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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Russia pushes for an end to the sanctions control system against North Korea at the UN.
On Thursday (28) at the UN, Russia blocked the renewal of the mandate of the experts who oversee the application of sanctions against North Korea, a veto denounced by the majority of Security Council members concerned about the development of Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Since 2006, North Korea has been the target of Security Council sanctions, mainly related to its nuclear program, which were reinforced several times in 2016 and 2017. Since 2019, Russia and China have been trying in vain to convince the Council to ease these measures, which have no expiration date.
In this context, Moscow today vetoed a resolution aimed at extending by one year the operation of the committee of experts in charge of monitoring sanctions, whose reports are a benchmark in the field.
"The commission continues to focus its work on irrelevant issues that are not commensurate with the problems facing the [Korean] peninsula," commented Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia.
"This veto is not a sign of concern for the North Korean people or for the effectiveness of the sanctions. It is about Russia getting the freedom to violate sanctions in search of weapons to use against Ukraine," denounced British ambassador Barbara Woodward.
In addition to the United Kingdom, the United States also denounced the veto as an attempt by Moscow to hide its growing military cooperation with Pyongyang.
"Russia's actions today have cynically undermined international peace and security, all to promote the corrupt agreement Moscow has signed with the DPRK [North Korea's official name]," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller
China could have done this for 30 years and didn’t do anything. Good for Russia, and shame on China for pretending they can be the “big brother” while dangling their little brother in front of the wolves for so long
The relationship between China and DPRK is complicated.
Kim Jong-il really disliked China, and part of it came from the fact that the DPRK was deeply reliant on the USSR for foreign export market and fuel import.
As the DPRK had been sanctioned by the West, the only way it was allowed to obtain cheap fossil fuel was from the USSR, and also trade with the Eastern Bloc through Comecon (not an official member, but as an observer).
Unlike what many usually think, the DPRK by the 1980s was a highly industrialized country with 70% urbanization rate, and much of its agriculture mechanized, which required huge volume of petroleum to operate. The collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, which coincided with one of the worst climate disasters in Northeast Asia at the time (freeze, flood, drought), caused the DPRK agriculture and industrial output to plunge by some 80-90% due to the atrocious weather, the loss of export revenues and fuel import. With only 30% rural population to work on farms and unable to operate much of their agricultural equipments, severe famines soon followed.
As if this was not enough, Kim Il Sung died in 1994, and Kim Jong-il was forced to take over a country under severe crisis. The economy of DPRK never recovered. It is not an exaggeration to say that the DPRK was one of the direct victims of the US-China alliance to destroy the USSR.
His eldest son, and the heir apparent at the time, Kim Jong-nam (from his first(?) wife) on the other hand, loved China and hoped that the DPRK could open up and reform like China. He was exiled in 2003 and was eventually assassinated in Malaysia a few years back. Kim Jong Un (son from his second(?) wife) took over the country in 2011 and relationship with China only began to thaw, because what else can North Korea do?
I really need to write up an effort post about North Korea. Waiting for the Country of the Week’s to be the DPRK turn, or maybe I had already missed one earlier?
Kim Jong Un (son from his second(?) wife)
I know various anti-communists like to say how Kim Jong Un is a quarter Japanese as an own for some reason.
Doesn't seem complicated at all to me, seems like outright social chauvinism and collaborationism by China and allowing a nation to starve over petty bullshit that isn't their fault
By the mid-1990s, China was undergoing a severe economic crisis. Dengist reform had run its course and brought a level of unemployment and underutilization of industrial capacity never seen before under Mao.
China either goes back to Maoist planning and isolate itself from the world like the USSR did, or join the WTO and submit to Western capital. There wasn’t really an easy solution here. China chose the latter, which means joining the sanctions against the DPRK.
At the end of the day, China will always prioritize the well-being of its own citizens over the others. This is just how China has always operated (and how most of the world works, with some notable exceptions from the USSR while it was still alive) - play both sides hoping that you can come out on top. And came out on top it did.
They could have done more to help Korea is all I'm going to say. I do not like the social chauvinism and isolationism that China has adopted post-Mao. Under Mao there were many blunders, but there were also many successes like the defense of Korea from the imperialists. If the US were to attack DPRK today would China come to their aid? I hope so, they definitely would not have in the 90s.
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Russia was in no capacity to help the DPRK even if it wanted to. The mass de-industrialization, followed by the 1998 debt default, which started from Western financial speculators’ attack on Thailand’s central bank that sparked the Asian Financial Crisis and ended in Russia, meant that Russia had to practically re-build much of its economy from scratch.
China was also undergoing its very first economic crisis since the Dengist reform, which had led to a level of unemployment never seen before during Mao’s era. The 1990s was a total and complete victory for neoliberalism. China joined the WTO and relaxed much of its regulations to Western capital, and leveraged its vast reserve of labor power to come out on top.
If you want to be generous, China was in a situation where they needed to be on friendly terms with the west in order to develop their economy. For better or for worse China is still fully integrated into the western-dominated capitalist economy, and an open partnership with Korea will come with costs exceeding the benefits. This can change in the future, China is slowly using it's increased power to assert independence and is beginning to play a more active role in foreign policy and the west is getting scared and trying to limit their economic exposure to China. Although we're not there yet, the scales are moving towards tighter Sino-Korean relations.
Russia's current situation is very different. Their relations to the west are damaged beyond repair for the foreseeable future and there's nothing the west can do to punish Russia for working with Korea that they haven't already done. There's also nothing to positively gain for Russia by playing along with western anti-Korean sanctions. On the other hand Korea is a neighbouring country with a well-developed defense industry and lots of experience in overcoming western economic warfare. Russia and Korea have lots of things to gain by working together.
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That’s an insult to coconuts
thank you for not taking a swipe at goldfish (an animal which can learn tricks, recognize individual people, and has been shown to remember things for over six months)
I think China surreptitiously ignores most of the DPRK sanctions
Yet they've been on the Security Council not vetoing the sanctions for decades. Way too obsequious to great satan and a shameful phase in Chinese history