SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
newsMy weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
::: spoiler preamble We remain at a precipice in the Middle East, with the return of US strikes expected just after the midterm elections finish on November 3rd - perhaps even as soon as November 4th. With American military might substantially diminished from earlier in the year, there's been a ton of speculation in various corners of the internet about what they could possibly be planning that would produce results worth the sacrifice of Iran's massive retaliation expected in response. These theories, once limited to MOABs and another attempt at a broad assassination campaign against IRGC officials, now include the possibility of outright nuclear strikes on Iran, in order to try and penetrate Iranian underground facilities which have proved impervious to conventional weaponry (and are also very probably impervious to nuclear weaponry from what I've read, though I am far from an expert), and also to try and degrade the up-to-this-point steadfast resistance that the Iranians have put up since the war began.
Efforts by some in the Trump administration to engage in diplomacy are embarrassingly transparent; both the US and Iran know (and know that the other knows) that it's just meaningless theater in preparation for further conflict. If a nuclear strike on Iran is indeed carried out - which I currently think is quite unlikely, but still the likeliest it's been since February - then the reactions of other nuclear-armed countries around the world to the breaking of the nuclear taboo are difficult to predict; as is whether the US would receive meaningful economic/political/diplomatic consequences from countries with the power to deliver those consequences, most notably China and Russia.
My personal expectation is that the US will start hitting some Iranian refineries and power stations and conduct impressive-but-ineffectual strikes on Pickaxe Mountain. Iran, meanwhile, has planned to strike US and Zionist economic interests across the whole region, military bases outside of the region (namely, those in eastern Europe), and even suggested that they'll cut the undersea cables feeding into the Persian Gulf. A preemptive strike by Iran now also seems to be a strong possibility, as they have hopefully gotten over their anxiety of being seen as an aggressor in the court of international opinion. The West's ability to repel these potential strikes is now a shadow of even its limited ability in February, with many radars destroyed and interceptor stockpiles unable to be restored quickly due to American industrial bottlenecks. Iran's leverage is now the highest it's ever been as global oil and LNG buffers are very much drained. Pakistan, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia recently sent various officials to Iran to discuss regional security (image above), a telling indication of the growing recognition that the future of West Asia relies on a security arrangement outside of the West's dictum, but it seems unlikely to be a significant event in the short-term.
The protests continue throughout Europe, with every major country seeing a share of riot police facing down people angry at the economic hardship and the lack of even a gesture towards conditions changing; the neoliberal rot has set in far, far too deep for even the most tepid of reforms at this stage. Poland has been the latest political battleground - I won't pretend to fully understand the situation after just some cursory reading, but it's essentially an battle between pro-EU liberals and not-so-pro-EU conservatives calling each other totalitarian dictators after the former started off a constitutional crisis by remaking the Constitutional Tribunal.
Over in the US, tech stocks (most notably Intel's) faced carnage mostly due to the ongoing lack of profitability of AI and the enormous amounts of debt that is accumulating to support the ever-increasing lack of revenue. This market plunge follows the one earlier in October in Asian (especially South Korean) markets; Michael Roberts has had great coverage of these dynamics over the last year, so I won't go too far into it here. There's also been a variety of interesting contingencies and warnings, such as that the electrical grid may be critically vulnerable and that US military bases should be able to last for at least 90 days off the grid in the event of war. The combination of the fact that NATO ran a nuclear exercise period in mid-October and all the myriad internet PHP vulnerabilities that are being discovered and hurriedly patched explains a great deal of the ominous warnings and preparations that we've been seeing, but there's been some intriguing speculation whether Iran has figured out some major vulnerabilities in the US and might exploit them if the US strikes their own power grid. :::
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::: spoiler 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.
:::
::: spoiler 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.
:::
Ansarallah in the last 72 hours has made large advancements into the north mountainous area of the Lahij Governorate. This area is important as it gives Ansarallah secluded positions from which they can enforce a closure of the Bab Al-Mandeb and prevent ground offensives by Saudi Mercenaries. The ‘Giants’ brigade failed again at an assault to retake the coast of the Bab Al-Mandeb, resulting in many casualties, including the commander of the brigade. The failure has lead to further bickering between the various Saudi-backed forces.
