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.
He’s doing mafioso shakedowns and playing chicken with both the American economy and the economy of his opponents
It’s working. The opponents are folding.
Just now the US Air Force exercised freedom of navigation rights over the Gulf of California. While the US Air Force aircraft technically remained in international airspace for the entire flight, it was very much a show of force/power given recent events. This whole powerplay with flying US military aircraft over other nations and on the borders of Mexican airspace is very much a mafioso showdown, kind of like the Gulf of Sidra incidents with Libya from the 80s, but this time there is little resistance from the aggrieved parties. Gadaffi would've tried to shoot down a US plane by now. But we obviously can't and shouldn't expect that from the leaders of LATAM and Carribean countries, it would be suicidal and a terrible course of action. The best option is to just give in where it doesn't hurt too much, and try resist where possible. México and Colombia are trying that strategy.
These fools already completely burned their bridges to any meaningful alternatives.
Submitting to Biden meant having no choice but to submit to Trump later on.
Canada should call Trump’s bluff. 60% of US crude import came from Canada that they cannot replace, at least not for many years.
However, if the US decides to take the pain (as Trump has warned of as a possibility), then it’s game over for Canada.
The question is do you want to bet your entire nation on a mad man’s challenge?
Fair play, why does the bigger economy not simply eat the smaller ones? We saw it in Colombia, now we’re seeing it in NA. If only there was an alternative consumer market to pick up the import slack
Actual annexation requires management and an increasing bureaucracy. Why do it this way when you can have a friendly satrap who you can pressure economically to bend to the will of the market
Trump gets to test the waters, he calls the Heads of States and pretend he won, the chuds clap thinking their leader won something. Meanwhile Mexico, Colombia and Canada gets concessions from the US.
i saw someone explain that they thought this was trump testing the waters for his tariff deals, seeing how successful they are, and how nations will react.
That's giving Trump a lot of credit, might be true but it's just as likely that he's getting meaningless concessions as scraps to throw to his base. I'm sure he intends to grift them until he dies
its not meaningless to essentially order around a good chunk of the mexican army, he's making sure the closest vassals are still loyal.
I don’t even think it’s Trump running the show here. He already did it once to China back in 2018-2019.
Then under Biden, we saw:
All three conditions are now creating a “perfect storm” for the US to switch the export of dollars from running permanent trade deficits into coercing countries to accept foreign investments in dollar form. The US has to make the switch in order to retain dollar hegemony while allowing trade deficits to be reduced, without offending the Wall Street finance capital.
What is perplexing though is that Trump is still calling for creating external revenue services (lol) and sovereign wealth funds (lmao). So who knows what’s going on there?
But beware of “building plank roads by the day, while secretly crossing Chencang at night” from the Americans.
At the very least, we saw how the US adjusted and adapted its strategy after the first trade war with China.
Just wanted to feel like a special boy by taking important game actions
So basically Trudeau and Sheinbaum caved to his demands to ramp up fascism in their own countries.
Fully expected of Trudeau, but a little disappointing for Sheinbaum.
But what else is Mexico going to do?
80% of Mexico’s export is to the US, with one third of them cars/vehicles worth $30+ bil every year. If the US stops buying, people are going to lose their jobs, and that can spiral into recession very quickly and worse, riots and coups.
It’s not easy to be a leader of small countries, especially not as a leftist. On the one hand, you want to assert sovereignty for your own nation, on the other, you have a responsibility to make sure your people don’t suffer even worse under economic collapse.
The real answer to this dilemma is to have an alternative bloc (think the USSR and Comecon that was largely insulated from the Western capitalist bloc). Nothing like this exists today, so we all have to listen to what Trump has to say.
I do wonder what the prerequisites are gonna be for an alternative bloc to be formed because I feel like there's this big contradiction where the necessity of its creation - at a time of accelerating American militarism and belligerent sanctions and such - is growing, but none of the countries that would form this bloc seem terribly interested in actually "pulling the trigger" (to vastly oversimplify it into a process as simple as just 'pushing the communism button'). I wonder if China will have to be forced into it, kicking and screaming, totally against their will. They'll be insisting that they want to co-exist with America for development and peace and whatever the fuck right up until the US starts trying to bomb their military bases and infrastructure, or blockades straits and seizes their transport lines. I'm increasingly thinking that it's gonna be a WW1/WW2 scenario where the economic system can only change (the gold standard back then, the dollar system now) when there is literally no choice.
Because you're right - we can talk all day long about how the US bullying all its "allies" will lead to them retaliating, or, at a minimum, reducing Atlanticist tendencies inside those countries. And I do believe that's genuinely true; anxiety about the American hegemon might be a soft and very difficult to quantify thing but transgressions and minor instabilities do add up over time, history demonstrates that time and time again, it just requires years or even decades of patience to see the fruit of it. But all the anxiety and dislike of the US in the world isn't terribly meaningful if there's nothing that, say, Mexico can do. I also want to see Sheinbaum retaliate, but I also realize that it would be deeply stupid to do so. The DPRK and Palestine and Yemen are perhaps the truest warriors of the anti-American movement and they've been isolated and impoverished for that exact reason.
I think some people overestimate the capacity for Mexico to negotiate with the US.
You can’t expect a country to hold against the US when you have a history of your government getting topple by the states.
Also Mexico is the sweatshop of NAFTA
Yeah you need a Soviet Union to be behind you to have actual leverage when negotiating with the US empire.
Even then the USSR wasn’t enough you need a mad man like Mao to call US’ bluff
please maoists take over india we need a new USSR
Sheinbaum’s position in regards to the border is not so different than AMLO’s who ran border control for Trump and then Biden.
If DOGE wants to optimize the government they should abolish ICE because it is a useless job doing DEI hire for failed middle aged white navy seals
This is the border plan that Canada came up with in 2024, but didn't fully implement. It seems as if Trump is trying to force them to implement the plan fully over the next 30 days. Trudeau also said that a fentanyl czar will be appointed and cartels listed as terrorist organisations, along with a joint Canada - US strike force against organised crime, drug trafficking and money laundering. That last part is interesting given US military activity along the US - México border. Also explains Ford's rant about México earlier today.
So the first concessions from Canada, in some ways a similar deal to México with 10 000 personnel being sent to the border, in some ways quite different with regards to the joint strike force and terrorist designation.
I wonder what will happen over the next 30 days, I expected more concessions and a lot of photo ops to show that they are prepared to implement this deal.
Based on the language I don't think this is new Canadian border agents or anything, just stating that CBSA has about 10,000 current employees.