Image is of a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.
As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there's been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.
In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia's runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda's 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn't risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.
Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America's ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.
Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.
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.
Shot across the bow by Tisch, he needs to fire her ass already; the buffer period is over
There was never a buffer period to keeping on a known Zionist fascist. He should never have hired her
keeping Tisch should have been in exchange for getting to do something else to the pigs, let's not pretend there's a "good" cop to have in charge of the other cops.
unless he's hiring saboteurs there's no way this is anything other than an L. at least the hocul stuff he seems to have gotten some cooperation from albany.
There are better cops than the Tisch heiress. But yes, if this was some masterstroke, we would have seen some compromise on her end and instead she gets to keep running her fiefdom
And trigger a mutiny by the NYPD in his first month? No, keeping her for the first 100 days was practical; keeping her after six months is just some bullshit and it signals a lack of confidence in confronting the NYPD
He said from the start he's playing the long game with the NYPD through funding attrition, but looks like the NYPD and its sponsors has other ideas
He couldn't do it then. He can't do it now. When can he?.
Your argument boils down to him having to pick a fight to not be complicit. Yeah, duh. That is what we do.
My argument is that he should do it, he can do it, but he lacks the political confidence to do it, that's on him and the broader left for not instilling that confidence
We're literally not even disagreeing
Perhaps he lacks having any plan at all to do it in the first place and it was just a nice-sounding line to adopt for a campaign and not really commit to in any meaningful way. Because he is a social democrat that will inevitably align with fascist and settler interests at the end of the day, not a figurehead for a cadre of a disciplined organization. He's just some guy, not really worth defending to other socialists.
What do you mean by 'not instilling that confidence'? What exactly are people supposed to be doing here, did they not vote for him, do we need to raise an armed militia to defend him? What does this actually, functionally, look like?
Lmao yes cope more about how she’s ruining his perfect plan to neither fund nor defund the police. Who could have imagined she would get in the way of his agenda
Look he would have defunded the police, but he's playing 4d chess and has to wait for a buffer period. Oh the buffer period is over, but he has to increase police headcount or he will pick a war against the NYC capitalists. It's better to just go along to get along and not cause any problems. Look, he has to crack down on the anti-Israel protesters, they were being anti-semites.
Why is this guy the one getting banned when he is right? The mayor's wife was in isis. It was clear from the start he was a pice of shit.
because he is unable to respond to people he disagrees without constantly insulting them breaking rule 5 and 8 of the code of conduct, did you not read the rest of his comments?
I would like some clarification or elaboration on this please
Mayor's mother ex husband was in Israel intelligence. Mayor's wife did propaganda for isis. When he was elected mayor, mes did a series of posts on both issues. Unfortunately I did not save them.
It was only later when this site was defending this guy that I uploaded the following post. https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/88b78d4a-ae71-404f-b462-ae261e78ba69.jpeg?format=webp
Both posters have a point but they were probably banned for the personal insults and general incivility, they just seem a bit more heated, hopefully it's a short temp ban.
Do you even read the thread you are in?
Mamdani defended it and supports hiring more cops. He doesn't plan to reduce headcount. He lied to you, and you believed it like every soft succ lie.
You see a moralistic narrative about betrayal; I see backroom negotiations that keep the NYPD off his back for the time being while his policies that build social and political capital among New Yorkers mature to the point where he would have the power to do cool things
Unless you want to offer a competing materialist analysis where Mamdani is godking of New York City and its political economy and he can just order around the NYPD "unions," Wall Street, and the real estate barons without friction or cost?
Yeah that's the obvious read on this imo. I'm concerned that this will continue. Not that "immediately fight the NYPD head on" is a good plan either, but he should have seen this coming and had something better prepared.
My larger concern is that by winning office, he's now administering a hostile system, but without the social power to actually transform it. Despite some "sewer socialism" at the margins, the main function of local gov is policing and repression, that's why it always dominates the local budgets.
Withholding all judgment, whatever you think of him or his intentions or his larger plan, we now have a socialist who is (nominally) in charge of the very system of repression that's the biggest and most immediate threat to his constituents. That's the contradiction he put himself in.
