Image is of a Colombian campaign rally in support of Iván Cepeda of the left-wing Historic Pact.
As always, my weekly preamble is in spoiler tags below.
preamble
The unstable stare-down in the Middle East continues. Yet again, there's been little region-level change, but there have been some big escalations. Namely, the entity has decided to go further into Lebanon, with all the casualties and destruction that will bring them, while simultaneously abandoning bases elsewhere in the theater due to constant pressure by Hezbollah. Seeking to pressure Hezbollah away from their successful strategy of attrition on IOF forces that attempt to advance only to receive rapid onset symptoms of FPVdroneitis, they have also decided to resume airstrikes on Beirut, which is an obvious violation of the region-wide ceasefire that Iran may or may not militarily respond to, but they do seem very diplomatically displeased as of me writing this sentence. Meanwhile, Iran has responded to US drone incursions with strikes on Kuwait military bases. Trump has escalated his demands lately, so a return to war seems more likely than ever.
In Bolivia, Paz appears to be escalating in response to undiminished general strikes, with Congress allowing him to declare states of emergency at will, and therefore get the military more easily involved. In Colombia's runoff elections, far-right candidate Espriella won the first round of the runoff election with 43.7% of the vote ahead of left-winger Cepeda's 40.9%. Every poll had Cepeda beating Espriella by varying margins, so this appears to be a fairly standard case of the US putting their thumb on the scale; as the saying goes, they do not trust the population of Colombia to do democracy correctly and they couldn't risk them accidentally electing the wrong person.
Over in Sudan, the conflict appears like it is moving in a pro-SAF direction, with some significant military gains against the UAE-backed RSF, although the military situation is still fairly complicated. A potentially notable news item that I missed a couple weeks ago is that the US seems to have ended their strategic ambiguity over who they consider the true government in Sudan, as they now firmly recognize the SAF over the RSF. Why exactly this has occurred is a little beyond me. Could be because they see how the winds are blowing militarily; could be because they want to fuck over the UAE for some perceived slight (to be America's ally is fatal etc etc). The humanitarian situation appears no better though, with millions of people remaining in incredible hardship and near-starvation, and RSF-backed genocidal atrocities of the kind that Zionists would nod approvingly at.
Thankfully, China is looking at all these manifold crises and has dramatically escalated the speed at which they are writing strongly worded letters and are calling for a revitalized UN.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 the Zionists' 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.
Should be bad news, but all I can think is maybe this will finally break the attachment to police reform that so many well-meaning people have. There couldn't be a better image of the "actually good Democrat" for the more progressive libs, and they will see how anything he persues that aims to limit the power or abuse by police will be meaningless.
put top paid cops round up every quarter to annoy people in social media. slash jobs as efficiency gains from ai (there are no gains). cut down propaganda budget as cops shouldn't be doing pr. break up police unions and force insurance of malfeasance on them. etc all milquetoast lib policies you can feasibly sell to electorate, yes cops would rebel, then you pull a reagan on them.
the fucker is plugging holes with state pensions before touching police (funding probably entity bonds and elbit so some pluses here)
That would be acceptable to the electorate especially in NYC, I was going to say the police would properly riot and burn down city hall or something if you tried to break up the unions, but I'm not sure if the average officer really cares about anything enough these days to do that. They would probably just move upstate.
i mean you can do structural reforms which cops (being dumbasses that they are) won't notice at first (pr issues especially), or you can upsell as redistributive to cops themselves (say fire top 5% earners split the salaries between city and the cops, do it every year, look mr cop, you get 500 bucks more cause we fired mcovertime, fracture them like strikebreakers use to cleave educated and well earning engineers from grunts). i'm sure if you invited 2-3 black anarchists, couple of media analysis people and couple of marxists/structuralists you can nudge your way into fuckery.
Or they could just stay in Long Island since more than half of the force comes in from the suburbs there.
I think this is less about police reform vs abolition itself and more about the fundamental flaw in letting bourgeois electoral power structures control your "political representatives", or at least those claiming to be of your ranks. Mamdani is clearly not particularly beholden to a substantial group of people demanding this nor did he have any serious plans to take on the NYPD (if he did he would be showing us his socialist cadre security team). The basic dynamics are totally reversed: Mamdani calls shots based primarily on bourgeois power structures and feedback, eking out marginal gains exclusively in socdem territory. The DSA et al aren't crafting a platform he has to follow (or else!). Totally wrong way of organizing anything, always temper expectations massively because it depends entirely on one individual deciding to have these difficult fights and not on organizations pushing it all via mass work.
Except he’s not limiting anything. He’s hiring more cops and “surging” them into “high crime areas”.
The only lesson well meaning people will learn is to stop listening to leftist succs who lie to them with fake promises and make excuses the whole time
Well-meaning people were police abolishments during BLM, it was the revisionist forces greatly aided by January 6 dem messaging that caused the reversion of that.
IMHO, "abolish the police" was itself a watering down of the raw sentiments of the streets, which was "fuck the police" and "fuck 12." What should have happened was for more politically conscious activists to harness the raw hatred and contempt the masses have for the police and to say what people are thinking.
The BPP wasn't having any of that "abolish the police" nonsense. They were shouting "off the pigs" while liquidating particularly heinous pigs within their neighborhoods. Go listen to some of their chants. They're chanting about picking up guns and killing cops. Let's call it for what it is.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: