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Bulletins and News Discussion from April 28th to May 4th, 2025 - Competent Fascism? - COTW: El Salvador

Image is from the Britannica article on CECOT, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center in English.

This megathread's topic is inspired by our lovely news regular, @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net, who talks often about the conditions inside El Salvador and gives nuanced and informative takes.

As the Trump administration continues to make foreign policy blunders that would make even the staunchest anti-imperialist accelerationist blush - and we are barely three months in! - it's interesting to compare and contrast his policies of incompetent imperialist and domestic management to the dictators in other countries.

Bukele is somewhat unique among fascists, in that he seems to not hide - and seems to even admit to - his evil, self-describing as the world's "coolest dictator". El Salvador has no particular shortage of prominent fascists in their history, but one major example is Maximiliano Martínez, who led the country over much of the 1930s and the early 1940s. He was responsible the deaths of many thousands of communists and indigneous people, and yet joined World War 2 on the side of the Allies and against the Nazis.

The comparisons between Martínez and Bukele - and, indeed, between Bukele and Trump - in terms of their impact on minority groups are slowly growing as world attention is being drawn to the country. The recent meeting between Bukele and Trump has shifted a spotlight onto El Salvador's crime policy; the internal conditions of El Salvador's prisons are genuinely monstrous. One gets a similar feeling as when reading descriptions of the conditions of Holocaust victims in German concentration camps. Trump has made statements to the effect that he want a similar crime crackdown inside the United States, and I certainly believe that he wants this (ICE is already just kidnapping people off the streets into vans), but his administration has been so chaotic and mismanaged that it's difficult to determine whether this will be an interest he rapidly drops in favor of some other hair-brained scheme.

Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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783 comments

  • TASS: Trump vows to reduce customs duties for China

    "At some point, I’m going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. And they want to do business very much. Look, their economy is really doing badly. Their economy is collapsing," he told NBC News in an interview.

  • Trump: "We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we're essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we're saving hundreds of billions of dollars. It's very simple."

    wow

  • Israel indirectly places blame on the United States, with the Israeli Air Force stating that the American 'THAAD' system missed the Yemeni missile, allowing it to impact at Ben Gurion Airport – Kann

    • Telegram

  • Estonia increased its military spending to 5.4% of GDP from 3.4% (an increase of €750M).

    This is enough money to provide a significant amount of funding to Rail Baltica, further improve public transport, or even build a nuclear power plant that can make Estonia self-suffifient in complementary renewables/nuclear energy (or even make Estonia an energy exporter).

    But you know,

    sounds of the Riigikogu collectively chowing down beet and onion slop and polishing horse cocks

  • US and UK airstrikes continue on Yemen for the 51st night in a row. The following governorates were hit by airstrikes:

    Hodeidah:

    • Unspecified amount of airstrikes hit Ras Isa Fuel Port.

    Sana'a:

    • Fighter jets heard over Sana'a.
    • 3 airstrikes hit the Sawad area in the Sanhan district.
    • Unspecified amount of airstrikes hit Al-Malikah area in Bani Hushaysh.
    • 6 airstrikes hit the Bani Matar District.
    • 2 airstrikes hit the Sa'wan area of Shu'ub District.
    • Unspecified amount of airstrikes hit Al Rawdah area of Bani Al Harith District, near the airport.
    • 2 airstrikes hit the Attan area of Bani Matar District.

    Ma'rib:

    • 2 airstrikes on Raghwan district.

    Al-Jawf:

    • 3 airstrikes hit the Khabb wa ash Sha'af District.

    Big focus on Sana'a today, after it was excluded from strikes yesterday.

    Warning for potential graphic imagery during ongoing airstrikes:

    Al Masirah TV twitter

    Xcancel mirror

    I hope to get my post about the Franken SAMs out tomorrow, but who knows, maybe Iran will unveil another ballistic missile, or Yemen will hit another target, and delay it further.

    Latest statement by the Yemeni Armed Forces on the ballistic missile strike at Ben Gurion airport, and the announcement of a air blockade on Israel, something that they've been working on since March 22nd. I think the direct hit very near the airport terminal and control tower has given Yahya Sare'e the necessary political capital and confidence to announce it more broadly now.

