Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.
Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.
summary
The Iran ceasefire is grinding on. After a brief period over the weekend of heightened activity where it seemed that US strikes might be resuming, Trump announced a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran, which initially appeared to be an agreement along Iran’s demands.
For those not following along with the diplomatic minutia, Iran’s position for several weeks has been that the nuclear issue must be discussed separately - because, well, last time they started discussing the nuclear issue with the US, they got fucking bombed - and so have proposed a two-stage negotiation where the war is first officially ended with certain preconditions (e.g. the US has to end sanctions and unfreeze assets and presumably withdraw at least some military assets), and then the second stage will begin in which the nuclear issue is handled.
The reason why a deal has still not been signed after all this time is because the US disagrees with doing it this way, and wants the nuclear issue to be handled right away (and obviously also objects with things like Iran retaining control of the Strait). Therefore, Trump’s announcement appeared to be him finally accepting reality, but it quickly became apparent that this was just another market manipulation. I’m definitely in the camp among several other analysts that believes another round of war is going to happen barring some very sudden circumstances (e.g. Trump being forced out of power one way or another, or Iran obtaining a nuke) because the US still seems agreement-incapable. And in Lebanon, consternation for the Zionists against Hezbollah’s attacks continues as the FPV drone threat only continues to increase despite them desperately seeking countermeasures.
As I’ve been perhaps too focussed on Iran lately, here’s a brief roundup of big news events from the last month or so.
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Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.
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Strikes in Bolivia against that dipshit Paz: Very nice to see, as it appears that Bolivia has among the best widespread on-the-ground popular support for worker-centric policies and politicians in Latin America that makes it so they can genuinely pressure power (already, the Labor Minister has resigned).
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Situation in the Sahel: “Mysterious” third parties sponsored a big offensive against the AES which they largely repelled with help from Russia. The situation there is still a little tenuous as I understand it with a greater focus by anti-government forces on blockades of cities to cause internal revolts. This tactic is currently broadly failing as armed convoys are getting fuel and food into the cities, but figures like Traore are aware that more needs to be done.
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Ukraine War: Aside from the usual grinding advance by Russia on the front, there have been back-and-forth missile and drone strikes as Ukraine hit some targets in the outskirts of Moscow with drones and then Russia fired a shitload of missiles, including the iconic Oreshnik, directly at Kiev, as Simplicius and others have covered in greater detail.
I could go on and on with the recent aggressions against Cuba, Modi’s recent victories in India and the AI/chip tech war between China and the US but this preamble has to end at some point due to the character limit.
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.
President Trump has sent Iran a revised peace deal with tougher terms -multiple US officials to the NYT. The “new, tougher proposal” is intended to put more pressure on Iran to accept a deal.
“The official added that Mr. Trump’s changes — a new, tougher proposal — were potentially intended to speed up the process by putting pressure on Iran to accept the framework already sent to Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, for approval.”
A “new, tougher proposal” that Iran probably already rejected previously is exactly how you speed things up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/trump-iran-peace-framework.html
Exclusive: US military personnel are being targeted using location data, Pentagon letter shows
US Central Command says it was warned that adversaries used location data to target troops Lawmakers urge Pentagon to act, citing adtech industry as national security threat Calls for disabling ad IDs, restricting location sharing, and moving away from Chrome on devicesWASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - U.S. forces deployed to war zones have been targeted using commercially available location data, according to reports fielded by military officials, an illustration of how the global surveillance economy is shaping the battlefield.
In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, opens new tab, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater." The message, sent on April 14, offered no further specifics, but Centcom’s area of responsibility includes the Gulf, where U.S. forces are facing off against the Iranian military over the Strait of Hormuz.
The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. Sign up here. The disclosure was the first official confirmation that U.S. forces had been targeted in an active war zone, Wyden and a bipartisan group of legislators said in a letter sent on Thursday, opens new tab to the Pentagon.
“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned. Wyden said in a statement that it was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”
The Pentagon said in an email it would respond directly to the lawmakers but did not elaborate. The lawmakers said in their letter that their efforts to obtain more information from military officials about the reported targeting had been unsuccessful.
LOCATION DATA TRADE FUELS PRIVACY CONCERNS
Location data is widely used in digital advertising, which is a key source of revenue for many tech companies. Such data is typically collected from smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers before being sold to data brokers who collate and resell the data, sometimes via complex networks of intermediaries. Although the threat to privacy inherent in selling the details of people’s day-to-day movements on the open market has long been a matter of public discussion, its potential as a national security risk has recently drawn concern as well.
As far back as 2016, one U.S. defense contractor was able to leverage commercially available location data to track special operations forces from their bases in the United States to a sensitive staging post in Syria, according to an account first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, opens new tab.
More recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets drew on billions of coordinates collected by a data broker to expose the granular comings and goings, opens new tab of people stationed at or around 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.
Two groups that represent digital advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not return emails seeking comment. The letter from U.S. lawmakers to the Pentagon said that, given what military officials know about the trade in location data, they should have acted faster to protect their personnel, for example by disabling the unique advertising ID attached to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in the field, and steering staff away from Google’s Chrome web browser toward more privacy-focused alternatives.
One of the letter’s cosigners was U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican who was formerly a U.S. Army Special Forces officer. Harrigan said that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to collect and share user data” and that every day they remain on government-issued devices “is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops.”
In a statement, Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google said that Chrome had “industry leading security.” The company added that it had “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers, opens new tab.”
Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis
MidEastEye - Iran rejects Trump’s terms of deal to lift Hormuz blockade
It sounds like they are no where near any deal.
Snips
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Trump conditioned the lifting of the US’s blockade on Iran agreeing not to charge fees in the Strait of Hormuz and allowing the US access to damaged nuclear facilities in order to destroy Iran’s highly enriched uranium. The US bombed three Iranian facilities in June 2025.
“The enriched material, sometimes referred to as “Nuclear Dust,” which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains…will be unearthed by the United States…in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED,” Trump wrote on his Truthsocial platform on Friday.
As a result, Trump said that “Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of “heading home!”
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But Iran said on Friday that “no negotiations" were taking place over its nuclear programme, and a deal had not been finalised.
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Iran wants sanctions relief and the unfreezing of billions of dollars in funds held abroad as part of any ceasefire extension. Such an agreement, according to reports and analysts, would only be a stepping stone for deeper talks.
Trump ruled out the unlocking of frozen funds in a social media post, saying, “No money will be exchanged, until further notice”. It’s unclear whether that language applies only to frozen funds or to waivers allowing Iran to sell its oil on the global market without sanctions.
https://xcancel.com/jonelmer/status/2060595808525775328
Hezbollah seriously wounded the commander of the IDF’s 401st Armored Brigade after tracking him to a newly established forward HQ; he has been commander since the Qassam Brigades killed his predecessor in Jabaliya in October 2024.
Colombia’s right-wing opposition are threatening their own country with a US military attack if they don’t win tomorrow’s elections. Latin American democracy is weak because it tolerates these people. Just saying this should merit a long prison sentence for terrorism & treason.
Regarding the issue of drug trafficking. Colombia became the epicenter of cocaine production under the numerous right-wing & pro-US authoritarian regimes. Uribe is accusing others of his own crimes.
This is what Bolivia’s highways look like at the moment. Each town & village blocks their stretch, and the union members in each community take turns at the barricades. This is part of the general strike against neoliberalism. Now entering week 3.
Bolivia’s workers union confederation official statement: “There is only one demand: Resignation of the government. There is no turning back”
Rumors have been going around that Ukraine received new batches of Western air defense equipment to prepare for Russia’s Imminent Strike On Kiev™. It wouldn’t be surprising, since Zelensky has been publicly begging for them.
Some pro-Russians are upset by this, but it was extremely predictable, to the point where I’m sure it was factored in by Russian leadership. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even part of the plan. Coax out another big air defense shipment, track it, and destroy it.
critical mineral shaping up to be one of the worst supply bottlenecks for US defense contractors is the rare earth samarium (Sm, atomic number 62). China makes 100% of current production and unlike neodymium and dysprosium magnets, samarium-cobalt magnets are almost entirely used in military applications, making avoidance of export controls via dual-use subterfuge much more difficult. building one F-35 requires ~23 kg of samarium.
US missiles blown up in Iran and Israel [sic] will never be replaced | Inside China Business
from what I can tell the second tightest bottleneck is probably gallium
NVidia is expected to announce new mobile chips for PC, after an almost 1 year delay. It could be a good power-efficient alternative to Intel/AMD/Apple. I’m betting they will blow the opportunity by integrating AI at a hardware level, so that you will be unable to remove it & it will constantly use power just sitting in the background.
https://xcancel.com/MenchOsint/status/2060693407132000361
Saudi Arabia privately complained to Washington in early April that UAE retaliatory strikes on Iranian targets; including oil facilities at Bandar Abbas and Asaluyeh, risked Iranian counter-attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and were spiking oil prices - NYT
UAE struck Iranian Oil infrastructures to provoke an Iranian retaliation on its neighbors’ energy facilities, in hope to get Saudi Arabia or Qatar directly involved in the war on Iran.
man, Freud would have had a field day with the emiratis’ death drive
Nazitown, USA
How Ukrainian nazi collaborators smuggled into the US after World War II have created racist enclaves in our country, and developed influence over US politics for the past 86 years.