The DPRk once again defeated the Yankee imperialists, this time on the pitch. The DPRK’s U17 Women’s Team triumphed in a 3-0 victory.
the next call of duty DLC is going to have this as the inciting incident sparking war
While the DPRK trumps (ha) the Yankee imperialists on the field, the latter can only do so in video game stories.
In response, Trump renames soccer to American football.
Kill Israel
More and more people are saying this!
Red squares say possibly two ships on fire in the SoH right now.
TASS: Armed men hold around 40 people in basement near Kiev — media
Armed men are holding around 40 people in a basement in the community of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev, the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN reported, posting a video on its Telegram channel.
According to the news agency, a medical worker told police that she had received a video from inside the basement and shown it to officers. The footage shows people in critical condition, including one person who appears to have an exposed intestine. An ambulance crew arrived at the scene, but the men, presenting themselves as the building's owners, refused to let them in, the news agency reported.
The person who recorded the video said that representatives of Ukraine’s territorial recruitment centers (military enlistment offices), as well as police officers and an ambulance crew, had arrived in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka.
Libs think busification are cops knocking on peoples doors or catching draft dodgers and not the near constant stream of videos of brutal kidnappings and forced disappearances.
The busification will continue until morale improves.
I don't get it, who are the captives? Ukranians refusing to enlist?
Civilian probably stumbled across some Azov torture factory or SBU blacksite and reported it to the authorities and press, and now they have to pretend like they are busting the operation they set up
Borshch-ahivka
Really?
there are a bunch of towns named after cherries, peaches, apples, citrus in orchard heavy parts of the US and Canada
mrs. oil market thinks that deal within reach (tm) (again)*:
(also yields have fallen from 5.6 to 5.2 on 30 years in last month, smdh, but that's probably cause of the fed)
*all i've seen is vague posting that allegedly iran surrendered its already sucky plan for 7-days-to-reopening to 2-days-to-reopening of hormuz, but seems so unwise it might be true.
How many more times are we going to believe western Bs talking points?
who is western B?
Probably related to Miror B. More importantly, how good is their theme song?
Edited
well, seemingly ms. iran believed them enough to actively start attacking tankers in mid september
world historical fell-for-it-again award champs
nah, that's russia, even if this is true
https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/AMK_Mapping_/status/2117106062738530460
Russia's 48-hour-long massive Geran drone attack on Ukraine has finally concluded.
Over 1,400 Geran-4/5 jet-drones and Geran-2 drones were used in total, attacking dozens of different towns and cities across 22 out of 23 regions (excluding Kherson Oblast due to the ceasefire). Of these 1,400 drones, around 1,000 Geran-2/Gerberas and 400 Geran-4/5s were used. The main targets were electrical substations and railway infrastructure, as well as some airbases used by the Ukrainian Air Force. Widespread power outages occurred across large parts of Ukraine, including the cities of Dnipro and Kyiv, and the implementation of rolling blackouts has been intensified. In the second half of the attack (the last 24 hours), explosions were heard in/near the following locations:
::: spoiler more
- Lviv City
- Hlyniany, Lviv Oblast
- Kremenets, Ternopil Oblast
- Dubno, Rivne Oblast
- Kostopil, Rivne Oblast
- Hoshcha, Rivne Oblast
- Rivne City
- Manevychi, Volyn Oblast
- Netishyn, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Slavuta, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Shepetivka, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Horodok, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Letychiv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Derazhnya, Khmelnytskyi Oblast
- Khmelnytskyi City
- Chernivtsi City
- Mohyliv-Podil's'kyi, Vinnytsia Oblast
- Turbiv, Vinnytsia Oblast
- Kozyatyn, Vinnytsia Oblast
- Lypovets, Vinnytsia Oblast
- Illintsi, Vinnytsia Oblast
- Vinnytsia City
- Chudniv, Zhytomyr Oblast
- Rudnya-Horodyshche, Zhytomyr Oblast
- Ozerne, Zhytomyr Oblast
- Korostyshiv, Zhytomyr Oblast
- Zhytomyr City
- Uman, Cherkasy Oblast
- Cherkasy City
- Bila Tserkva, Kyiv Oblast
- Fastiv, Kyiv Oblast
- Bucha, Kyiv Oblast
- Irpin, Kyiv Oblast