  • Big news from Iran, with the suspension of negotiations between the USA and Iran. Iran has unveiled a new Anti Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) called the Qassem Basir. This is the ASBM version of the land attack Haj Qassem ballistic missile, with a range of 1400km for the land attack version, Iran claims a range of either 1200km or 1300km for the anti ship version (conflicting information currently). Yes, these missiles are named after Qassem Soleimani. This is big news as the current longest range dedicated ASBM in the Iranian arsenal (and potentially Yemeni arsenal) is the Zulfiqar Basir, with a range of 700km, so we're looking at nearly double the range.

    Qassem Basir ASBM variant:

    View of the target in the bottom half of the image from the missile's electro-optical seeker:

    Haj Qassem land attack original variant:

    Now, the Zulfiqar, Dezful, and Qassem missiles are all part of the same family of ballistic missiles (which I will call the Zulfiqar family), in that they all use a Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle (MaRV) of similar design, with Dezful and Qassem being ways to extend the range of the Zulfiqar MaRV, from 700km, to 1000km with Dezful, to 1400km with Qassem. With an ASBM version of Zulfiqar already in existence, it makes sense to use the Qassem as a longer range ASBM platform.

    How this missile works and acquires it's target is similar to how other Iranian shorter range ASBMs work, and an extension of the Pershing-II concept (first ever MaRV equipped land attack ballistic missile). The missile is targeted at an appropriate re-entry point, near the actual or predicted location of a ship. During re-entry, the MaRV performs a "pull up" maneuver, then a "glide phase". During this glide, the electro optical seeker, likely an infrared camera, acquires it's target using image matching techniques (Iran calls this AI now, yes the AI mind virus is everywhere), and them plans a trajectory towards it, before performing a final dive to the target, ideally with an impact velocity above Mach 2.

    The big breakthrough here is getting the seeker to survive the higher speed and higher altitude re-entry associated with longer range. The Zulfiqar Basir had a burnout and initial terminal velocity of over Mach 7, and the Raad-500/Tankeel of Mach 8. So that was the previous limit. The land attack Haj Qassem had a peak velocity of Mach 12. With the range being reduced slightly for the anti ship version, likely to reduce velocity to ensure survival of the electro optical seeker, peak velocity is likely not as high. But I'd guess a safe estimate is that the seeker can now survive Mach 10+ speeds, a noticeable improvement.

    Iran has unveiled this very covertly, under the guise of a "new missile to target Israel and evade THAAD", but the Basir designation (means to see or perceive in this context, used for Iranian ballistic missiles with electro-optical seekers,), and presence of an electro-optical (likely infrared) seeker on the MaRV, tells a different story. This is an ASBM that works in the same ways as other Iranian ASBMs. Yes it can be used to strike land targets in Israel with higher accuracy in GNSS jammed environments (like shorter range Iranian missiles have done in the past versus US military bases, but now at long range versus Israel, solving the accuracy problem for long range Iranian ballistic missile attacks), but that's a dual use capability that could make a hypothetical "Operation True Promise III" counterforce attack more viable in future. The real question for now is, if Ansarallah/the Houthis in Yemen will get their hands on it.

    This is a card that Iran has had up it's sleeve and is now being played, the question is, how will they play it. Exclusively for themselves, or will Yemen get it to strike US Navy warships. Without further modifications to increase range involving lighter payloads and suboptimal minimum energy trajectories, it's not viable to hit targets in Israel from Yemen (2000km range is needed for that), and I can't see the electro optical sensor surviving re-entry under those conditions.

    4 minute long video is included in the article:

    Iran unveils its latest ballistic missile 'Qassem Basir', May 4 2025

  • Trump is sending his Sanctions Coordinator, David Gramble, to Brazil on Monday to negotiate "punishment" for one of Brazil's 11 Supreme Court Justices, Alexandre de Moraes. People like Trump & Greenwald accuse Moraes of censorship but sanctioning a judge IS a form of censorship.

    Moreas oversaw the criminal investigation of Trump's buddy Jair Bolsonaro. When sanctions are levied against a foreign judge as a direct response to their rulings, they function as a tool of censorship by seeking to control or punish judicial speech (i.e., legal decisions). Moraes is also the Supreme Court Justice behind the temporary ban of Trump overlord Elon Musk's X platform, when it failed to abide by local laws.

    According to Brazilian journalist Paulo Capelli, the Trump administration is thinking of barring Moraes from visiting the US (as if he cares), and freezing any US assets (of which he doesn't have any).

    Silicon Valley technofash and their puppet-journalists have wasted so much effort pushing the false, Moraes as dictator narrative, they don't seem to realize that if he were deposed tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect Bolsonaro’s trial. Only 2 Justices are expected to vote 'not guilty'.

