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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[–] plinky@hexbear.net 35 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

https://nitter.net/LulaOficial/status/2059045183564468260

Lula aurafarming aid to bolivian government instead of sending oil to cuba, another day, another banger

Like i understand brazil aspires to be subimperial nation and all, but aside from construction they don’t have the juice i feel like. fucking over venezuela didn’t bring them juicy contracts, as compared to euros/canadians/seppos? is there some shadow brazilian agroconglomerate i don’t know about? is this for the love of the game?

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 4 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 59 minutes ago)

Brazil is kinda like Nigeria in that it does not aspire to be subimperial, it already is quasi-imperial in its own right. To make a long story short: Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay are, for all intents and purposes, annexes of Brazil. This is not just because of the relative weight of Brazil, it is policy. The most flagrant expression of this is in regards to energy exports and land acquisitions into all three countries. You asked about a shadow agroconglomerate. Well, remove shadow from that query because the landowning oligarchies and corporate agriculture are the owners of Brazil and that's not a secret to anyone.

With Venezuela I suspect it is a combination of factors. First is that Brazil tried to coordinate with American capital and the Bolivarian government to bridge them and create Brazil's own caribbean oil infrastructure - the result of which was Brazil getting couped, the siege of Venezuela tightening and all assets involved being outright stolen by the americans. So of course Brazil is not going to tango with or even against the americans any more.

The second factor is that Brazil has aspirations of extending their 'leadership' across South America, which Venezuela is (was?) geared towards resisting by default - Venezuela in the BRICS would have been an independent actor, not a partner of Brazil's.

The third factor is that even with the aforementioned setback, Brazil and even the Brazilian social democracy has not been pushed against the wall - not to the extent that Russia, China and Iran were. It is easy to forget at this point, but 15 years ago the BRIC countries feared that China would be the weak point. That the Chinese would choose a G2 enténte with the United States and they might have done so if the americans left them any choice in the matter. Russia, too, would have been happy to become europeans but that was never an option. And Iran too was ready to enter a deténte with the US after the Iraq War, the GWB administration just answered 'no thank you, we'll invade you eventually'.

Right now Brazil is in a comfortable position. It is poor, yes, and its agricultural exports cannot provide enough for its population to prosper. Moreover, that agricultural industry is sustained by high taxes and rents levied on the service sector to sustain a banking system geared entirely towards the needs of landowners. Even so, there is exceptional amounts of money to be made selling soybeans and iron ore to China, Brazil just contracts services from the United States and all in all, this is a win/win for the oligarchies in the US, China and Brazil.

There is always the danger of sectors of the american oligarchy deciding that owning the cake and eating it too is just not good enough. But they have not alienated India yet, somehow, and there are so many juicier targets at home when it comes to low effort imperialism. Venezuela has not yet been fully subjugated or digested into the american system and Cuba is still there. Easy for Brazil to just fall into complacency.

Add all this up and, yeah, more than the Brazilian government under Lula - the Brazilian State just wants stability in Bolivia. Under Evo? Great. Under Paz? Bad, probably, but moreso since so far Paz is proving to be an inherently bad proposition for governability and social stability. It is the same thing with Milei. If the guy was just an ancap idiot then Brazil would have no reason to complain. But Milei can't help himself but vice signal towards hating on Brazil for being social democratic. So Brazil grumbles a bit while making nice profits from all the dollars Milei borrows and inevitably spends across the South Cone.

[–] demeritum@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Socdems be doing socdems. Also Brazilian agricultural and industrial elites don’t really want revolutionary states ringing them.

Eastern Bolivia has seen big Brazilian agribusiness buying up land and if a leftist government nationalizes foreign owned farmlands then the bourgeoisie would lose their soy farms and cattle ranches in Santa Cruz.

[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 9 points 3 hours ago

Pink Tired :Kelly: