This week's summary of the situation is in spoiler tags below:
preamble
Diplomacy between Iran and the US has begun in... perhaps not earnest, but it's certainly started. Iran's very reasonable requirement that the Zionist occupation stop ethnically cleansing Lebanon and withdraw has caused a great deal of consternation throughout their population, and several analysts have suggested that Netanyahu being forced to accept Trump's (and therefore Iran's) demands spells the end of his leadership in the coming elections; then, the occupation is expected to "mellow out" and the conflicts and genocides slow and stop. This view is only really impactful if you believe that, rather than the US and Zionists being in a strongly mutually beneficial relationship based on geopolitical, financial, and clandestine goals, that instead Netanyahu is a devious mastermind bending any and all in the US to his whims. I don't believe this; and, if anything, the events of at least the last three years prove that he's really quite stupid, with "Israel" being in its worst position in decades under his rule.
Nonetheless, Iran has made the issue of Lebanon a not-quite-red-line (an orange line?). It hasn't stopped them from going to Switzerland and beginning negotiations, but they still want to strongly express their discontent by harnessing the newfound superweapon that is Hormuz. Similarly, threats by Trump and others to restart the war if Iran doesn't bend to their whims have been met with formal stoppages of negotiations, but it appears technical teams are still talking to each other and working things out. Trump's threats are fairly idle at this point because most in the US military must know that there's essentially zero effective military actions left to them with their current munition stockpiles.
Trump let slip that the US has about 3-4 weeks of oil reserves left, which aligns moderately well with the projections of analysts like Yves at Naked Capitalism (it's now expected in late July rather than early July as was originally forecasted months ago). This means that even if the negotiation process goes off without a hitch, that there's going to be a period of at least a few weeks where the US is out of reserves but is waiting for new shipments of oil to physically traverse the distance between Hormuz and the US continent. And many analysts have pointed out that it's going to be a long time - at least a few months, and perhaps more like 9 to 12 - before Hormuz flows pick up to pre-war levels, due to logistics companies and insurance companies wanting to be sure that their property isn't going to be blown up mid-transit. Regardless, the fact that the timetable is now so tight could indicate that the Trump admin has finally realized that it cannot outbluff and outwait Iran, and will give them a good deal out of necessity, even if this means forcing their unsinkable aircraft carrier to stop bombing children for five consecutive minutes.
However, there is a palpable anxiety throughout Iran right now, especially due to controversy over the degree to which Khamenei actually agreed with the current course of events. This does seem to be confirmed by his wording (to paraphrase): "In principle, I took a different view, but allowed the President to proceed." Many inside Iran now have more fear that their politicians will not push hard enough for a good deal than that they'll return to war, with all that may imply. This isn't an unfounded fear, especially given how suddenly the 12 Day War ended despite Iran's strengths being medium-and-long-term attrition (now confirmed by this latest war). This is one of those events that reveals how the Supreme Leader in fact doesn't have complete dictatorial power unlike how he's conceived of in much of the West, and that even during existential wars, major concessions have to be made to democratically elected leaders. Though, this could also be a clever move to shift blame explicitly onto the Reformist elements if the deal collapses.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
https://xcancel.com/OlgaBazova/status/2069843118120378666
the Ukrainian counter-propagandists are also really losing their touch https://archive.ph/icbXL
Uh, yeah... that's how casualties and replenishments work? Like, let's say you have a million men, lose 500k, replace them with new recruits, and do this another 2 times, you'll end up with 1.5 million casualties while maintaining an army of 1 million.
Kind of an ancient example, but the Romans, at one point, over the course of several battles lost a fifth of their total adult male population, 150k men (although admittedly a bunch of those were captures rather than deaths) - their eventual peak during that war would be a little under 130k (and they of course had subsequent losses even after those initial defeats).
Are we supposed to pretend that Ukrainians have taken literally no casualties? Like, even if this Russian claim is hyperbolic, the statement here seems to be opposed to the very notion of the casualty count increasing over time!
They basically don't even bother make any sort of cogent counterargument, just "well it's from a 'hostile-leaning outlet'" so it's untrue by default"
I mean given the size of those numbers I do hope theyre inflated or miscalculated.
