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.
https://apnews.com/article/sam-altman-ai-bernie-sanders-trump-public-ownership-772224f9cd138eb79d3ef3336858a5d5
the bag upholding will continue until socialism arrives
This is fucking stupid. Oh my god Bernie, you dumbass. Retire already.
Altman finna leave American taxpayers holding the bag when the collapse happens.
I increasingly think this means a collapse is impossible if this goes through. Sure some small investors might get screwed but government will be forced more than ever to bail them out and just continue handing them fistfuls of cash in the name of national security. A company or two might collapse but their competitor will immediately secure funds to buy out all their assets on the cheap to increase their own size and capability.
The government so badly wants a total AI panopticon, the problem with NSA mass surveillance was always not enough humans to sift through it but AI can do it and surveil and punish all citizens. With zionism being crushed among the youth in popularity and capitalism in crisis they are desperate for total police state and thought control now and will happily spend trillions of dollars to prop up this industry which can plausibly deliver it. It's worker discipline (we'll give your jobs to AI, so take the pay/benefit cut) plus control and it promises to lead someday to the capitalist promised land of autonomous robot armies and slaves so they can do away with the pesky human proletariat once and for all with mass culling via climate change and related issues while remaining utterly insulated and untouchable by the masses. Porky is willing to spend an awful lot for all of that.
I think this AI push is porky trying to develop the technology before that collapse happens. They want to get it across the finish line before economic downturn severely limits their ability to develop it.
However, I don't think the US state is going to be capable of bailing out the economy and AI players this time around. Depends on when it occurs, but I think any sort of bailout of the magnitude required will jeopardize US dollar hegemony, as few countries will want to be holders of a bag that is going to be massively devalued to keep wholly overvalued AI companies afloat.
There are far too many icebergs lurking in the current economic situation, possibly all hitting one after another. AI, oil, credit, housing, all large enough to trigger a recession on their own. Despite their unified line against the proletariat, situations where collapse occurs on multiple fronts will have porky fighting amongst themselves to get some bailout money.
When Bernie thinks he’s stumbled into a good idea…
That’s how you know
I don’t ascribe him ill intentions on this, he is just that impressionable/in need of a bag
fuck it. bernccelerationism arc. why the hell not.
Thats so fucking funny... and cursed. I was watching Noncompete's video on Universal Basic Capital, a neoliberal policy proposal that tech bros are subscribing to, and this is the very same shit he was talking about.
Link to the vid: https://youtube.com/S_JOpo7g18U
I somehow feel responsible for this, in that, sometimes when debating socialism with people who I know are not doing so in good faith, I troll them by saying I am talking about universal basic ownership and not socialism.
What is the pitch with this "UBC"? The public "gets a share of the profits" in certain companies without any actual voting rights/power to influence said companies? And it just so happens to be capital in companies with dubious financial performance whose early stage investors are looking for a bag holder?
Pretty much. Its being dressed up as a redistributive policy, but there isn't much the public could do with their "share". Much like how 401ks were pitched. As we've seen, when shit hits the fan in the stock market the people that suffer the most from those losses are all the working people who's 401ks are tied up with it. I'd imagine they could put similar penalties for withdrawing money from these "UBC" account much the same way there are tax penalties for using 401k money before you retire. So imagine getting money from you check pulled and put into some "savings" account that will be tied up and dependent on all of these AI companies. When that bubble bursts so many people are going to be fucked over and they'll be doubly fucked over when the government steps in to bail these companies out in the interest of the "economy" and the "public".
i think it's more grifter like, say they swing 20% stake or whatever for some reason, then they'll start pump these companies full of cash via contracts, schools blowing up, education (if such a thing exists), then they'll suddenly turn profitable (10 billion per year contract now is enough to make them "le profitable"), than their evaluation start absorbing more dollars in the world, then they sell it back under different admins, ultimate bagholding achieved. and they can't do it via tech companies themselves cause those have run out of cashflow already and/or doesn't make sense for them (apple). so the apple reasonableness around llm will be their porky undoing
*because i don't think they will give treatlers the scraps, why would they? meanwhile pumping usa stock market by all the wealth in the world is very profitable endeavor. if anything, i expect them to privatize social security if they manage to pump stock market even more