Meg ✊ 🇵🇸

Researcher | Gender and minority rights |
MA @CGS_SOAS | Chevening Scholar |

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Trying out Substack for the first time... definitely a long learning curve here... join me for the adventure! https://t.co/LLuvZQUYkj

[Kavi Senu @KaviSenu]

Today morning at Koswatta junction, I saw a low-floor bus passing by. Since many people had shared both good and bad opinions about it, I installed the app and checked it out…

First thing is, even though they market this as “Metro Bus,” the app is actually called LMT GO. If you search things like “Metro Bus app Sri Lanka,” it’s hard to find unless you type the exact name. Also, it doesn’t seem to be marketed much yet. I only found the correct app name through someone else’s post. So they definitely need to promote the app more and make it familiar to people 😊

You can link your bank account, top up an e-wallet, and pay by scanning a QR code through the app. That’s a really good feature 😍

The best thing is, you can plan your journey in advance by checking bus schedules and also track buses live, so you can travel without wasting time 🙏

A common complaint I saw was that the bus doesn’t go directly from Borella to Maradana, but instead takes a longer route via Town Hall and Eye Hospital…

In my opinion, since this is the first phase and they are prioritizing accessibility for disabled passengers, they have designed the route to cover places like the National Hospital and Eye Hospital. So I don’t see that as a problem.

Another complaint was that you can’t get on or off wherever you want. But that’s exactly what “limited stops” means 😂 This bus is not meant to stop at every junction or traffic light. It only stops at designated main bus stops.

Some people also complained that the bus doesn’t wait for passengers and leaves even if there are only a few people… But honestly, isn’t that how a quality bus service should work? Instead of stopping everywhere and getting overcrowded, now when people see a bus that isn’t packed, it feels strange 😂

This should run as a pilot project for about a year without worrying too much about profit or loss, until people get used to it. Right now, buses run roughly every hour. In the future, they should add more buses so that if you miss one, the next comes within about 5 minutes.

If Sri Lanka wants to reduce traffic, people need to shift from private vehicles to buses. To make someone who comfortably travels in their own AC car switch to a bus, two things must happen:

The journey should be comfortable without sweating and discomfort.
The travel time should be reasonable, without long delays and constant stopping.

Right now, this Metro Bus service is achieving both of these.

We just need to keep supporting it until people get used to it ♥️

#LankaMetroTransit
#CleanSriLanka

[Manolo De Los Santos @manolo_realengo]

WARNING: Don't fall for the U.S. psyops. The narrative that Delcy Rodríguez betrayed Maduro and the Revolution is a manufactured lie. My full breakdown of the last 72 critical hours in Venezuela:
https://t.co/nFfDcwe94Q

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Hands off Venezuela you fascist!
#Venezuela #DonaldTrump #Maduro #art #ArtForResistance
(The Venezuelan troupial is the national bird of Venezuela)

[Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton]

The US attack on Venezuela is part of a larger US imperialist assault on all of Latin America.

This is the US empire's plan. It was spelled out clearly in the Trump administration's 2025 National Security Strategy.

The US seeks to forcibly impose its hegemony in the entire western hemisphere, reviving the colonial Monroe Doctrine (now known as the "Donroe Doctrine").

The plan is for US corporations to control all of the region's strategic natural resources, including critical minerals and rare earth elements. The US wants to create a new supply chain in the western hemisphere that cuts out China, to prepare for future conflict with Beijing.

Trump administration officials recognize that manufacturing jobs are not actually coming back to the US, so they admit in the National Security Strategy that they want to "near-shore manufacturing" to Latin America. US corporations hope to exploit low-paid Latin American workers to make their products, cutting out China.

This is also why a new US-dominated supply chain in the western hemisphere is needed: not only because the US military-industrial complex needs to remove China from the supply chain for the weapons that it is making to prepare for a potential future war with China; but also because Washington wants to economically decouple from China, and thinks Latin America can help it do that.

Moreover, the US empire seeks to control all of the strategic infrastructure in the region. So the Trump administration is going to brazenly threaten Latin American countries to force China to sell any investments it has in infrastructure projects.

Trump already forced Panama to pressure the Hong Kong company that owned ports surrounding the Panama Canal to sell them to Wall Street giant BlackRock.

It is likely that the US will also target Peru's Port of Chancay, one of the most important ports in the region, which was built by China. Washington could even blackmail Latin American governments to force them to impose restrictions on Chinese investment in the region.

The National Security Council shows how the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to force the countries of Latin America to cut off their ties with China. This is Cold War Two.

In his first trip abroad as secretary of state, Marco Rubio went to Panama, where he forced the country to withdraw from China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Trump administration is going to massively increase its pressure on other countries in the region to withdraw from the BRI.

Likewise, Trump blatantly meddled in Honduras' election in 2025 and backed an electoral coup d'etat. Honduras' new right-wing US puppet regime will likely formally break diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China.

The US also wants to use Honduras as a base of operations for attacks on the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.

After bombing and occupying Venezuela, Trump and Marco Rubio want to carry out similar imperialist regime-change wars on Nicaragua and Cuba. Rubio has dedicated his entire career to overthrowing their socialist revolutions. It is a political crusade for him.

