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.
Two unrelated thoughts:
Trump's batshit crazy cabinet actually proves that voting Trump was the correct accelerationist position. If you wanted to accelerate the downfall of American hegemony and the weakening of American institutions by appointing the biggest dumbasses on the planet, then you got your wish with this 2nd Trump admin. I sympathize with Americans comrades, but chickens come home to roost like the great martyr Malcolm X said.
Russians actually entered deep into Kupiansk, I can't believe my eyes. Actually insane development, I didn't expect this at all so quickly honestly. It says a lot about the state of Ukrainian defences at this point. The story of Kupiansk is very interesting and serves as a good blueprint of the future of how Ukrainian territories will be integrated into Russia. Russia took over Kupiansk without a fight in February 2022, because the mayor was an intelligent man who spared the city from unnecessary bloodshed by calling the Russian command and telling them that they're free to enter the city without needlessly destroying infrastructure and civilian life. Civilians stayed, got their wages from Moscow, repairs were done quickly, civilians didn't leave, schools switched to Russian which the population already spoke perfectly, and that angered western media so much. When the Ukrainians took back the city in September 2022, mass arrests took place and sob stories were planted in media. The city was turned into a military hellhole by the AFU and most civilians had to flee. Russia kinda stabbed those people in the back during that disastrous period, but that's another discussion.
This tweet grows ever more powerful with each cabinet pick.
Better and more coherent theology than most Americans
Antichrist
There will be many AntiChrists, but God willing we're reaching the last of them
Trump's appointments are all over the place. He's trying to set up his typical court, playing all the minions against each other to give himself the maximum number of opportunities to control things. Some rightwing neocon freak could come out of nowhere to dominate the administration's policy by playing this court better than Trump himself can, and Trump is busy marginalizing anyone he thinks is competent enough to challenge his power. They're absolutely speedrunning imperial decadence..
I more or less agree, but Rubio in the Secretary of State position is bad because he’s gonna want to pivot hard against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, et al. But it’s not like he’s particularly competent so I don’t know…
He's not a good politician, but I have no reason to doubt he's relatively intelligent and ambitious. He'll bring the most brain-dead careerist Bush administration-era State Department officers to the fore. They'll turn the place into even more of an ideological concentration camp, where realist thought is severely punished, and cynical careerist backstabbing is the only driving force. It's going to be a wild ride. They'll probably start several wars in the next four years, and we're going to be stuck in conflict like Russia or Israel for the next decade based on the petty politics of these fools. It'll be the end of the empire though, and if they make things bad enough soon enough, we'll never be able to dream of starting a war with China.
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The problem is that Trump is nowhere as good in leveraging US financial might. You have admitted to this multiple times comparing Trump with Biden. Trump might be there to discipline the domestic population, but he doesn't really understand the driving force behind US imperialism. 4 years is a long time for the Democrats to come back to the White House, presumably with Gruesome Newsome.
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The problem with a 2026 "blue wave" is the Senate there are only 2 seats they might flip and that puts them only at 49. America
Yes, I've seen some people say that the Democrats purposely threw the election because they want the recession to happen under Trump where they can then stroll into the White House with Gruesome Newsome in 2028. They even claim that the Democrats purposely nudged Biden into that debate with Trump knowing that Biden would eat shit. You focus on different aspects, but it's honestly not that different from what they have said.
The Democratic Party is the oldest surviving bourgeois party. It has weathered the storm for two centuries. People need to stop underestimating them.
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There has been so little talk about Ukraine in recent months, but every time when I see some news it is about Russia rapidly (compared to previous years) gaining ground. Is there some news or social media channel where I can get a general overview of the situation?
Boris Rozhin is usually up to date.
Syriak Maps is good
And military summary channel
RF is really blitzkrieging now. I can't believe they are already in Kupyansk. I just caught up on the northern war front two days ago and they were at the Zherebets river along the Luhansk border.
While appointing buffoons and neocons is compatible with saying, "look at the blatant incompetence and cruelty, this will degrade the state faster", I think there is something to be said for the accelerationism of the Biden administration's approach of career ghouls that know how to pull the levers of power and keep their constituencies docile.
While Dems and the GOP should be understood as two factions in the same team, I think the most accelerationist policies are to stay the course on neoliberalism and to foment a split between the imperialist bloc and one led by China etc. Trump offers incoherence on the former while Biden offers pure commitment to neoliberalism. Trump offers ham-fisted attempts for the latter, which strengthens any anti-US bloc and makes them more comfortable earlier while Biden seeks to implement the plans of State Department ghouls, trying to build the split along a material basis, e.g. using Ukraine to peel off Europe, hightening actual mechanisms for war and direct confrontation.