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.
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
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.
I have nothing to say. Except that we definitely need the finland-cool emoji. Shame, fucking disgust.
Linky
The left leaning liberal darling is pro genocidal and apartheid state. What a surprise. Honestly this is why the only westerners (mostly but not exclusively white people) I'd trust are out and communists.
Also what a dogshit purchase. David sling is literal trash and a flaming money pit.
She is vile. Put Finland to nato, partied in the newspapers while the vulnerable were dying of covid. "It's time to live" were the words she used in this party article, "live" here means consume.
Went to work for Tony Fucking Blair, is overseeing whatever the ghoul does in his institute of neoliberalism. A Davos goer and a huge ukraine stan, went to a funeral of one of the ukrainian nazis.
The fact that she had queer parents was how she was supposedly "left".
I call her the Neoliberal Princess. My disgust for her co-opting leftist words and using them to put this country in nato is something I will seethe over until the day I die. To this day, the radlibs get mad if you critizise her in any way. It's all very annoying the way her being a woman and supposedly a wee bit progressive makes it so she can do no harm.
It's honestly crazy. Like was she cooked up in a liberal lab
Yeah, like the way she got fast-tracked to being PM after her "whimsical" appearances in Tampere city council, the amount of positive press she got. Then the full 180 she did mid-covid on pretty much all she supposedly stood for. I suspect that she was always like this and just held back a bit by the more old school socdems like Kiuru on how many old people should die for capitalism. Went full mask off as time went on. A classic social democrat.
It's the classic Obama playbook isn't it. Supposed grassroots campaign by a left leaning progressive before hard right shift immediately once in power.
Opportunism 101, have no principles and say what gets you further. There is no political memory
I remember people here getting so pissed when you mocked her being a drugged out cheating NATO puppet. "Noo the right are criticizing her you can't criticize her. Girlbosses have the right to do whatever they want, including getting high while on the job while approving billions of dollars of weaponry to Nazis"
I mean I don't really care about her drug use of infidelity lol. But she was obviously a NATO puppet and deserved criticism on that. Of course the liberals dick riding her focused exclusively on defending her from the attacks on her personal life and didnt even care about politics. It was all aesthetic for them. Basically like you put it "Girlbosses have the right to do whatever they want"
Her drug use is extremely corollated to her ideology and support of Nazism. Do you think it's a coincidence that the entire country of Nazi Germany was on amphetamines while they were doing the genocide? The hard drug/amphetamine industry and culture and extremely reactionary and rightwing and controlled by neo-nazis. Trump supporters in the USA also have extremely high rates of amphetamine and opiate use. Fascism and these hard drugs go together 1:1, they dull your empathy and create an anti-human callousness and selfishness. They legitimately change your brain chemicals to make you into a reactionary over time, and that's nothing to even say about the surrounding distribution system (Nazis and organized crime and pimps who sexually enslave addicted girls are the ones supplying it, the ones gaining leverage over you).
We mock male politicians for openly cheating on their spouses too. The Girlboss defense was purely cultural nonsense. She's a piece of shit for it, it's an immoral act to cheat on your partner. Even if the scale is smaller than her other crimes, it's still a valid point of criticism. We make fun of politicians personnal quirks and issues all the time, it's what the original CTH podcast culture was built on, mockery of the inhuman swine. Clutching pearls arbitrarily when it's a Liberal Girlboss darling shows a certain failure of thinking.
Like I already said I agree with you but I wanted to add this because I saw the liberal defense of her drug use and cheating as a smokescreen for her far worse actions. Like people were criticizing her for a bunch of stuff, joining NATO like a stooge for example but also for using drugs and cheating. But by focusing on defending her cheating and drug use the rest got quietly forgotten. That's why I didn't really pay attention to the rest because I saw it as a distraction from the more consequential actions. Honestly it's like a maze navigating through all the liberal media bullshit
Right but I wasn't talking about the liberal media maze, I was talking about the users on this website who also fell for it. Like I said, it shows a certain remnant of Liberalism that they haven't purged, and bringing up the drugs/cheating alongside the NATO stooge criticisms is a good way to eek that out of them.
There was legitimately hundreds of comments in struggle sessions over this when it occurred. The Liberal Media circus is coming from inside the house.
Yeah this is an absolute L
Oh ok. Yeah I'd say that fits
Finland and siding with Nazis, name a more iconic duo
you dont understand, they had to, because the alternative was not siding with nazis.
AKSHUALLY 🤓👆 Finland wasn’t part of the axis and didn’t help the nazis, they just attacked the Soviet Union at the same time the nazis did and coincidentally cut off rail lines leading to Leningrad the moment the nazis were sieging the city. Smolbean Finland would never do something bad, also their super special sniper ghost of Turku killed a quintillion russian soldiers because Stalin fired all his generals because they stole his big spoon 🥄 to eat all the Finnish grain.
And that symbol the finnish air force is literally still "phasing out" isn't a Swastika because it isn't from the swasti region of Germany, its actually a good luck symbol and the guy who introduced it was just goering's brother in law
This is the price Finland pays to not be invaded by a country that wasn't gonna bother invading them anyway
The wholesome social democracy 😍
Nordic socialism 🤩🤩🤩🤩
Deeply racist country
This just keeps happening. Death to finland, irredeemable shithole.
The Finnish bougies are nothing if not consistent.
First sold us to the British empire just as the copper was being ripped from the walls. Then came nazi Germany, as pictured here. Now it's
and 
.
Lenin should never have been so nice with the whole independence thing. All the fash just got put to high office after ww2 and here we are.
The soviets made a mistake in not annexing it post-ww2, no tbh it wouldn’t have made a difference in the end with Estonia in hindsight.
it would've been worthwhile just to hang a heap of those SS and white army bastards