On December 4th, Rwanda's Paul Kagame and the DRC's Felix Tshisekedi signed the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity (pictured above). Trump boasted that he was settling a war that had gone on for decades, and remarked, idiosyncratically, "[...] and now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands [...]"
A few days later, the M23 militia (backed by Rwanda) advanced into Uvira, a city near the DRC's eastern border with Burundi and a major commercial and strategic location in the region. Burundi, although a small country, is a significant ally to the DRC and has sent thousands of soldiers to aid them during conflicts; this offensive by M23 aims to cut off a direct route between the two, though they do still share quite a long border over Lake Tanganyika. Tens of thousands of civilians (possibly up to 200,000) fled as M23 approached.
Signed almost simultaneously with the Accords was a Strategic Partnership Agreement between the DRC and the United States, which effectively threw open its critical minerals in the east to American exploitation. These minerals include tin, tungsten, and tantalum, which is vital for many industries. The irony is that M23 has been taking territory in the eastern DRC in order to transport these very minerals to Rwanda and onwards to global supply chains. Signing the Accord was, therefore, a remarkably pointless endeavour for everybody involved. Burundi and the DRC have complained, calling for sanctions on Rwanda, and appeasing to Trump's pride, calling this a "slap in the face to the United States", though I doubt the US is ultimately all that bothered about it one way or another.
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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.
What are the totals up to so far? Seems relatively small still? Unlike the thousands of aircraft involved in desert storm or shock and awe.
I always thought it was significant that despite the enormous amounts of equipment and ordinances the US brought to bear in 2003, the truth of the matter is that the Iraqi military surrendered en masse for the sake of briefcases filled with cash
Yet despite that fact, it still took the US three weeks to subdue a country that basically wasn't fighting, to say nothing of the incredible amount of damage the US military suffered during that fiasco; a third of vehicles catastrophically breaking down just on the highway to Baghdad, entire divisions worth of US troops getting bogged down for days fighting what amounted to civilian volunteers and the private army of Saddam's clan
The US has no hope of conquering Venezuela
I still think this is all about trying to incite panic among Maduro and his allies, trying to scare them into fleeing the country.
It's also an intensification of the siege
Yeah, like what they did to Arbenz in Guatemala. Hopefully the Bolivarian government follows the example of Cuba and stays strong instead of blinking.
I've seen someone mention that this is comparable to the build up to the invasion of Grenada, so not very large.
For context, Grenada is 1/30th the population and 1/50th the land area of Caracas metro alone.
Yeah its nothing. I guess its trying to impoverish venezuela by making them spend more on their military or goad them into attacking western puppets such as Guyana or Trinidad.
If that's the end goal they are surely not taking the bait.
I think this is just more akin to trying to create an economic blockade, while in the meantime creating right wing governments in the region that support an invasion.
If a right wing government wins in Colombia or Brazil, I think it's war.
if We've learnt anything about the United States in the last few years, it's the it isn't the role of their armed forces is not to instigate direct conflict with others: it is to precisely create the conditions for opportunistic rivals to do the heavy lifting for them.
All the shiny toys have to do then, is to keep a gentle bit ever-present thumb on the scales towards their preferred victor.
Venezuela also has a small amount of modern air defence systems
1x S-300VM battalion, consisting of two batteries and a command installation, and a total of 30 missiles before needing to reload (6x very long range and 24x long range):
1x Buk M2E brigade, consisting of four battalions with three batteries each, as well as a command installation. Up to 192 missiles before needing to reload across the entire brigade, if all Buks are operational:
That's defending the entire country and coastline for modern air defence in a best case scenario.
There are apparently 44 modernised S-125/SA-3 launchers, but I find it difficult to think that this would pose a significant threat to US fixed wing aircraft. Maybe some ambush tactics.
One F-35 can carry 8 small diameter bombs, all internally. That's their primary weapon for taking out air defence sites. Right now there are 10x F-35Bs, 6x Harriers, 12x EA-18G Growlers, and 50 F/A-18 Super Hornets all deployed at Puerto Rico or onboard the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier. I think.
Moreover, a lot of these sites don't even need to be destroyed out right. whether it's by destroying their radars, using electronic warfare, or even just disrupting command and control, a lot of these systems could be put out of service without ever needing to be engaged directly.
So, somewhere in the region of 40-100 aircraft will be used in the operation. Probably on the lower side?
Do we know how many tankers capable of air refuelling are deployed? This is good measure of the size of the operation they have planned. The number of air tankers create cap on operational capacity.
I doubt all craft in Puerto Rico will get deployed.
There are 10 KC-135s in the Dominican Republic, 6 KC-46s at the US Virgin Islands. So 16 large tankers. The Marines also have KC-130s deployed for refueling helicopters and and tilt rotor aircraft, and the Navy can refuel F/A-18s with other F/A-18s configured to do so.
MacDill in Florida has capacity for 24-26x KC-135s or KC-46s, and is where AWACS aircraft sortie from and the refuelers there provide support for bombers and large reconnaissance aircraft.
The US has so much refueling capacity and so many aircraft that forward deploying to Puerto Rico is not really necessary for a strike, nor is the aircraft carrier. The only things that really need to be forward deployed are helicopters and tilt rotor aircraft, and combat search and rescue (CSAR) assets, to pick up any shot down pilots if aircraft get shot down. CSAR assets arrived a few days ago to Puerto Rico.
Yeah that's more than I was expecting, perhaps they do plan to use all those aircraft.
I'm still not convinced that it'll bring down the government if they fail to hit Maduro.