Image is of a destroyed American AWACS plane in Saudi Arabia, of which there is a very limited supply and each of which is enormously expensive both monetarily and in terms of components. Iran hit this with a precision drone strike that likely cost ~$20,000.
I don’t have much to add from the last megathread description. This isn’t to say that nothing has happened or has changed since then - decades are still happening in weeks - but the general flow of the war is remaining the same. Trump sometimes threatens to open the Strait with troops and flatten Iran to rubble, and other times threatens that he’s gonna back off and let other countries handle it if they really want little trifles like “fuel” and “energy” so much. Iran continues to strike across the Middle East. The West continues to bomb civilian infrastructure due to their relative inability to affect the missile cities. In all: things are generally getting worse for America and the Zionists.
April is the month where the last ships that left Hormuz before it was closed will arrive around the world, so the last month of economic turmoil has been a mere prelude to what’s going to occur in the near-future. The silver lining is that Iran appears to be formalizing the new state of affairs in Hormuz, creating a rial-based toll to allow passage between a pair of Iranian-controlled islands where they can be monitored, meaning that, as long as the US doesn’t do something exceptionally stupid, the global energy crisis may “only” last a couple years instead of simply being the new reality from now on. Some countries have already agreed to this arrangement, and others will inevitably follow despite their consternation as their economies increasingly suffer.
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:
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.
The question to be asked is where the countries are getting the Yuan from. Not whether the trade is settled in Yuan.
Natural way of obtaining Yuan would be i. China has a trade deficit with your country ii. China buys your assets/give you Yuan. For many countries neither is the case, or at the least the latter isn’t sufficient to cover their trade deficit. So, the other way is exporting to other countries with which Yuan has enough liquidity with (Dollar, Euro, Pound) and exchanging it for Yuan.
The reason why China Russia trade works so well is because they both want each others real goods (for China, mainly oil), and Russia wants to accumulate Yuan, get Chinese goods. China Iran trade works well too, China wants crude, Iran wants Yuan both for importing from other countries and China and to accumulate as reserves.
If your country has a trade deficit with China (ie your country can’t provide what China wants), if you didn’t export to others ie countries excl China/didn’t obtain capital flows from others, your trade with China will be limited to the amount of Yuan you can obtain by exporting to China (much lower than what you are currently importing), via remittances (not a lot), net income, capital flows from China.
There’s some good parts such as Chinese loans, investments and so on which finance part of it but not enough to cover trade deficits as they currently exist.
Xhs is still with us in spirit
it’s hard to find good information on what the precise currency mechanism is going to be with the Iranian toll system, like is it the toll that has to be paid in rial and then the oil itself has to be bought/sold in yuan or they won’t let it pass?
but yeah, as you point out and I mentioned at some point in the past couple weeks (time in a bit of a blur right now), this does put China in a fairly complicated spot post-war because they’ll have to make some significant adjustments to their economy in order to resolve contradictions if they’re going to be handling pretty much all the oil and gas coming out of the Middle East, and while the adjustments required to make yuan a (not necessarily the) reserve currency would make them powerful in some ways, it would make them weaker in others (which is why the US economy is in such a weird place with AI bubbles and real estate bubbles and private equity gaining immense power and deindustrialization etc). like, don’t get me wrong, I still think a communist-controlled China with control over a major reserve currency would be better for the world than letting the dollar continue to reign supreme, but at this point one wonders if some Chinese officials aren’t beginning to consider Keynes’ bancor idea more seriously
but I think regardless of whether a toll serves the grander goal of global dedollarization, pricing the toll in a non-dolllar currency is good because it grants the US meaningfully less non-military control over global energy flows (which will have all sorts of knock-on effects), and also it being the Iranian rial in particular will cause there to be demand for gaining rial in other countries to pay the toll, which means you’re gonna have to engage with the Iranian economy if you want fuel and energy, which means either you have to lobby the US to get rid of all the sanctions, or you’re gonna have to try and subvert/ignore the sanctions (which would imply joining up with Russian and Chinese economic mechanisms so your economy isn’t fucked by being isolated by the US)
for years I’ve held that dedollarization is gonna take a good couple decades at the minimum to fully occur because there’s so many complications to resolve, and sometimes the progress isn’t going to look like progress until there’s sudden ruptures or major deals. in december 2025, saying “I think Iran should blockade Hormuz and set it up such that in order to pass, you need to pay for the oil in yuan” would be regarded as the delusional wishcasting of a dedollarization-obsessed idiot, whereas a mere three months later it’s rapidly becoming reality
This really needs a thorough country-by-country study to analyze the different splits in export/import and local/yuan/dollar trade.
Currency exchange rate gets confusing for me. Its not physical exchange of the paper notes but just some random digital number. Also “Belt and Road” and donation money could end up in china again because of China’s export surplus …
True, but the country at least gets something real ie Chinese and foreign goods.