this post was submitted on 25 May 2026
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Image depicts Bolivian trade unionists on strike in La Paz, Bolivia.


Long preamble/summary below of recent news events.

summaryThe 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.

  • Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.

  • 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).

  • 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.

  • 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.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.


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[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 59 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

The Pope released his Magnifica Humanitas encyclical letter today, warning about the dangers of AI. He compares those currently building the AI-powered technocratic dystopia to the builders of the Tower of Babel, which in the eyes of the Church is Very Bad. It has some good stuff (as much as you could reasonably hope from a Pope) like the following:

More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.

He also writes about how the economic system and profit cannot take primacy over human dignity:

The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.

Economic models that exalt efficiency and individual success often view investment in disadvantaged people or in those with slower development paths as useless or inconvenient, as if their futures depended solely on their ability to keep pace with the “winners.” In reality, a just society requires a vigilant State and civil institutions that are capable of overcoming the singular mentality of efficiency, and of ensuring that resources, creative solutions and regulations favor the most vulnerable.

Also has some fun stuff about finance:

In recent years, finance has increased in importance and has undergone significant innovation, driven partly by the introduction of cryptocurrencies. The reflections and observations contained in the teaching of my predecessors, particularly in their Encyclicals, have highlighted how the financial intermediation sector, “when operating without the necessary anthropological and moral foundations, has not only produced manifest abuses and injustice, but also demonstrated a capacity to create systemic and worldwide economic crisis.” It is likewise the case that income from capital risks replacing income from labor, which is often confined to the margins of the economic system’s primary interests. Yet savings transformed into credit for the real economy, thereby creating both jobs and self-employed work, remain central for development and the investments that must accompany ongoing transitions. The social function of credit remains irreplaceable. Finance for its own sake is fundamentally different from finance aimed at the development, creation and evolution of work.

That said, this particular line is making me lose my mind:

For this reason, certain works have taken on an almost prophetic significance: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony can be seen as a desire for unity; Guernica as a denunciation of dehumanization; Schindler’s List as a call not to consign the past to oblivion.

Comparing a fucking Spielberg film to the former two immortal works of art is sending me.

You can read the whole thing here: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

[–] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

His section on modern day slavery is actually rather good.

This distorted view of the human person is reflected today in various forms of servitude directly linked to the digital economy. Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical. Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure and, above all, people. A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential yet largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages. Added to this invisible labor is the even harsher work of extracting the resources required for the production of the devices and microprocessors on which AI depends. In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted. The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly. Furthermore, criminal networks use online platforms, messaging systems, anonymous payment methods and profiling techniques in order to recruit, control and transport victims of trafficking — very often minors — reducing men and women to “data” to be tracked and “packages” to be moved around within the same digital circuits that support much of the global economy. This reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time. It is not enough to invoke efficiency, nor to celebrate the benefits of innovation, if they are built on a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden. If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.

He even apologies for the Church supporting slavery.

Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Boise_Idaho@hexbear.net 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Catholic Church, one of the few orgs to think in centuries, knows which way the wind is blowing and it is slowly pivoting away from the West due to the decline of Western imperialism.

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago

Achieving mental oligarchy just by showing up

[–] marxisthayaca@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago

The burgerland pope

[–] Weydemeyer@lemmy.ml 42 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

As someone who has expressed some discomfort at the left’s occasional meme-ish appreciation of the Catholic Church… I am developing an appreciation of Leo to some extent. Francis I felt was a master at saying things that the western press would latch onto as “woke” but once you scratched the surface, would be revealed as not really all that different from the past. I think Francis was well aware of this and used it to make himself seem like more of a progressive force than he actually was. He was partly sincere, sure. But he also knew how to phrase a sound bite that would appear one way, but hide something else that wasn’t quite what the sound bite implied. Better than his predecessors, but that’s such an incredibly low bar.

Leo, on the other hand, has actually made fairly enlightened statements like this on AI; or when he mentioned that the focus on sexual sins should be placed well below a focus on justice and helping others. And when he does speak, it seems like the meaning is plain without any need to guess at what exactly he’s getting at. I like that about him. A straight-shooter, even if he represents a regressive institution.

