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Get it? "Revolting" is a double entendre! Anyway...
As the Trump administration continues to accelerate the flagrant disregard of "international law", we have seen various European leaders flock to China (alongside Canada), seeking deals. Some trips have been more successful than others - for example, Macron's was fairly dire despite his lavish reception by Xi Jinping, but Starmer's resulted in some actual deals and tariff reductions. The intent of this wave of diplomacy with China is clear: leverage.
Nobody should be fooled into thinking this revolt immediately benefits the developing world, of course. While a relative weakening of the US compared to Europe is progressive in a limited sense (insofar as the US is the locus of imperialism), every indication shows that, when it matters, the European consensus remains aligned in most respects with the US, such as with them and the Zionist entity against Iran, against national sovereignty in Africa (e.g. ECOWAS), as well as in Latin America (either in support or not sufficiently opposing American designs there against Cuba and Venezuela, to name but two countries). It is also unclear how long such a divide will last - perhaps Trump leaving office in 2028 and a slightly less bellicose leader in power will result in many cancelled deals with China.
Despite the very shaky initial steps over the past couple years, Europe still has many miles it must traverse to achieve sovereignty, let alone socialism. For now, it will cheer on the sanctions against millions of vulnerable people and incoming bombing of Iran and Hezbollah, though perhaps it will also share a degree of the economic/military retaliation.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in effort posting to find the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first slop they read. DM me to feature effort posts and good threads in the newsmega/newscomm here (including your own).
Previous posts of the week:
2025: Oct 27 | Nov 3 | Nov 10 | Nov 17 | Nov 24 | Dec 1 | Dec 8 | Dec 15 | Dec 22 | Dec 29
Trying not to post too much about the Epstein files, but this one is great. Praise be to Epstein for not knowing about cloud storage in 2015 and emailing himself a picture so that it doesn't get lost.
Second round of presidential elections in portugal tomorrow, some municipalities are still literally flooded with no power since last week but it seems like things are going forward anyway. The socialist party's candidate is set to beat the far-right candidate.
In Marinha Grande, the communist party's office is being used to cook and distribute meals, here's some photos
Gotta say, there's something funny about the US getting booed at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, and seeing a bunch of American liberals pretend that the fans were only booing JD Vance or saying that American athletes shouldn't have to come out and say that just because they are representing the US doesn't mean they support the US government. Funny how the latter doesn't apply to Russia.
supposedly vance go boos and the athletes got treated normally.
I watched the video, and it sounded to me like the boos started when the US was announced and before they even showed JD Vance. It wasn't as uniformly boos as Israel's entrance, though.
watching olympics run by post fascist meloni in italy, after historical refugee crisis in mediterranean where if one where to look, frontex is everywhere in stories of boat capsizes. burgers and stadions eh
"Who the fuck do these people think they are" also crossed my mind in regards to what I assume is mostly Italian fans booing for exactly the reasons you said lol
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/06/venezuela-after-the-coup/
much more scathing review of venezuela internal politics, but aside the democracy shit (this being tempest whatever), some critical snippets about ownership/military are relevant (and encountered in other places), especially for iran (of course no one will learn anything from this, and we are doomed)
I disagree with the basic premise of this. The attack failed, it was intended to kill far more key people besides Maduro.
When it failed, they pivoted. The protectorate situation is plan B, the original plan was regime change but they failed to get all their targets
I disagree with a lot of it, but there is some truth there. While Maduro was doing his best, I don't think it can be denied that cracks were starting to show in the Revolution.
This is a chance to roll back some of the (externally forced and justified, IMO) authoritarianism, serve the people, and bide time until US hegemony ends.
Why would the US allow this? Because they need access to the oil, duh. For the moment they are using it to pull India away from Russia. Soon they may need it to replace some of the flow from the Persian Gulf during wartime.
