A week ago, the Bolivian left-wing party, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), currently led by Luis Arce, decisively lost the round of elections against the right-wing. This comes after a prolonged period of "infighting" between Arce, and Morales, who previously led the MAS prior to the 2019 coup which briefly installed Jeanine Anez.
I put infighting in quotes because despite the nominal similarities between Arce and Morales, it is clear that this is not merely a counterproductive battle between two men - instead, the Bolivian left has arrived at a time of unavoidable conflict between two competing strategies. The electoral strategy is represented by Arce, who has aligned himself with a more middle-class-oriented campaign that is more economically liberal, whereas Morales represents a more working-class-oriented campaign that seeks to go further than tepid reform.
Such a conflict between electoralism and revolutionary action is inevitable in any and every developing country that 1) possesses a functioning left-wing party or organization, and 2) is under internal and/or external pressure by capitalists. This crisis must be resolved eventually - and this electoral failure is how such a crisis is manifesting right now. So while the Bolivian left has indeed lost the election, it is not yet defeated. The revolutionary campaign can, if it is willing, still ultimately stand triumphant. But what must be done is a real movement towards socialism, which goes beyond technocrats reforming from above, and instead transforms the state into a full political project of the working class, in which their movements, organizations, and protests are genuinely empowered. Such a project will involve repression by the forces of reaction, not least by the United States, but it is the only road left to take.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel'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.
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.
This headline reads like a shitpost but I swear that it's not. "F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before fighter jet crashed in Alaska." This is the consequence of totally outsourcing your entire military production to private companies with little to no state oversight. Turns out, not only does the F-35 not work in a thunderstorm, it also doesn't work in the cold!
Per https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/27/us/alaska-f-35-crash-accident-report-hnk-ml
"Welcome to Lockheed Martin technical support. There are many customers calling about their F-35 right now. Please hold."
elevator music plays
Y'know, you'd think a problem like that would be trivially solvable by, like, some kind of basic manual override. One would expect it to be intuitively pretty obvious how stupid it is to let your jet "think" anything without making sure you can overrule the automated system if it thinks something incorrect, like "I'm not actually flying even though multiple sensors should be saying I am".
But anyway, glad to know that even though we may have missed the 2025 date, we may yet manage Call of Duty: Black Ops 2's "entire Western military gets hacked and self-destructs" at some later point. Keep going, MIC folks, and put AI in everything, please!
If I paid trillions for a plane project it better start thinking
Yeah but if you add a basic manual override, then how does Lockheed Martin get its consulting fees for 24/7 tech support? Come on, think of the shareholders here.
As much as I hate Lockheed Martin and would never work for them on principle, god would I love to have that tech support job just for the laughs
I'm having a really fun time reading this thread imagining the brain geniuses I went to uni with who interned there, assisting this pilot while the plane is going down, and the pilot is crashing out at them while they ask ChatGPT for help.
"You'll need to keep the aircraft airborne until our technicians are able to get out to your location. The next availability we have for one of our service crews is in March 2027. Would you like to schedule a service call?"
That or actually doing preflights
This has nothing to do with the aircraft not being able to fly in the cold and everything to do with some grunt filling the hydraulic fluid with water. Literal litres of water in the hydraulic fluid, causing the landing gear to freeze in place. Any aircraft with it's hydraulic systems full of water, would have them freeze when it gets cold enough. This caused the weight on wheels/squat sensors, first on the nose landing gear and then on the main landing gear after multiple touch and go landings, to think that the aircraft was on the ground. These touch and go landings are what caused the main landing gear sensors to think that the aircraft was on the ground. This caused the fly by wire system to think that the aircraft was on the ground once 3/5 sensors indicated such (one sensor for the nose wheel, and two per main landing gear wheel), and put the aircraft on ground control flight laws, which is obviously uncontrollable in the air.
This is nothing unique to the F-35. Any aircraft with a fly by wire system relies on the input of sensors to implement flight laws, and the first fighter with a full fly by wire system was the F-16A in the 1970s. The first Soviet aircraft was the Su-27 in the 1980s. Having a "conference call" with the manufacturer isn't anything unique either, both in civil and military aviation. Everyone from Lockheed, to Boeing, to Airbus, to Sukhoi has someone on call to help troubleshoot if something goes wrong. This is modern aviation, and it's the safest it's ever been. No system is immune to a failure of basic maintenance, like filling the hydraulics with litres of water.
So in actuality, this is just a massive fuck up by the American mechanics?
Yes, it's suspected that they used hydraulic fluid from barrels that sat exposed to the elements in Japan, and that said barrel had expired in April of 2024 and was 1/3 water.
Good lord, if the person who did that isn't a saboteur, they've missed their calling in life.
Critical support to that worker. Or uncritical support if they did it on purpose. Keep it up!
Or sabotage heheh
I fucking love my state with all the wild and outlandish shit that keeps happening here
lol. lmao
Still love the ~~truck~~ plane
"welp, I finally bricked my F-35. How cooked am I?"