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.
hey newsheads, question— not that I give a shit about the ritual minutiae of our liberal “democracy”, but why does the president have complete uniliateral authority to determine tariffs? seems like something the legislature should be doing. I remember hearing someone say it was because of some bullshit national “emergency” execption because of some made-up shit involving fentanyl or whatever?
The Onion’s “no one will stop me” loophole joke is just real real now. All the checks against presidential power are based on someone having to use discretion to enforce the law, and no one is willing to set the precedent that laws apply to the executive branch. It’s not worth hurting the power of the office just to deal with one oaf who still agrees with the status quo on a very fundamental level. Trump isn’t a revolutionary; this is pure infighting among the elites.
This whole thing is a gigantic display of that observation about how conservatism boils down to having an in-group protected but not bound by the law, and an out-group bound but not protected by the law. Laws are for poor people, and Trump is not an exception.
To add to your last paragraph, you shouldn’t underestimate just how much the current crop of republican reps. derive their power from being near Trump. Like, obviously the house reps are all ghouls, but it seems like a solid chunk of them now just consider themselves Trumpists primarily, and anything going against trump is considered political suicide to such an extent that nobody wants to go first.
It’s also the best way to get things done. If you can get Trump’s ear, he’ll say yes to anything you suggest. There’s no reason not to lean into being a Trump ghoul, and I doubt that’ll change until they start ramping up for the next election, at the earliest.
yeah he’s declaring use of the international emergency economic powers act of 1977, so theoretically a congressional resolution can just put a stop to it and say the emergency is over or they’ve decided to revoke their delegation of authority. apparently trump is the first to use this act to impose tariffs, so the senate parliamentarian was caught completely off guard and has to dig through decades of legal documents before anything like that could happen.
If the parliamentarian decides it’s haram they can shoot Trump, right?
Ah well, nevertheless
That law is pretty much the basis for Treasury sanctions. Congress won’t revoke it.
You don’t even need to revoke the entire law. Just pass a resolution saying that the crisis that Trump uses as a legal basis is over (or that he made it up), which should theoretically dissolve his legal ability to enforce the tariffs. Of course, this is speaking from a lawyer POV, which trump has shown the correct amount of respect for until now (none).
i’m sure if the parliamentarian weren’t such an obstinate bastard, they could come up with some creative way to revise it so that trump can’t whipsaw tariffs via twitter decree while maintaining the ability to impose sanctions.
but alas
There’s nothing in the international economic emergency powers act of 1977 that says a dog can’t decide tariff rates
wag the dog/air bud/manchurian candidate mashup is cinema gold. i’ll let you run with it since it’s your idea, but i’m going to pitch it if you don’t want to.
All urs. I haven’t actually watched any of the films so can’t do the bit justice
don’t worry, neither have i!