this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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Image is of Iranian speedboats spotted by a satellite in the Strait of Hormuz.
Not terribly much has happened in the last week. The main two developments is the very much expected resumption of fire in Lebanon as the ZIonists are famously agreement-incapable, and the continuing supply of equipment to the Middle East, including the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier. This means there are now three aircraft carriers in the general vicinity, and while I'm uncertain how much of a role the burnt-out Ford and the increasingly exhausted Lincoln will ultimately play (they were rather ineffective during the first round), there are also a good ~20 destroyers and however many submarines that are carrying their own munitions. I have a couple more paragraphs of exposition below, but it's unlikely to be major news to anybody here, so I've spoilered it.
spoiler
On the one hand, it feels like a resumption of the war for the US at this point would be complete madness. We are getting article after article from even the Western media admitting to US standoff+interceptor missile shortages, as well as detailing the extensive damage to US bases. The Zionists are also getting ever more mired in Lebanon, with Hezbollah's unjammable fibre optic drones playing an ever more prominent role in causing substantial long range damage to invading forces. On the other hand, it is very unlikely that most of the US's remaining firepower is being brought to the region on a mere bluff. For its part, Iran and their allies seem to have their finger on the trigger, with their own extensive repairs, upgrades, resupplies, and adjustments having been made for round two.
Assessing the overall global economic situation is difficult, not least because of a degree of financial manipulation that is almost admirable in its sheer scale and recklessness - to quote Ghalibaf: "Their frontline is the yield curve." Multiple countries are now facing real and desperate shortages, including major economies like Japan. Diesel prices continue their record rises, and reports about the potential impacts to all sectors of the global economy are streaming in, with famines around the world now very likely. While the US is profiting from the rise in oil prices, it seems like it will be unable to meaningfully increase production for at least a year or two, and so the US will certainly not be replacing the massive oil barrel deficit to create an energy hegemony, as some have suggested. In contrary: this is the best opportunity in a generation for China, Russia, and Iran to collectively make economic decisions that could cripple entire pillars of American hegemony. However, if the response is lacking - and we've all seen before over the last four years how China's responses to crises have been on the lacking side - we could see a (albeit temporary) strengthening of the US's financial power, as this global crisis will almost certainly result in debt climbing even higher as Western financial institutions grant loans en masse to struggling countries in the developing world. It's very uncertain times.
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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In the rare moments this week where they're not talking about "antisemitism" the right wing media in the UK has been very obsessed with surrogacy, specifically they want to end it. This has been all over multiple tv news channels this week.
For context, paid surrogacy is already not a legal thing here, you only have voluntary unpaid surrogacies and/or the people that go abroad to pay. They are promoting people that want to end all surrogacy.
I've been thinking it over all day because I don't believe for one second that they give a shit about women or any of the reasons they claim to have been pushing this. It's dawned on me that what they actually want is to give the child the "right" to be raised by their biological parents. They are trying to strengthen the nuclear family and the idea of innate bonds that can only exist between biological parents and children. If you give the child this "right" then you destroy all possible familiy types that aren't the nuclear family.
Putting together a few different comments. I noticed the groups that benefit from surrogacy:
It has a kind of Nixonian pure evil logic to it
It's also like, adding "perk" of being a woman if only you are capable of creating these bonds if they are innate. If you make that a fundamental belief of society then any women who reject that are essentially attacking a perk of womanhood that other women believe in. You can set the group against itself, the women that buy into the trad perks and pseudo spirituality vs anyone who exists outside of that.
This would work similarly to how men react so negatively to other men that display femininity through rejecting their patriarchal benefits by being queer or non-standard. Homophobia is so much stronger against gay men than gay women because men that buy into their patriarchal benefits feel threatened by men who exist outside the patriarchal norm, setting the group(men) against itself.
If they build enough perks of trad womanhood then you build a pile of women who hate and react viciously to any women that exist outside of that in the same way. This is kind of what the terf movement feels like in a way.
good analysis
I am generally aware that the immediate context is the gay couple that had a surrogate in the US and are now trying to get their parental rights officially approved in the UK. My suspicion is that some portions of the conservative movement are also pushing this to pressure women into having children at a younger age.
Yeah that seems to be the trigger for it and now they're trying to open the floodgates.
Their interest in this is definitely because of the nuclear family though, if you give a child this "right" and you sell this idea of innate bonds between biological parents and children then you can force this family unit as the only type of family.
Think of it as creating a perk of being a woman. The innate bonds between mother and child can ONLY be found between biological mother and child then you're creating this almost pseudo-religious belief in the power of women as baby factories. The culture they very much want to create is one where women are proud of being baby factories and that requires building up a whole pseudo-religion of
spiritual beliefs around pregnancy, womanhood and children.
If you create a "right" for the child to be raised by biological parents you're building the infrastructure of that culture. You're saying as a society, in law about children, that biological bonds are innately stronger than any other. The ultimate goal is sincerely a system in which women are happy and proud and sincere participants in reinforcing that culture.
The best way to go about doing that without receiving resistance from women is to do so indirectly. To build a cage around women without them noticing, by selling it as "improving the rights of children" in this case, or attacking trans people in other cases, and so on.
real fascism hours when you have to start digging deeper into why the bourgeoisie are getting their horndog on over specific policies
Yeah in this case I think it's part of the infrastructure for making women into tradwives.