This week marks the one year anniversary of Honduras ceasing to recognize Taiwan and instead only recognizing China. Over that time period, China and Honduras have gone through several rounds of negotiating a free trade agreement, with trade expanding. Additionally, they have just signed a $275 million cooperation agreement, providing education infrastructure for Honduras.
The other major news piece relevant to Honduras is the battle against Prospera, a US-based crypto libertarian firm that sought to buy a private island in order to create an ancap paradise, in which Bitcoin would be legal tender. In 2022, Honduras killed the island's special status that made the deal possible, and so Prospera is seeking $11 billion in compensation.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Honduras! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
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.
Amerikkka abstained, and the resolution also calls for the immediate release of all hostages. It's unclear to me if they mean the release of only those being held in Gaza or if Palestinians being held captive would also be released. For some reason I think they only mean the captive Israelis should be released
Also taken from the UN security council website, why the fuck do they call it the "Palestinian question"? I would have thought that phrasing would give them pause to think
I doubt Israel will willingly release all the Palestinians they have locked up on bullshit charges and I think Hamas will try to get as many of them released as they can since Oct 7 was mainly a hostage taking operation from what I remember. A hostage swap is definitely going to happen at some point but I doubt it will fully end the hostilities.
I think that fundamentally too many of the contradictions in Israel have been broken, laid bare, or challenged by Oct 7 and the work of the axis of resistance. Israel can't go back to the previous status quo since that's been delegitimized. However this progresses there will be a new dynamic in the region and that new dynamic is still coming into being even if they somehow get a ceasefire enacted temporarily.
Speaking after the vote, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution.
“We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she says is the reason why the US abstained.
“Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. She stressed that the release of captives will lead to the increase in humanitarian aid in the besieged coastal enclave.
In a statement following the vote, the White House said the final resolution did not have language the US deems essential, and the vote does not represent a shift in policy.
Maybe there is a limit to how much open genocide america will publicly support. But seeing as america is still supplying them with the weapons israel needs to commit mass murder I think it's more a propaganda move than anything. I think Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden will hold true to that and support israel for the foreseeable future