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.
summary
The 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.
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Orban losing power: Pretty cool, though his replacement being Neoliberal #2980329891 means that big changes seem unlikely.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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.
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:
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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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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Considering the encyclical always leaves room for “men and women of good will”, regardless of faith or lack thereof. You are fine.