Image is from this article, of protestors in Mexico tearing down a steel fence.
While military, economic, and covert pressure on Venezuela and nearby countries in South America proper continues to mount, a similar process is occurring against Mexico, currently under the leadership of the very popular Sheinbaum, who has generally followed the footsteps of AMLO in terms of policies.
While figures in the Trump administration have made statements to the effect of wishing to bomb Mexican territory, internal pressure within Mexico is rather hard to generate when the government is doing generally positive things for people. As such, protests - comically denoted “Gen Z protests” despite young people being a vanishingly small proportion - have arisen in Mexico, very obviously astroturfed by pro-US and anti-Sheinbaum interests. The first protest, on November 15th, gathered less than 20,000 people, while the second, on November 20th, gathered perhaps 200. Article headlines suggesting that Mexico was “on the verge of collapse” have proven rather sensational and wishcast-y.
While it’s easy to poke fun at these farces (I certainly am), it’s important to keep in mind that soft coups have long been part of the American strategy in Latin America, and with unlimited money and many resources to throw at a project, even incompetent forces can eventually create enough chaos that it can make the ruling president or party feel forced to resign. Such eventualities are certainly not inevitable, and even weak states can provide enough resistance to force the US to try a hard coup instead, with outright bombing campaigns and covert military operations. Cuba has provided perhaps the best example in the western hemisphere of how such plots can be subverted with enough national support (e.g. the hundreds of times the CIA tried to kill/maim Castro, plus the Bay of Pigs debacle), but you do have to be willing to take extraordinary measures to do this - the sorts of measures figures like Chile’s Allende did not take in the 1970s, and the measures Venezuela’s Maduro appears to be taking right now. We shall see what path Sheinbaum takes.
Last week’s thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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 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.
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.
This fire in Hong Kong is absolutely horrific. 36 confirmed dead so far and 270+ injured. Multiple buildings went up after bamboo scaffolding caught fire and windy conditions transferred the fire to other buildings with bamboo scaffolding too.
It’s like Grenfell in London but multiple buildings, the fire travelling on the outside of the building. China needs to ban bamboo scaffolding.
https://www.northwaleschronicle.co.uk/news/national/25653705.death-toll-hong-kong-high-rise-fire-rises-36-279-people-reported-missing/
China phased out bamboo scaffolding for modern developments a long time ago. In fact, Hong Kong is the ONLY city left in China that still uses Bamboo scaffolding for literally everything they build. And the only reason why is because of the SAR status they have (the ‘one country, two systems’ model) which protects the Bamboo scaffolding companies that basically have a monopoly on the construction industry there.
As another user said before me, the HK government is trying to finally phase out Bamboo with new regulations that will put HK in-line with what the rest of China already does, but the main problem is the Bamboo scaffolding lobbyists that have immense power in HK’s Capitalist system.
They’re already doing that: https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/hong-kong-will-start-to-phase-out-its-iconic-bamboo-scaffolding-032025
Unfortunately, it seems like this regulation was a bit too gradual (only half of government buildings, and apparently none by private companies, although I’m not sure what the ratio of public to private construction is in Hong Kong). I assume after this tragedy it’s likely to speed up. At least it’s good that the mainland has already mostly phased it out.
Also unfortunately, unions were opposed… https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1787994-20250117.htm
Scaffolding isn’t going to disappear as an industry lmao they’re just going to have to use different tools. Fucking bullshit.
from another more detailed article (https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/09/style/hong-kong-bamboo-scaffolding-hnk-intl-dst), his argument seems to a sort of luddite thing about how bamboo scaffolding is more artful or something
Which is a pretty shit argument - certainly, there’s value in preserving traditional construction methods, but you shouldn’t be doing that to the detriment of people’s safety.
I’m not a Hong Kong cultural specialist or anything, but it feels like there might also be an unfortunate element of anti-mainland contrarianism here, basically a perception that such regulatory moves are mainland impositions that will erase the city’s unique culture
The whole “saving HK culture” argument is inherently rooted in bigoted anti-mainlander and/ or anti-communist sentiments (you will never see HK leftists use the culture argument for stuff like this, it’s always a reactionary thing like the ‘culture war’ in the West). Hell, Bamboo scaffolding is not even unique to HK, it was used all over China for thousands of years! However, the real reason people in the industry oppose getting rid of bamboo has nothing to do with culture at all.
As always, follow the money and you will find the (materialist) truth. Who controls the construction industry in HK? One of the major shareholders is the Bamboo scaffolding companies, which effectively holds a monopoly over the scaffolding business and ensures that nobody can ever change this through intense lobbying via industry associations, private donations (i.e. bribes), and even through the unions like the one you quoted, which yes, are deeply corrupted by the companies they negotiate with to the point that they are willing to ignore worker health and safety standards to protect the profits of the owner-class under the most BS pretences like “oh but our traditional sacred craftsmanship will be destroyed and we’ll lose these precious skills, nevermind the fact that we’ll still keep our current jobs and just learn new skills because people still need scaffolding to build stuff!!”. In fact, you’ll find that these are usually the same type of unions that supported the 2019 HK protests (which happened to be backed or at least implicitly favoured by many HK big capitalists), even though the protests had nothing to do with improving worker’s rights or working conditions at all.
This may change soon though, as the Tai Po apartment fire (which will almost certainly be attributed to the bamboo scaffolding as the cause or at least a major contributor to the severity of it) has caught the attention of the central government and Xi Jinping has personally commented on the event, which may give the HK government a lot more confidence in their ongoing efforts to phase out bamboo.
HK has such a strong reactionary element in the culture it’s awful. Especially among like young boomers/Gen X/millennials (not sure what the zoomers are like). An ingrained sense of superiority over the mainland because they used to be more developed due to imperialist investment, but being overtaken by the mainland in development terms hasn’t provoked them to reexamine their mindset, only become more rabidly racist.
The difference in attitude I’m met with when I speak Mandarin and British-accented English there is seriously disheartening.
I won’t lie, I sort of like the whole bamboo construction thing.
This event convinces me it can fuck right off though.
Yes, it’s definitely cool - just not for massive residential complexes where hundreds (if not thousands) of lives can be put at risk due to it.
You can just do what the Japanese do, and pay a bunch of people a pension to keep lacquering pots in the traditional manner or whatever.
(I’m being facetious but it’s honestly a genuinely really cool practice that I think more governments should engage in - unfortunately, exactly the countries that have the most traditional arts and practices under threat of disappearing are also the ones least likely to have spare funds in the budget for such programs…)
Maybe it can be retained for buildings up to a certain height? The biggest problem with this shit is that the anti-fire system of very tall buildings typically is designed around compartmentalisation. Grenfell for example is a building where fires in one apartment should be fine, the fire shouldn’t have been able to escape and set fire to other apartments, the apartment would burn out and that would be ok. But the cladding on the outside of the building set fire to the outside and that then travelled to other apartments via the outside of the building.
That appears to be the same problem with this bamboo scaffolding. Maybe it would be ok though for smaller buildings where fire crews have the ability to actually reach floors with water? Tall buildings fire services can’t do jack shit about because they simply can not spray water above like the 12th floor or something like that. There must be a height where the concern is more negligible due to fire services actually being effective compared to the tall buildings.
Also as you say, it doesn’t matter as much for commercial or industrial buildings.
wait we shouldn’t wrap buildings in grass?
and if we do wrap building in grass, we shouldn’t wrap multiple buildings only a few feet apart?