by building out networks of battery swap stations
China is also investing into crazy crazy high-voltage transformers and transmission lines for long-range power transfer.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I think that's part of it, but also because it would recreate the same issue of oil, just in miniature. Uranium and thorium are not equally distributed across the Earth. Sure, China and Russia and the United States can be self sufficient in uranium. Even nations as large as France cannot, and rely on uranium mines in Africa. Going all in on nuclear does not solve this problem of control. Given nobody can control the wind or the sun (yet, let's hope the fucking atmospheric seeding shit never happens!), renewables avoid this.
You're correct, but nuclear stuff like that isn't a continuous feed of resources like oil is. It's still a lessening of control, just not total.