Freezing the conflict along the current front line was Vladimir Putin’s proposal, Western media say

According to their information, Trump expects a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia to be concluded by April 30, by which time Russia will allegedly completely expel the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the Kursk region and end military operations.

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Hamas has released a statement mourning Pope Francis

'The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) extends its deepest condolences and sincere sympathy to the Catholic Church worldwide and to all Christians on the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, Pope of the Vatican, who passed away after a distinguished career in the service of human and religious values.

The late Pope Francis was a noted advocate of interfaith dialogue, calling for understanding and peace among peoples, and rejecting hatred and racism. On more than one occasion, he expressed his rejection of aggression and wars in the world, and was one of the prominent religious voices to condemn the war crimes and genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

While we, in the Hamas movement, value his moral and humanitarian stances, we emphasize the importance of continuing the joint efforts between the bearers of divine messages and people of living consciences to confront injustice and colonialism, and to support the causes of justice, freedom, and the rights of oppressed peoples.’

Pope Francis survived pneumonia, report reveals likely cause of death. It wasn’t pneumonia that Pope Francis battled for months that might be the cause of his death. Italian news agency ANSA reported, quoting sources, that the likely cause of his demise was a stroke, and not respiratory illness. An official confirmation will only come from the Vatican.

I would also have a stroke if I had to talk with JD Vance

Trump and Powell can agree on one thing: destroying the American economic empire by any means necessary

Word is that Pope Francis has ruthlessly purged reactionary cardinals, paving the way for less shitty cardinals to elect another less shitty pope. Is this liberation theologist cope or should we trust the plan?

Rumours of Secretary of Defence Hegseth being replaced are false, according to the White House:

I had to spend the weekend in Trumpland. His supporters already have their excuses locked and loaded. No matter how bad the economy gets - 20% unemployment, 1929 stock market crash, whatever - the US economy was already fundamentally broken because of democrats and their “loony lefty” socialistic policies over the last few decades. However bad it gets, the suffering was “necessary” because our entire economy was built on a shaky foundation - not because of capitalism, of course. But because we didn’t do ENOUGH raw, uncut capitalism.

And we don’t care about the old popes, talking about the old style too.

Shout out to this person who unironically thinks that JD Vance assassinated the pope.

With Catholicism suffering from the death of the Pope and undergoing the whole succession ritual now, let’s talk about a different religious group that will undergo the exact same process probably very soon. Shia Islam works remarkably similar to Catholicism, where the position of Grand Marja occupies a similar standing to the Pope within the faith. To summarise the position of the Grand Marja to anyone that haven’t heard about it, Shia Islam has a lot of small Popes that reach that status after at least 30-40 years of studying theology, the Grand Marja is the biggest Pope out of the them all. A Shia Muslim can follow the rulings of any of the small Popes, but there’s an implicit understanding that everyone respects the big Pope and his word is in the end the most important. The Grand Marja right now is a very old and sick Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who coincidentally is the first ever Shia Grand Marja to meet the Catholic Pope, after a historic meeting in Najaf, Iraq a few years ago.

The discussion within Catholic circles right now is about the conservatism of the next Pope, where Catholics discuss if the next Pope should be woke or not. The discussion around the next Grand Marja is a bit more multifaceted than that even within normie circles that aren’t really into theology. I like Catholicism even as a Muslim dude, but the truth is that Catholicism in Europe is basically dead as a relevant political force, while Shia Islam is alive and still very energetic as a political and societal force. The first point of discussion is “how political should the next Grand Marja be?”. Sistani is remarkable as the first modern Grand Marja with an active website and everything, but at the same time he’s also remarkably media shy and there’s still not even a recording of him actually talking. He’s also very apolitical, he stood silent during the American invasion of Iraq, he offers no political commentary when it comes to the internal politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and his only outwardly political position was taken during the ISIS campaign across Iraq in 2014, when he declared lawful jihad against ISIS and asked young Shias to join the fight against ISIS, which later led to the creation of the Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Now we come to the more woke second discussion point, “should the next Grand Marja be Arab or Persian?”. This is basically the eternal Shia idpol dilemma. Sistani is Iranian from the city of Sistan, but has basically lived his entire life in Iraq. The last important Marja before him, Ayatollah Abulqasim Al Khoei was also Iranian, and we have to go back to the 60s to Muhsin Al Hakim, to find a Grand Marja that is considered Arab. Al Hakim is coincidentally the most political Grand Marja in modern history, with his rulings against Arabism and Communism still being debated today and his sons Abdulaziz Al Hakim and Muhammed Baqir Al Hakim were instrumental in the founding of the current Iraqi state after the American invasion. Maybe the Marja shouldn’t be Arab if the result is such comprador sons, but that’s just my commentary.