Yeah we're getting close to nearly 10% of the population without severe unrest, nuts if true
The unrest you don't see are the civilians who de-mobilize their family members, or the attacks on TCC officers and barracks, or the deserters who are fleeing the sinking ship rather than face a bullet from fascist mobs.
It'll crack soon enough, though.
Yeah I'm most talking Russian and Syrian civil war style balkanization
I saw a video recently, of a teenager beating these thumb-looking recruiters, when they get off their vehicles.
If I'm thinking of the same video, he was screaming that they had kidnapped his father.
This isn't fully unprecedented - the Paraguay War led to truly staggering losses for Paraguay, traditionally estimated as 50-70% of the population (admittedly a lot of this was famine and disease), with more recent scholarship (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5341419, https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/68/2/289/147309/The-Demographics-of-Paraguay-A-Reinterpretation-of) arguing for a more conservative 8-18% (the massive disparity in estimates has a lot to do with lackluster census information making it difficult to know what Paraguay's population actually even was, which in turn makes percentages iffy). But even that lower figure is still pretty substantial - and yet there was little meaningful dissent against the Paraguayan government, with the Triple Alliance eventually capturing the capital and Solano López managing to continue waging a guerilla campaign for another year until straight-up getting killed in combat.
There is a reason why they are desperate to lower the conscription age and in some cases have started to conscript women.
I don't think they are far off.
horrific stuff.
it can only be real if it's total losses including wounded
If its just deaths, it would be more than any single country in WW1.
it would also imply same number of heavily wounded, because those basically go 1:1 in non-nato militaries and 1:2-3 in nato militaries (more evacuations, but those convert deaths into invalids)
It is. That's what casualties means.
it is what casualties mean, it's not what losses mean
"losses" could include wounded severely enough that they can't return to service while excluding those who can. Just a guess though.
I cannot exaggerate how often I hear/see liberals doing this. They do it ALL THE TIME. Reflexively and instantaneously, by default. They will do literally anything to avoid experiencing cognitive dissonance. They have their VERY ACCURATE AND TRUSTED NEWS like CNN/CBC/Reuters whatever, and they refuse to read or trust anything else (unless it tells them what they already believe, and is funded by the Burgerland Freedom Institute for Liberty and Regime Change Against Bad Guys™)
Last week I shared in a lib chat a DropSite article about how Pissrael was basically hunting medical staff in Lebanon for sport. One of the libs responded
Well akshually did you know that DropSite news has a HEAVY LEFT WING BIAS and they publish articles that are VERY ANTI AMERICAN???
they linked me to a very trustworthy POLITICAL BIAS CHECKER™ website.
In response I "joked" that I'm way more anti-american than Drop Site is. I got crickets as a response and nobody ever commented on the actual substance of the article.
I did find it amusing that they tacitly equated USA and Pissrael, though.
Oh and we're both Kkkanadian by the way lol.
Zelensky was outright calling the Polish President a Russian agent because he didn't like Bandera.
Grim. Just grim.
Are the very high losses this year plausible? I thought the war was fought at lower intensity recently
I don't think the intensity has necessarily lowered - perhaps it appears that way because the Ukrainians haven't really been able to launch any notable offensives? But that's precisely a consequence of the sheer scale of casualties they're taking, and the fact that forcing Ukrainian refugees back home for conscription and having half of the assault troops be mercs are being floated as ideas is pretty indicative of the state of their manpower.
Russian casualties actually are way down, even according to pro-Ukrainian sources (the somewhat serious ones at least, obviously there's also plenty of sources still reporting that Russia is losing a gajilion men per femtosecond), although we should of course note that casualty numbers typically lag somewhat (Mediazona relies on inspecting obituaries and social media, where reports of deaths might take a while to show up)
So, for the Russians it might be less intense - but that doesn't mean the Ukrainians aren't still taking massive casualties, just that more and more of those casualties are being inflicted by bombardment where Russian troops aren't exposed to danger, rather than firefights, which would be consistent with the massive fire superiority Russia has.