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.
https://archive.is/AfITY
Dipshit know-nothings called "economists" say people wanting to not sell their blood to afford luxuries like food and a roof over their head are lazy entitled idiots that don't know what's good for the economy
Here's a fun game, every time you see a ghoul say or write the words "The Economy" replace it with either corporate/shareholder profits, and see how many times you go "oh shit that makes more sense!"
First mUh EcOnOmY, and already we can really see what these mongrels are whining about
THE PRICE IS TOO DAMN HIGH
Who needs a time machine when you can actually MANAGE THE FUCKING PRICES
Econ ghoul sophistry. They're investing a word for the phrase "we overguessed it would go up by 10%, so aren't you happy the prices went up by 9% instead?"
INCREASED INFLATION ISNT A FUCKING IMPROVEMENT WHEN THE MINIMUM WAGE HASNT CHANGED SINCE 2009
If you won't pay people more, no shit they'll want to spend less you fuckubg leech!
Many economists are frauds that couldn't tell you how much of the U.S GDP is fake fluff made up of financial transactions between the finance imperialists and how much of the U.S GDP is actual industrial production
The fucking gangsters that are the banksters of England can blow it up their ass
Bet you're gonna tell us why it's good for people to starve.
A fetish that is the inverse of inflation
Causes by finance ghouls destroying themselves and taking the world with them
Tough shit, maybe they should put their imperialist government on an airplane and dive-bomb it into a volcano.
Throwing your ghoulish selves under a moving tank would help the economy
FUCK RIGHT OFF INTO THE SEA YOU GODDAMN SNAKES
GOOD
Guess what I think should be cut to stave off a recession![gui-better gui-better](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/2922460e-ec99-4d91-92ae-3895addc7e38.png)
Fuck off, you try to raise wages, you'll say people will lose their jobs, you try and raise buying power, you'll say people will lose their jobs, you try and say you'll do anything to materially improve the lives of the people and your knee-jerk instinct is to threaten their lives by threatening their employment. You know what we call folks that want to behave like that? Robber-barons and slavers.
Those few economics can actually use a bit of common sense materialism to figure out they don't actually know shit and base their entire theories off of one fuck up they themselves caused.
Yet again, who's fault was it?
Oh no, they let the cat of truth out of the bag at the last minute like they always do. It's the finance bros fault!
Ghouls lived on borrowed debt
For us, not them. They'll get bailed out like always.
People who doesn't understand orthodox liberal economic dogma needs to be addressed like idiot children.
Good news! You have more cancer than ever and the cancer is still spreading throughout your body but it's doing it slower than before. You're practically cured!
Imagine if people waited to buy shit until they actually needed it? The horror!
What's astounding is that it's not very good gaslighting even.
That is true, but of course that wouldn’t kill the economy, just profit margins. If the economy was fine before the inflation, it will be fine after some deflation.
But IMO people saving up could make deflation a great way to encourage degrowth. Telling people to slightly lower their standard of living is tough, but deflation would incentivize them to consume less without even being asked to. “Why spend $20,000 on this new car when it’s going to be $15,000 next year (probably exaggerated) and I already have a working car?”
And it makes sense as a polar opposite to capitalism. Inflation is part of capitalism’s requirement of infinite growth and deflation is the opposite.
I haven’t read it myself yet, but Radhika Desai wrote a paper on how for the last ~25 years, despite all the media reports of how “bad” the Japanese economy has been, the actual material conditions for workers in Japan has been ok (not that they are great, but that things actually haven’t gone bad for them despite all the gloom in the overly broad economic numbers).
Yeah I could tell you the same thing without the degree, but who'd believe me lmao.
People are food-insecure and going homeless, but you know what the real tragedy is? Folks aren't taking enough vacations.
I think if prices were decreasing, I'd probably starve myself for a year so I could eat like a king next year.
Signs you might be a little detached from reality....
If we lower the prices of food, we'll destroy the economy like the great depression!