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.
Be sure to check out HexAtlas
Developed by comrade @hex_atlas@hexbear.net
Thank you for making a pinned post, I'll use the opportunity to make two calls:
(The other thread was at the end of it's lifecycle already)
- Under the Nexus > Misc tab you will find a basic integrations of:
- World Inequality Database
- UN Comtrade
- International Labour Organization
- International Energy Agency
- World Bank
- OECD
If there's (economic) data you'd like to see feel free to reach out. I at the very least will add linking, but will also make an effort for deeper integration at some point.
- In order to increase usability of the atlas please add the location to the comment body. Also please consider following: Since there's a province/territory scope, and a lot of these are empty atm you can post local news from your area also. It would be cool for comrades that would like to now what's going on locally in different parts of the world. If doxxing is a concern: create a new account.
Example:
- You read interesting news about a certain location
- Post the news in the format you're used to, but
- If you use the exact wording how you find it in the atlas to "tag" (see what I mean below), you will make sure it pops up in that scope
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e.g. Xinjiang, China , Eastern Asia , Asia, CN, CHN (in that exact wording; the Atlas works by using the lemmy search function to find these strings, by having it in the comment body you make them findable)
We as a community could for example also decide to use the ISO3166-alpha 3 for one type of news/post and the full nomeclature of the country/region for another type (not sure if need actually, it's just a thought/suggestion, but maybe someone has a cool/good suggestion)
Thank you :)
Not sure if you can pull data from this: https://dbasu.shinyapps.io/World-Profitability/, but it pulls data from: https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/valuechain/wiod/, which may be of use.
Cool! Unfortunately I found no way of directly linking to the country. (I also checked the network in devtools, but nothing I'm familiar with or could use) It'll have to be a generic link for now
I didn't download it, but I think the second link has a spreadsheet with all of the countries data
Hmm.. I'm mostly familiar with front-end and for most of the integrations, I've been able to leverage various APIs, where a lot of that backend-stuff is solved already (i.e. asking the server to get X Data and getting X back; like the IMF Data Tab). Downloading the spreadsheet and doing this myself, I'd have to get familiar with writing that type of code and the math first and it would take me a long time to implement. If someone would like to help doing the back-end it would be cool (please reach out). For now I feel like I still have so much left to do on the front-end of things. I'm also thinking about reaching out to the listed researchers at the bottom, once I'm ready to tackle it
That makes sense, unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to help. Hopefully some people do, this is a cool project
Commenting for future. I’d love to have a crack at this, but my arm’s in a cast for at least another few weeks so
Yeah. Seems relatively straightforward to import the data into an actual, useful database, and then make a backend API to serve it in some fashion. The real question is: what is the useful thing to actually do with it?
The data is basically a cross product of input country/industry by output country/industry, with each entry being a dollar amount.
Is there some desire to add a way to look up a relation between two countries in the UI? Or, even more specifically, an industry in a country with an industry in another?
Would the desire be to sum up a row or column for each industry in a particular country?
Or...?
Is there some desire to add a way to look up a relation between two countries in the UI? Or, even more specifically, an industry in a country with an industry in another?
Yes! Ideally you'd be able to select two or more countries and see capital and commodity flows and show (imperial) relations. Not sure how to achieve that yet, but I view this as a long-term project.
Do you have experience with the math etc. involved?
I'm not sure what "the math involved" is. I suspect that, at the most, we're just talking about summing up the values in a row and/or column, and that's about it. But I guess I'd need to see a description of what the chart details actually mean (there's some paper it refers to, but that seems to be behind a paywall, and I'm not even 100% sure if it would provide the required info).
So I'm fairly certain that the math would not be difficult at all to work with, but also not sure how to confirm that.
EDIT: Actually, one of the papers linked on the main page is downloadable. It does, indeed, have a bunch of convoluted math in it. But I'm not entirely sure if that's relevant to what you'd want to show, and again it doesn't really describe that clearly what the WIOD data actually is (like, in relation to the match described). So...IDK, maybe?
