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.
Maybe I’m missing discussion about the Canadian federal election, but the Libs have won again.
At least the conservatives were kept from winning, but support for the NDP (the party to the left of the libs) is way down.
Everyone i know who was going to vote NDP decided to strategically vote liberal because of the fear of a conservative upset
Bittersweet result for sure. Happy to see the tories blocked from victory but just about all of my favourite MPs got trounced. F in the chat for them.
The inevitable result of FPTP voting, tbh. What were the NDP’s stances relative to the Libs, were they trying to actually reasonably differentiate themselves by being further left or are they triangulating themselves into irrelevance? IIRC Mulcair swung hard to center and I don’t recall hearing if Singh changed that at all.
I met Mulcair in my university he used to teach polsci. He said that Tony Blair is his dear friend and inspiration.
Demonic
My feelings on Mulcair are complicated. Policy-wise he was bland. But my god he was a pitbull in question period, he actually did a good job in focusing media attention on then-PM Harper’s BS.
Singh was just another pivot to the center. He was supposed to be the answer to Justin Trudeau, in that he embodies vaguely progressive aesthetics with no substance. He should absolutely have resigned after the last election. He got elected in 2019 having lost like 15 seats, then failed to manifest any gains in the following election.
That would have been a perfect time to bow out and allow for a robust leadership contest and a chance for some renewed enthusiasm for the party going up against an unpopular incumbent and a differently unpopular opposition. The fact that Trudeau resigned and Singh didn’t is damning. I’m so glad he lost his own riding.
I wonder if the NDP realizes at this point that they can’t win the triangulation war. They had years of real leverage over the government and they got neither policy gains nor political gains to show for it. They have a great opportunity to reinvent themselves as a legitimate alternative to the two default parties, and I look forward to seeing how they manage to fuck it up for themselves.
They got a few small policy wins but other than that you’re right. I’m hopeful a new leader can move things in a more popular and left-wing direction.
Getting a couple policy wins is tablestakes when you’re in a literal supply and confidence agreement. They appeared to do very little to use their position to make noise or twist the knife on the government.
That’s just armchair quarterbacking from me, though. The real tragedy was the loss of seats. They had the opportunity to be an alternative as the Liberals lost popularity, and they were losing disaffected voters to the Conservatives doing bad Trump cosplay. Completely unforgivable performance, and should by now prove that the NDP has no future trying to appeal to the center. They could carve out a substantial position for themselves by staking out firmer, clearer positions on socdem policies, but they seem allergic to that idea. I’m guessing they believe that if they’re not taking a straight line path to forming government then they’re not being serious, a deeply unserious position.
it’s honestly hard for me to say, because they’ve allowed themselves to fade into the background in the last few months. They’ve lost something like 30-50% of their support compared to the last election. Part of that is definitely strategic voting in our rotten voting system (e.g., genuine NDP/Green supporters casting votes for Liberals to keep Conservatives from winning), but they’ve also made it really easy just to forget about them, likely losing them genuine support and failing to connect with potential supporters.
I think they’re more comfortable nagging liberals to do marginally better for the working class than fighting for real power to make bigger changes.
The fact that the NDP is a junior partner to the liberal didn’t help their case, no one is going to give you credit for the dental insurance for low income citizens when the liberals are the one that allows it to pass.
but looking at the results liberals cannibalizing NDP’s votes is pretty obvious
The NDP are just the second liberal party at this point tbh
The NDP and the Liberal should fuse into one party and become the Neo Liberal Party. They can even put the “Neo” in their logo to be green because they will all be about that market solution to solve climate crisis
I can see floor-crossing happening if it would put the Liberals into a majority.
I’m wondering if Carney is going to push for proportional representation. It would prevent a Liberal majority ever again, but it would also deny the Conservatives a majority ever again. Carney may gamble on the latter being worth the cost of the former if it keeps Canada independent.
no he won’t.
He also proposed to build 500k social housing unit, so he’ll probably sweep it under the rug in the following month
I sincerely doubt carney will push for some kind of proportional representation. I mean maybe, but the two big parties really benefit from devolution to 2 parties under FPTP. it makes the ‘sword and shield of capital’ model of democracy that much easier.
It’d surprise me if libs decided to actually do voting reform. That was their big promise when Trudeau was first elected, but they’re the ones that benefit the most from FPTP so they decided to drop it and never mention it again
Somewhat worse than that, they allowed a committee to form from all elected political parties. Committee came up with recommended voting systems and the different parties said they were willing to compromise if a system they didn’t like was chosen.
Then Trudeau came in and said, “cool thanks for all the work, I want ranked choice voting and if you don’t want that, this committee is dissolved” to paraphrase.
I’d encourage you not to undersell how harsh the process was.
Oh yea it was brutal, just another example of Libs promising one thing during the campaign and completely reversing course once elected. You can’t trust those slimy bastards, they’re all snakes that would sell their mothers for some votes