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.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
The United Nations is facing a severe liquidity crisis, affecting many of its agencies.
quotes
The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that only 5 percent of the nearly $45 billion needed for funding in the humanitarian community this year has been received as of the 6th of March, leaving a gap of more than $42 billion. Reuters reports that OCHA itself is to "cut 20% of its staff as it faces a shortfall of $58 million", "U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher told staff" [no publicly available statements found on UN websites with these numbers.]With the US leaving the World Health Organization, refusing to pay it's contributions for 2024 and 2025, combined with reductions in funding by some other countries, WHO is expected to face a salary gap for the 2026-27 biennium between US$ 560 and US$ 650 million. Representing at least 25% of staff costs in the current biennium. While other member states have agreed to increase their contributions, increasing the 2026-27 biennium funding by US$ 320, it is too little, and has left the WHO with no choice but to restructure and reduce the scale of their work and workforce. Cutting the senior leadership team from twelve to seven, and departments by over half, from 76 to 34.^2^
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has projected "its 2026 budget to shrink by at least 20% compared to 2024", as reported by Reuters [no publicly available statements found on UN websites with these numbers.]. This years budget is also affected, meaning that "At least 14 million children are expected to face disruptions to nutrition support and services".
Speaking at the UN on the 21 March, Deputy Executive Director Kitty Palais said:
The World Food Program is expected to cut its staff by up to 30%, as reported by AP [no publicly available statements found on UN websites with these numbers.]. The agency said on March 28th that it was "facing an alarming 40 percent drop in funding for 2025".
AP also reported that the High Commissioner for Refugees "would downsize its headquarters and regional offices to reduce costs by 30% and cut senior-level positions by 50%" [no publicly available statements found on UN websites with these numbers.]. With the agency saying that it's "health budget has been cut by 87 per cent".
A much more insignificant result of the crisis, but much closer to me, the Meetings Coverage and Press Releases has been publishing coverage of UN meetings later, and using machine translation of coverage by the French team.
[1] https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162751
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/speeches/item/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-member-state-briefing-on-the-programme-budget---22-april-2025
[3] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/least-14-million-children-face-disruptions-critical-nutrition-services-2025-unicef
The UN deserves nothing for becoming a US proxy. I still fear what could follow without it, though.