- Brovary, Kyiv Oblast
- Kalynivka, Kyiv Oblast
- Multiple different districts of Kyiv City
- Vylkove, Odesa Oblast
- Usatove, Odesa Oblast
- Mayaky, Odesa Oblast
- Odesa City
- Dolyns'ka, Kirovohrad Oblast
- Baburka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast
- Rozumivka, Zaporizhzhia Oblast
- Vilnyansk, Zaporizhzhia Oblast
- Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
- Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
- Synelnykove, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast
- Oril'ka, Kharkiv Oblast
- Lozova, Kharkiv Oblast
- Chuhuiv, Kharkiv Oblast
- Rohan, Kharkiv Oblast
- Vasyshcheve, Kharkiv Oblast
- Kharkiv City
- Slovyansk, Donetsk Oblast
- Hlobyne, Poltava Oblast
- Putyvl, Sumy Oblast
- Konotop, Sumy Oblast
- Shostka, Sumy Oblast
- Okhtyrka, Sumy Oblast
- Nosivka, Chernihiv Oblast
The first half (24 hours) of the attack involved a little over 600 Geran-2/4/5 drones, and focused primarily on targeting energy infrastructure in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, as well as railway and energy infrastructure across Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, and Ternopil Oblast. There were also a large number of strikes on Kyiv and its surroundings, and heavy attacks on Sumy City and its surroundings. Southern Ukraine (Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kirovohrad, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts) were largely spared from attacks. The second half (24 hours) of the attack involved around 700 Geran-2/4/5 drones, and continued to focus on energy and railway infrastructure in the western regions of Ukraine, although strikes on Ternopil Oblast were swapped for heavier attacks on the neighbouring Rivne Oblast. Kyiv and its surroundings continued to see a lot of activity, although this decreased compared to the first half. Odesa Oblast was struck this time, and there was also more activity seen in Zaporizhzhia Oblast too. Strikes on energy infrastructure in Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava Oblasts decreased compared to the first half. :::
In my opinion, this is a prelude to the upcoming combined missile and drone attack involving strategic aviation, which will likely occur sometime this week. It has helped exhaust Ukrainian air defence and aviation capabilities, and put further strain on the power grid, which will be hit even harder once the missiles start flying. I will make a separate post about the preparations for this upcoming missile attack in the near future. I do find it funny, though, that this massive attack involving over 1,400 long-range drones, hundreds of successful strikes, and almost every region of Ukraine hit was almost entirely ignored in the information space in favour for two Russian refineries being hit by a few Ukrainian drones each.
https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/SU_57R/status/2116981719865962773
The communications director of Ukraine's air force command, Yury Ignat, stated during an interview that Russia has employed a new strategy of launching small groups of Geran drones to bait away Ukrainian fighter jets. He noted that F-16s have to travel several hundred kilometers just to intercept a pair of Geran drones, then fly back. This puts more strain on the airframe and pilots, without risking valuable Russian aircraft.
I wonder if the reinforced hangars at Engels Air Base are ready yet. If they are, we could see a major uptick in strategic missile strikes this winter.
Anthropic Q3: A $23B net loss on revenue of around $10B-$15B.
Q3 Net Loss: $23.3B Vs $12.1B Y/Y
9M Revenue: $33.2B Vs $2.5B Y/Y
They'll get government bailouts anyways so why bother having a sensible business model?
A lot of the loss was from accounting, but their operating margin also went down to 15% (from the already low 20%).
They will need a continuous bailout, one per year!
those are called nda-ed dod contracts. as i've said before, punting 20 billion a year is a small price to pay for 30 trillion in stock market evaluation. (and then it's next admin problem)
this is how we get a nationalized industry lol
AI truly is the money losing Olympics of our generation
The question is, how much money could a single person set on fire (assuming working 40 hours per week) if all they had was $1 bills and they had to transport the money 5 feet by hand.
all right, if it takes about 5 seconds on average to make a round trip and they can reasonably pick up and carry, say, 10 stacks of 100 $1 bills without meaningfully slowing down, that's $120,000 per minute. it would take about 3 work weeks to burn through $1 billion, or about 2 years to burn through $32 billion for the anthropic ipo.
