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.
Update on military action on the US - México border/deportation flights situation: México gives more concessions to the USA, Belize accepts a US military aircraft directly, first removal/deportation flights to Guantanamo Bay, India and potentially El Salvador, Colombia continues to send their own military planes for repatriation flights, more flights to Guatemala.
Detailed update.
Starting with México, there were a number of key developments. Firstly, a United States Coast Guard C-130J, carrying out a potential deportation flight to El Salvador from San Diego, utilised Mexican airspace. Then afterwards, a United States Airforce C-130J from Florida, flew over Mexican airspace while on a flight to El Salvador. This could be to do with the proposed deal for El Salvador to house “dangerous migrants and gang members” that are deported from the USA, including those that have acquired US citizenship. This also means that US military aircraft flying to other countries have now made use of Mexican airspace.
The C-17 deportation flights to Guatemala haven’t made use of Mexican airspace yet, so the deals with Guatemala and EL Salvador are likely seperate in this regard. Guatemala also reportedly signed a new deal with regards to accepting deportations from the US of citizens from other countries. There has been a new bunch of civilian aircraft likely chartered for this purpose, that have made flights to Guatemala from the USA.
Belize accepted a US Navy Boeing C-40A transport aircraft which landed there after departing San Diego, so they too allow US military planes to land there, and not to just use their airspace.
The first flight of migrants to Guantanamo bay took place, apparently only 10-20 of the “most dangerous migrants”, whatever that means, were moved there onboard a US military C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.
India of all countries recieved their first deportation flight from the United States, a US military C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft took a multi legged journey there.
Circling back to México, we got a breakdown of where the 10 000 México National Guard troops are set to deploy to. Interesting to note is that the areas that saw the most US reconnaissance and signals intelligence flights nearby, namely Baja California and Sonora, are seeing the most troops. To me this suggests some unofficial Intel sharing, and that the US are going to try use the Mexican National Guard to go after cartel strongholds.
The breakdown
Countries that have allowed the United States to conduct suspected deportation flights to them directly using US military aircraft:
Countries that allow the United States to use their airspace to conduct suspected deportations using US military aircraft to other countries, but have not accepted US military deportation flights themselves:
Countries that put up resistance to deportation flights using US military aircraft and turned them away ( and use their own military planes for repatriating their citizens), however the United States says that they will accept military deportation flights in future (no such flights have taken place as of 5 February 2025):
Overall it’s quite a depressing update, to be honest I really didn’t want to make it, but I feel as if I had to, otherwise this information just sits in aviation geek or chud circles with brainless losers cheering it on.
Latin American countries can not stand up to the US alone - only together they can.
Yeah, but the time to start preparing for that and forming those alliances was 8 years ago. Vijay Prashad even wrote about that back then. It truly seems as if many did not expect Trump to come back, and are just unprepared for the reality of the current moment.
What is it about the flights being made with military planes that make them so special? They were accepted beforehand with civilian planes, right? I don’t really understand it.
Well to fly your military aircraft over another countries sovereign/territorial airspace, you need usually to organise some sort of diplomatic agreement/deal with all the countries involved, as you are in effect carrying out a military mission using another country’s territory. It’s quite different from chartering a civilian airliner and flying it there from a diplomatic perspective. México has been refusing this permission for US military aircraft, (and still refusing in the case of C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft to Guatemala) since the first military deportation flights using US military aircraft started taking place. But now with the US military and Coast Guard flights to El Salvador, these aircraft were allowed to use Mexican airspace. So it seems as if some agreement was reached there.
It’s significance is a matter of sovereignty over one’s country and in diplomatic relations. Freedom of navigation in international waters/airspace, and over allied countries sovereign/territorial airspace and waters, is something that is very important to the United States. The US will go to war over freedom of navigation.