We move on to the next discussion point, “should the next Grand Marja be sympathetic to the Sadrists or not?”. A short summary of the Sadrist movement coming now. Big family in Iraq and Lebanon, Musa Al Sadr in Lebanon is the spiritual father of all Shia Lebanese, Muhammed Baqir Al Sadr in Iraq basically creates Shia Islamism in Iraq, he also founds the Dawa Party (biggest Shia Islamic political movement in Iraq during the 80s and later), Muhammed Baqir gets executed by Saddam in the early 80s, Dawa Party moves to Iran, regular Shia proletariat in Iraq starts following his cousin Muhammed Sadiq, Muhammed Sadiq gains popularity as a pretty good preacher who says the anti-Saddam stuff without really saying it, he gets assassinated in the late 90s, the preaching stops after his death but his following moves to his surviving son Muqtada Al Sadr, these Muqtada followers later form the backbone of Iraqi resistance to the Americans, at the same time Sadrists slowly start resembling a cult around the image of the Muhammed Sadiq and Muqtada, big clash between the Iraqi government and Sadrists first in 2008, then it turns bloody again in 2022, but doesn’t escalate. There were already some rumblings that Sistani’s influential son was trying to move certain pieces in order to create an anti-Sadrist camp in 2022, with him reportedly saying that the Sadrists would be considered soon outside the realm of Shiaism. So question remains, does the next Grand Marja exclude Sadrists from the bigger Shia umbrella, or maybe tries to steer them away from the cult and back into normal religion?

I have two or three more points to bring up but my attention span is failing me, so I’ll bring them soon in a different comment inshallah 🙏. No proofreading of course, please notify me if something is completely incomprehensible. If you’ve made this far, congrats!

What is the point of Kentucky as a state, it’s capital is Frankfort with an ‘o’

who could have expected

once again, japanese bond traders - pathetic effort, haven’t breached 5%

forex markets do be wilding though

new conspiracy theory, what if bessent is deep soros mole, and soros plans to do another heist of the century, this time on the dollar?

gold at $3459 per ounce

I am kinda sad to hear Pope Francis passed away, even though it was coming eventually. And I say this despite being somewhat atheist myself. In Argentina, Francis is know to some as “The Pope of the Atheists” because he was well liked among important groups of people for his militancy, not only at the head of the Catholic Church, but also during his days in the Argentinian Church. I have grown a great deal of respect for the man, of course I had a lot of disagreements with him but I don’t think he was your regular super conservative Pope, far from it. It’s kinda good to see he was deeply moved by the Genocide in Gaza, and he was personally invested in denouncing it until the very end of his life. That I can respect, despite our “spiritual” and political differences.

He really got under the skin of milei as well, he absolutely despised the Pope. Years ago he even called him, publicly, a “fucking Communist SOB” that is a “representative of the Devil in the Holy See”. A while back he was shown a fragment of a interview an argentinian journalist did to the Pope, where he said that we should all be aware of “men without history that pretend to become saviors”, he specifically mentioned that “this was the case with Adolf [Hitler]” and milei took great offense lmao and became very angry because he thought the Pope was talking about him. He is, indeed, a dangerous man without history, someone who has a messiah complex.

Francis also mantained some relationships with local Communist leaders and Socialists, especially those linked with the Church and/or doing charity work among the needy. His persona ideology however could be something along the lines of Social Justice. Truth is, he wasn’t a rabid anti-Communist like pretty much all the other Popes, quite refreshing.