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.
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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.
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.
I finished reading Seth Harp's Fort Bragg Cartel book recently. it's good and touches on a lot of stuff we cover here. The book talks about the nexus of special forces operators doing death squad work in Afghanistan getting involved in drug dealing and crime around Fort Bragg. A couple of unsolved murders of operator types are used as a vehicle to tell the story. I wished there had been more big picture analysis over more detail about individuals' rap sheets, but I found it compelling nevertheless. Fair warning that the book opens with some really disturbing accounts of death squad activities and the absolute brutality of these cowboy operator types. Lots of descriptions of violence and cruelty, so be mindful if you are triggered.
spoiler to keep the thread manageable
The theme of the book is blowback. America went to war in Afghanistan, was unable to achieve goals with conventional means, attempted to achieve goals using unaccountable death squads, the lack of accountability provides structural support for other crimes like drug trafficking, drug abuse and casual violence, then members of death squads come home. Blowback stateside comes in the form of drug violence, domestic violence, deaths of despair/addiction, PTSD, and ex-operators that act as a reserve pool of labour for clandestine wet work, foreign and domestic.The best part of the book was his discussion of the evolution of the war in Afghanistan/Iraq and the growth in the importance of JSOC in the invasion/occupation. Harp paints a good picture of this trajectory. I wish this aspect of the book had been expanded as I think there is a lot to dig into there: the distribution of opium from Afghanistan out and connection to real international cartels, the budgetary/decision making implications for this unaccountable state-within-a-state, the implications of reliance on special ops on American force projection (I don't think the US could fight a peer war now, let alone win). The book focuses on specific people and crimes, not broad analysis. For newsheads who don't need to be convinced that these people are monsters, the relative absence of structural analysis is a bit disappointing. Maybe in a followup book.
Early in the book Harp makes a throwaway comment about how there are two types of special forces operators: heavily tattoo'd outlaw biker types and straight laced, religious teetotalers. The book centers on the outlaw biker types, specifically the three guys whose murders are discussed. Crashing out into spectacular murders and wild drug crime is by definition more visible and high profile than not crashing out and continuing to quietly do the work of empire. The current activities of JSOC/special forces/general black ops is discussed in the book in general terms, but is not the focus because by definition these things are not as visible as a tweaked out operator murdering his friend in front of both their daughters. The spectacular crashouts by the outlaw types are like the visible portion of the iceberg while the quieter, more stable work lurks invisibly.
Another thing that struck me is that the imperial machine really chews these operator types up and spits them out. I frankly have no sympathy for them on a moral basis, but nevertheless I think it is correct to identify how the machine does not support its elite soldiers as they crash out. I have a bit more sympathy for the young women who joined JSOC and were sexually harassed while they provided administrative support to facilitate the act of extrajudicial murder, but also is it your first fucking day? Who do you think these guys are?
After reading this book I rewatched Sicario from 2015. It is a glamorization of these kinds of guys applying the skills of war crimes against Mexican cartels. The disdain for anyone not part of the unit, the culture of bravado and machismo, insider/outsider attitude, and brutal violence all line up with the world that Harp portrays, though of course that movie is generally dumber and not grounded in any kind of geopolitics the way that Harp's book is.
To tie this back to news and future blowback, this article "Azov 9/11" posted earlier this thread is worth reading as a historic analysis of what this class of death squad soldiers and compradors get up to after The War is over. We've already seen a taste of that with (attempted) perpetrator of stochastic violence Ryan Routh, but he wasn't actually any kind of operator. As the American rug is pulled from Ukraine, there will be a lot of skilled combat veterans left high and dry that will disseminate into the west. some will be angry nationalists driven by ideology, but others will be more mercenary soldiers of fortune who gravitate towards around these secretive flows of money and weapons like remora.