One week ago he was bragging about the Grok Bot being the future of SpaceX!
Also:
Pre-AI-nonsense SpaceX was literally the only company he was remotely connected to that (a) made things that worked as promised and (b) was profitable. Of course he couldn't leave well enough alone because he's a fucking idiot.
They are now going almost all-in on Starship and IIRC Starship hasn't yet made a flight where all the engines worked.
Yeah, Starship prototypes are showing promise, but it's not remotely ready for production.
And they need to do at least 10 launches in 2028 just for Artemis 4! (If they are chosen over Blue Origin)
Then by all means Elon, give all your money away
mr. iran, you know what needs to be done to bring non-money future for elon. it looks like 100k steel rods at the 520 km orbit.
lmao. customer pays you $1 and it costs you.... $2 dollars?
That's net losses so $3 for each $1 they earn.
you love to see it
What do y'all make of the various people talking about Trump being about to nuke Iran. Regular ol' hyperboly or an actual probability?
Possible. The planning agencies of a lot of western aligned countries are talking quietly and not so quietly about people needing emergency supplies and similar resilience messages that seem like they expect something soon or in the future that is now being planned for to result in massive retaliation (cyber attacks perhaps) that just shuts down logistics and the workings of things. Obvious targets would be power systems and water systems on top of computer systems.
For all we know they’re really planning nuclear war with Russia in two years but who knows.
I don't think it's high odds because of how much it would upend the world order that currently benefits the USA. then again, that's what I thought with respect to launching a war against iran.
I'll believe it when I see it.
When this war started I figured we'd be lucky if the US didn't end up using nukes out of desperation. They can't defeat Iran in a conventional war, thats why they previously stuck to sanctions and terrorism.
Nuclear bunker busters are likely, since they can simply blame the release of radiation on the target.
It's possible. My suspicion is that it's a good media opportunity for his base, and that depending on how they do it it might actually cause problems for Iran because although they can dig out the entrances to their missile cities, digging irradiated dirt and rock is much more complicated. I assume Iran has prepared for that situation but it still makes it more difficult.
I am slightly worried that someone is whispering on Trump's ear that we beat Japan in WW2 by nuking civilian cities and that he thinks that's somehow an instant win button but I think that's significantly less likely. Anything is possible though with this administration they have zero humanity and zero care about public image so there's really nothing holding them back from it.
I'm not an expert though just a dude who likes the news.
From my understanding, there are theories that nukes in a post-knowing-about-nukes world aren't as effective militarily as people assume. But nukes being used in a post-knowing-about-nukes world is kinda uncharted territory...
Yes it's definitely different now. I hope we don't find out
no shot, they don't want their bases in pacific to require 50 warheads to be obliterated
(but side story of cia heart attack gun on some dem senator is funny)
Chris Murphy and Tucker Carlson are both very worried - one was at a war plans briefing and one has a lot of inside connections. I still think the probability is low, but since they have already tried basically everything else...
Today we've seen a big "no war" offensive in the media, it very much looks like they are trying to create a buffer in the stocks and options market before the war fully resumes.
Plausible, low likelihood.
Feels like one of the biggest TACOs or Netanyahu trying to get the Knesset to come to am agreement after the election.
The use of nuclear bunker busters (which detonate once underground) is quite likely in my opinion. It's the only remotely feasible way to destroy Iran's underground nuclear sites.
do we even know whether those would actually work? I am ignorant on the subject, and I am unfamiliar with the concept of nuclear bunker busters… I had heard some Iranian sites are under like 300 meters of granite- plus they are underground, so how would the have certainty on where everything is?
