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.
The synthetic netting used for the exterior cladding and the styrofoam used for internal patch work was a primary factor yes, but bamboo also contributed to it. Bamboo is a natural thermal insulator and can be quite resistant to prolonged high heat exposure, but it is still highly flammable due to being made out of a porous material. So when bamboo catches fire, it doesn’t rapidly disintegrate like the synthetic netting and mats did (which I think were made out of polyurethane composite), however, it does allow the fire to spread to other flammable materials easily.
As I briefly mentioned in my original comment, It is no coincidence that while the government is publicly stating now that synthetic cladding was the main cause of the fire spreading so fast, they were also sending government cabinet members to meet industry leaders in the last couple of days about accelerating the phase out of bamboo scaffolding.
FYI I’m not against the use of bamboo scaffolding because it does have economic and sustainability benefits (plus it is a cool alternative to steel/ aluminium), but it’s simply not as reliable as metals for high rise or huge construction projects due to its inconsistency.
Whether it’s economically beneficial depends on how cheap steel is, and China is by far the world’s biggest steel producer.
As for sustainability, why do you say that steel isn’t sustainable? You can reuse steel scaffolding probably more often than you can bamboo since it lasts longer, and you can recycle it by melting the steel.
I mean, yeah it doesn’t grow out of the ground like bamboo, but compared to some other materials like plastic it’s not that bad.
Bamboo still has its uses, i’m not suggesting they stop using it entirely, but maybe in the future not for this scale of construction work?
Sorry for late reply, was very busy with IRL stuff last few days.
I’m not an expert on the economics of the construction industry, but growing bamboo farms is generally cheaper than trying to mass produce steel, because bamboo doesn’t need the massive power requirements than the steel supply chain does. It’s also funny that you mention China as the world’s biggest steel producer, because China is also the world’s biggest bamboo producer and HK, despite having local bamboo producers, actually imports most of its bamboo from mainland China to fulfil the city’s massive demand. So I imagine the construction companies in HK can source their bamboo scaffolding at very cost-effective prices that are at least competitive with steel, if not cheaper because of the lower production cost.
As for sustainability, while it is true that steel can be easily recycled, it still has a huge environmental cost from mining and refining the metal composite. According to this article which sources its data from a EU environmental report back in 2020, steel and concrete applications account for 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions alone. Another reason is because bamboo is also a very fast growing wood, a newly planted bamboo farm can be harvested in just a few years, which is why it can still be applied to large scale modern construction scaffolding so easily in HK. Combine that with the lower environmental cost, and bamboo can be seen as a sustainable building alternative to metals.
However, as I said in my previous comment, bamboo lacks the consistency in integrity properties that steel can provide (as it is a naturally produced material), and on top of it not being as safe as steel for working conditions, is the reason bamboo isn’t used widely in the construction industry today.