Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
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The Cradle article about "Israel's weird abduction of a Lebanese sea captain" where German peacekeepers assisted in the crime.
It brings up some important history of previous incidences:
Tel Aviv's use of such covert raids is nothing new. In April this year, an Israeli death squad infiltrated Lebanon to target a currency exchanger, Hussein Srour, who they accused of transferring funds from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into Gaza. The squad lured Srour to a villa in Beit Mery, Mount Lebanon, where they kidnapped, tortured, interrogated, and ultimately executed him – all while recording the gruesome act for their superiors in Israel.
In 2006, during Israel's month-long July war on Lebanon, occupation forces raided Baalbek and thought they had captured the late Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, only to discover it was a case of mistaken identity. Instead, the Israelis discovered they had apprehended a plasterer sharing the same name in a failed operation that quickly became the subject of ridicule. They released him soon after.
...
The Israeli Mossad has also carried out kidnappings beyond Lebanon's borders. In October 2021, they abducted a retired IRGC officer in Damascus, seizing him while he was strolling near the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital. He was transported to Tel Aviv for interrogation and later released in South Africa.
At the time, Mossad was actively seeking information on missing Israeli pilot Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Then-Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett later admitted that the Syrian abduction operation had yielded no new information, though the Iranian general was suspected of holding crucial knowledge.
In yet another shadowy episode, Israeli intelligence operatives kidnapped a Lebanese agricultural engineer in Cambodia, suspecting him of having ties to Hezbollah. Again, after intense and clearly fruitless interrogations, he was eventually released in Thailand.
It really does prove that you can be given the most advanced panopticon and supreme surveillance state apparatus on the planet but if the people running it are completely incompetent dullards who pop out of the womb and are instantly promoted to vice-admiral, it doesn't really matter.
It's why the whole "We actually knew Hamas was going to attack, we just didn't do anything about it because we just, uh, didn't wanna" is such a hilarious story, because I guarantee that all Sinwar had to do was send messages to Obeida via a cell phone he knew was being tapped about how he was gonna turn Hamas into a thinktank for the advocacy of a Palestinian state by 2070 and these gullible morons in a base in the Gaza envelope were just like "Finally, we knew those cowards would give up. Time to send half our soldiers on holiday to Morocco," and now they're just trying to cover their own asses so they don't get fired. I'm not a Sun Tzu guy but he went hard when he said:
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Especially given that I'm pretty sure Sinwar learned Hebrew so he could read and analyze Mossad operations and learn how to counter Israel, and he survived for over a year in one of the most bombed areas in human history.
But all this stuff is phrased in the most intimidating way possible for regular people, like: "Using our bleeding-edge cyberintelligence capabilities and intelligence gathering using top artificial intelligence algorithms..." so they're just like, well fuck, Palestinian opposition is hopeless I guess, when it's demonstrably not
But all this stuff is phrased in the most intimidating way possible for regular people, like: "Using our bleeding-edge cyberintelligence capabilities and intelligence gathering using top artificial intelligence algorithms..." so they're just like, well fuck, Palestinian opposition is hopeless I guess, when it's demonstrably not
I think about this every day. I am quite sure that almost nowhere on earth is subjected to a more comprehensive aerial and sigint surveillance campaign than the tiny area that is South Lebanon at this moment. NATO is running AWACS 24/7 off the coast. And yet, the fighters are able to operate and carry out successful operations. Hiding in the mountains and foothills and delivering death to the child-killing occupation army.
All the tech in the world and the gluttonous imperialists still get dunked on daily.
Lebanon vs UK for scale.
Western intelligence has been hampered for decades by an obsession with more tech and more data, to the detriment of quality analysis. Just a bunch of spreadsheet nerds with no brain for context or application
Yearning for mossed to capture me and release me in a south east asian country without me actually having to pay for a ticket
I dont think so. Those people have permanent damage from torture.
Waking up in a bathtub full of ice sans liver somewhere in Madagascar