  • If anybody wants to suggest a new thread topic, then you have a few hours before I put the next megathread up to make a suggestion.

    I was thinking either India/Pakistan, or maybe the Spain and Portugal blackouts.

  • Looks like the Romanian election's second round's gonna be Simion (fash de facto replacement for the fash guy who got his victory last time around annulled) vs Antonescu (hazy centrist neocon), opinion polls heavily favor Antonescu for the 1v1 Dan (hazy centrist running hard on an anticorruption platform, basically prewar zelenskyyy), Dan’s ahead in the 1v1 polls but it’s too close to be completely sure

    I would lament how Romania has a depressing party system but as a resident of Amerikkka theirs is still three tiers above ours lmao

  • As the UK Labour right's increasingly circular firing squad intensifies after expected blowouts across recent local elections they're announcing (via the political editor of The Times) that they're going they're going to chainsaw - as in shut down - the Department for Media, Culture, & Sport, while their ministers are on Twitter screaming about how they have to do "more deportations, faster".

    The DfMCS supports and strategises for a huge amount of sport and tourism in general, but it also oversees two very obvious and important things that the far-right (in Labour, Reform, and the media) are desperate to be able to sack and dismantle...

    The first is that it oversees funding and provides support for things like galleries, museums, their links with education, and also things like music and the arts. It's a massive culture war target for the frothing at the mouth fash who believe that anything other than white-supremacy and the glory of the British Empire is critical race theory and the woke mind virus. It's history rewriting time folks, not to mention that no doubt the government is probably eliminating it at least in part for retribution against artists like Kneecap (who the Met Police anti-terrorism task force have now assigned units to trawl through every online video of the band ever posted to try and find grounds to charge them with offences, it was revealed the other day) as well as literary and art figures who have spoken out against the genocide in Palestine.

    The second is that it also oversees matters of press freedom and media regulation. Dismantling it provides a perfect attack vector for not only directly forcing media to follow the party line (as oppossed to implicit method of it being one big club of about 300 privately educated lunatics funded by foreign billionaires at the moment), but also eliminating whatever tiny sliver of regulation there is on the right-wing newspapers and television news, the protection of journalists, and defence of ordinary people / groups from smear campaigns and libel (& frivolous libel suits too).

    I've been saying for months that Starmer's government is following the Trump policy agenda in everything but speed and tone and here we have the tone shifting as they scream to speed up the process.

  • In case anyone's wondering why I only share or post satellite imagery or geolocations after any bombings have already happened, and am very strict about OPSEC (even to the point of not reposting posts from resistance figures or media with poor OPSEC), this is why. US CENTCOM has been using social media OSINT (twitter, telegram, WhatsApp, etc) for targeting information, resulting in innocent people dying.

    Twitter source

    Xcancel mirror

    Remember, this is war, not a circus or videogame. Innocent people just like me and you are dying. Don't post, repost or share incriminating stuff, even if a popular resistance figure posts say, a selfie of themselves next to a US daytime bombing while it's happening (Yes, this actually happened, no, I will not share it). Don't post satellite imagery of "potential military sites". Unfortunately many people online in OSINT communities do not understand this, they either don't realise war is real or they don't consider those on the other side of the world as human.

    Ultimately the responsibility is on those doing the bombings (the US Navy in this case), and a group's OPSEC is their own responsibility, and not the responsibility or fault of random twitter accounts, but still, don't play any part in the death of innocent people. There's a reason why Ansarallah in Yemen have put in place a strict official media and social media censorship campaign, which I have posted about before.

    Also if the Commiejones moderator on hexbear is still around, thank you for enforcing OPSEC when you were around.

    If anyone's wondering, the data I use for the daily Yemen posts comes from the Ansarallah/Houthi owned and ran Al Masirah TV.

  • Firestorms in Israel

    Huge forest fires in Israel. So-called 'firestorms' are raging all across Israel, with much of the country experiencing strong winds with velocities up to 110 km/h, reportedly a 'highly unusual' event per Israeli media.

    All 'Independence Day' events and gatherings are canceled across Israel due to the firestorms. Israeli tanks and military bases are burning in the firestorm. The firestorm has reached an Israeli military base in Central Israel, with soldiers reportedly trapped inside their barracks and possibly being burnt alive.