The crucial part is private ownership shifting to military, it's recipe for basically this type of coup, porkies can't resist clarion call of asset appreciation. what i don't understand why on earth they have "professional" (very allegedly) military at all, they got militias. historically all proletarian states found militias being the only stable form of bulk of armed forces, due to variety of experiences
the usa would allow this until they get cuba got and internal cia opposition is allowed to flourish via some imposed press freedom for local porkies, it's kinda obvious how this will go over the next 2 years 
Thousands of patriotic Libyans attended today's funeral for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in Bani Walid. They waved the Jamahiriya's green banner and called for their country's liberation.
China's anti-crypto laws expanded to include a ban on real-world asset tokenization.
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) just released a new circular expanding the current ban on cryptocurrencies and other related technologies in the country. China’s central banking institution [machine translated] broadened the 2021 restrictions to include real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, even including offshore tokenization of domestic assets and rights, unless approved by a regulated body
The new circular also banned internet providers from promoting, hosting, or even providing cryptocurrency and RWA traffic.
What does this mean in a political-economy context for baby Marxists?
There are less avenues for cash/cash adjacent wealth to be used to "gamble" on the price of physical stuff.
Typically, this type of gambling involves a promise to buy the stuff (somewhere in the process) which... can cause changes in the price of those things for those not involved in the gambling.
It is harder to sell derivatives of futures that are based on real stuff (like silver) that you don't even own. Obviously, crypto is also a waste of power and resources.
The problem is that lots of this is still happening with more ordinary instruments anyway. Someone on the HK stock exchange is short more silver than the entire Chinese market even has in warehouses. Imagine that all players at the roulette table have 100 chips in total (combined), you hold zero chips, but you bet 110 chips on black anyway.
unbelievably based
This is just one primary, so it obviously doesn't matter, but the discourse around it is very funny. Especially when MattY kept saying exactly the opposite this entire time, that Kamala & Biden funding genocide was actually good and popular and that the Dems need to distance themselves from the unpopular groups like anti-genocide groups.
Space-based interceptors make even less sense now
The Pentagon and its Golden Dome contractors are proposing to replace one showstopping problem with another.
more
The rationale behind Golden Dome’s mandate for space-based boost-phase defense made some sense. If orbiting interceptors could hit an enemy missile very early in flight—before it could deploy countermeasures—they would avoid the Achilles’ heel of defense systems that target missiles in midcourse. But now the Pentagon and contractors are proposing to also use space-based interceptors for midcourse defense, which would jack up the cost while defeating the purpose of going to space in the first place. Today’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD, system and its 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California are designed to intercept warheads during their 30-minute travel through space. But in outer space, lightweight decoys follow the same trajectory as the heavier warheads—preventing the defense from identifying and destroying the true warhead. Any country that can build a long-range missile and nuclear warhead can also build decoys and other countermeasures, creating a defensive problem that remains unsolved despite decades of work. As a result, the GMD system would almost certainly be ineffective against an actual attack. One response to this problem is to focus on a different portion of a missile’s flight: its boost phase, when its rocket motors are burning and before it deploys countermeasures. But the boost phase lasts only about three minutes. The only way to station interceptors close enough to every possible launch point in “peer, near-peer, and rogue” countries is to put them in space.
And “to station” is a misnomer that conceals the true difficulty and massive resource consumption of creating an effective boost-phase defense. Each interceptor satellite has a very brief time to accelerate to reach a boosting missile, requiring the satellites to be closely spaced to provide a defense without gaps. And because satellites move in orbit, those in position for an intercept will quickly move away and must be replaced by others moving in. (This simulation helps show why.) To ensure that at least two interceptors are in position to reach a single attacking missile during its short boost time, the system would need several thousand interceptors in orbit. Defending against a salvo of 10 missiles would require a constellation 10 times that size—that is, tens of thousands of satellites. Defending against a full Russian or Chinese attack would require hundreds of thousands of satellites. And that would be for a missile burn time of three minutes. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union demonstrated that they could reduce the burn times of their solid-fueled missiles. If the U.S. deploys a space-based boost-phase system, one should expect Russia, China, and North Korea to work to reduce their burn times enough to effectively eliminate the possibility of boost phase intercepts. The practical difficulties of boost-phase intercept have led the Pentagon and some advocates to talk about using space-based systems for midcourse defense instead. This would give the interceptors more time to reach their targets—perhaps 15 minutes, rather than less than three. That would reduce the total number of interceptors needed to have one or two in place to reach a single target in space at any time.
