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.
They're giving every troop $1776. Gotta shore up support with the rank and file before big actions.
Yeah that plus the F22 point from our Marmite comrade earlier in the thread is sussin me out. I'm glad the announcement was nothing but something feels off
It's a fake-out most likely.
Venezuela had to put everything on highest alert in case Trump announced "as I speak 15 minutes ago our forces entered into a war with Venezuela" or whatever. Now that the moment has passed they relax a bit. US waits a while, does some more bombing then suddenly with minimal telegraphing begins huge strikes just after Christmas or on New Years or what have you.
It's clear they want to take out Maduro. That's a matter of getting the right intel and a sprinkling of luck. So IMO they wait until they have good intel on his location for a period of say "next hour", then move out and strike. Either to kill him or to quickly bring down Venezuela's air defenses, create a diversion, and drop special forces to capture him, extract and bring him to the US where they have a show trial and then sentence him to death (or life in prison). That or they kill him during the raid and bring his body back as a trophy. Once that happens, once the decapitating strike occurs, whether it succeeds or fails the US will roll out the rest of what it wants to do. That may be nothing. That may be expeditionary force to capture parts of the capitol and create a green zone, install an "international community recognized" government with the recent nobel winner at its head and bring in some Latin American pawns as occupation, sorry "peacekeeping" forces to help stabilize things, have their pawn declare the oil or some huge amount of proceeds thereof goes to the US and/or its corporations, then just beat on the Venezuelan military, destroy anything mechanized, anything too organized, etc.
I don't think they're foolish enough anymore to get drawn into trying to do jungle warfare and Vietnam 2.0 to pacify the whole country and they'll likely do the Iraq/Afghanistan thing with an internationally recognized green-zone they defend where their puppet government that rubber stamps things is which they viciously defend and fortify and then the rest of the country (minus oil fields) which they allow to be ruled by remaining elements of the Bolivarian revolution as unimportant. Meanwhile they strangle those parts of the country by not allowing significant imports or exports except through their puppet government, declare anything else to be illegal narcotic trafficking, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, etc. This continues on for a decade until they get pushed out but by then they've made their moves on China and denied them a toe-hold in this hemisphere and by controlling Venezuelan oil they have near total control of global oil and can squeeze China economically.
I like your analysis and it aligns with a lot of things that have worried me. However, it remains to be seen if there are still enough competent actors in the US government to execute this whole thing correctly. Based on the past 5 years my only shred of optimism is that Americans are too brain damaged from Long COVID to do this properly. It'll still utterly fuck Venezuela but my hope at least is that the damage isn't nearly as permanent and it's another fumble for Empire.