Image is a map of the Western Sahara, sourced from this article in the Middle East Eye. Much of the information in the preamble also came from there, as well as this article.
November 6th marked the 50th anniversary of Morocco, under King Hassan II, beginning the invasion and occupation of much of the territory of the Western Sahara. Today, approximately 80% of the territory of the Western Sahara is controlled by Morocco, with the Polisario Front - the government of the Sahrawis - controlling the rest, hugging the border of Mauritania. Between them lies one of the longest walls and one of the largest minefields on the planet, of which construction began in the 1980s.
The legitimacy of Morocco's control over the Western Sahara is one of those long-lasting diplomatic issues which ultimately doesn't seem to matter very much in terms of on-the-ground realities, and reveals the eternal uselessness of the United Nations especially in regard to actually helping oppressed people. Up until about 2020, the US and certain other Western countries did not formally recognize Morocco as having sovereignty over the whole territory, but in terms of providing genuine opposition to Morocco, it seems that Algeria is the major player in the region. While American, European, and Moroccan corporations exploit the fisheries and phosphate minerals of the region, protected by their minefields (and claims of merely advancing the cause of renewable energy development, AKA greenwashing), Algeria provides what aid they can to support the displaced Sahrawi people, many of whom have been forced to live in refugee camps.
On October 31st, the US put forward a resolution in the UN Security Council which was adopted (Russia and China abstained) and provided major support to Morocco, urging the Polisario Front to adopt the 2007 "autonomy plan", which would, despite its name, be synonymous with an end to their independence movement. Such a plan was met with much jubilation in Morocco, with King Mohammed VI remarking "From now on, there will be a before and an after October 31, 2025.” Such a date was also the catalyst for the PF intensifying their guerilla struggle against Morocco, as legal avenues for autonomy and basic human rights are running out as the imperialists grow more desperate.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity'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.
Look at my store of value, bro. Totally not another top-heavy speculation and fraud vehicle.
Stocks doing this the day after nvidia posted good earnings and guidance is hilarious.
Good earnings... maybe. They are supposedly completely sold out, but their inventory just keeps rising. Also their order to cash conversion went down by like ~20%, meaning someone didn't pay for their orders, or Nvidia had to do some non-cash deals for their GPUs. Their accounts receivable also went up by like ~$5 billion.
It could be just a quarterly anomaly of course, a single quarter isn't that much time. Nvidia is still guaranteed to do quite well for a while because they are in the shovel selling industry during a gold rush.
How it was explained to me is NVIDIA sells the GPUs to a spun-up middle-man company that then leases the GPUs to places like OpenAI on a specified term. The value of the lease isn't recognized by NVIDIA during the term, only when it's concluded. NVIDIA won't see the cash until 5 years down the road (or whatever), but will book the revenue up front.
No, stablecoins are an easy entry point into the crypto system and are the main source of printed fake coins on the market. You can go to any crypto exchange and swap your magic stablecoins for magic crypto.
I think USDT trading volume may go down as bitcoin crashes but there will always be demand for it, its where all cryptobros run to whenever trying to cut risk.
Converting between USD and BTC directly will get you into issues with AML/KYC, it also has fees (2-5% for cards, bank transfers are cheaper but take time). So, USDT works in between since there are no controls in transfers as long as you own the wallet. Direct USD BTC trade is also much more visible in the banking system, so cops can ask your bank for statements and see you are sending back and forth money to an exchange or random strangers (in case of P2P exchanges). USDT can be tracked too since there is always a ramp between fiat and crypto but it's more difficult, more so if you use physical cash for P2P trading.
If you are in a third world country, your currency weakens as U.S. economy collapses due to dependencies on capital/trade flows.
Countries which have currencies with tight capital controls cannot have a stablecoin, at least one that is directly pegged to the respective currency.
Tether works because Tether Inc. is the issuer, all the Tethers you buy in the secondary market like Binance only has secondary liquidity and isn't convertible to Dollars (ie you can't take it to Tether Inc for Dollars in your actual bank account), they have various checks and requirements for being a participant, only then you can convert.
Meanwhile, if a Tether Inc like entity tried to setup a similar entity in say, India pegged to Indian Rupee (INRT) they'll fail, since the Indian Government can just freeze their bank accounts for violating capital controls and money laundering regulations. This will cause the INRT prices in secondary markets to crash.
Ofc, no country with capital controls would want just anyone to be able to hold their currency equivalents without checking the owner of the wallet.