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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My conviction that Putin is waiting to time the Russian offensive for October grows day by day
Scott Ritter has interviewed Russian officials both military and civilian and they seem pretty set on making large movements the second the ground is sufficiently dry, so like late April early May. Further than that on a military level they expect to have this wrapped up militarily by the fall. Only thing stoping them is if the west intervenes militarily since that would change the calculation obviously.
I'm deeply skeptical of having anything wrapped up by the fall. I could see them taking the remainder of Donetsk Oblast/DPR by then or maybe kharkiv but both seems like a stretch, let alone Odessa.
Yeah, unless Ukraine completely collapses (which is a possibility, mind you), I don't think this war is going to end before 2025. I'm ready to be proved wrong, though
I think the collapse is imminent. The azov battalion is nearing its breaking point. They've been in the shit since avdiivka fell and they were the main blocking troops. The mobilization bill has been scrapped. No new conscripts and no blocking troops. The few remaining conscripts are free to surrender or flee and they can see how things are going.
Im worried that some EU countries are gonna do something stupid if its a complete collapse of the frontline. Looking at
and 
I can't wait for NATO-friendly media to start doing mental gymnastics to justify a Polish invasion of Ukraine, after spending years screaming about how unjustified Russia's invasion of Ukraine was.
France is the one I’m worried about. I still think macron is going to send troops to Odessa and Kyiv to try to stop the Russians from advancing for fear of killing nato troops. Problem being Russia has been preparing for war with nato the entire time.
People need to keep in mind Russias performance in the war is a strategy, not doctrine. If Russia was engaging doctrinally Ukraine would be Russia today and all the western intelligence reports admit this, but Russia didn’t want to take the high number of casualties that would necessitate. The approach they took in Ukraine is meant to completely collapse the Ukrainian army, and what these officials are saying is they highly suspect the UAF will collapse by the fall. There’s no real reason not to believe it. Match that along with supposedly large swaths of territory being taken I don’t see why Odessa is off the table.
It's the end of March. Odessa is on the other side of the dnieper and is a major city, much bigger than bakhmut or avdiivka. Doing an amphibious landing or river crossing is a whole other kettle of fish. Odessa will not be taken this year.
I mean believe what you want but I’m going to believe the people with actual intelligence services. If this was a one off comment then yeah dismiss it, but it seems pretty unanimous among the people who’s opinions have weight behind them. Even Zelensky at this point is saying they’re doing everything they can to not retreat.