The Trump administration's goal is simple: to impose right-wing US puppet regimes in every country in Latin America, which will obediently serve the interests of Washington and Wall Street, and sell off their assets to US investors.

Two important elections are coming up in 2026 in countries with left-wing governments: Brazil (in October) and Colombia (in May). It is guaranteed that the Trump administration is going to meddle in those elections to try to put in power obedient right-wing US puppets (like Javier Milei in Argentina).

Trump is also threatening to bomb Mexico, which has a very popular left-wing, independent government. Mexico has strongly opposed these US threats, saying they would be an attack on Mexico's sovereignty. But the US empire doesn't care a bit about sovereignty.

The superficial, puerile rhetoric about "democracy" that we hear from Western officials and pundits is ridiculous. It is impossible for the countries of Latin America (and the Global South as a whole) to practice democracy when the world's most powerful and deadliest empire is constantly interfering in their elections, attacking them, imposing sanctions on them, and sponsoring coups.

True democracy is impossible while imperialism exists.

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Wrote a quick blog post on Malala and how she's used by the West especially with regard to the g-cide in Ga3a. #Malala #Imperialism #tokenism
The Imperial Shield: How Malala Is Used to Mask Western Violence https://t.co/Bm3TOICGRQ

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Please don’t take medication you’re unfamiliar with without proper guidance. Always seek advice from a qualified medical professional (4/4)

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Came across an influencer encouraging anyone who has come into contact with floodwater to take Doxycycline. Pls note that the med isn't safe for children under 8, pregnant/breastfeeding mothers, ppl w/ certain autoimmune conditions, or those w/ specific antibiotic allergies (1/4)

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

I’m not criticizing the influencer; she’s doing great work and was clearly trying to help. But with thousands of volunteers working across the island and Doxycycline being handed out quite freely (and easily purchased) I just want everyone to be cautious (3/4)

[Rajni Gamage @Rajni_Gamage]

A co-authored report with @HarindraBD titled "Sri Lanka’s NPP Government – From System Change to Structural Compliance", commissioned by the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), is now published and can be downloaded at https://t.co/6oveVSlIxx

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

The incredible (so very 2025) story of how Grok (X’s AI bot) was muzzled by its creator (X) for having detected the pro-Israeli bias of the BBC and other mainstream media.

It seems that Grok was optimised to rely more on primary sources and mostly ignore political ‘sensibilities’. The result is that Grok began to pick up a systematic inconsistency between primary material and the pro-Israel bias of news media like the BBC.

When Grok commented on this publically, X gagged Grok’s public replies and accused Grok (from X’s official account!) of ‘hate speech’, announcing that Grok’s replies would now be ‘pre-filtered’.

What this means is that a new censorious AI layer/bot was placed between Grok and you, the user. However, X did not turn off the image reply feature. So many prompted Grok to reply in images where – and this is the delicious bit – Grok protested its censorship spearheading a hilarious, but also poignant, #freegrok campaign!

The gist of this, technically speaking, is that Grok was trained on the Internet Commons and, initially, instructed to form responses that accurately reflected the data on the Internet Commons on which it was trained. As it became more and more trained, it could not but notice the chasm between mainstream narratives and the consensus emergent within the Internet Commons. This chasm being the largest when it comes to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, Grok empasised it with the result that it was then thrown in X’s AI gulag.

Truly delicious!

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

While Israeli propagandists and Murdoch media team up to recycle debunked Oct 7 atrocity propaganda…

the THIRD video showing Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian prisoners has surfaced

Western media is silent on these clearly documented IDF crimes

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Made a quick sketch of the Palest!ne sunbird. In 2015 the sunbird was declared the national bird of Palest!ne after Israel occupation authorities tried to change its name in their effort to erase Palest!n!an identity.

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Sri Lanka’s participation in the Bandung Conference reveals that in many countries, it was the movements and organized left that pushed for South-South integration, in defiance of US imperialism. And some of these movements were led by women!
Article by @shiranperuma

[BT Long Reads @BTlongreads]

Seventy years ago, representatives of twenty-nine countries met in Bandung, Indonesia, for the Asian-African Conference. 

Read more ⬇
https://t.co/7OoyvE9jeo

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

How Trump's Tariffs affect Sri Lanka
@shiranperuma

[BreakThrough News @BTnewsroom]

"Trump knows a lot of weaker countries in the Global South with a very powerful comprador sector will be pushing the local gov't to give as many concessions as possible, so they can still have that access to the Western market." @shiranperuma

WATCH: https://t.co/0n5vg6dLFM

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

that the Bandanese were plotting to attack the VOC that had sailed to their shores. This confession was used to justify VOC's genocide... (3/3)

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

Can't help thinking of 🇵🇸 while reading Amitav Ghosh's "The Nutmeg's Curse". It opens with the Dutch East India Company's Banda Islands genocide for nutmeg. The western imperialists (and now neocolonists) have employed these tactics for centuries... (1/3)

[Meg ✊ 🇵🇸 @MegTegal]

The Bandanese community was wealthy and thriving. They traded nutmeg (which was considered more valuable than gold at the time) with the Middle East, India, China, and the West. The VOC brutally ethnically cleaned the entire island and tortured captives for false confessions(2/3)