[–] mkultrawide@hexbear.net 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

A lot of what Francis actually did, at least to my understanding a lapsed cradle Catholic, was basically internal stuff to sideline or purge a bunch of the real reactionary psychos from the church hierarchy/deep state. I've been told by some people I generally trust to know more about it than me that basically there is no Leo without Francis getting rid of a bunch of the old guard and replacing them with his own guys. Also, the Church's growth is no longer in the West. It's Africa and maintaining its presence/fighting the evangelical movement in Latin America, plus maybe some growth in Asia. That eventually necessitates a shift in church policy and teachings. But yeah, it's still the Catholic Church, you can't completely remove all the freaks and you shouldn't expect it to lead a communist revolution.

[–] PleasantPeasant@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago

you shouldn't expect it to lead a communist revolution.

obviously, but if church keeps on down this path i can see a future where church could be a tentative ally (a la national bourgeoisie in revolutions in the periphery)

[–] marxisthayaca@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As someone who has expressed some discomfort at the left’s occasional meme-ish appreciation of the Catholic Church… I am developing an appreciation of Leo to some extent. Francis I felt was a master at saying things that the western press would latch onto as “woke” but once you scratched the surface, would be revealed as not really all that different from the past

A better and more important criticism is that he would say this seemingly woke things, but never in an official capacity and the PR corp would immediately do damage control. He did some important things, but never to the extent I wish he had.

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 24 points 1 day ago

The funny thing about the catholic church is that it is Conservative, with a capital C and in an almost primordial sense of the word. It is the inverse of a revolutionary vanguard, which is not to say that it necessarily aligns itself with reactionary forces. It may, in so far as the church is also a local institution and if everyone in charge of the local branch is a reactionary then the church's resources will be marshalled in a reactionary fashion. But that is not a natural alliance, the catholic church shepherds a medieval worldview and, as such, it entered the industrial era with its own brand of neoconservative thought.

Catholic corporativism had a lot to offer to the neo absolutist and arch reactionary regimes of Europe. But there were limits, much in the same way that some neoconservative philosophy is only partially useful to Fascism. Everyone knows about Nietzsche being bastardized by the Nazis, but even an arch elitist like Spengler was persona non grata for a number of reasons. The catholic church is similar, it is useful to the american empire because, by coincidence, the church is inane about contraception. But even if the Pope defends, like, a limited, charity centered paradigm of redistribution then he's portrayed as anti Christ somehow.

This is all to say that, if you are leftist and catholicism is part of your community's superstructure then you are best served by picking your battles and arguing the material reality of things.

[–] red_giant@hexbear.net 24 points 1 day ago

If the captains of US tech are calling someone “the anti-christ” then there’s a good chance I’m going to critically support whoever that is

[–] MemesAreTheory@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Legit found myself wanting to treat his piece as a serious grounding for a Secular discussion of AI. Can his positions be held without a commitment to God™? I think so, but it would require real scholarship to demonstrate. The arguments made and topic matter deserve serious moral consideration, though, and he's getting it (mostly) right starting from very different assumptions than the a-religious/pluralist left.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago

he's getting it (mostly) right starting from very different assumptions than the a-religious/pluralist left.

A very important lesson I've learned recently is that although dialectical materialism is the best path to discovering the truth of things,

A) DiaMat itself emerges dialectically from interaction with past and present intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, and scientific frameworks

B) Those other frameworks, even the most spiritual and idealistic, are still capable of discovering real and useful truth

[–] marxisthayaca@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Considering the encyclical always leaves room for “men and women of good will”, regardless of faith or lack thereof. You are fine.

[–] FALGSConaut@hexbear.net 33 points 1 day ago

You know what, at this point I'll take a Butlerian Crusade if that's what it takes

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In reality, a just society requires a vigilant State and civil institutions that are capable of overcoming the singular mentality of efficiency, and of ensuring that resources, creative solutions and regulations favor the most vulnerable.

the state has been the opposite of that, bro, for 40 years, let it go.

In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control.

which is fine aspiration to have for humans, unfortunately, that aspiration is only allowed for bourgeoisie

*bro hadn't mentioned sanctions once, but did spend his time about nebulous cybersecurity, jihadi operatives and criminal networks. oh well, feely sections about humans are fine