Image is of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which transports gas from Russia to China. This isn’t an oil pipeline (such as the ESPO) but I thought it looked cool. Source here.
Trump has recently proposed a 500% tariff on goods from countries that trade with Russia, including India and China (who buy ~70% of Russia’s oil output), as well as a 10% additional tariff on goods from countries that “align themselves with BRICS.” Considering that China is the largest trading partner of most of the countries on the planet at this point, and India and Brazil are reasonably strong regional players, I’m not sure what exactly “alignment” means, but it could be pretty bad.
Sanctions and tariffs on Russian products have been difficult to achieve in practice. It’s easy to write an order to sanction Russia, but much harder to actually enforce these sorts of things because of, for example, the Russian shadow oil fleet, or countries like Kazakhstan acting as covert middlemen (well, as covert as a very sudden oil export boom can be).
Considering that China was pretty soundly victorious last time around, I’m cautiously optimistic, especially because China and India just outright cutting off their supply of energy and fuel would be catastrophic to them (and if Iran and Israel go to war again any time in the near future, it’ll only be more disastrous). Barring China and India kowtowing to Trump and copying Europe vis-a-vis Nordstream 2 (which isn’t impossible, I suppose), the question is whether China and India will appear to accede to these commands while secretly continuing trade with Russia through middlemen, or if they will be more defiant in the face of American pressure.
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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
Former Russian minster Roman Starovoyt found dead in his car. Gunshot wound just hours after sacking http://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/7/8/russia-probes-ex-ministers-death-after-body-found-hours-after-sacking
crashed out for a bit there, what did I miss?
On Russian long range air attacks on Ukraine, since another is taking place.
Russia has fully committed to Geran 2/Shahed 136 one way attack drones for the bulk of their long range strike capacity, as the optimal way to deliver the payload of a 80-100kg warhead. The jet powered Shahed 238/Geran 3 has seen limited use still, with no signs of that changing. It’s not long before we start to see 500 Gerans, and 1000 one way attack (OWA) drones total (including decoys) being launched per attack. Current highest numbers are around 300 Gerans and 600 OWA platforms per attack. Even at a very optimistic 90% interception rate, 300 Gerans is 30 impacts, 500 is 50. Sure it’s not a half ton warhead from a ballistic or cruise missile impacting at high speed, but dozens upon of impacts per attack is not sustainable for Ukraine.
Some of the Gerans have been upgraded with a electro optical sensor (infrared camera), an onboard Nvidia Jetson mini SoC for image and video processing, and a potential datalink capability. This should allow for Automatic Target Acquisition (ATA) and Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) at minimum, with Digital Scene Matching Area Correlator (DSMAC) navigation being possible. In short, these Gerans should be able to navigate, recognise and accquire targets independently without the use of satellite navigation (GPS/GNSS/GLONASS), like the Tomahawk Block II cruise missiles used in the Gulf war. This would make jamming efforts futile. Russia should look into putting similar systems on their glide bomb kits.
If the datalink capability works as intended and is not jammed, in flight updates to the mission and target set, the ability to hit moving targets, and human-in-the-loop guidance can also be used. Again, Russia should seriously look into putting such technology on their glide bomb kits.
There has also been a serious ramp up in the production of decoys, called Gerbera. These are made of polystyrene/styrofoam, shaped like a hybrid of the Iranian Arash 2 and Shahed 136, and often have no warhead at all. Given the above, they are very cheap and easy to make, similar to many hobbyist projects. Up to half of the OWA drones launched per attack are Gerbera, to act as decoys and overwhelm air defence systems.
With the losses incurred to the Russian strategic bomber fleet, Russia has massively increased the use of the Iskander-K system to launch cruise missiles to supplement cruise missile attacks, to make up for the less frequent and lower number of attacks by Russian strategic bombers. Iskander-K is a ground launch platform for Kalibr cruise missiles, launched from TELs similar to the Iskander-M ballistic missile TELs. While the Kalibr cruise missiles are not as advanced or stealthy as the Kh-101s launched by Russian strategic bombers, they are filling in for now.
On the ballistic front, Russia has switched from using longer range Iskander-1000 or Kn-23B ballistic missiles, back to the Kinzhal air launched ballistic missiles, for striking targets at longer ranges (greater than 500km). The Iskander-M and regular Kn-23 have still seen plenty of use.