more
I’ll be honest with you. I’m not a great writer. Nope, I gave that up a long time ago, when a very good friend and fellow creative who I respect told me, rather plainly in my early adult years, that I was a much better graphic artist than a writer. It stuck, and I gave up the practice for quite some time so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. But being a geopolitical junkie as I am, I’ve found some very disturbing links in the past couple of years that I’ve been researching the conflict in Ukraine which I feel I should share with the American public, whether it gets traction or not. It’s been a rabbit hole that keeps twisting and turning, and the more I’ve learned - the more concerning it’s been. I could probably research it for another decade and not find all the connections. So, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut it off where it stands and write this article. Feel free to use the information I present, build upon it, or contact me if you have any valuable insight yourself. I will make the article free of charge, but I do ask - as I’m a disabled guy with not many resources - if you feel it’s worth supporting, please consider a paid subscription & it’ll give me much more time and leeway to sharpen my writing and share further valuable information on Ukraine and other topics. I’m going to present it in three digestible parts. First, explaining how I fell into the rabbit hole in the first place, learning about a small town in Wisconsin and some very disturbing, recurring racist/nazi incidents, and then how that research has expanded to reveal a 75-year partnership with Ukrainian nazi collaborators, prominent American politicians, the Democratic Party, and connections to billions in Ukraine aid that our government has passed just since 2022.
Part I: Nazitown, USA
Now, I’ve got no connections to Russia or Ukraine, but I became curious about the situation there since 2013. Followed it, again, just out of curiosity since. And one day, a couple years ago, I stumbled across an article in the Wisconsin Examiner that started this whole affair. Long story short, it was about the Ukrainian Youth Association summer camp in the small town of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Just on the surface, a camp devoted to the culture of a foreign state wouldn’t be such a concern, but the headline itself “Ukrainian Association in Baraboo honors nazi collaborators with statues at children’s summer camp” - well - that was worth delving into, I thought. You see, Baraboo - a small town with a population of around 12,000 and a 88% white population, nestled on the Canadian/American border - It’s got problems. And by problems, I mean, a suspiciously repetitive pattern of racist incidents over the past decade. You may remember a very widely-disseminated national story from 2018 where a group of schoolchildren took a prom photo with many of the students pictured doing a nazi salute. It provoked a lot of outrage at the time, but was quickly forgotten, and excused mainly as students performing the salute as a very unfunny joke. School officials said they investigated, but never took any action. But, curious as I am, I decided to dig further into it and found very many such racist incidents happening in such a small town, incidents in the city and nearby areas where nazi flyers have been distributed in sandwich bags, weighted down with birdseed and thrown into people’s yards (with no culprit ever caught in subsequent investigations). Then, an incident in 2018 where a video was posted on Youtube where local LGBT and Jewish teachers in the school district were mocked and slurred, and subsequently taken down.
And it goes on, and on, and on, to the point that listing all such incidents I found examples of in the past two decades would be too exhaustive. In 2012, a convoy of teenagers drove around Baraboo in trucks, each flying Confederate battle flags, in an effort to memorialize a student killed in a car accident. In 2020, there was a federal lawsuit filed against the school district where a black student, Dasia Banks, alleged that school officials would openly allow slurs to be used against her faced constant harassment since 1st grade. The lawsuit was settled out of court. In another incident in 2024, a school superintendent, Rainey Briggs, filed a restraining order against a white parent who jumped onstage at a graduation ceremony to shove Briggs (who is black) away from a handshake with his daughter, telling Briggs that he did not want him touching her. Seeing a pattern? I did. And that a Ukrainian Youth Camp was in the area with statues glorifying Ukrainian nazi collaborators, I decided to dig into that and will describe what that led to in part II:
Part II: The Camps
For anyone who has followed the conflict in Ukraine, even mildly, you have surely seen allegations hurled at groups such as Azov adopting nazi symbols, performing torchlight parades, ceremonies, etc. openly. You may dismiss them, but for someone who is well-versed in the conflict, you shouldn’t. It’s a real phenomenon and cannot be ignored. The Ukrainian Youth Association, abbreviated as ”CYM” in Ukrainian (which I will refer to it as going forward) was founded in 1925 as an underground nationalist movement against Soviet control as a way to preserve Ukrainian culture. Broken up by the Soviets, with many members sent to the gulags thereafter, it was brought back into life post-WW2 in German refugee camps by Ukrainians who had cooperated with the nazis during the war. These were people who fought against the Soviets on the side of Nazi Germany as part of the OUN (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and their militant wing, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army), who feared retribution for their collaboration with Germany and had participated in atrocities and pogroms against Jews within Ukraine and Poland (If you’ve heard the name Stephan Bandera in relation to Ukraine and the neo-nazi Azov Battalion, he is one of the founders of that group). Flash forward to 1949, and as a result of “Operation Paperclip” (Wherein nazis and their collaborators were brought over to resettle in the US to be used for secret government operations against communism/labor organizing and for their technical knowledge), not all the fascist-sympathizers were German, but Ukrainians as well. This was against the wishes of President Truman at the time, who specifically issued orders than no nazi sympathizers would be brought into the US, but under the leadership of Edward O’Connor, the effort brought such people into the USA and helped them also settle in South American countries and elsewhere, “bleaching” their backgrounds and using them for various purposes, both scientific/technical and as a means to quell worker unionizing since they were ardent fascists who hated the idea of communism. O’Connor was described by many as a fascist himself for his efforts to hide their true identities and reform their image in the public eye.
