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.
Yes, current economic relations don't really create an incentive for a family unit to reproduce. There was a very interesting article posted on this website some months ago that I can't seem to find that discussed the population growth dynamics of various stages of capitalism. It alluded to the possibility of a semi-permanent state of high population growth, low urbanization, and lack of development as seen in Nigeria, although I am not sure how accurate that is. Regardless, the obvious progressive move that communist should be advocating for is for the state to take on the entire cost of reproduction, which would make previous subsidies look insignificant.
Contemporary capitalism is absolutely drowning in contradictions.
100%. It's also from my belief that even those that do want to have kids such as myself don't want a whole gaggle of them like in the old days where people used to have 10+ kids as the norm to make sure at least one made it to adulthood, even most parents these days have 1-2 kids, 3+ still happens but its much less common and to offset the current low birth rates in most nations that implement monetary rewards (that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things) it would require more people to have a number of kids that the majority, wheter they want kids or not, isn't willing to raise, much to the desdain of capitalists who need as many wage slaves as possible. Now I do wonder how lower birth rates affect communist/socialist economies vs capitalist ones and what approaches we as the former should take to make sure people who want kids can have them and those that don't want them aren't "forced" for lack of better word to have them just for "the sake of the economy". It's not something I've been able to look much into as of now and I do have trouble finding non shitty capitalist sources on the subject but I would like to learn more.