Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras

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

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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Very cool protesters have locked themselves to the side of the USNS Harvey Milk to prevent its departure to Gaza.

https://twitter.com/hyphy_republic/status/1773806950561816812
- USNS Harvey Milk
  
  The U.S. truly is woke, as evidenced by its delivery of gay genocide bombs to The Holocaust 2.0.
  
  Anyway, while I'm glad folks are doing this, we really need to come up with something more effective than delaying ETAs by a couple hours or whatever.
  
  It's a shame that container ship technology has only been accidentally applied to civilian infrastructure and not things that are far less useful.
  
  The alternative is actual sabotage to a US military asset and enjoying the rest of your days spent in Guantanamo.
  
  I don't blame them for not going further.
  
  Well of course. There are risks involved in stopping an empire from committing genocide. Do you honestly think you need to tell anyone that?
  
  Usually those risks are taken covertly/anonymously as a method of risk-mitigation, unlike these good-hearted but effectively pointless delaying actions.
  
  Sure but I'm not advocating for something I'm not willing to do myself. I am not willing to get put in guantanamo and will not hold it against others for being unwilling also.
  
  I think anyone advocating for such actions from a keyboard while not performing them themselves would look sort of sus.
  
  will not hold it against others for being unwilling also.
  
  I'm not holding it against anyone specifically that they're not doing it either. Like, I'm happy the folks taking the action shown in the link are doing what they're doing, and not disappointed in them for not doing more. I'm saying that, as a movement, we need to start doing more things that are more effective.
  
  I think anyone advocating for such actions from a keyboard while not performing them themselves would look sort of sus.
  
  I love it when people assume that folks who are talking online aren't doing anything. Especially because good opsec demands we don't talk online about shit we do. This is some lazy and bad-faith criticism, TBH. I've got enough scars, arrests, and other traumas that if we were having this exchange face-to-face you wouldn't dare make this kind of accusation.
  
  Anyway, SOME folks ARE doing this shit. Like folks who are part of the active resistance in and around Palestine. We just need to expand it more in places closer to the seat of empire too. And small reminder that a comrade fucking self-immolated, so it's not like some of us aren't willing to make large sacrifices to stop this shit. Most likely more of us would be willing to take larger risks if we had more help and support, and thus it was likely to actually have some real effect.
  
  This'll be my last response to you in this particular exchange. Take care.

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