A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like "in Minecraft") and comments containing it will be removed.
Image is of Rixi Moncada of the LIBRE Party voting in the election.
On November 30th, Hondurans voted to choose their next President, as well as deputies to the Congress, councillors, and other candidates. Like all elections in Latin America, the looming shadow of American intervention will be a major factor in deciding the winner. In this election, that intervention has been fairly naked, with Trump literally stating who he wishes to win (the far-right nationalist guy, Nasry Asfura). Asfura has said that if he does not win, American funding to the country will dry up - a clear threat - and Trump has additionally pardoned the former Honduran president and US ally Juan Orlando Hernández, imprisoned for smuggling cocaine into the US.
The other candidates in this election are Salvador Nasralla of the Liberal Party, who is essentially running on the same platform as Asfura with some differences (such differences would inevitably vanish if he were to win); and Rixi Moncada of the progressive (self-described as democratic socialist) LIBRE Party. The narrative about this election is - try not to yawn - the neverending battle of democracy against communism. This narrative is obviously very important to uphold in the current environment of accelerated aggression against Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and others.
Who is going to win? As of me writing this sentence, the results have not yet been fully reported. However, there has been something of a scandal in regards to a plot - with recorded voices, though those guilty plead AI tampering - to show the best possible preliminary results for the right wing, so as to manipulate the narrative and morale of the population. The idea, is presumably, that if LIBRE were to win, the fascists could say "How did LIBRE go from 20% of the vote (which is what the preliminary results showed) to a victory?! It must be communist meddling!"
Of course, it's entirely possible that LIBRE won't win anyway, or get particularly close. We shall see how things turn out very shortly.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.
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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
The US really get their money's worth from Kagame, don't they?
China's arming and training Rwanda, and the M23 uses advanced Chinese weapons, it's not that simple. This is more the US seizing an opportunity given to them by South Africa's failure, the US get to be a transparent arbiter of the conflict (US interests are transparent, the US wants natural resources and doesn't care about principles or morality, which in reality is a better offer than South Africa's incoherent morality based promises they have no ability to follow through on), freeze the frontlines (the official Rwandan army has to leave the eastern DRC, but M23 can stay, as they're not technically Rwanda and are bound by a seperate deal, so Rwanda still maintains unofficial control, but no further advance, the DRC must take action against anti Rwandan groups). And in the end, the US maintains control of rare earth minerals and cobalt in the DRC. China can't get them.
This is also one of the many ways BRICS is kind of a joke, Chinese made missiles aimed at South African helicopters and jets over mineral resources in central Africa. And then the US sweeps in and makes a deal.
Of course, classic. I didn't mean to imply that it's a US puppet or anything like that, just that Kagame had huge support from the west and it seems like the US has gotten a lot of ongoing benefit from being able to use Rwanda under his leadership to extract resources from the region and destabilize any potential anti-colonial movements, etc.
This just seems like mostly another W for Kagame and his ilk overall.
It's stops further advance and the break out of a large scale war at least, without SADC or UN support, the DRC's odds are poor. The M23s seizure of Goma was swift and sends a clear message. All of North Kivu, and all of South Kivu bordering Rwanda, could fall under M23 control if the order is given by Rwanda. M23 is currently on the offensive in South Kivu.
Taking Goma was always going to be a big win for Rwanda. There's no undoing that. No South African or UN troops are going to die trying to re take it, it's gone.
Looking at the map, this seems like it has the potential to restrict the DRC's access to a lot of water in the area. Relief shadows and map coloring look like a lot of the untaken land bordering the lakes, especially in the north, is quite mountainous/forested.
It's a lot worse than you think, if you zoom out
Holy fuck the UN needs to be abolished if this is what they're calling a peacekeeping mission
The UN is useless. As I said, the UN mission lost basically all its airpower once Ukraine pulled out. South Africa's attack helicopters were not airworthy. And no one else contributed much, I know there were some Uruguayans on the ground and some reconnaissance drones from various countries, but no one supplied close air support once Ukraine left.
Seems like they got their wish. The DRC lacks control over a good chunk of the east since basically the first congo war, so they dont really lose out much.