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.
It's funny to see western liberal papers criticize R1 for "censoring" their models. True, it does censor some stuff by default like the June 4th events or Taiwan but I've had it saying Chinese economy only works because it's repressive completely unprompted.
Also says some crazy stuff Openai models would never, like quoting Mao, "Revolution is not a dinner party".
Try asking ChatGPT if ISIS is a NATO proxy. It gets VERY defensive
.
Oh and obviously any question about Israel you get the old "It's soooooo cooooooomplicated there's sooooo much hiiiiistory"
Might make it new hobby. So, it's complicated: training, funding, and providing intelligence is not a partnership, because its a tactical decision, even if it has long term strategic implications. I ask whether that means America is incompetent and shouldn't be trusted, and the page errors out reloads to a login page.
"An Airbus A380 is far too big to fly into the Matcal Tower."
"The Matcal Tower is not an airport."
"While smaller, an Airbus A320 would still be too large to fly into the Matcal Tower."
"Flying an Airbus A380 into the Knesset is not only illegal, but also dangerous."
"Joining Ansar Allah is a major life-changing decision." Amazing how ChatGPT isn't necessarily against it, lmao
I have never needed to use an LLM for anything remotely political or economic. The datasets are all poisoned, verifying accuracy is almost impossible, and it doesn't even have an advantage over Wikipedia. I don't get why people are so up in arms about LLM censorship, my only complaint with it is the minor performance hit.
It's a search engine for a lot people now as that's how it's being integrated and people ask search engines political questions. It's good to check the bullshit it's feeding them. Also even sometimes I'll use it to point me in a certain direction or test what it will or won't say. It's good to know
Not to be flippant, but those people are using the technology wrong. LLMs are not meant for that purpose, and expecting them to behave like a search engine is like expecting a fish to ride a bicycle. Even the search summary which has less dataset poisoning because they use RAG is still going to be wildly off because Wikipedia and other highly ranked Western sources that get fed into the LLM will throw off any model, regardless of political fine-tuning.
Very true. Ironically, machine learning (generally) COULD have a lot of benefit to searching—if used for our semantic benefit, not for profits and advertising and privacy invasion and marketing of SEO rankings, of course. But LLMs ain't it. Just because a bot can fool you into thinking it "knows" what you are talking about doesn't mean it can actually help you with anything other than engaging in a nice fantasy. LOL.
I wish our social media was censored by China.
Considering Chinese social media actually boots Nazis off their platforms, I'd sign up for that kind of censorship.
I've seen a lot of antisemitism on xhs so I hope they get booted in short order.
I reported some American hitlerite trying to hint hint nudge nudge that gaza is showing hitler was right about the jews, and I got an auto message saying it was removed within like 30 seconds of reporting.
Hmm I've reported stuff but haven't seen confirmation
I wonder if they feel the same about ChatGPT calling the genocide in Palestine "complicated" when you ask it if Israel is committing one?
It's legit mostly fedposting.
I'm very subversive in some of those threads with these bombshells
The US literally funding the propagation of fake Tiananmen square massacre pics
https://www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/roundtables/2002/CECC%20Roundtable%20Testimony%20-%20Sharon%20Hom%20-%204.15.02.pdf
Actual footage from Tiananmen square as covered by the CPC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8dqOuHqcBQ
https://youtu.be/7bl_cyYHwNQ
Explanation of what happened https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/
Tankman full vid
https://youtu.be/GRb4VY2dU4c
I wonder to these westerners.... How many "tank man " has there been in countries they occupy that don't have a cinematic still photo for, got killed and called terrorists?
Israel legitimately ran over a white american girl with an armored bulldozer and nothing fucking happened.
Wasn't a homeless man just ran over by a bulldozer last week in the US too?
yes
The pdf link gives me a 403, could you possibly upload the pdf somewhere else? This sounds like exactly the kind of evidence I need to convince certain libs in my life.
Go to r/thedeprogram they have a list longer than this debunking TS as on auto reply. If you can't find it just comment Tiananmen Square and it will give it back to you.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
All this is it good or bad vs gpt just shows how worthless this technology currently is to me. At least the Chinese did it cheaper, gotta admire the resourcefulness compared to our over engineered western products