CYM came along with them, and the American branch was first established in Philadelphia in 1949 (to this day, Philadelphia remains the 2nd highest concentration of Ukrainians in the US). The organization was then spread to include camps in Chicago, Wisconsin, and other camps/branches, primarily in the Northeastern States. In total, today, there are four main Camps, and 28 branches across 12 US States. In a 2013 dedication of monuments at the Chicago branch to Bandera and Roman Shukhevych (the head of the UPA who held the rank of Captain in the German Wehrmacht and is on record as participating in pogroms against Jews and atrocities committed against Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia), the President of CYM confirmed that “The forefathers of CYM were members of OUN Banderivtsi and their supporters who developed a system to raise and develop youth to serve God and Ukraine”. And the organization is not limited to the US, either. Currently, CYM operates in 13 other countries across the globe, with branches/camps in Canada, Germany, the UK, Austria, France, and several other European countries, as well as including branches in Australia and Argentina. As a personal observation, it seems, the countries that host these “cells” (as their Ukrainian-language website calls them) seem to be some of the most ardent supporters of Ukraine in their current conflict against Russia.
Now, it’s sort of - on the face - perhaps not something to question so much, until you recognize what a “youth camp” means within Ukraine itself. I’ve found records going back far beyond the current conflict, before Ukraine’s Maidan revolution in 2014, where many of these camps were hosted by groups like C14, Svoboda, and the Azov Battalion (all considered to be neo-nazi, “nationalist” groups that have thrived in post-Soviet, sovereign Ukraine:
(Excerpt from a November 2018 Morningstar UK article, “Fascists in training: Ukraine’s nationalist youth camps”, which detailed life in one such camp ran by the Svoboda “nationalist” organization)
cont’d in response
https://xcancel.com/Osinttechnical/status/2060404208419910023
Update: Bulgaria has announced that it will eject US forces using Sofia airport at the end of June. The move comes after the United States failed to approve a visa-free system for Bulgarian visitors.
https://xcancel.com/OlgaBazova/status/2060608680999969278 https://archive.ph/Gf7NF
To the last Estonian! Compulsory military service for girls - a matter of time in Estonia
- This was stated by the head of the country’s Defense Resources Department, Anu Rannaveksi.
- Estonia will face a shortage of men for military conscription in the future. According to her, if in the past up to 15,000 boys were born annually, now there are only 4-5 thousand. “By 2040, the problem will become very noticeable - we will not be able to recruit 4,100 people, as envisaged by defense plans,” said Rannaveksi.
- The conscription of women for military service is already being discussed. Supporters of this idea note that many tasks in the field of defense do not require high physical fitness.
- In the country’s parliament, such a step is not ruled out if the demographic situation does not improve.
US Marine Corps F-35Bs to… Finland?
8x Marine Corps F-35B 5th generation short takeoff and vertical landing stealth aircraft have arrived in Finland as of 15h ago. Why? I don’t know. I’m guessing as part of NATO military exercises on the Finnish border, the “Northern Star” exercises. F-35s operating from remote locations is part of Nordic defence strategy, Finland has purchased 64x F-35As (conventional landing and take-off), and Norway’s 52x F-35As, of which they have taken full delivery of, are equipped with a drouge parachutes to assist braking action in icy weather on makeshift runways/highways. Italian F-35Bs were taking off and landing on highways a few days ago in Finland as part of the “Immenent Field 2026” military exercises. Finland has not yet taken delivery of it’s first F-35A, it looks like allied F-35Bs are playing the role for now in military exercises as Finland prepares for delivery. But a weird deployment all round in 2026.
It’s an interesting look into Nordic defence tactics, they intend to distribute even their highest end weaponry on makeshift bases to keep them in the fight against an adversary with long range strike. The Nordics do not have the luxury to base their fighter aircraft out of range of Russian long range strike for various reasons (not enough mid air refueling capacity, geographical constraints, not enough air defence to intercept long range high end weapons), so they have to operate well within in the Russian weapon engagement zone in a hypothetical war.
That is a lot of damage, considering the Pentagon said that all Iranian missiles were intercepted.