    Israeli Channel 14: Some of Israel's highways are completely shut down due to the firestorm. 'There are dozens of fires burning across the country, and not a single one of them is located in an Arab area'

    Israeli Fire Commissioner: 'The firestorm is spreading at a significant rate. Winds are expected to worsen, and the fires will become more severe the next 24 hours' Not a single one in the West Bank or any Arab community inside Israel. A massive sandstorm has started to appear in the Israeli Negev desert

    Israel: 'International aid and firefighting teams will not start working until tomorrow' Israel has requested international assistance to combat the ongoing fires, reaching out to Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, and Italy for support.

    • Telegram

  • Israel has used drones to attack a Gaza humanitarian aid flotilla in International waters off the coast of Malta.

    UPDATE from Thiago Ávila, coordinator of the Freedom Flotilla still in Malta:

    We had another mission 15 years ago that was attacked, and 10 of our participants were killed in this mission of the Mavi Marmara. And right now we just suffered another attack, where two drones attacked our boat and put our boat on fire and created a big hole on our boat. There was a distress signal that was sent to all neighboring countries, to all the vessels nearby.

    And until very early in the morning, no one had responded to this. This happened now six hours ago. And now that we finally — the fire was put down, and finally, the drones that attacked the boat are out of the region.

    But we are very concerned for our participants. This is part of a humanitarian mission that was carrying food and medical aid to Gaza, because Gaza has now been for 58 days under total blockade — that not a single bag of flour, not a single bottle of water has entered Gaza for 58 days under a state of famine in the Gaza Strip.

    So we were trying to break the siege and create a people's humanitarian corridor, with people from over 20 different countries and carrying all the aid we could carry. We had members of parliament, we had actors, we had doctors, we had news outlets, we had influencers, we had grassroots solidarity movement activists as well for Palestine.

    And we were doing our best. This was a confidential mission. Because they've been attempting bureaucratic warfare on us, we were not disclosing the information until then that we were going, because they've been trying to hinder us. We were supposed to be on the boat three days ago now, and we've been hindered. And now, a few hours before we depart, we were attacked.

    And so we are due to share this information, to contact local politicians, to contact everyone you can, so that the Maltese government organize a proper rescue operation, which is not ongoing until now, and it's been many, many hours. We don't want to antagonize this government.

    We actually think this government needs to be an ally on a rescue mission, but we really need to denounce the war crime that happened because the boat was 13 nautical miles from Maltese territory, so it's in international waters, but it's nearby Malta, and we need people to denounce this attack, this war crime that just happened against a peaceful humanitarian mission to Gaza. And we need people to put the spotlight as well on the total blockade that Gaza has been suffering for 58 days.

    We only went to the boat because we knew there was no other choice to open a humanitarian corridor, so the people of the world were willing to open it.

    And we were attacked. So we were urged for your help, and Nicole here is part of our delegation, has been doing an amazing, amazing job, and we count on you to follow up with her, because we really need you right now, and especially the people, the Palestinian people in Gaza need you more than ever.

    From elsewhere on Twitter:

    We spoke with Jasmine, one of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla.

    She reports that the 30 people aboard the ship are afraid to board lifeboats—fearing Israel will strike them again once exposed. As of now, there are no confirmed injuries, but communication with the ship has been lost.

    Jasmine is currently organizing an independent operation with others to reach the Freedom Flotilla after 7 hours without any response to the ship’s SOS. Authorities, embassies, and officials have remained silent.

    The ship is sinking in international waters.

    Despite multiple calls to embassies, media, and an SOS call and beacon no countries responded for over 6 hours until a Cypriot vessel picked up the SOS call and sent help.

    I don't have the national makeup of activists on board for obvious reasons, but if any of them were British then it's highly likely that the British government has actively assisted in the illegal drone striking of one of its own citizens since they provide radio surveillance of that area, as well as surveillance flights and targeting for Israeli drones from RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus.

    History is repeating itself again, as a reminder; in 2010 Israeli military boarded and stormed a previous Gaza humanitarian flotilla and executed at least 10 activists, all unarmed, some at point blank range, including UK and US citizens.

  • Happy May Day comrades!

    Some May Day reporting from Finland. The local reactionary nazis held a gathering in the city of Tampere today. Their gathering was fully protected by the cops who violently arrested 15 counter-protesters and used a growd control rifle on them.

    The local bougie newspaper report about this here, you can see some of the nazis protected by the cops. They've essentially built a little pen for the fash and during their pathetic unjoyous little march they protected them from all sides.

    The national news piece here.

    A short video about the cops shooting a counter-protester who is throwing back a torch the fash threw in the crowd. This video will expire in two days.

