My weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
To start briefly with Iran, there’s been two significant developments over the last week. First is that Iran is now beginning to put into practice its policy that allows preemptive strikes - a policy which was authorized by the previous Khamenei a while before his death but has so far gone unused - to strike at Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan without a corresponding American aggression immediately beforehand. The second development is that Iran is now taking a firmer stand against the US Navy in the waters of the Arabian Sea, beginning by testing anti-ship ballistic missiles against the US fleet - so far without confirmed hits as of me writing this sentence - as it is obviously disadvantageous for Iran to simply not do anything against the blockade even with US logistics under strain. The US has attempted to dissuade these new strikes by striking Iranian oil tankers, to which Iran has responded by striking oil tankers aligned with the West. This is very much not a shooting war that the US wants to get into as oil stockpiles continue to decline and diesel prices are at all-time highs (though if adjusted for inflation, we still have a little more time before we hit absolute highs). The overall picture is of an Iran growing in confidence.
There’s also been some encouraging news out of Yemen, where Ansarallah has been conducting a ground offensive weaken the enemy occupation of the western coast, including some breathtakingly precise drone-drop operations combined with using recon drones to guide ballistic missiles at enemy formations. As far as I’m aware, the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi tankers has been very successful, although stopping Saudi tankers from heading north towards Suez has been understandably trickier. I suppose if push comes to shove, they can continue to strike the very immobile coastal oil facilities rather than trying to hit moving ships at a great distance.
The news out of Russia/Ukraine has been quite miserable for particularly Ukrainian civilians over the past month or two, with Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian logistics and warehouses being met with much greater Russian responses on Ukrainian civilian logistics and warehouses. Ukrainian ports are now effectively blockaded, making exporting agricultural products in the same quantities as before essentially impossible, and within the cities including Kiev, food suppliers are scrambling to find smaller warehouses to place goods in so that they aren’t as easily destroyed like the larger warehouses have been. I find it sincerely upsetting that the war has progressed to this point, though it’s always worth noting that, first, Ukraine had a few opportunities to sign pretty good negotiating terms with Russia; and second, in comparison, Western wars begin at the step of making a conflict about hurting civilians, even to the extent of it being a detriment to strategic goals by not solely hitting military targets (most famously in Gaza, but also e.g. during Obama’s term by bombing weddings and hospitals).
I will confess to not being as up-to-date on the situation in Europe, and especially Germany, in regards to the Ukraine War as I would like, but as a general statement, nothing I’ve seen over the last few years has demonstrated to me that Europe is capable of fielding a conventional force which would provide a formidable, let alone existential, threat to Russia at this stage. There’s been lots of embarrassing stories about European missile, drone, and shell production being well below standards in both quality and quantity. My thoughts are now that I think the age of the US/NATO posing an existential conventional threat to China, Russia, and probably Iran (and perhaps others like the DPRK?) is now conclusively over, with Western bases proven to be indefensible with existing missile defence programs, their logistics very vulnerable to disruption, and their aircraft not being safe to use over airspace at least as well-protected as Iran’s. The US can still do cataclysmic, nation-destroying damage to smaller, less defended countries like those in Latin America and Africa, but for the anti-US squad in Eurasia, the vast majority of the threat from the US is now a combination of financial/debt offensives and covert intelligence. We still have a long way to go on both those fronts, however - a minimum of a decade or two, I believe, even with Trump’s inadvertently anti-imperialist accelerationism.
Lastly for this preamble, the annual SCO summit took place on September 1st in Bishkek, with the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, India, Türkiye, Pakistan, and others in attendance. A lot of the usual statements were made: down with hegemonies, down with militarising space, down with unilateral sanctions, up with local currency exchanges, up with cooperation, up with peace, etc etc. The big proclamation this time around was the Bishkek Declaration, which reiterated all those points I just mentioned. Overall, it’s one of those documents where the content is mostly cool and indirectly jabs a lot at the US, but I find that paper is a generally ineffective barrier of protection against bombs and missiles, which is a pretty major avenue of… let’s say, “international communication” in the current day. And I would like to see some real contenders to the World Bank and IMF taking shape soon if we’re gonna truly start fighting hegemonism, but I digress.
Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.


https://xcancel.com/ABKt198990/status/2097474052201857402 (machine-translated)
https://xcancel.com/cym27s/status/2097443332855107865
potential explanation for why the Americans are burning through such a sheer quantity of interceptors https://x.com/ripplebrain/status/2097532084717834270 (privated account so xcancel won’t do any good)
and the eventual consequences of such an expenditure rate https://xcancel.com/AryJeayBackup/status/2097450010803618119
Patriot operators be like, the faster we run out of ammo the faster we’ll abandon this base
People are speculating that Iran surprised them with a salvo of fragmentation missiles and the Patriots in automated mode just went crazy targeting the submunitions.
sure blame it on the robots
Wouldn’t be surprised if they had hooked up the patriots to an LLM
Missile defense has been shifting to “fully automatic” for much longer than the LLM fad has been around, and anyone who has been a defense systems operator and/or maintainer in simulations has seen how quickly the fully automated systems can expend all of your ammunition if you have any kind of credible scenario. There wasn’t enough inventory a decade ago to do a successful missile defense against anything more advanced than (CIA backed/created) forces like ISIS.