The B61-11 is a 400kt strategic nuclear weapon, 26x more powerful than Little Boy, designed to use ground coupling to increase it's explosive power equivalent to that of a multi megaton weapon vs hardened and deeply buried targets. That is the USA's "bunker buster" nuclear weapon, exclusive to the B-2, each B-2 can carry 8x B-61-11. While classified low yield Earth Penetrating Warheads (EPWs) could exist, especially on the Israeli side for bunker busting, there is no public knowledge of such. The W-86 was cancelled after all. The US has the W76-2 warhead for the Mk-4A re-entry vehicles of the UGM-133A Trident II D5 Submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which is designed for tactical use, with a significantly lower yield of 5-7kt.
I highly, highly, highly doubt nuclear weapons would be used, even though the chance of usage is always non zero. It's just the latest Tucker Carlson talking point someone paid him to say or he used to drive traffic to his videos. GBU-57 MOPs on Pickaxe mountain are far, far, far more likely.
My understanding is that they probably wouldn't. They would need to use conventional bombs to blast a hole through the rock and then drop a nuke into the hole once the complex is breached.
IMO the whole airstrip base they set up when 'looking' for the downed pilot was either an attempt or a test at seeing if they could set up a FOB for special forces to open the doors at Natanz and plant a bomb rather than attempting to do it from the air
I wonder if Iran's Mosaic Defense has taken this possibility into account. If so, the US would have to worry about fallout reaching Pakistan or Russia, which would trigger Mutually Assured Destruction.
No it wouldn’t lol. What world are you living in?
Pakistan is a US dog. They control their military and just run drones inside it to bomb who they wanted for years during Bush. Russia is run by a coward who would at absolute most (2% chance) use it as a pretext to nuke Ukraine in turn. Neither would lead to nuclear exchanges between nuclear armed nations.
Modern nukes also produce less fallout than the ones the US used in WW2. Also nuclear bunker busters if that’s what they use (they could nuke a city but I don’t think it would be first choice) would further contain the fallout.
It feels plausible to me just because he doesn't have any other moves left
You're forgetting that he can just keep trying the same things expecting a different outcome.
In Denmark:
Cyrus Razavi an Iranian-Danish electronic music producer who was removed from his post as PR guy for a neo nazi organisation (No, really) for not being white after it was pointed out on social media, briefly tried to start his own party. The Danish Family. With the platform of racism and Cyrus promising that if someone else would do better racism than him he would step back. He had already sent his application in, and was writing his manifesto, but was asked the question of "Why not just campaign for one of the other racist parties" on a podcast and decided that was a good point and shut it down.
for not being white after it was pointed out on social media
He is literally Aryan ffs. how do you fuck Nazism Up to such a degree , impressive showing by the Danes.
nazi-aryan theory holds that the white aryans founded all the civilization, but that the oriental aryan places interbred and were diminished to grains whereas the white euros preserved the orginal white aryan heap
Aryan is too broad a term nowadays - they need something more 'purer' - if they accepted any Aryan, they would have to begrudgingly include those from South Asia as well
Besides, Denmark is not America - they don't classify West Asians and North Africans as white
Aryan is too broad a term nowadays - they need something more 'purer'
Lol ,so when "Aryan" is not pure enough for them , they maybe should put "Non-Aryan" into a search maschine first , find out what that means ..maybe ...
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Without knowing anything about Mr. Razavi, I have to ask if he is one of those annoying iranian monarchist who constantly talk about the dangers of "islamification", just like the rest of the right wing Iranians we all have to see every election season. Tbf, it was pretty funny that he appeared on TV to explain why he wasn't leading a nazi-movement, and then immediately afterwards was shitcanned from his own org.
Right wing infighting is amazing and I hope to see much more of it.
and then immediately afterwards was shitcanned from his own org.
Explicitly for his skin colour. The leader of the organisation explicitly said on the record that it was because he couldn't represent an organisation dedicated to white supremacy and not be white.
In cloud news: Thunderstorm Hector has awoken
He'll be forming almost every day until the end of the wet season.
how come there is no native name* for it, fucking hector. although it looks very polite.
*(at least in first two pages of searches, only names of seasons it signifies)
That's a crazy anvil, wow...
It's incredible to see in person. It looms in a very distinct way
First?
Death to Israel and their pal USA
evropa delenda est
