Image is of Venezuela’s Maduro and Colombia’s Petro walking together at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas in 2022, sourced from this article.
Ordinarily, I avoid straying into the American domestic situation, but the government shutdown appears to be continuing into increasingly harmful territory. If the situation is not resolved, soon tens of millions of Americans will lose food assistance, and already millions of federal employees are furloughed or are working without pay. To those not in the know, this situation has essentially stemmed from the Democrats refusing to sign off on the Republicans’ plan to substantially shrink Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which would eventually result in tens of millions losing healthcare coverage and tens if not hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
To be clear, though, the Democrats have not exactly been paragons of healthcare: they not only oppose plans to make affordable healthcare a right (in defiance of wide popular opinion), but also do their part to maximize suffering. Biden’s policies during the pandemic ensured at least one million people died, and millions of children lost public healthcare coverage. We may never know the true toll, as the US decided that simply ceasing to report on a problem means that the problem no longer exists.
In other news, over the last couple weeks, the US has expanded their hostility against Venezuela by also including Colombia in their ire, and particularly the left-leaning leader, Petro. Both countries are now experiencing major economic and covert pressure by the US to try and cause regime change. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier to the waters near Venezuela and is conducting a military training operation with Trinidad and Tobago, which Venezuela has warned may be the prelude to the long-awaited attack.
Additionally, the US is attempting to combat Chinese geopolitical interest in central America and the Caribbean by carrying out digital attacks and launching pressure campaigns against Chinese and pro-Chinese countries and organizations. Given China’s enormous economic weight, if central America were to break all ties with China, it would be a catastrophe for them; such decisions would only be made by outright compradors, and the resulting economic problems would make their reigns unpopular and, hopefully, brief.
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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.
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.
Executive Order To Go Back To Steam Catapults On New Aircraft Carriers Coming: Trump
It’s not coming, EMALS is baked into the Ford class of aircraft carriers (all aircraft carriers being built in the US for the foreseeable future), and after years of testing and delays, it finally works. The USS Gerald Ford Carrier had over 10 000 sorties without incident during an 8 month deployment that started in October 2023, it’s worked just fine since then. This is just Trump saying stuff. He was giving a speech onboard a carrier that uses steam, the USS George Washington, easy way to hype up the crowd of sailors by saying that what they use is better. Trump says a lot of stuff, he calls the B-21s the Air Force is buying a “new B-2 order”, he calls the plans to equip F-22s with EOTS/IRST and stealth drop tanks the “F-22 Super”, he calls the Navy’s F/A-XX planned sixth gen fighter the “twin engined F-35”. He’s just ignorant. None of this is real. The US is not restarting B-2 production, the F-22 Super and twin engined F-35 don’t exist. He’s just using simplified terms (probably fed to him by generals to try explain how things work, very challenging with someone like Trump) to the point he makes stuff up.
It would be funny if he continues his destruction of the military by forcing them to go back to older tech though. Set them back even further
Good object lesson in the limits of the great man theory of history
Yeah there’s a whole military industrial complex that manages things, and unfortunately for us, they’re quite smart.
For hilarity, imagine being a general or procurement person trying to explain this to Trump. What approach do you pick? Do you tell him “sir, China has equipped their latest J-20s with EOTS/IRST and the J-20 has a larger combat radius than the F-22. To keep the F-22 competitive, we need to equip it with similar technologies while the F-47 is being built. This will require modifying the aircraft with new missile approach warning sensors, an EOTS/IRST pod and helmet mounted display, and low observable drop tanks, and maybe new low observable coatings”. Or do you you say “sir, we need to upgrade the F-22 to beat China. Think of it like a supercar, a special edition Ferrari or Corvette version of the F-22. Extra options, more bells and whistles are being added. Yes F-22 Super, that’s it”.
How are you going to robber-baron without steam engines?
Rare earth problem I think. Or took his medication twice.
Nah he just thinks that electricity is woke. He brought this up in his first term too.
Noob US navy can’t develop electromagnetic catapults that are reliable like the PLA-N, big boss of US says I like boiling water better actually.