But this switch would simply return to the first show-stopping problem: countermeasures. These systems cannot distinguish warheads from decoys, regardless of whether the interceptors are based on the ground or in space. Attempting to intercept all the warheads and decoys each missile releases would vastly increase the number of interceptors required in orbit. And it is far more expensive to field a midcourse defense in space. In addition to the costs of building and launching thousands of interceptors, satellites have a limited lifetime, which depends on their altitude. Midcourse interceptors would all need to be replaced roughly every ten years. The cost of building and launching the satellites would come due again and again. The Pentagon appears poised to spend enormous amounts of money only to end up where it started: with an ineffective mid-course defense. Policymakers must beware of the promise of high-priced fixes that solve nothing.
golden dome is a golden shower to piss money away as a jobs program cmv
's greatest achievement: Turn Argentina into a concentration camp for the US Nazi Regime
Rubio admits Argentina a country in talks with US over accepting deported immigrants
Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno avoided confirming whether discussions were underway
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted on Wednesday to having “conversations” involving Argentina and other countries about potentially accepting immigrants the Trump administration has decided to deport. Rubio, however, clarified that the two governments do not have “anything lined up” yet. “I know it’s been the subject of media leaks, and sometimes those are with malicious intent, but certainly Argentina is a great partner across the board, and at the end of the day we have tremendous faith and confidence in our relationship with President Milei and his team,” said Rubio.
He also described Argentina as an important partner in various areas and emphasized the strength of the bilateral relationship. Marco Rubio spoke in a press conference opening a State Department-hosted summit with dozens of nations aimed at building a bloc to rebuild global supply chains of the critical minerals without China. His words come five days after The New York Times reported that both countries are working on an agreement to allow the United States to deport immigrants from other nations to Argentina.
The negotiations come as the Trump administration has mobilized a sweeping and aggressive deportation effort, including deploying immigration officers to U.S. cities. According to Argentine media outlets, Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, who was present in Washington DC for the summit, has declined to answer questions about reports of negotiations over immigrants.
Critical minerals under the spotlight
Ministers from over 50 countries are attending the United States’ summit on critical minerals this week in Washington, DC. The meeting is the first of the new Critical Minerals Ministerial, a U.S. initiative to build alliances aimed at countering China’s control over critical mineral supply chains around the world.
Officials are seeking to strengthen and diversify their nations’ stockpiles of critical minerals, which are used to manufacture batteries, clocks, wiring, military hardware, and semiconductors, among other technological products, essential for the defense industry and for the development of artificial intelligence. Marco Rubio proposed frameworks that will serve as “platforms for coordinating policies” to ensure countries can have abundant and affordable access to critical minerals. Argentina was invited to the summit due to its vast resources of critical minerals. The sector has been a priority for President Milei’s economic plan, as his government has signaled it as a key for economic growth.
Several moves over the past recent months also indicate that Argentina seems to be moving away from a decades-long opposition to mining and other activities perceived as harmful to the environment, in favor of an approach that places greater emphasis on urgently needed economic development and growth.
President Javier Milei filed a bill that modifies a law that protects glaciers, with the goal of loosening barriers on mining. Mendoza has also greenlit what will become the first copper mining project in the province in two decades — which environmental activists say could potentially contaminate the water in the Uspallata area. In Washington, DC, Minister Quirno confirmed a new investment of US$14 billion dollars by Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mineral company Glencore, under the new RIGI investment regime.
Secretary of State Rubio emphasized the importance of Argentina’s place in the plan. He pointed to the country’s capacity “to be a key partner in minerals critical to the world, not just the United States.” He emphasized its geology and geographic location as one of the global leaders. “Furthermore, its location in the Western Hemisphere has strategic value not only for Argentina but also, obviously, for the United States,” he concluded.
What is this country even about anymore? Why even have our own flag, anthem, army and so on, why not just become like Puerto Rico and be done with it?
