Image is sourced from this Guardian article.
The Pope's fucking dead.
He gave JD Vance three chocolate easter eggs, exchanged pleasantries for 17 minutes, and then keeled over and died.
What a way to go.
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.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
If you have evidence of Israeli 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 Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
Ukrainian and European peace deal counterproposals to US at talks in London
Ukraine and Europe continue to huff their own farts. A peace deal is not looking very likely if this is their starting point.
spoiler
Ceasefire:Security guarantees for Ukraine:
Territory:
Economics:
Reading through this whole list, I think this war is going to continue a while yet
Yes, it's clear Trump didn't actually know as much about this conflict as he said (big surprise!)
He thought it would be so simple and he could get it done in one phone call with Zelenskyy and Putin, completely failing to realize there's no overlap in acceptable conditions between the two parties. The things that Russia requires, Ukraine will never allow. The things Ukraine requires, Russia will never allow. This list makes it clear that Ukraine still has not moved an inch on their stubborn nationalism and anti-Russia militancy, the underlying causes of this conflict they still have not yet admitted any fault or moved whatsoever.
The only way that Trump could actually make a peace deal happen is to either break Zelenskyy's knees (metaphorically) and make him surrender to Russia, or replace Zelenskyy with another puppet who would surrender to Russia. Otherwise, Russia will continue the war until its completion and their total victory.
Echoes of the POW MIA movement associated with postwar Vietnam
Also how “the hostages” has become weaponized into abstraction by Israel. All things are justified until the hostages are all saved (how many and who are they?
doesn’t really matter)
lmao sooo... If the ceasefire is unconditional, they can just say "nah we're not giving up territory" and they're not allowed to break the ceasefire because it's unconditional?
What a load of bollocks. Ceasefire begins on the basis of coming to an agreement, the moment it becomes obvious an agreement will not be met then ceasefire obviously ends.
None of this is agreeable. Especially not the article 5 or nato/eu concerns. Don't get me started on how China isn't mentioned as the only country that can be a guarantor in this.
They're asking for a ceasefire because they'll use it to launch another Steiner's counteroffensive and then blame russia for violating it and then breaking the negotiations.
If this were true and they wanted to use ceasefire time for a counteroffensive then their ceasefire terms would be more appropriate. The terms being offered aren't remotely possible to accept. The only conclusion possible is that they do not want a ceasefire.
That they want Russia to withdraw from the ZNPP and the Kinburn Spit (two tough strategic nuts to crack) kind of hints that they do indeed want to launch another offensive ultimately aimed at retaking Crimea.
American occupation of ZNPP? They have to be japing
Ukraine constantly breaks ceasefires. They should be disarmed entirely tbh and even that is no guarantee.
More human lives thrown into the meatgrinder for no reason at all other than european chauvisnism.
Well more like profit rather than chauvinism
They really don't want it to end....
Is the purpose of this exercise just to have something for Russia to sign in case someone pulls off a coup?