Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras
Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras
Image is from this Reuters article.
This week marks the one year anniversary of Honduras ceasing to recognize Taiwan and instead only recognizing China. Over that time period, China and Honduras have gone through several rounds of negotiating a free trade agreement, with trade expanding. Additionally, they have just signed a $275 million cooperation agreement, providing education infrastructure for Honduras.
The other major news piece relevant to Honduras is the battle against Prospera, a US-based crypto libertarian firm that sought to buy a private island in order to create an ancap paradise, in which Bitcoin would be legal tender. In 2022, Honduras killed the island's special status that made the deal possible, and so Prospera is seeking $11 billion in compensation.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Honduras! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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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Putin - at a meeting with pilots in Torzhok:
This is complete nonsense - the possibility of an attack on some other countries, on Poland, the Baltic states, scares the Czechs. Just nonsense! Another way to deceive your population and extract additional costs from people, force them to bear this burden on their shoulders, that’s all.
Putin on military spending by Russia and the enemy:
Let’s take 2022, military spending, because the results for 2023 are being summed up and calculated, 2024 is too early to say. According to our data, we spent 3.5% of the country's GDP on defense spending. Let’s take data that is not ours, let’s take data from the Stockholm Peace Institute, international data, they have the following calculation: The United States spent 3.5% of GDP on defense, Russia - 4%. Let's say Israel is 4.5%. Ukraine spent 33.5% in 2022. But in absolute terms, what a difference it makes. In 2022, the United States spent, God willing, 811 billion dollars, and the Russian Federation - 72 billion. 72 and 811 - the difference is noticeable, more than ten times.
The United States spends, its defense spending is approximately 40% of global defense spending, 39% of global spending is the United States. And Russia – 3.5%. And, keeping this ratio in mind, are we going to fight with NATO or something? This is just nonsense!
Putin - about attacks on NATO airfields:
If they deliver F-16s, they talk about it, like they are training pilots, I think you understand this like no one else, better than others, this will not change the situation on the battlefield. And we will destroy their planes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment today, including multiple launch rocket systems. Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, no matter where they are located. And the F-16s are also carriers of nuclear weapons, and we will also have to take this into account when organizing combat work.
Putin - on jingoism:
When I listen to our - there are such people everywhere, in any society - jingoistic patriots, including those who say that Russia is only for Russians, then a feeling of anxiety arises in me. Because we have 190 ethnic groups living on the territory of the country and some nationalities are represented by millions of peoples, as soon as we begin to implement these destructive thoughts about the fact that everyone else is strangers here, we will ruin the country. And the main victims will be the Russian people. Therefore, you need to treat this component very adultly, seriously, not wave your arms and wag your tongue, but think when you pronounce every word, every phrase. To think that we have one big united Motherland.
Anyone gets the feeling that the US is going to press for a hot war and prevent truce in Ukraine no matter what?
That last quote by Putin is great, and really goes to show why he's not a "fascist" like a lot of radlibs label him as. He's a conservative Liberal.
I don't know if he is a liberal. I think he puts the good of the society over freedoms of individuals. I find it really hard to pin down exactly what to call his ideology. Honestly its probably harder to define than Peronism.
His administration would still be liberal by Leninist definitions because ultimately the Bourgeois class is in power and in control of Russian society. Although his administration seems to be a capable custodian it doesn't fundamentally stop the National Bourgeoisie from running the country, which to be clear is far better than the International Bourgeoisie.
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Yeah but then it's likely than another "Putin" leader would come to power that acts the same of Putin today. I don't mean to diminish his own power and the power of people around him, but instead to make sure it's never forgotten that material conditions are the primary driver of societal development and that this is no different. Material conditions of governance would likely force a National Bourgeoisie government to take power as I'm not sure Russian people or the Russian economy could've survived much more looting.
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More hypothetical moralist mind reading, the favorite attack of radlibs
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Again, coming up with alternative realities you can get mad at instead of looking at this one
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I agree with your argument but disagree with your conclusion, I think the whole time Putin was trying to make peace with the west in the deeply held and utterly naive belief that Russia could someday become a member of 'the club'. He - and by he I mean the entire strain of liberal centrist Russian capitalists he represents and is the leading organizer of - assumed that someday Russia would be allowed to sit at the high table with the big boys, carving up the spoils from the rest of the world.
But of course the west never considered Russia as anything but another meal. It's clear to us that the US is a pack of bloodthirsty demons and that peace was never an option, but Putin's tone of shocked disbelief about stuff like them kicking Russia out of SWIFT and freezing their assets seemed genuine. Like he really didn't believe the NATO empire would throw absolutely everything they had at cracking Russia open until the moment it was happening.
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Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, no matter where they are located. And the F-16s are also carriers of nuclear weapons, and we will also have to take this into account when organizing combat work.
This could end up being dangerous if the mad dogs running NATO decides to let Ukraine-flagged F-16's attack from NATO bases. If Russia retaliates the evil empire gets a pretense for starting a hot war with Russia and with the F-16's being nuclear-capable a situation can arise where Russia has reason to believe the Americans are going to nuke them.
Anyone gets the feeling that the US is going to press for a hot war and prevent truce in Ukraine no matter what?
What reason do they have? It feels like they're trying to disengage.
Yeah indeed IMO the consensus is the US would rather drop Ukraine right now, very clearly the media would not be writing articles about Ukraine already losing or whatever for months now.
But I guess its hard to pinpoint with accuracy because at the same time Biden can't afford to "lose" the war in Ukraine. The neolibs have always been completely straight to the point, there will be no negotiation and no other plan except a Ukrainian victory.
So the US is currently on this back and forth between having to support Democratic Western Valuestm in Ukraine while also knowing this shit is completely over and done with and they want to move on to China and Israel. Ultimately to keep this up sometimes they do have to resort to things that may seem like escalation and if Russia gets careless they'll pay for it though I don't think we have to worry about that.