The imperial core is continuing the process of self-cannibalization as the interimperial wars between Europe and the US over resource and territorial control continue. Greenland, populated with less than a hundred thousand heavily exploited people, is the newest territory to fall under Trump's gaze. The main draw is the mineral resources present there, of which it boasts nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum, and much more than remains unexplored under the ice. But the ice is melting, and profit must be made. There is an additional element of wanting Arctic territory to counter Chinese and especially Russian interests and aims; Russia is increasingly eyeing the northern Arctic route as an alternative to more vulnerable routes through the Suez Canal or around Africa, and is investing heavily in icebreakers for that purpose.
However, even if Europe possessed the desire to resist American annexations - and they absolutely do not, at the end of the day - they do not even have the ability. Denmark may, to a lesser or greater extent, make angry sounds and talk about national honour or some such, but their military would be trampled underfoot by even the New York Police Department, let alone a concerted military effort by the US. If Trump wants Greenland, he will have it. This will naturally increase the grumbling in Europe about reconsidering the Transatlantic alliance, and that grumbling may, in the medium-term future, as the American Empire continues its decline, lead to meaningful results. But in the short term, Europe shall have to bear whatever Trump throws at them, for they obviously cannot now ally with Russia, who was the natural counterweight to American interests for decades before 2022.
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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.
These idiots can say this shit all they want but it is absolute nonsense, any surface level look at Brazilian social media's most popular apps like Whatup shows its just as infested with bots and fake news as FB/Twitter or any other garbage.
The cultural phenomenon which allows these services to be almost entirely controlled by right wing/far right-bolsonaro/religious fundamentalists(evangelicas) and ultimately still a somewhat decisive political factor is completely adjacent to whatever the American billionaire alien face dipshit says or does.
1he "Brazilian government" will say this and do actualy nothing meaningful about it. Case in point the recent PIX(online transaction) tax fake news scandal/mass hysteria going on. Entirely through social media.
Yet the Lula government did absolutely nothing to fight about it and that will remain true.
Could you elaborate on that? My partner has a lot of Brazilian friends/gets Brazilian content on social media and we see posts every day about it. I’m having trouble verifying independently, mostly because I don’t speak Portuguese.
I'll try to use US equivalents.
First PIX is a modern QR code style payment system created by the federal government. It became very popular to the point a lot of people are cashless now.
The second major point is every informal(freelancer, gig worker etc) and every small business also use this.
Given those two we have what actualy happened. The Brazilian government sent out a new document saying the Federal Police(FBI) and the tax agency(IRS) are now going to monitor every PIX transaction.
The moral outrage then is two videos(I wont link but you can google "Nikolas Ferreira Pix Instagram") that by now got a combined 150 million views where the far right guy successfuly created this fake news narrative saying this is the Lula government going after the poor, who have been struggling due to neoliberalism and small businessses by making it harder to dodge taxes. The fear is the "IRS" will put a tax on these transactions and hurt the poor/small business.
It is particularly effective for 3 reasons.
First because the person mixes this fake news narrative along with the real Lula neoliberal government hypocrisy, including instances where the government did lie and went back on a similar promise e.g the promise to not tax cheap imports under US$50 which they in fact did.
Second because he successfuly also mixes the natural inherent exploitation and class issues, its very successful at pointing out the rich politicians, big business owners, state owned business are corrupt and dodging taxes while the poor are still struggling to make ends meet so it is just plain evil for "Lula" to go after the poor now. Indeed its true Lula 3 did not bring any meaningful economic gains so far.
Third because one of the main criticism of this neoliberal shit government from the left is that Lula doesn't care about communicating with the population. The President could arrange a prime time national announcement on every TV, radio etc network, every week if he wanted to in order to communicate but he literaly doesn't do that ever. This is a special opportunity where it is necessary for the government to address the population and dispel this narrative. But he hasn't and he wont.
So in the end the government is only barely responding now after almost a whole week. As a result a single Bolsonaro fake news campaign managed to bring down the whole payment system and as a result PIX transactions are down 15% already so far in January.
As for the Zuckerberg thing, as I said, did you notice why it is so ironic? This PIX fake news campaign was an Instagram video.
Remember that some people were quick to lick Moraes(the judge) boots just because of that extremely brief spout with Elon Musk where twitter got "banned" except it literaly all went back to normal, all Musk had to do was pay some absurdly tiny comical fines, literaly a few million is what Elon makes within a day or two.
Some random government/federal judge will say anything again today but the key point is Brazil is completely dominated by American IT, Brazil is held hostage by these companies not the other way around it literaly doesn't matter what political theater they try to pull, money talks and these people are cheap. Brazil is not China, there is no local Brazilian google to fall back on.