Never before in history a nation has capitulated to another with such enthusiasm, never before I have seen or heard of a nation BEGGING to be annexed by another just because they believe in fantasy. Imagine wanting to be annexed by a pedo nation like the United States of America.
also death to "israel".
What is this country even about anymore?
Recreational burning of Patagonia.
There are people here saying that "IDF" soldiers on vacation were seen near fires in Patagonia... I dunno
But conveniently, milei's chainsaw policy also heavily affected policies put in place to fight and contain forest fires.... how convenient....
Yeah, one of the argentinian people i talk to has been sending me similar articles. I can't tell if that's just WhatsApp uncle syndrome or what.
WhatsApp uncle syndrome
truly, the world lives under a monoculture
https://xcancel.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/2019441260801540591
The Swiss Foreign Minister, Ignazio Cassis and OSCE Secretary General, Sinirlioglu have arrived in Moscow.
French President Macron is also talking about reestablishing diplomatic relations with the Kremlin, citing Europe can't end the conflict/defeat Russia.
People joke about Germany leading the EU but 
is just setting the pace for everyone
Macron is the Erdogan of the West. He's a wildcard and does like 80% bad things, 10% neutral things and 10% good things, but lies about what he's doing and flip flops constantly. Just an impossible enigma to track in terms of coherent ideology or platform because it's all cynical opportunism. Tries keeping multiple parties interested and playing sides off of each other.
Germany is just nothing. Out to lunch. NPCs. Just no agency or willpower whatsoever it seems.
Well since Merkel left, Germany's been so shambolic and disorganized that they have no vision or ability to lead whatsoever. They've entirely ceded the field to France.
Nordstream 2 destruction being totally glossed over and everyone holding any evidence or suspects over Germany's head and playing monkey in the middle with them should have clued them in, but they're still acting like they don't know. Poland having the Ukrainian patsy in their country and just refusing to give them over to Germany is so funny. Like, we're not even let you administer "justice" to the scapegoat we framed. We blatantly lie to your face about who did it, and then don't even give you the person that we threw under the bus.
Knowing macron he’s definitely gonna change his tune in a week, if not a couple minutes later
There's a reason Chinese netizens call him a chameleon.
Given the Swiss are by far the most incensed by the Americans in recent months, not surprising that they're amongst the first to realise that if you really wanna pivot away from the Americans, you need Russia on your side.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:s5b3x4exyludm73jcgvupe7q/bafkreiaxaxvzyfj4j3n3ifpiaue7onic64guwkstvgrn3o3wkaidc3lygy@jpeg Trump is a racist pedo piece of shit.
Damn, during BHM is insane. I hope this goes viral and pulls more folks into action.
Obama will still shake his hand next time they meet, though. I guarantee it.
Dear liberals: I am anti-Trump because I am anti-fascist. You are "anti-fascist" because you are anti-Trump. We are not the same.
what ended up happening with that PSL general strike last week does anyone have news on it
It wasn’t a general strike, it was a one-day protest
I would look at BreakThrough News to see some video of it. It was a pretty large overall day of demonstration, hundreds of thousands of participants across 300 locations.
Long story short, there was some great activity in certain areas. I don't know how much the Twin Cities shut down compared to the week before. I did see that Boyle Heights, a major Latino immigrant neighborhood of LA was pretty much shut down. But there was nothing in any city that could be considered a "general strike"
I still think the day was a success in advancing the cause of a general strike and putting the idea into the people's consciousness. I don't know if a nationwide general strike is possible given the current material conditions, but localized general strikes where federal surges are likely to see success just like the Jan 23 Twin Cities strike.
The PSL is still pushing and agitating for a general strike, but there are no concrete further actions at this time. Hopefully, we can build towards a large mass action this May Day.
Yeah it wasn't meant to be a hole-in-one. Historically general strikes are built up over consecutive actions culminating toward the big one. In this case PSL amplified the organic calls from black and Somali student orgs to expand the strike and then mobilized 300 cities with varying degrees of success in developing coordination with unions, churches, civil groups and small businesses for large protests and shutdowns.
The snowball is just beginning it's long roll toward mayday, and a nationwide general strike is now closer and more popular than it's ever been in the past 8 decades or so.