EDIT 2: The paywalled paper looks MUCH more useful, and the paywall can apparently be circumvented by a simple web search for its title, as it seems some sites provide it publicly. But I haven't read more than the intro yet.... (Link: Wisconsin University Social Science Computing Cooperative: An Illustrated User Guide to the World Input–Output Database: the Case of Global Automotive Production...archive)
EDIT 3: Okay, I see the data isn't as homogeneous as I thought and there is actually some non-trivial math that can be done to e.g. compute "value-added exports" for an industry in a country. Seems like relatively straightforward linear algebra. Pretty easy to implement, and seeing as all the data is static, any desired computations could be done once, at the time of import (or feature enhancement).
I added the paper and your comment to the issue on GitHub. Personally I don't have experience with what I takes to implement a feature like this and will definitely reach out to you when I'm ready to takle this task. Thank you for looking into this.
You should also search for flag emojis (based on ISO 3166-1 alpha 2), they’re a useful shorthand and visual.
imagine being Buttigieg right now.
> get told by Obama to drop out in 2020 in exchange for a cushy cabinet appointment where you do nothing
> be told you can be in the spotlight and run next time
> deaths by car at an all time high
> East Palestine train derailment happens and poisons an entire town
> Boeing planes start unraveling in mid-air
> a major bridge gets rammed into and collapses
> all US infrastructure starts collapsing and annihilates any chance you have at being president
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In an interview with Israel today, Donald Trump calls for an end to the war in Gaza: "You have to end your war. You have to do it. We have to reach peace. We cannot allow this to continue. Israel has to be very careful, because you lose a lot of the world. You are losing a lot of support.'
Meanwhile, Fetterman:
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One of Trump's biggest political strengths is knowing which way the wind is blowing.
EDIT: Found this from Twitter:
“I think Israel made a very big mistake,” he said. “I wanted to call [Israel] and say don’t do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, ‘Oh, that’s a terrible portrait.’”
“It’s a very bad picture for the world,” he continued. “The world is seeing this … every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever’s providing that, that’s a bad image.”
Trump reiterated his support for Israel, but he said images of the heavy-handed military response have sparked anti-Israeli and antisemitic sentiment.
“Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that,” he said, referring to mass bombings. “And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’ve watched every single one of those. And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.”
He later urged the country’s leadership to change its public image in the conflict.
“Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations, because right now they’re in ruin,” Trump said. “They’re being hurt very badly, I think in a public relations sense.”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4554652-trump-israel-gaza-hamas-war
About as "sympathetic" to Palestine as you can probably expect from him.
he's still fully mentally there, and a more 'humane' zionist than biden
He’s definitely saying better things than Biden (and every Senate democrat, too). I actually think this highlights that Biden will not be any better than Trump on Gaza. Because the Biden admin is maximally supporting Israel other than using the actual US military (overtly) to support Israel. Like, it’s not mathematically possible to be more supportive of the genocide other than to land some Seals in Rafah and have them join in on the genocide. Biden has his foot on the gas in all other areas: US military equipment is pouring into Israel, US diplomats are providing diplomatic cover to Israel at the UN and ICJ, and Biden is telling Netanyahu to ease up on the genocide with same level of conviction my aunt does when she tells us she doesn’t want any rhubarb pie after dinner this time.
I don’t see Biden or Trump going that last step and getting the US military directly involved. That is the only way the US could be even more of a partner in the genocide.
Edit: to clarify, my aunt really loves rhubarb pie.
At this point in time I'm beginning to believe that it would be easier to push Trump left than Genocide Joe. Trump is an opportunist nihilist who believes in nothing except for himself coming out on top, if turning down the genocide dial a notch is goong to make him popular he will do it. Genocide Joe on the other hand believes in Zionism and imperialism and is ready to make sacrifices to uphold it.
HOW IS TRUMP BETTER ON THIS THAN FETTERMAN
mostly trump just knows how to play the fiddle for the establishment. He knows when its done and its time to bail.
Exactly. And more importantly, the likes of Trump and Alex Jones, despite being craven reactionaries, aren't zealots. They're perfectly happy to cut and run, even flip, if it suits them. Unlike Biden who's a true believer through and through.
Why are you surprised that Fetterman is not some kind of progressive? He literally said that South Africa has no rights to criticize Israel because they do atrocities on white farmers.
