Image is from the Britannica article on CECOT, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center in English.
This megathread's topic is inspired by our lovely news regular, @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net, who talks often about the conditions inside El Salvador and gives nuanced and informative takes.
As the Trump administration continues to make foreign policy blunders that would make even the staunchest anti-imperialist accelerationist blush - and we are barely three months in! - it's interesting to compare and contrast his policies of incompetent imperialist and domestic management to the dictators in other countries.
Bukele is somewhat unique among fascists, in that he seems to not hide - and seems to even admit to - his evil, self-describing as the world's "coolest dictator". El Salvador has no particular shortage of prominent fascists in their history, but one major example is Maximiliano Martínez, who led the country over much of the 1930s and the early 1940s. He was responsible the deaths of many thousands of communists and indigneous people, and yet joined World War 2 on the side of the Allies and against the Nazis.
The comparisons between Martínez and Bukele - and, indeed, between Bukele and Trump - in terms of their impact on minority groups are slowly growing as world attention is being drawn to the country. The recent meeting between Bukele and Trump has shifted a spotlight onto El Salvador's crime policy; the internal conditions of El Salvador's prisons are genuinely monstrous. One gets a similar feeling as when reading descriptions of the conditions of Holocaust victims in German concentration camps. Trump has made statements to the effect that he want a similar crime crackdown inside the United States, and I certainly believe that he wants this (ICE is already just kidnapping people off the streets into vans), but his administration has been so chaotic and mismanaged that it's difficult to determine whether this will be an interest he rapidly drops in favor of some other hair-brained scheme.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
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.
https://english.news.cn/20250430/0e0a48cbc7e64a45b3fbe6ac30b3ddc3/c.html
China's State Council Information Office released a report about coronavirus. They go over the Chinese response, the investigation into the origins (not Wuhan) and the US's bungled response. It ends with a call to investigate US biolabs including Derrick as a possible source of the virus
I remember the detrickposting back on the sub, it seems like ages ago now
Vindicated. I definitely had it autumn 2019. Almost died on that hill and got longcovid. All the covid symptoms that came out later were like lightbulb moments for me. Every single one.
So I've thought about this a alot. The reason it was "the vaping illness" or whatever everywhere in the West is that neoliberal "efficient" healthcare only ever treats symptoms. And it does that in a very atomized way.
Since the western brainpan has categorised all things to separate units with borders, like the human body and related medical fields, it makes it so that nobody ever looks at a patient as a whole. The general practitioner kind of should, but they have no time, no allowance to test anything and are told to treat symptoms and refer to one of these units if absolutely necessary. Mostly they treat symptoms and send you home.
So you go in with your flu or GI symptoms first, they treat the symptoms, but never test for anything, because testing costs money.
Then you go back two weeks later with fatigue, heart palpitations and a different doctor treats those symptoms, not looking two weeks back to the flu symptoms.
In the middle of all this, you visit the ER once for something related like chest pain. They treat the symptoms, but don't tie it back to anything either.
Repeat this until you are in there hospitalized for what looks like acute renal failure/pneumonia or whatever covid can do and get told "it has no explanation" and still isn't related to anything prior, even though you know it is a result of the same illness you have been having for three months.
This is a system feature. Doctors are not insentivized to test, just to treat symptoms. If it looks mostly like the cold/flu and the afterplay is missed, nobody is going to look for a novel pathogen. And when it does get too big to ignore, start talking about a vaping illness and call it good. Afaik none of those cases were tested for anything other than the most basic stuff.
werent the mods removing comments from people detrickposting a month or so ago for misinformation lol
Reminder that the outbreak in Wuhan happened around month after the World Military Games were held in Wuhan, and is still my preferred conspiracy for how COVID showed up there.
Also shout out to this paper for calling out the vape lung thing. Even a lot of people who are willing to consider the potential Ft. Detrick shutdown theory basically stick their fingers in their ears and go "LALALA IT WAS VITAMIN E OIL" even though a lot of the symptoms match up with COVID.
There was also water sample testing in Spain that found COVID in the waste water in the spring on 2019, which I have never heard any follow up on:
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/coronavirus-traces-found-in-march-2019-sewage-sample-spanish-study-shows-idUSKBN23X2HP/
It was Spanish flu 2.0 all along
Milan Italy also had covid positive sewage samples from before it was discovered in Wuhan
Did COVID-19 Come from America?
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Woah, when all the facts about mishandling of biological testing and manipulation in the US are laid out like in topic 3 of the report, it paints quite a damning picture that the virus likely originated in the US via a lab leak.
The US does love projecting