Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras
Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras
Image is from this Reuters article.
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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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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In an interview with Israel today, Donald Trump calls for an end to the war in Gaza: "You have to end your war. You have to do it. We have to reach peace. We cannot allow this to continue. Israel has to be very careful, because you lose a lot of the world. You are losing a lot of support.'
Meanwhile, Fetterman:
One of Trump's biggest political strengths is knowing which way the wind is blowing.
EDIT: Found this from Twitter:
“I think Israel made a very big mistake,” he said. “I wanted to call [Israel] and say don’t do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, ‘Oh, that’s a terrible portrait.’”
“It’s a very bad picture for the world,” he continued. “The world is seeing this … every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever’s providing that, that’s a bad image.”
Trump reiterated his support for Israel, but he said images of the heavy-handed military response have sparked anti-Israeli and antisemitic sentiment.
“Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that,” he said, referring to mass bombings. “And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’ve watched every single one of those. And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.”
He later urged the country’s leadership to change its public image in the conflict.
“Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations, because right now they’re in ruin,” Trump said. “They’re being hurt very badly, I think in a public relations sense.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4554652-trump-israel-gaza-hamas-war
About as "sympathetic" to Palestine as you can probably expect from him.
mfw Trump is the lesser evil on Palestine
So TikTok reels showing the war worked on Trump
Amazing
he's still fully mentally there, and a more 'humane' zionist than biden
He’s definitely saying better things than Biden (and every Senate democrat, too). I actually think this highlights that Biden will not be any better than Trump on Gaza. Because the Biden admin is maximally supporting Israel other than using the actual US military (overtly) to support Israel. Like, it’s not mathematically possible to be more supportive of the genocide other than to land some Seals in Rafah and have them join in on the genocide. Biden has his foot on the gas in all other areas: US military equipment is pouring into Israel, US diplomats are providing diplomatic cover to Israel at the UN and ICJ, and Biden is telling Netanyahu to ease up on the genocide with same level of conviction my aunt does when she tells us she doesn’t want any rhubarb pie after dinner this time.
I don’t see Biden or Trump going that last step and getting the US military directly involved. That is the only way the US could be even more of a partner in the genocide.
Edit: to clarify, my aunt really loves rhubarb pie.
We can push him left
At this point in time I'm beginning to believe that it would be easier to push Trump left than Genocide Joe. Trump is an opportunist nihilist who believes in nothing except for himself coming out on top, if turning down the genocide dial a notch is goong to make him popular he will do it. Genocide Joe on the other hand believes in Zionism and imperialism and is ready to make sacrifices to uphold it.
HOW IS TRUMP BETTER ON THIS THAN FETTERMAN
mostly trump just knows how to play the fiddle for the establishment. He knows when its done and its time to bail.
Exactly. And more importantly, the likes of Trump and Alex Jones, despite being craven reactionaries, aren't zealots. They're perfectly happy to cut and run, even flip, if it suits them. Unlike Biden who's a true believer through and through.
The man can read a room. The bar is that low.
Why are you surprised that Fetterman is not some kind of progressive? He literally said that South Africa has no rights to criticize Israel because they do atrocities on white farmers.
Maybe Oz wasn’t the most evil choice on the ballot, it’s not like anti scientism and crank politics are something new in Americas
In Hellworld, your only choices are between a racist genocidal maniac and a batshit insane crank.
Permanently Deleted
Predator is the harm reduction candidate. We can push him left!
Look, I know you tankies disagree with Predator on some issue, like ripping heads off of people, but do you really want Alien to be in the White House?
Hey now, Alien is promising a facehugger on every face and that's way more than Predator is offering
Why are you surprised that Fetterman is not some kind of progressive?
I never said I was surprised, though. I don't think anyone here is at this point. We're just dunking on this loser.
It's appalling the U.S. allowed passage of a resolution that fails to call for the immediate execution of John Settlerman.
Eh, Trump literally said he wanted to deport Muslims and Palestinian supporters. Biden isn’t saying he’s doing that, yet.
Yeah he’s just enabling and perpetrating a genocide against Muslims
Cheeto does the theory, Brandon does the praxis
People are making a big deal about this, but it's basically just the U.S. abstaining on its own proposal: non-binding, non-permanent, and unconditionally demands Hamas releases all hostages (yeah, that's right: the unconditional part is on Palestinians).
TBH it's gross that Russia and China let this pass (who submitted it? god I hope it wasn't one of them) when they vetoed the one by the U.S. on Friday.