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, @[email protected], 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.
Power is back on in some parts of Portugal. I’m getting word that apparently amidst mass suspicious of a russian attack provoked by an image of a fake news CNN Portugal article shared around whats app people were filling up supermarkets to buy non-perishables, water and toilet paper, same thing happened when covid started because of a whats app message saying covid caused extreme diarrhea.
Around me everything was pretty chill, a lot of work was canceled and it seems most people took it as a chance to touch grass and socialize, I walked around and a lot of cafes were well attended. Overall the blackout lasted 8 hours.
As for me I busted out my pirated nintendo 2ds to play kid icarus and I watched Jackie Brown. Since work was canceled today and Friday is worker day this will be a 3 day work week.
I’m having libs in my life literally saying “the lack of evidence points to Russian sophistication in covering their tracks”
Enemy both too strong and too weak yadda yadda. Nice username you got there btw
3-day workweek
My brother-in-law is Spanish and when he heard about the power outage he immediately started yelling about Russia and World War 3 and ran to the supermarket to stock up on food, water, toilet paper and batteries. He hasn’t lived in Spain, or even the EU, for over 2 years. He is now 150% convinced that the power outage was caused by a cyber attack from Morocco but I really didn’t feel like asking where he got that idea.
He got the idea from being Spanish. As a Spaniard: Arab-phobia, Islamophobia, and to a lesser extent Francophobia (as in Fr*nce) are a big part of the foundational myth in Spain. I’m sorry that your BIL is a so-called “cuñao”… really tough shit to deal with on a semi-regular basis.
Al-Andalus will rise again
Your brother-in-law is a stoopid
I’m aware. I’m painfully aware.
almoravid hackers are about to invade east portugal and you’re resorting to ad hominems
It’s not that I doubt Russia would be capable of large-scale sabotage… I just see very little point in doing so in Spain or Portugal. If Russia were to pull something like that, it would make much more sense to do it in countries that are more involved in Ukraine or in Eastern Europe. Right?
But don’t you know that everything that happens anywhere in the world is EviL PuTleR plotting in the shadows.
At all times the evil Russians plot to take away the daytime tv of Spanish boomers.
Uncritical support: burn Spanish TV. Half is owned by Berlusconi (ripbozo), half is owned by ATresMedia (equally right wing outlets with one outlet called La Sexta controlling the mass opinion of progressives in the country). Burn the whole fucking thing.
Yes there is no reason, but portuguese people have a lot of resentment over not being “real europeans” so sometimes they pull shit like this