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.
US-Ukraine "minerals deal" has officially been signed
“Hank are you really gonna perpetuate the war in Ukraine over a bunch of rocks”?
at least crop out the watermark
{ifunny.c☻|
}
It’s funnier that way
You mean the punch line??
Dooming Ukraine to even more neocolonial shock doctrine is a small price to pay for more ineffectual weapons for use in another counter attack that won't work
I think this is more about securing US rearmament for Ukraine post war than another counter offensive. The first parts of three F-16ADF fighters delivered from the US arrived in Ukraine a few days ago (previous F-16A specification fighter jets came from Europe). It's questionable if these F-16s are still airworthy (the last US F-16ADFs flew over 18 years ago, retired in 2007, and have been in the boneyard ever since), but they could use them as spare parts, or get one airframe flying from the parts of three planes.
They already announcing loud and proud that they will break any future ceasefire/peace deal.
I am sure Russia won’t take it into account.
What Ukraine says doesn't matter, it's what the USA says that matters. Ukraine cannot fight the war or maintain their country without US support (which is why they signed the natural resource extraction deal in the first place).
also announcing that the US will have a strategic military interest in any Ukrainian territory occupied by the zelensky regime. No different to an "Article 5".
The way all the media outlets talk about it as a "minerals deal" or "economic deal/partnership" in the headlines is deliberately misleading, and in actuality a master propaganda play by Trump, he knows that the media will refer to it that way after he called it a minerals deal and went on a tangent about rare earths. If you actually read the drafts, it becomes clear that it's a wholesale natural resources extraction deal, one could even say of the neocolonial kind. This AP article has a short throwaway paragraph on the subject buried halfway through, even though it's the most important part of the deal!
The only media outlet so far that had got the headline right surprisingly, is the Financial Times, though their article is barebones at the moment, I'll at least give them credit for being the only ones to get the headline right.
Financial Times - US and Ukraine sign natural resources deal
Archive mirror
Obviously I'm not aiming this towards you, but the stenographers in the media class. It's like they've forgotten how to do actual journalism.
With regards to the deal itself, at least Ukraine got an endpoint clause now, the deal is only set to last for 10 years. Previously discussed endpoints were repaying all past, present and future US military aid, a $500 billion clause, matching 2021 GDP, or even no endpoint at all.
Someone told him it doesn't matter once American capital owns them.
This is what I call "Out-sourced Occupation" considering the occupier faces zero cost while reaping all benefits of an occupation.