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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Can someone explain why voting for Biden, not as a “harm reduction strategy”, but to buy more time to organize revolutionary organizations, doesn’t work? I assume it has something to do with the fact that libs are more complacent under a Dem candidate in the US, but I’m not sure what the exact reasoning is. I also just want to have a solid reason to disagree with
sfbi will arrest your ass in rev org just as well with biden.
With unions maybe its more relevant, but that depending what level of union action we are talking about.
buying time for what? libs have demonstrated once again they are thirsty for blood no less than fascists. they are not any more gentle than fascists
Well, I guess radical queer orgs are slightly less likely to be arrested for being queer. But I can’t think of much else.
This isn't true. Biden literally wrote the patriot act.
to buy more time to organize revolutionary organizations
What revolutionary organizations truly exist in the US? Like we have some fringe political parties but there just aren't the conditions for anything close to a real revolution in this country. We barely have unions half the time and a lot of them aren't militant in any way. Most people in the US are atomized little consumers with treat brain. Mass politics in this country just can't really exist in a meaningful way right now and that's regardless of who is president.
If the United States is going to have a revolution then it will be after capitalism has further declined and the conditions arise for it. We can prepare and build organizations for when that happens and better our local communities in the mean time.
Tell them it doesn’t even matter because voting for someone conducting genocide is an indefensible moral position in absolute terms, independent of anything else
I feel like this would just start an unwinnable argument about ethics
Edit: Though I do agree, of course
Can someone explain why voting for Biden to buy more time to organize revolutionary organizations
IDK about buying time but a good argument I've heard for this would be if democrats actually meaningfully made it easier for workers to organize and unions to gather more power (possibly to fund an american working class party) by way of, for example, removing Taft-Hartley regulations. A good argument against that though would be a very simple "that's just not gonna happen", democrats do make it slightly easier for organizing to happen but not significantly enough to be worth supporting, Biden would never remove Taft-Hartley.
If individuals want to vote for Genocide Joe sure whatever it doesn't really matter anyways.
The problem is when self-proclaimed socialists start telegraphing critical support for Genocide Joe and spending a bunch of time talking about it. Then they are just making themselves into the ineffectual and completely ignorable left wing of a capitalist party and making socialists look like fools.