The billboard has been defaced
Russian forces liberated the Zaporozhye oblast town of Kamenskoye today.
Some combat footage from during the town’s liberation: https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/kamenskoe.mp4?_=1
So, apparently during the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris did an interview with the liberal podcast @SubwayTakes that was SO bad that they decided not to even release it because the host didn’t want to get blamed for her losing…
“Death to idf” is honestly the centrist position at this point.
After the U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation accused Hamas of attacking two American employees at its distribution center, eyewitnesses and local journalists say the GHF fired grenades on the crowd first before aid-seekers threw them back at them.
Further supporting the witness accounts:
Although the sites where GHF distributes aid are monitored by cameras from all angles, it did not publish any video or photo evidence to support its claim that Hamas members threw hand grenades at its staff, a local journalist told Mondoweiss. Had the story been true, the journalist said, such footage would have been widely broadcast.
Pam Bondi says missing minute from Epstein security camera footage was routine procedure
We are lying to you in a routine way, why are you getting upset?
Also, didn’t they previously say that video was destroyed/lost? Now they are just publishing it? And some people are saying there is more than one way to the cells anyway. I’m sure there are also other ways to fake/mislead with this.
Of course that Iraqi Kurdistan goes straight into civil war mode the moment I start looking for plane tickets. I’m still seething over my canceled trip to Iraq because of that fucker Netanyahu btw. In slightly related news, my son turned 1 yesterday, and he celebrated that by somehow pushing over a drawer and destroying it in the process. Fucking Mossad agent.
In other unrelated news, I should probably address the current instability in Lebanon here, as the government is openly colluding with Israel in an attempt to disarm Hezbollah. At the same time, I’m genuinely tired hexbears, the barrage of bad news just isn’t stopping these days. This is probably counter-revolutionary or defeatist or whatever, but I still haven’t recovered from the martyrdom of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah. I have struggled to engage with any Hezbollah news or content in the past few months, I just can’t get over that he isn’t with us anymore. The death of my own grandparents didn’t affect me even 10% of Nasrallah’s martyrdom. I desperately want to go to Beirut soon, but it’s still risky security-wise and I’m just dreading the thought of actually seeing his grave, I just can’t do it.
Wait what the fuck happened in Iraqi Kurdistan? I currently have a couple of friends visiting family members there, and I haven’t heard them say anything.
It looks like Elon/xAI finally managed to get their “AI” Grok to not be woke, after saying that it needs to be ‘retrained’. Now it is talking about ‘leftist Jews’ and praising Adolf Hitler (directly by name!). The funny thing is that it is also using the vocabulary of the soy right, like ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’.
But don’t worry, this is all OK because Elon supports Israel.
[edit] From the RollingStone Magazine;
xAI has disabled Grok, deleted a slew of its antisemitic and neo-Nazi posts, posted a statement, and are evidently rolling back the prompt that made it identify as “MechaHitler,” but this new low for Elon Musk’s chatbot will live in internet infamy:
Very good to see. It means it associates with anti-woke with Nazism.
It means it associates with anti-woke with Nazism.
Was that what did it? A prompt telling Grok it needs to be anti-woke?
Not an AI expert, but im guessing what happened was they added a bunch of training data from the alt right internet, places like gab, bitchute, /pol/ etc. and just stuffed it into Grok without vetting any of it for the stuff you arent allowed to say outright. Absolutely hilarious.
People are speculating that Elon tried to hardcore some stuff (a big no no!), but this broke the algorithm.
I don’t think it was Elon this time. We saw how that went with the white genocide thing. There’s probably been a whole programming team trying to make grok unwoke the entire time.
praising Adolf Hitler (directly by name!) Got a link?
🇮🇶⚡A short explanation of what is happening in Erbil, Iraq:
The Kurdish Peshmerga forces’ attempt to capture a leader of the Harki tribe, Khurshid Harki, has escalated into a large-scale armed conflict between the Peshmerga forces, the Harki tribe, and allied tribes, with both sides continuing to mobilize their forces in the Khabat area of Erbil province in northern Iraq, where the fighting is currently concentrated.