Maybe Oz wasn’t the most evil choice on the ballot, it’s not like anti scientism and crank politics are something new in Americas
In Hellworld, your only choices are between a racist genocidal maniac and a batshit insane crank.
Why are you surprised that Fetterman is not some kind of progressive?
I never said I was surprised, though. I don't think anyone here is at this point. We're just dunking on this loser.
Eh, Trump literally said he wanted to deport Muslims and Palestinian supporters. Biden isn’t saying he’s doing that, yet.
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Use this one weird trick to get liberals to think and care about material conditions.
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
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For the next four months I'll be studying a subject called "Economy of Historians" in my University. Turns out the professor is a Marxist gigachad and his classes are four hours long, the first two hours we see general economic theory, from Smith to Keynes, Marx and all economic systems. The last two hours it's just him reading through Das Kapital chapter by chapter, line by line.
This is the evil political indoctrination milei was talking about. HELL YEAH.
By the end of this period I'll be the biggest Marxist around here, so you better buckle up, liberals.
Damn that's a long class, is it once a week or what? I only ever had stuff like that for field work
Once a week, but that is just one class. Classes are divided in three types: Theoretical, Practical and Theoretical-Practical, each one of them is 2 hours long. Each subject (I think that's the correct word) has these three types of classes which is 6 hours per week, 96 hours in total. The differences between these classes are in the method and topics to be covered, theoretical and theoretical-practicals are pretty much the same, it's a professor speaking for 2 hours about certain topics. Students can speak and ask questions and even debate but the class must proceed. Some professors are quite boring to listen to while others are better, it depends. Practical classes are there to "teach" the students how to participate in class, how to prepare certain texts for a class and how to make research and so on. These classes are more like a debate-ish kind of thing where students participate by asking questions and what not.
Practicals are divided in "commissions" that you have to join and attend to, there are multiple commissions to choose from that have different professors, methodologies and times. You could have 6 hours long classes if you combine all your classes in a single day. It's way too much to sit in the same place for 6 hours to listen to pure theory, despite the 15 minute breaks, but sometimes we have to do it.
In this case, the marxist economics professor uses the first two hours of class, the theoretical, to cover some topics and the theoretical-practical covers Das Kapital, which he said it's optional and not mandatory to attend to. So I believe most students will leave (especially because it's late) and few will remain, those interested in the topic and Peronist debatelords who want to own the Marxists. There are no libertarians in this University, for real.
Biden is walking back the sanctions on the individual settlers
They're calling him the most spineless man to ever live
Charges dropped against Ontario pigs that killed toddler
They were pursuing a father that kidnapped his kid, they knew the kid was in the vehicle, and the opened fire anyway and killed both of them. Of course the charges were dropped. KKKlanada cops are just as bad as anywhere else
How much away from any humanity do have to be to still respect the police after something like this happens. Rest in peace.
I had to edit cbcs passive voice headline, I don't understand how someone could be writing that story about a kid getting shot by the cops. It's fucking disgusting
It takes all my self-control not to unload on idiots who claim the CBC is left-wing.
It’s extremely frustrating to hear politicians demonizing Nicaragua for “eroding human rights” and then praise fucking Bukele for being tough on crime.
George Santos, former US congressman, has announced that he will run again, only this time as an independent. He justifies it by saying that he can't remain in the Republican Party, because of "what has been demonstrated in the House of Representatives".
Please let him win again, it will be so fucking funny.
If I were in his district I'd be incredibly pissed that some assholes in a different state deprived me of my representation. Every person in his district should be tax exempt for the period that he was ejected from congress.
Have you seen that when Genocide Joe is giving a speech and a group of protestors yell things like "Genocide Joe! How many dead kids is enough for you?" to interrupt the rally... the pro-Genocide Joe crowd begins to chant "Four more years!"?
Are they asking for four more years of genocide?
Regardless of this, I know History will be the final judge here. And History will not be kind to them.
Some Zionist with a "NUKE GAZA NOW" sign getting owned in the marketplace of ideas:
https://twitter.com/gfunkposting/status/1773724461553885373