An actual confrontation would require an unprecedented social mobilization (well beyond the scale of BLM) so I'm concerned he'll continue to take the realistic option of non-confrontation until his entire project withers.
No, I think you hit the nail on the head, without an organized labor army, he on his lonesome can only do so much, and tackling an actual capitalist army like the NYPD requires a massive grassroots game plan, plus downtown power to legitimize it
He barely has downtown power and he certainly doesn't have a big enough ground force that can be called a labor army
As a result he's buying time with minuscule compromises with New York capital, which is just gonna hurt his credibility in the longrun
Yep.
Hopefully I'm wrong and the NYPD is defeated somehow and then this sparks off some new municipal pink tide. I'm nowhere near there & can't really do anything about it (other than write/post) so I guess I'll wait and see
No i see a materialist narrative of him being a representative of the capitalist class, and thus will always be our class enemy. I see how the forces of capitalism are arrayed, while you see nothing and keep doing the same bernard entryist dead-endism over and over. It is you who has the idealist, simplified and useless worldview that has consistently been proved wrong.
I cannot be 'betrayed' by succs because I don't believe in them or support them. I can't be betrayed by my enemies. I'm using the 'betrayed' framing to hopefully move your idealist dumbass from repeatedly making the same mistakes and maybe opening your eyes and reading your namesake.
https://gothamist.com/news/mayor-mamdani-defends-hiring-more-cops-on-wnycs-ask-the-mayor
the buffer ride never ends
You keep falling for it. She’s following Mamdani’s orders.
Tisch follows the orders of her social circle and sponsors, and that doesn't include Mamdani, she was a compromise
No, she quite literally is a subordinate to Mamdani and he can order her to do anything or fire her on a whim. Every single thing she does she does with his tacit approval.
She is the princess of the 43rd richest family in America and an agent of New York real estate and Wall Street moguls; pretending Mamdani has anything but nominal public-facing authority over her is just an out rejection of any materialist analysis of the situation
Firing her WILL trigger a reaction, and Mamdani obviously thinks it's too risky because the reaction will be laundered through the NYPD and its "unions"; I think he's wrong, I think he has the social and political capital to go through with it
That's just liberal excuse-making. He can fire her today if he wanted to. Doing calculus to avoid doing so because she's bourgeois is the antithesis of having a socialist in power.
I was going to make an excuse like sometime you need to make a calculus on decisions like that because there would be a response, but he's the mayor of a massive, diverse city and hugely popular, if he really walked the walk as a "socialist" he would fire whoever and rally the people to defend his decisions.
no, he should have her killed in a way that doesn't come back to him
Yes, he would either have prepared for these obvious fights and committed to them realistically or he could have bumbled into the fights not anticipating the difficulty. But balking most likely indicates that he didn't have any real plan to begin with. Plus look at his transition team. Fill of libs and non profit types for basically no good reason aside from playing ball with more libs.
Mamdanist social fascist. You have endless excuses for the leftwing of fascism and zionists. You have endless excuses for Nazi skulls on succs. You have endless patience for the electoralist liars who are 100% always scams. Don't struggle, the capitalists might fight back! Defeatism, reformist dead-endism.
This social fascist is expanding the fascist army used to crush anti-zionists, with a zionist at the helm. If he's too afraid to fight that then he's completely washed and useless to us. But the truth is he isn't afraid to fight, he has no intention to.
It's hilarious how a simple baseline materialist analysis of the most obvious prevailing conditions just sends you into one deranged crashout after another
Phrasemongering and insulting me is not an argument bro; try an analysis that maybe accounts for the existence of an extremely powerful and wealthy capitalist class in New York City that opposes his policies and then calibrate your expectations to something beyond 1917 Russia
When I endorse zionist social fascists, that's materialism :) Btw I love marx guys
Lol you need to chill bro
That user is in every Platner, Mamdani, AOC, Bernie thread making excuses for zionism, reformism, social fascism, reaction and imperialism. He's a social fascist and he is dragging the name Marx through the mud to make it worse. He needs to delete his fucking account or read Marx.