Image is of Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute a week or so ago.
I didn't really want to keep spotlighting American domestic events as I had assumed that shit would calm down pretty quickly, but it appears that the Trump administration, including Musk, are determined to bring down the empire from the inside.
One of the most important lessons of ruling a country - and especially an empire - is to never, ever believe your own propaganda; and yet now we have neo-Nazi failsons disrupting parts of the imperial apparatus and causing general government mayhem because they actually seem to believe in libertarianism; that the state and the capitalists are somehow in opposition, rather than working in lockstep to maximise profit and boost American hegemony around the world.
I'm not so optimistic as to believe that a national collapse is FOUR DAYS AWAY, like those weird anti-China cranks often speculate - the US has at least a decade or two left even under these conditions. But consider the damage being inflicted in these past couple weeks, and extrapolate that over the next four years. Does any living American political figure possess the competency to halt - or even meaningfully slow - the already ongoing decline? And could they achieve power (or even be allowed to do so) after Trump's term is done?
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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.
An update from México's president Claudia Sheinbaum: The tarrifs on México have been delayed by one month to March 1-4 2025, in exchange México will deploy 10 000 National Guard troops to the México - US border to combat drug trafficking, in particular fentanyl. The United States committed to working on preventing the trafficking of high powered weapons to México.
Statement in Spanish
Sostuvimos una buena conversación con el presidente Trump con mucho respeto a nuestra relación y la soberanía; llegamos a una serie de acuerdos:English translation
We had a good conversation with President Trump with great respect for our relationship and sovereignty; we reached a series of agreements:Twitter source
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It looks like the threat of tarrifs, and potential military action, with the recent US Navy combat air patrols on the border, have extracted the first serious concessions from México. (unless you count the use of Mexican airspace for civilian aircraft deportation flights as the first). 10 000 Mexican National Guard troops being immediately deployed to the border is a more significant action than the US "committing to prevent weapons trafficking", which is just some nice words at the moment, no specifics or details are mentioned at this point. I wonder how long before we hear about concessions from Canada, I can't imagine them fighting this on their own. I think only China will hold out for long to be honest.
I don’t think the actual terms of the negotiations will be made public. The standard MO is “both sides negotiated and walked away satisfied with some compromises” and both get to claim their PR victories.
This is the carrot to the stick of lose-lose scenario that damages both sides and see whose economy can last longer. We’ll see more of similar stories in the future. And you’ll have to look carefully at what Mexico is doing over the next few months to tease out what was being compromised there.
We only see Khrushchev withdrawing the IRBMs from Cuba, but by the time the US removed the Jupiter missiles from Turkey months later, the public has probably forgotten about the incident already.
I also don’t think Trump was the one negotiating, at least not the person who set the actual terms.
The terms will never be made public, but the little we do get, even from the Mexican president herself who will try paint México in the best of light, seems one sided. México makes a concrete commitment to deploy a military controlled force to the border, the USA makes a promise on gun control towards México with no concrete commitment. The US president effectively ordering around Mexican military controlled forces is not a great place to be in terms of sovereignty. At least México is still holding out on their airspace not being used by the US military on the sovereignty front. We have to look to the future developments for the full picture, you're correct.
The migrants are the biggest losers by far here, now they have to deal with an increased military presence on their journey. The last time Trump did a similar deal in 2019, this photograph of the Mexican National Guard stopping a woman and her child went viral.
Finally get to test my hypothesis that the fent is coming from inside the house.
I think a lot manufacturing of the final fentanyl product is done inside the USA, but the precursors are imported and made outside of the USA. At least that was my understanding.
All of the precursors are available in the US, because US drug companies, I believe primarily Johnson & Johnson, already produced fentanyl and carfentanil for use in hospitals. I'm not a chemist, so someone correct me if I am wrong here, but I believe it's not too complictaed for an experienced chemist to create the precursors. There are posts on chemistry/drug forums from like 20 years ago discussing how to do it.
This wound up being a bit of an effortpost to get buried this deep in the conversation. So it goes.
The synthesis isn't difficult for a reasonably qualified synthetic chemist. Access to propionic anhydride was always the limiting step - before the explosion in sources for chemical precursors of all kinds the only way to reliably get it would have the DEA on your ass very quickly. There has been gray/black domestic production of fentanyl as long as there's been fentanyl but never on an industrial scale until the last decade or so.
The actual precursors are by and large being manufactured in other countries (China and India are the biggest producers) and the final synthesis can take place anywhere. Mexican drug trafficking organizations got a crash course in organic chemistry after the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act in 2005 led to the collapse of almost all domestic methamphetamine manufacture. They have the benefit of 20 years' experience in organic synthesis supplying meth for the North American market that translates very well to making fetty.
As far as I know most illicit fentanyl production for the usamerican market occurs in Mexico, but this is simply a matter of convenience. A handful of guys in the LA area produce more or less the entire usamerican supply of PCP. There's absolutely no reason if material conditions demand the production move across the border for it not to move across the border.
I don't know if it was here on hexbear or somewhere else on the internet that I read a comment that the United States has been waging an opium war against itself for 80 years. The nexus between hard-right groups, intelligence organizations, organized crime, and the networks of illicit drug manufacture and distribution is old and runs deep. The fentanyl will continue to flow, manufactured wherever conditions are best for its production.
Plus there are surely tons of US citizens who work in hospitals, pharmacies and other medical establishments who would love an opportunity to get some extra cash on the side in exchange for sneaking out some reagents