Source: ResistanceTrench
would love to hear y’alls thoughts and any info to share
My short commentary on this:
A collapse of the Barzani-led Kurdistan Regional Government with the return of the Federal Government to Iraqi Kurdistan would be a net-positive for the region. The KRG colludes with Israel and the US, oppresses all revolutionary activity, and is a neoliberal hellhole with no redeeming qualities unlike Rojava. They are only good at building nice apartment buildings and trafficking women, they can’t even pay salaries to their teachers and sanitary workers. Anything that breaks this separatist project is good.
im hearing that intense fighting is happening in iraqi kurdistan. sorry news heads but im not a news guy you just have to find more information yourself. looks like the sides are the herki tribe and the barzani forces.
To be honest, I don’t think anyone here has in depth info on Iraqi Kurdistan. I do however have new advancements in machine gun loading ft. a red hot barrel.
https://t.me/nayaforiraq/34354
Caption reads “Fierce fighting continues between armed Kurdish tribes and Peshmerga forces in Khabat district, Erbil Governorate.”
Here’s an alleged summary
“A short explanation of what is happening in Erbil, Iraq:
The Kurdish Peshmerga forces’ attempt to capture a leader of the Harki tribe, Khurshid Harki, has escalated into a large-scale armed conflict between the Peshmerga forces, the Harki tribe, and allied tribes, with both sides continuing to mobilize their forces in the Khabat area of Erbil province in northern Iraq, where the fighting is currently concentrated.
[Since then,] Khurshid Harki announced that he would not surrender to the Peshmerga forces.
Other Kurdish tribes have joined on the side of the Harki clan against the Barzani-led Pashmerga government.“
https://t.me/RezistanceTrench/44638
“Many are asking which group to support in the conflict in northern Iraq. The answer is that the Barzani family is a strategic ally of Israel, and much of the equipment that Israel smuggles to Iran passes through Iraqi Kurdistan.
The current conflict appears to be more like a Kurdish civil war for power, and the Haraki clan fighting that is Barzani’s forces has no connection to Iran or the Resistance Front.”
Cw: antisemitism. If you ignore the part calling Barzani a “crypto Jew,” this is a pretty solid spread of historical connections between former leader of Kurdistan Mustafa Barzani and Israeli intelligence
https://t.me/RezistanceTrench/9136
More reading:
https://saradistribution.com/barzanisisraelresa.htm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Kurdistan_Region_relations
If you ignore the part calling Barzani a “crypto Jew,”
The crypto jew thing is pure anti-semitism, but the town of Barzan where the Barzani clan originates is a genuinely interesting place to study. Other villages and towns in the now Iraqi Kurdistan region were always domianted by one tribe or one religious group. You had Christian towns, Sunni Kurdish towns, Shia towns and so on. But Barzan is unique in the region, because it became some kind of refuge for all kinds of tribeless Kurds, Jews, Christians and other outcast groups. The Barzani clan itself isn’t a tribe or a clan in a traditional sense, but more of a Barzani “nation” that indicates allegiance to the pre-modern concept of the town itself. A Jew in a normal Kurdish town like Akre would be considered a foreigner or a stranger, but in Barzan they would be treated as a “first class” citizen. There’s a very interesting Jewish history that is connected with Barzan, that stretches all the way back to the Assyrian Exile chapter of Judaism.
There’s an interesting book that I read about Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his relations with Israel many years ago when I was a teen. One thing that I remember that still sticks out in my mind is that he sought the help of Israel in the first place because he genuinely thought that Jews controlled America, so in his mind he thought that being friendly with Israel meant that America would help him. The relationship then soured because Israelis kept dragging him into massive issues with the Iraqi state, while he just wanted some concessions. The Israelis for example helped him plan an ambush against Iraqi troops. He wanted to kill a few soliders and take some hostages, but the Israelis embellished later the scale of the ambush and claimed that they helped kill 2000! soliders, which would be a suicidal move for Barzani and drag him into a massive problem. When he was later in hospital in the US, they didn’t even help him with the hospital bills when he asked them.
he genuinely thought that Jews controlled America, so in his mind he thought that being friendly with Israel meant that America would help him
Ah, the imperial Japan approach to antisemitism “these guys seem pretty powerful, we should be their friends”
