Image is of Colombian President Gustavo Petro giving a speech at the UN in 2022.
Trump has arrived in office with the force of an avalanche; ending slowing a genocide on the one hand, while simultaneously promising a total nightmare for minorities and the poor throughout and outside the United States on the other hand. [edited for clarity; I do not actually think Trump has ended the Palestinian genocide obviously, I was making a joke - but the ceasefire is a genuine improvement in conditions for millions of people right now who are on the edge of death, so it cannot be dismissed]
It’s still far too early to truly compare and contrast his imperial strategy with Biden’s, but initial signs show that there does appear to be somewhat of a reorientation. Biden was famous for being two-faced; ostensibly offering aid and stability, while also blowing up your pipeline to ensure you did not actually have an alternative to his idea. Trump, meanwhile, seems only really capable of aggression, threatening several “allied” nations with what may as well be sanctions because of the economic harm they’d do. I suspect we’ll be debating for a long time how much of this can be attributed to the specific characteristics of Trump, or whether he merely embodies the zeitgeist of imperial decline - a wounded empire lashing out with extreme violence to try and convince everybody, including themselves, that they can still be the world imperialist hegemon.
I’ll admit it: I did not believe that Trump would actually try and go ahead with putting tariffs on basically anybody who annoys him. And while the threat could still be empty in regards to countries like China and Canada, Colombia is the first indication of the potential of his strategy. Despite some fiery words from President Petro, after Trump’s administration revealed the punishment if Colombia did not agree, it appears that Colombia will in fact be accepting deported migrants after all. It’s funny how that works.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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.
Finally can create an account to say:
FFS people Colombia didn’t agree or surrender to Trump’s terms on deportation. Petro wanted deportees to be treated humanly and not be chained like animals.
He got it. And didn’t get any sanctions.
How is this a loss for Petro or Colombia? Or a win for Trump?
PFLP leader Mohammed Ghali feed from prison, welcomed home by Gazans
http://www.indiatoday.in/amp/world/shows/story/the-buzz-abolishing-income-tax-donald-trumps-plan-and-what-it-means-for-you-glbs-2672126-2025-01-30 So trump wants to abolish income, corporate tax and then make up the short in tariffs and tariff taxes. So the big brain idea he said from his own mouth is to tax other countries. But the US income tax bought in over 2 trillion. To make that up in tariffs they’d have to massively increase imports to a degree ridiculous degree.
Funny portugal news
An MP from the far right Chega party (which has 50 seats and is 3rd place), Miguel Arruda, has been named a suspect for the crime of stealing bags from airports and filling his office with them. The same day this was revealed a Vinted account (online shopping plarform) thought to belong to Arruda and featuring a ton of clothes being sold for 1 euro each (what a steal!) was deleted. He kicked himself out of the party’s what’sapp group before the party leader got the chance to do it but he’s decided to keep his seat (and salary).
It’s ironic because the party and its MPs are constantly talking about “bandits” and wanting to send politicians to jail. The guy was also elected from the Azores archipelago district, which means he has a very thick azorian accent and that made his interview trying to deny the accusations pretty funny, he just said “I don’t feel like I’m guilty”. This past week 2 pranksters managed to get him on a call by pretending to be far-right activists and when they asked him about his relation to Mario Machado (a far right criminal who was in jail for years for killing a black person in the 90s and after being released basically made a joke about wanting to sexually assault a leftist activist and got sued into being in jail again) he said “I belong to mario” 2 times, he’s since clarified that he was just joking. Raising questions about explicit connections between Machado and the Chega party.
heartwarming news: Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have formally withdrawn from ECOWAS
I know many leftists oppose non-military foreign aid because it promotes US regime change friendly NGOs. However, not all aid is like that and the right wing opposition to US Foreign aid is because “they are not Americans, why are we helping them?”.
But take the condoms example, where do you think those condoms are made? I know US is struggling with manufacturing but I think condoms are one of those things it can still make.
