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.
Minister Promises More Talks: 8.000 Injured Workers Trapped In Danish Bureaucratic Limbo
Over 8,000 Danes with workplace injuries languish in administrative purgatory, having waited more than two years to have their claims of compensation processed. Some have waited as long as five years. This, despite a solemn 2022 political promise to reduce the backlog to 4,000 cases by 2024. Today, the figure is twice the size. Despite this, Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen, the head of the fledgling nation's Social Democrat-controlled Ministry of Employment, channelling the tone-deaf optimism of a Nordic Baghdad Bob, is assuring the public there is "a huge political focus" on reducing processing times. Her preferred strategy appears to be deferral; she dodges interviews, offering only vague promises of “status talks” after the summer recess, all while cross-party pressure is mounting.
Read more
The agency tasked with processing these claims, the Labour Market Insurance, a so-called "self-owning" institution born out of neoliberal new public management orthodoxy, blames the malaise of the workplace injury compensation system on COVID-19 backlogs and problematic IT system changes, offering the thin solace of promised "record-high" case resolution numbers year in 2025 – a promise heard before, as delays have steadily worsened since 2023. Agency leadership declined interviews.
Criticism echoes across Denmark’s carefully managed political spectrum. Karsten Hønge of SF, a usually regime-loyal soft centre-left party, cuts through the platitudes: "Hope is not a strategy, but it has apparently been the minister's strategy until now." Even the Liberal Party, a coalition partner of the ruling Social Democrats and nominally more right-wing than they are, is growing impatient and is demanding action. From the moderate pro-democracy opposition, the Red-Greens point to the human wreckage – lives upended, suspended in cruel uncertainty by the state’s malfunctioning machinery.
Trade unions watch in weary disbelief. Their members — nurses, social workers, lab technicians — endure injuries worsened by years of official neglect, their lives paused by endless bureaucratic delay.
Minister Halsboe-Jørgensen acknowledges the strain but offers no concrete remedy beyond the postponed talks. Her callous attitude towards the poor and the vulnerable is well-known and is emblematic for the Danish Social Democratic party. Recently, she defended a contentious welfare reform, universally predicted by independent observers to cause a sharp increase in destitution and homelessness with characteristic indifference, calling it "correct" because it was "broadly politically anchored from the left to the right" – proof, she claimed, that "some balances were found." When pressed on what she would do once expert warnings of an impending surge of homelessness comes true, she offered nohing but a promise of more talks, more deflection, more indifference, like it was no more urgent than adjusting the margins of a spreadsheet: "then that is something we must discuss. I just think we have to view it holistically."
If the injured were fighter jets, one imagines their paperwork might move faster. As it happens, while thousands of injured workers await meager compensation, the Nordic hermit kingdom's Liberal Party-controlled Defence Ministry has announced their intent to purchase at least ten more F-35 warplanes from American arms traffickers. The regime has refused to tell how much the splurge will cost, naturally, other than it will be "a large multi-billion amount." The jets will expand Denmark’s fleet to nearly 40, increasing the regime's capacity for destabilising the region, a symbol of martial readiness that belies the state’s apparent incapacity to care for its own civilian population. In Denmark’s strange political system, the roar of warplanes drowns out the cries of the injured.
Sources: