Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
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Dollar’s Enduring Appeal on Show in China’s Sovereign Bond Sale
China’s Dollar Dedication
Just weeks after China’s President Xi Jinping signed off on a BRICS communique that included a call for reducing use of the dollar, his finance ministry was marketing sovereign bonds denominated in — wait for it — US dollars.
Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. For all the de-dollarization fervor, Beijing is demonstrating that it remains dedicated, or at least resigned, to continuing to use greenbacks in international finance.
China’s government has no real dollar-funding need itself, so one of the main motivations is to offer benchmarks for Chinese banks and corporations to price their own bonds off of. Dollar-denominated securities are appealing to Chinese borrowers because they can access a broader pool of investors than at home. Some Chinese investors also like dollar investments to park their funds offshore.
High rates and a run of defaults cast a shadow over the Chinese dollar debt market for a time, and the government held off on sovereign issuance in 2022 and 2023. In September, when Beijing for the first time in three years sold its first new sovereign bonds in euros — popular lately with Asian corporate issuers — the question was whether dollars would also resume.
This year’s dollar sale came with a twist: the securities were sold in Saudi Arabia, not Hong Kong as was done in the past. Which also tells a story. First, it demonstrates China’s increasing connections with the Middle Eastern oil giant, which is building its own international financial hub in capital city Riyadh.
Fans of de-dollarization have for years awaited a move by oil exporters to shift their pricing of crude to Chinese yuan, at least when it’s shipped to China. But dreams of a petro-yuan always ran into a key challenge: what would Saudi Arabia and others do with the Chinese currency? China itself maintains capital controls, which makes it awkward for any investor interested in liquidity.
This week’s China dollar bond sale suggests a solution: keep on pricing the oil in dollars, and build out an offshore dollar bond market in Riyadh, with China’s help.
Whatever the longer-term intentions, investors loved the deal: bids were some 20 times the $2 billion of bonds on offer and they were sold for a razor thin margin over similar-maturity Treasuries.
Unfortunately saw this coming for a while now. Nothing’s good gonna happen when Saudi Arabia is involved. I have said before that Saudi Arabia (not in BRICS yet) is going to play the role of dollarizing BRICS, not dedollarizing it.
China’s economy is going to do fine, but de-dollarization and challenging US imperialism are going to take a back seat for now.
I mean if you were framing dedollarization in the terms of the Youtube thumbnails about it this could be very shocking. Yet another case of proofreading Western news turning into mindlessly reinforcing its premises. You're literally just repeating Bloomberg and the fed to me.
I like what Jan Oberg said about Western censorship. 10% truth, 20% lie, 70% omission. People prefer to think of it as more than half truth and ignore the omissions.
The issue is not really dedollarization here, there is no need to fixate on that.
Rather the fact this is further signs of Chinese integrating with western capital at the most critical juncture.
The part about Saudi Arabia trying to pivot into some sort of Hong Kong 2.0 is accurate as its one of the ways they hope to survival the oil crash. It is also part of the ME own internal struggle between the oil exporters to see who comes out on top. OPEC is doing production cuts and Oil is once again at the 2 year low. Saudi Arabia is rather trying survive by pivoting into financial speculation, putting it in competition with the UAE for example.
As reported 2 billion is quite literally nothing in the grand scheme so why bother at all? Because it signals a complete Chinese compromise with the western consensus. Its China being absurdly simplistic and trying to secure their own slice of the pie.
Major financial corporations are all moving to Riyadh's financial center, just this year there is Goldman Sachs which was the first significant Wall St player just barely last month, HSBC, Rothschild. Even the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is opening a new office there. You can probably make a long list soon.
So both Chinese and the Western capital see the potential of Saudi Arabia realy becoming a financial hub(or simply don't want to miss it) and China wants to secure good relations before its completely bought out by US interests. Yes they are that naive. Heck in this instance I'd go even further and saying there is absolutely acting as if their married to the devil. If they weren't what would explain to us their previous deals and investments in Israel during the 2010's and even earlier?
Its quite the epitome of trying constantly pandering about being an alternative to US imperialism and denouncing western crimes while simultaneously happily making deals with the worst enemies of the global south.
It is as bad as it sounds.