Image is of the Central Bank of Iran.
My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The so-called "Economic D-Day" is set to start this week, which is the term trotted out by the US to describe what it regards as the most crushing sanctions ever unveiled in all of human history against a foreign state. Up to me writing this, nobody appears to have many guesses as to what precisely this would entail, but a confirmed aspect is secondary sanctions - i.e. the sanctioning of any country that does business with Iran. China is Iran's largest trading partner, and has previously explicitly ordered their oil/refining companies to keep receiving and processing Iranian oil regardless of US sanctions. Assuming China maintains this relationship, and the ever-sanctioned Russia does likewise, it's difficult to see how these sanctions could not only 1) be significantly more effective than the current sanctions on Iran, which are very substantial and yet are being successfully sidestepped and mitigated, albeit at a meaningful cost to Iran's citizens, and 2) outright bring Iran to a position of surrender when it is in the midst of an existential war. The only conceivable way would be if the US did genuinely sanction China in response, which even the US, in this phase of baffling idiocy, is not yet so stupid as to attempt. Other suggestions I've seen is that the sanctions aren't so much about trying to keep China away as much as stopping the Gulf states from ever economically, politically, and indeed militarily reconciling with Iran; essentially saying "At the end of this war, you may not be on our side, but you certainly won't be on Iran's either."
Nonetheless, ever since Iran militarily proved themselves back in March and April, and, in particular, their missile cities proved effectively indestructible, I and many others came to the conclusion that the only way to destroy Iran would be some kind of internal political or economic crisis - likely both, going hand-in-hand - and it appears that US war planners now agree. A resumption of missile fire is still plenty possible, mind, but if I was the US, it would be in support of that hypothetical internal crisis, were it ever to start, rather than putting the cart before the horse. Therefore, one does have to take the threat of some kind of overwhelming economic offensive at least a little seriously, simply because it's the only non-nuclear vector left that has even the vaguest possibility of success. From all the analysts I take seriously, I'm getting signals that trend towards optimism that Iran will survive whatever the Bessents of the world can cook up; however, mere survival should not be Iran's medium/long term goal. Imaginary tankers transiting Hormuz notwithstanding, and with global diesel prices now skyrocketing notwithstanding, it's still unclear to me what the end result would be if Iran and the US simply decided to stop fighting from now on and apply maximum sanctions/energy disruption for weeks, months, or even years on end. Would China eventually pressure Iran to make concessions, for example? Could a critical portion of Iran's population, or a segment of the Iranian bourgeoisie, be tempted to try and overthrow the government to end the pain, long before the economy truly internally collapsed?
That's likely why, in response to the proposed sanctions on Iran, there have been signals coming out of the country (as always, hard to verify in the fog of invented/misattributed statements and exaggerations) that Iran could counterstrike by attacking US economic interests in the region - which, if correctly done, sounds much better to me than simply sitting there with thousands of missiles not being fired while you gradually bleed out over the medium term, hoping that the other guy will bleed out first. This would be a pretty profound step for Iran, though. Aside from maintaining the Hormuz blockade, they have always held the (somewhat strategically dubious) "moral high ground" of being the guy to respond to military attacks, perhaps due to an anxiety of being seen as a warmonger either internally or in countries throughout the world, not least their major allies.
So after all that bloviating, I have little more to offer than a shrug in terms of my predictions about what comes next.
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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:
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.
Can’t wait for the performative Canadian outrage only for them to then continue serving the empire most faithfully.
It really is crazy to continously hear this fake outage when that American bootlicking neolibshit government purchased himars couple months ago lol.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/army-artillery-defence-canada-us-9.7221033
We’re very upset with the Americans, which is why we intend to keep crushing their enemies on their behalf.
Do we think Dems will bother changing this one back or will it just be Lake America in anything made by the US government now
Let's not spend our time obsessing over the past. It's time to turn a new page for America - the country and the lake.
And the Gulf!
and the strait!
And two whole goddamn continents, America of the north and south, it's really gotten out of hand.
They will spend a lot of political capital trying to change it back but still fail and then campaign on the failure
They will change it back, then call it mission accomplished and go back to brunch for 4 years
It's probably going to quietly change back. Like, no official order, but newly published maps say "Gulf of Mexico" and "Lake Ontario".
he should rename all of the bodies water in or around the US this way
i want him to start renaming everything. what would france be?
america
new america
grok, generate a map of the world with every country named america and every city named trump
Sure thing, I've renamed every country to America and every city to Trump. This is a great first step to addressing the issue of white genocide in America
new America();
He's going to rename the Straits of Hormuz to Straits of America, and Tehran to Trump City and declare victory.
don't think he'd be okay with a trump city full of muslims
he can rename their religion america
it's 2030. America Trump is in Ams third term. Half of American nouns and Americas have been america'ed with "America." Discourse is... America.
Everyone’s pronouns are Am/Amer/Ams
Thesis: woke pronouns (cool, good); antithesis: chud culture war nonsense; synthesis: true equality through semantic destruction
Everyone is named either "Trump" or "America".
"Did you hear that America started dating Trump?"
"Blonde haired Trump or black haired Trump?"
"Blonde."
"Oh my God! America, who lives in Trump, is dating Trump?"
"No, no, I was talking about America with the Trump haircut."
I think we have enough straights.
Someone should suggest renaming the Atlantic to Ocean of America.
The Pacific, too
east and west american seas
One big beautiful sea surrounding the globe that belongs to America
And the Indian and Arctic.
Bush did it first
Carney should rename america to canada's asshole
How long until Apple Maps and Google Maps happily comply like they did with the Gulf of Mexico?
It was like same fuckin day for the inflight maps on Delta
There is a Trump Lake in Canada, not named after him of course. It's in the general area east of Wawa, Ontario. But it would be really funny to rename it something like Mashed Potatoes Lake.
lol
It would be funny if Wawa, the convenience store, pisses him off and he renames Wawa, Ontario to Sheetz, Ontario.
Oh...this wasnt a joke I saw
Still think "Transbian Sea" is the better name.
He should write an executive order that renames everything else to America as well. Just be done with it.
Planet America
The America System
The America Galaxy
The America Local Group
The America Supercluster
The America Universe
And in the other direction: Periodic Table of Americas