The full automation shift is necessary due to the speed at which missiles move these days. There simply isn’t enough time for a human to assign targets and launch. There’s barely enough time to approve the automatic engagement.
EDIT: With hypersonics there likely isn’t enough time to approve the engagement unless your radar gets real lucky
I can’t wait for Grok to be in charge of that decision instead. Gonna go sooooo much better.
Is this the largest PAC-2/3 missile salvo in history? Many people are saying yes! A great idea when you are running low on ammo.
This way Iran will think they have tons of missiles and give up
This way Iran will think they have tons of missiles and launch more next time
The US: Coming up with the most complex mindgame ever
IRGC Commander: I make fireworks, I shoot missiles
lol, ‘complex mindgames.’ everybody in Iranian leadership has PhDs, everybody in US leadership sniffs glue.
a complex mind game from the US: this time we’re gonna blow them up! we’re gonna use a bigger boom! it’s gonna be huge! they’re gonna go BOOM and blow up!
a complex mind game from the IRGC: to understand the role of mosaic defense in depleting the imperialists’ power projection capacity, a concise overview begins with a dialectical evaluation of the Franco-Prussian War’s impact on Europen national sovereignty and revolutionary socialist movements
Tucker doing an interview with Khamenei
Different civilization. If anything sumerian they should mention lagash, Wich is the easternmost sumerian city, and as such had some cultural similarities with the Elamites, sunch as snake worship.
But there are many cities as old and impressive as the sumerian ones in Iran, susa, choga zambil, jiroft, and shahr e shokth arguably it’s the most resembling what we understand as “Iranian” since what we understand “Iranian” mythology is not actually Iranian mythology but the mythology of sistani, due to some very recent historical coincidences. And yes some of those motifs are represented in artifacts as old as the bronze or even older.
I almost - almost - wish that Kissinger was alive to see all this unfold.
we are living in Hell (obviously) but we’re in the part that is punishing Kissinger specifically (positive)
the Iranians send a chess grandmaster with multiple phds
the yankee sits down at the table, looks him dead in the eye, grins, and starts eating the fucking pieces
Iranian missile cities tallying up patriot launches like they’re working on commission
hexbear should have a US interceptor stockpile countdown meter next to moscow time (sort of like those propaganda websites ukraine had where russia had run out of 99% of all tanks and soldiers by the sixth month of the war- but real this time lol)
Also one for the strategic petroleum reserve.
We also have:
hexbear homepage just opens up to
I’ve been seriously thinking about coding (by hand, not with fucking AI) a “state of the empire” dashboard web app. No analysis, just numbers.
you absolutely should. but I also don’t know if this is an intentional joke, but when I read “No X, just Y” or “Not X, but Y” My suspicions for something being written by an LLM are immediately raised.
I understand what you mean about the “not X, just Y” thing. Recently I’ve been thinking about my own use of language in the era of algorithm-speak and LLMs. But I think chasing after some subset of english that feels authentic in-the-moment to avoid looking artificial is a never-ending problem. I’ve decided to just type as I normally would if those factors didn’t exist.
Spose there’s no use defending waves 2 and 3 when the jets are already mush
Is it normal Patriot missile behaviour to be firing 3-4× as many missiles as you’re intercepting and still fail to intercept all of them? I knew interception was tough but wow.
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According to Ted postel, doctrine requires at least 2x interceptor for each incoming, and the real interception rate is still insanely low. It’s essentially a grift scheme/psychological armor at this point compared to the munitions it has to “defend” against.
At any point in missile defense history, you needed to fire at least two interceptors to have a successful intercept. The more advanced the missile you are defending against, the more defenses you have to expend. With modern ballistic missiles and hypersonics there is no credible missile defense.
wrong. the one credible missile defense is 30m of granite
yes it’s actually impossible to do effectively at any meaningfusl scale
I think it partly depends what interceptors they’re using. I think PAC2s are increasingly being used because that’s what they have stock of, but they’re basically useless against the types of ballistics Iran is using. Pretty much entirely for show and they basically only cause damage as the debris lands. I think PAC3s are more advanced, but I still think those have like a 1% interception rate if you only use one? So 3-4 are basically necessary to get the chance to see an interception occasionally. Some of the other interceptors have better rates, although some are more specialized for things like cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles.
I know we’ve seen Israel use like 20 interceptors against a single ballistic a few months ago, but I have no clue what kind of interceptors those were. I do think they actually intercepted though. Don’t know if it was ever confirmed what was so important to protect with that many interceptors, but I think the rumors have Benjamin being dead due to no public appearances for a while started shortly after it.
Interception rates are more like 10-20% but it varies on the adversary missile. a lot higher for the fateh line that’s the work horse of the Yemeni armed forces, but much lower if anything against the khorramshahr types.
That’s close to half a billion dollars of munitions deployed for very minimal results. Wild.