    The counter-protesters threw eggs and torches toward the fash and in general tried to make their cop protected little march fail.

    This picture of one of the counter-protesters goes extremely hard:

  • dow nearly where the liberation started, and yield fallen to 4.6 from 4.9 on 30 years treasuries, another nothing ever happens gang W.

    • We have stopped all trade with the largest market in the world and stocks are the same. Money is so fucking fake man

    • I believe - and I think there’s a tremendous amount of evidence that supports me - that the stock market is “efficient” in the sense that all information is processed nearly instantly (that doesn’t mean stock markets lead to efficient allocation of capital, that’s a very different thing). So that begs the question, the market is NOT pricing in an economic crash. Why?

      It’s reasonable to conclude that market makers are not on the Trump Train and don’t actually believe he will restart American manufacturing or bring in hundreds of billions in tariff revenue.

      OK, so that means the market thinks the tariffs won’t have much of an impact. Given the broad consensus among economists of all stripes about tariffs, it’s also reasonable to conclude that it’s not that the market anticipates there will be no impact from tariffs.

      Thus, I think that right now the market assumes these tariffs won’t stick, and that they’ll actually disappear fairly soon. Market makers are not blind acolytes of capitalism, though. They have a laser focus on making money. So IMO, I think they have reliable inside information that the tariffs won’t stick. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bessent is begging China to just give Trump the most nominal, pointless win so he can fold. And the market - looking back on the past - thinks China will end up being the rational grown-up and will spare any economic pain for giving Trump is cookie.

      And… they might be right. Or at least, I see why this is the response from bourgeois capitalists. But I think if the market ever gets the notion that the tariffs might actually stick then I think you will see the market crash hard and fast. Maybe not as bad as 1929 because I think the market will hold out hope that the tariffs will be lifted (and why would anyone destroy the economy on purpose?) if things get really bad.

      • market is inefficient plenty of times, it might just be external hedge funds have unloaded onto trump simps, the volume will then thin out, every retail trader will leverage out, and then it will crash a second time with margin calls on retail traders after disappointing q2

        or you might be right.

        the market has volume, price and depth of volume at the price (which is unknowable until price is reached), maybe someone dumping 200 billion will go unnoticed, maybe it will crash the whole thing, because deep pockets think different from you, but don't care to short (but also won't care to buy), and just wait on sidelines (like buffet). crashing dollar is very impossible proposition for example, no one has pockets deep enough against money printer, so they can't pull off asian/pound crash even if they plausibly wanted to, forex markets aren't that deep on that scale.

        like examples of shadowy albatrosses everyone ignores inside america: saudis are cash negative already at 65 dollars, what they'll do with that; india/pakistan is absolutely not priced in, despite modi being second bibi; oil inside usa is not, strictly speaking, very cash money as well at 65 (i think some wells are at 40$ cost, while some at 55, which is already bordering on non-profitable); lumber/steel shocks in construction, truck deliveries missing plausibly a month at this point; dropshippers not getting ad revenue, which also fucks google/meta; farmers getting boned inside usa with usaid pull out; ai not fucking working (tech companies do be swimming in cash to afford it, but their evaluation implies much more); construction work inside cities suddenly getting labor prices of non-migrant workers as well.

    • Yea, local currency bond yields were never a good measure. On the other hand, exchange rates are. DXY hasn't recovered much.

      There will always be demand for US Treasuries domestically as long as the US State is functional. It has no risk of involuntary default and is basically money (even long term ones to some extent). Short term treasuries are considered "cash equivalents" in accounting.

      Hedge funds and money managers love Treasuries. It's the easiest way to store money. Reserve accounts at the Fed are only accessible to eligible financial institutions, Treausries are accessible to public.

      If you are a money manager, you can store money in a commercial bank and earn interest. Even if there were no default risk and all deposits were guaranteed by Gov, the deposits are still a liability of the commercial bank, not the Government.

      That is not the case with treasuries, these are direct libablities of the Gov.

    • markets declaring they're not a measure of the economy is very cool and will definitely have no implications with the imperial core

  • The 'Gaza Freedom Flotilla' aid organization has announced that approximately six hours ago, one of its ships was attacked twice by Israeli drones while in international waters near Malta There are reportedly 30 aid workers onboard.

    This is the second time since the outbreak of the war on Gaza that Israel has sabotaged the aid organization’s plans to deliver aid, the first being in April 2024, and the fifth instance overall.

    • Telegram
783 comments