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.
I recommend the YouTube channel “Weeb Union” which sounds stupid but is actually very good and levelheaded
Here I am, typing "Weeb Union" into my YouTube search box... hoping for the best so I don't get swarmed by anime stuff.
Yeah I honestly cringe when sharing them because of the name and clickbait titles, but the actual content of the videos is done well. He starts with the weeds but often digresses into bigger picture analysis towards the ends of the videos.
He’s like a non-transphobic (that I know of) version of DPA but easier to understand, or a quicker version of Mercouris using maps. He also doesn’t do the cringe “panel discussions” with random Chud analysis.
Better than that guy "HistoryLegends" who makes cringe ass faces in his thumbnails about the war in Ukraine.
Yeah can’t stand that guy
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I so far haven't heard him spreading much misinformation, I watch maybe 1 in 5 of his videos so let me know if you find one that has a bad take but so far it seems fine. I wish he would start with the bigger picture stuff upfront, I find myself skipping past the small villages and minor advances as you say.
Normally these milblogger types can't help but insert their chud sense of humor or reactionary takes, but I've never heard anything like that. A lot of them are also obviously biased one way or the other, again I legitimately couldn't tell you this guys preference between Russia and Ukraine and his videos on Palestine were extremely good and not anti-Hamas at all. In fact he described their military coordination on October 7th in great detail, noting the sophistication and military nature of the operation. Indeed he even commented on the atrocities of the IDF quite openly, which a lot of these milbloggers liked to gloss over and only look at the maps.
The "weeb union" thing might be an allusion to the USSR and he might be a socialist of some sort, as he has a picture of Lenin, Che, Mao on his profile page (who's the guy on the right in the uniform and glasses?).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PTtuijzGmQ
here's a good one
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The guy on the right with the glasses is Hirohito.
Random
I mean he did say he was a weeb
Marcos, Guevara, Lenin, MacArthur, Mao and Hirohito? What a strange mix
Idk if he supports all these or if it’s just like “look guys from history”
I have been watching that guy's channel for a while now. He puts in work, like one video every 24 hours, which is kind of wild, really. I just check in every 3-4 days to get a general idea of the war.