Would Americans buy those condoms if it weren’t sent to Mozambique? Wouldn’t it likely be thrown in the landfill instead?
And the condom manufacturers make extra profit from Government purchases.
Explosion in Rheinmetall weapons factory in Spain (southeastern Spain, Autonomous Community of Murcia, not to be confused with 'Murica) (archive link from a Spanish news website). Translating from Spanish:
Six workers have been harmed by the explosion, which happened in an ammo storage facility, with one of the workers being gravely wounded. Rheinmetall has a total of 7 factories in Spain. In August 2023 Rheinmetall bought the Spanish weapons firm “Expal Systems” for $1.3bn. The company, now named “Expal Munitions”, is specialized in the manufacture of bombs, mortar ammunition, and mid-distance projectiles, as well as rocket propulsion systems and 155mm artillery projectiles, delivered to both other countries in the EU and to Ukraine. AFAIK, the causes of the explosions are still unknown (or at least unpublished).
Unemployment is high and salaries are low in general in southern Spain, so I find it hard to rejoice on the harm to the workers. That said: unlimited explosions in western military industrial factories.
Rationalist (Silicon Valley tech worshiping) adjacent, possibly vegan, possibly trans, death cult kills landlord and (Washington State) border patrol officer. I wish I was editorializing here, but weird things are happening in the tech sphere.
True Anon (intro into rationalism and what is going on) - https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/zizian-murder-cult-1
Newsweek (summary of both murders) - https://www.newsweek.com/death-cult-linked-two-murders-zizians-2023563
AP (Youngblut’s arrest) - https://apnews.com/article/vermont-border-patrol-shooting-youngblut-72c1b68aeb3d52cccb05b6b850d83450
Apollo Mojave (I cannot vouch for the integrity of this source) - https://web.archive.org/web/20250130033312/https://zizians.info/
Open Vallejo (Case overview) - https://openvallejo.org/2025/01/27/suspects-in-killings-of-vallejo-witness-vermont-border-patrol-agent-connected-by-marriage-license-extreme-ideology/
SF Gate (Another case overview) - https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/bay-area-death-cult-zizian-murders-20064333.php
Key Figures:
- Ziz LeSota (née Jack): Leader of the “Zizians”
- Milo Yongblut (né Theresa Yongblut): Alleged killer of Mayland. In custody.
- Ophelia Bauckhol (née Felix Bauckhol): Partner of Milo. Deceased.
- Curtis Lind: Landlord. Deceased.
- David Mayland: Border patrol officer. Deceased.
- Maximillian Snyder: Alleged killer of Lind. In custody.
Note that deadnames of individuals have been included for ease of research. Very few news outlets are using the chosen names of Zizian-related individuals, so their commonly used names have been included.
It is getting late, and I’m going to stop researching this before hallucinations set in, because this is very strange.
A little news from Kursk oblast.
Russian forces eliminated another Nazi (18+): https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/01/28/1011722.html
Russian drone operators destroyed another Kiev regime T-64 tank (video): https://odysee.com/@Support4Z:b/📽️-A-🇬🇧-🇫🇷,---Kursk-region,-Destruction-of-enemy-tank:a
if anyone’s bored I’m showing one of Stalin’s favorite movies on hexbear live right nowthe kids movies are on, if I’m still around after they finish I’ll probably try to finish my moverI finished my movie. Here’s the link if you want to see it yourself. If you’re curious about some history behind the film, let me know.
That’s according to a report by the Federal Aviation Administration that was obtained by The Associated Press.
The report says one air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash.
“The position configuration was not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” the report says.
We already knew it, but now it’s confirmed.
There has to be some kind of irony to such a terrible crash happening at Reagan National Airport, right? The guy who fired all the air traffic controllers?
Damn, they actually got him:
https://english.almanar.com.lb/2326898Al-Qassam Brigades Military Spokesman announced on Thursday the martyrdom of Hams military wing’s chief Muhammad Al-Deif in addition to a number of other commanders during the Zionist war on Gaza.
