At the same time i find this to be a very open place that doesn’t stifle discussion in that obnoxious way that liberal/ultra-leftist spaces with purity fetishes do, which is very good for encouraging newcomers to ask questions and learn without feeling like they are in a sectarian echo-chamber. So long as there is no apologia for fascism, imperialism or genocide of course…

Unfortunately they do not. They could definitely use some. Still too many Russians with liberal brain worms left over from the 90s. Including Putin himself.

So, Russia is kidnapping Russian children from Russia and taking them to…Russia. How nefarious. Surely the Epstein class and the notorious hub of human trafficking that is Ukraine are not just projecting their own depravities, right?

https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2066381129675096138

So what is in “The Deal with Islamic Republic of Iran”?

If you’re confused, it’s normal: the US and Iran already publicly disagree on what they agreed to, and it’s not even a “deal”: just a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that sets the terms for negotiating the actual deal within the next 60 days.

We do, however, know a few things:

1. Israel is actively trying to undermine the deal - for instance by striking Beirut yesterday Sunday.

Israeli media say that the deal is causing “profound concern among Israeli officials,” that “Israel, despite having started the war alongside the US, was not involved in the negotiations,” and that “the deal do[es] not achieve the goals of the war that were set out by the US and Israel” (timesofisrael.com/us-iran-re…).

That last part is clear: the very existence of this MOU proves the objectives of the war were not met, as they certainly didn’t include the US negotiating an exit with an undefeated Iran while Israel is freaking out about it on the sidelines.

2. We know, because both parties and Pakistan (the mediator) confirmed it, that a finalized MOU does exist and that it’s due to be formally signed on Friday in Switzerland by JD Vance and maybe Trump himself (Vance told Fox News: “I certainly plan to be there, but it’s possible the president himself could be there” nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dea…)

3. We know Trump ordered the US naval blockade to be lifted (supposedly today, Monday)

4. The Strait of Hormuz will reopen on the Iranian side (though both parties publicly spun the terms differently - Trump says “toll-free,” Iran’s FM Araghchi says with “service fees”)

5. The war would end on all fronts including Lebanon - both sides used this exact phrase. Israel, obviously, is trying hard to spoil this.

6. Some form of sanctions relief is included - Iran speaks of “termination of all sanctions” (fortune.com/2026/06/14/iran-…) and a senior US official confirmed the structure is “Iran would earn economic rewards each time it met a set of US demands”

7. The MOU apparently does not agree on anything wrt nuclear, just that it will be discussed during the 60-day negotiation window, with Iran maintaining its current nuclear status quo in the meantime

8. In fact I suspect the MOU defers most things truly contested - like nuclear - to later negotiations while resolving in the immediate only the problems the war itself created: stop shooting, reopen the strait (under updated Iranian rules), and lift the blockade.

Which means that, most likely, this “deal” is - at this stage - less a deal than an acknowledgement of the new status quo reached in the war. It differs from the April 5 ceasefire in that, this time, the US is lifting all coercion it introduced in the war - including the naval blockade it imposed on April 13.

So in effect the war had two phases of failed coercion (military, then economic with the blockade), and the MOU formalizes the failure of both.

In exchange what the US is getting is a conversation about its initial stated war objectives (like nuclear), which it will now have to pursue after having proven it cannot impose them by force.

Needless to say, you don’t get better terms at the table after showing you couldn’t get them on the battlefield 🤷

Well alright then. I have decided to try and go for one of your numbers. Guess i’m back to posting.

It’s not even a concession when Iran has been saying for decades it doesn’t want nukes. We may not like or agree with that stance but that has been their documented stance for a long time, and it’s not even possible to say that was just rhetorical posturing because if they really wanted to they would have had both means and ample opportunity (as well as justification and motivation following the repeated unprovoked Anglo-Zionist attacks) to build nuclear weapons.

I’m not kidding when I say my gf regularly stands in traffic for 2 hours

Damn. That sucks. You could drive to Germany in less time than that.

Yet another so-called “Russian propaganda narrative” that turned out to be 100% true.

Still a lot better than Ukraine.

Depends what you mean by AI. Because for the most part “AI” nowadays is just a pure marketing term. What the tech company marketing calls “AI” is not any kind of intelligence in the actual sense of the term. It’s just some machine learning algorithms and fancier CGI. We had “AI” back in the 90s too. Every computer game where the computer player makes autonomous decisions is a kind of AI. It’s the marketing that is the problem. The idea that it is some kind of revolutionary technology that can replace human labor. It’s not and it won’t be. It’s just another tool. Unfortunately too many people have fallen for the marketing hype, which has served to inflate the AI bubble that will pop sooner or later.

Not 2468?

Exactly.

Don’t worry so much about it and just post anywhere that fits the topic. If there is something objectionable there you will for sure get feedback from the community. It’s not a bad thing if your posts open a discourse.

Turns out you can very reliably judge whether someone will be principled in their domestic policies by whether they are principled in their foreign policy positions. The “supports AES states” litmus test.

If someone claims to be any kind of socialist but denounces socialist countries as “authoritarian”, they probably will not actually govern as a socialist but as yet another liberal when you vote them into power.

I am considering permanently stopping making any posts here going forward.

I don’t have any problems on my end. Have you tried viewing it in a browser?

Could it be that the text is too long? I already cut out a large portion of the text so it wouldn’t be overly large, as the original article is quite lengthy, especially when including all the pictures. Maybe it needed to be cut down even more?

I generally prefer copying at least a part of the text of articles into the body of posts i make that i think are important to read because i know that some people may not click the link and will just read the post itself, and i would prefer leaving at least the parts of the article that i think are good.

You can always just click the link and go read it directly on substack, including the parts i left out (some of which i don’t agree with btw).

Here is The Deprogram hosting a completely insane Russian leftcom (antitcommunist) to talk about how the Ukraine war is heckin imperialist Russian fascism.

That episode is where they lost me. Up until then I really thought they were a solid podcast, despite their flaws. But to me it is inexcusable to choose to platform a representative of a tiny minority of contrarian ultra-leftists over any one of tens of thousands of actual Russian communists, the overwhelming majority of who support the SMO and supported it before it even started. It is indicative of deeply entrenched western leftism on the Deprogram that they never thought of asking a communist from the Donbass who actually lived through the eight years of being constantly shelled and attacked by fascists to come on their program and explain the pro-SMO viewpoint, or give some insight into how the people of the Donbass view the Kiev regime. That is the very least you should do if you want to do the liberal “both sides” thing. You owe it to your audience to at least hear the side out that most Russian communists support, but they didn’t even do that.

Finland was part of the Russian empire so there are some Slavic influences on Finnish culture, but there are probably even more Swedish influences since it was also part of the Swedish empire at one point. Linguistically it’s neither Slavic nor Germanic.

Translations into my native language are hard to come by. So i usually read either in German or English. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The English translation tends to be more compact and faster to understand since the grammatical construction is simplified, but the German has more nuance. I would like to be able to read it in Russian as well one day.

If i was Taiwanese i would be ashamed and embarrassed to be led by such a cucked comprador regime.