Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
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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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
It definitely isn’t looking good for Latin America. Petro in Colombia is going have a hard time, as is Honduras, Nicaragua, and Brazil. Mexico too.
Edit: I also worry about my country because if he goes after El Salvador, Guatemala is going to feel the spill-over effects with anti-migrant sentiment getting even worse.
I always thought the smarter strategic choice of US empire is to temporary cede Asia and Africa outside of WANA to Russia and China while consolidating hold on Latin America and Europe. They can't fight multiple fronts at once. This is what the US transitioning to a regional power would look like: they give up trying to contain Russia and China and focus on exerting greater control over regions already under their domain. And since they can no longer squeeze the whole world dry, they have to exploit Latin America even harder to make up for no longer getting free lunches from Africa and Asia. In a paradoxical sense, a decline of US hegemony means an increase in repression of Latin America by the US.
This makes me so fucking sad and angry
Let's hope the US isn't a rational actor
i think brazil is gonna be fine, 3rd term lula has been neolib as fuck, there's no need for americans to do anything against it. lately some social movements have been trying to pressure congress into passing laws reducing the workweek to 5 days (currently it's like 5.5, with a 44h total, 4 hours on saturday) and his own minister of labor and employment came out against it (defending "separate collective negotiations in each sector" instead, but less than 9% of our workforce is unionized - even less in the private sector - and that fucker knows it lol)
also lula is pretty good at handling people like trump in general
Lula did have better relations with Bush than he did with Obama. Even Biden was really meh towards Brazil, Lula was really hoping for that money Biden promised to give the Amazon Fund, but all of that went to Ukraine and Israel. Then Lula decided to focus on Brazil's relation with China.
Lula is truly a land of contrasts.
He is known as a good negotiator and pragmatist. I think some Brazilian communists call him the three times “world champion of conciliation”. He allows a lot of neoliberalism stuff pass (cringe), but his social programs and foreign policies are generally very good and even his critics on the left are in favor of most of them.
yea i was thinking of bush when i said that, lula can run circles around idiotic neocons/reactionaries. if he has one great talent, one single ability that sets him apart from other people, it's knowing what you want to hear and how to say it (something that he uses to mislead both the right and the left)
smart libs like obama are another thing entirely though, they don't fall for his shit
Didn't stop the US rat fucking PT before.
Edit: also Trump probably misses Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro can't legally run, the entire Supreme Court hates him lol. Congress is too corrupt and stupid to help him. Lula it's not going to forgive Bolsonaro, and he can't help Bolsonaro anyway. I think Lula will do the same as he did with Bush and play golf with Trump.
i don't see any reason for them to fuck us, it's different this time because lula is pretty much just a figurehead now. the real people behind this government are the ones riding with haddad and his neoliberal goons
They are going to start to do drone strikes on the cartels, then escalate to left wing figures. Real dying empire lashing out vibes. At least one of our official enemies isn't going to make it out alive, and I think Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela are going to be in the crosshairs of the empire.
Petro always had a very uphill battle. No way he was ever going to get the US out of Colombia.
I’m at a point where I’ve mostly accepted that the Cuban revolution might end in this century. Too many natural disasters, crippling sanctions, and weakening infrastructure isn’t making it any easier. I really hope I’m wrong.
For what it’s worth, everything that’s happened to Cuba in recent years is still nothing compared to the Special Period, and they weathered that storm.
The SOS Cuba protests were very much small potatoes. There is not enough domestic unrest for the US to push a coup. And the US is already applying maximum pressure, there’s nothing more they can do other than threaten to torpedo any ship approaching the island.
I think Cuban leadership and to an extent the people of Cuba know what capitulation to the US means: a future more bleak than anything they are going through now. The islands assets will be stripped and handed to US corporations and gusanos. And there’s no way they will be allowed any sort of “democracy”, because they already have that. It would have to be some sort of US viceroyalty until the socialism is beaten out of them.
There’s no path to a better relationship with the US with Rubio, but not like a Harris administration would have offered any rapprochement either.
I agree, I think this is Cuba's real strength in that regard: whatever domestic situation they've created, it withstood what the USSR could not. It wasn't just the Soviet citizenry becoming disillusioned (or perhaps, a better word is "illusioned") that led to the fall but it was a big factor, and Cuba has managed to mitigate that despite living mere miles from the US.
Though it's still possible that the US tries something in their increasing desperation and attacks Cuba, and even with the US's profound lack of military ability to perform competent invasions they could still just bomb the shit out of the island for a year until there are no structures left standing.
Yeah I kinda figured they would be the first of the official US bad guys to fall. The worst people are going to loot the country to the bone.
It’s incredible they even lasted this long. It’s too bad they aren’t located somewhere more favorable for them in the same way North Korea is.
Seriously. It's a miracle they survived the Special Period alone.
I try to be hopeful, and don't think they'll nakedly invade. Now they will try some soscuba 2.0, and it would be really fucking nice if china or a thousands of rich american tourists shovel some money into it to give them opportunity for more bearable living, and for coup to fail.
I'll try to figure out if i can afford to go tbh, unless wheels of empire spin like mad
Didn't they make it illegal to spend money on government stuff if you're visiting from the US? I'd love to go and spend money on publically owned things there but I know they haven't made it easy.
The probably only can control (if they bother to) which hotel/bnb you stay at, it’s not like they see you spending cash.
I think Petro still has a strong and loyal base, which is why all the coup attempts have failed, and who is going to run against him? I think Uribe can't run due to legal problems, and Petro still has the important but not good support of the protestants. I think the US has already given up on Venezuela, Maduro has become the Assad of South America, no one can remove him.
Lula is very intelligent, unlike Bolsonaro, he is already planning on talking to Trump via phone (Lula had a better relationship with Bush than with Obama, at least Bush didn't spy on him). I don't know much about Nicaragua, but I think the Sandinistas have controlled most of the country since the 1980s, and that has never changed. But I think this is very bad for Boric, he's probably fucked.
It seems that Trump really doesn't like Bukele, but we'll see if Trump actually does something against him or if he just writes some really angry letters, like what Biden was doing. Trump may cut off all aid to Ecuador and Peru, which would be very funny if he just threw away everything Biden did. And he might even tell Milei to fuck off, which would mean the end of Libertad Carajo man
I can honestly see it now:
"folks, we're getting a very bad deal out of Peru and Ecuador. they want us to send our soldiers in to help them. lots of trouble there, many incidents, most of them very bad. I keep hearing it, they're saying it's bad. we need our soldiers elsewhere, like helping Israel and fighting China."
meanwhile Laura Richardson is sitting behind him, visibly distraught, her life's work crumbling before her eyes
"Milei. He says he's the president of Argentina but I don't even think there is a country called Argentina anymore"
Trump will learn about the Shining Path and Ethnocacetists, and then get the fuck out of there asap.