Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
Bulletins and News Discussion from November 11th to November 17th, 2024 - Chapo? Like, the President-elect of Mozambique? - COTW: Mozambique
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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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.
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Trump taps Mike Huckabee to be his ambassador to Israel.
A few highlights:
- He has previously spoken out against efforts to negotiate a ceasefire deal
- Huckabee was a longtime evangelical minister before running for political office and regularly leads "The Israel Experience" trips that take tour groups to sites with Biblical and historical significance
- In Jan. 2017, Huckabee spoke in the West Bank in front of a banner vowing to "Build Israel Great Again" while touting the policy shift Trump's administration would bring.
- He refuses to call the settlements in the West Bank settlements, and prefers to call them "communities". He also refuses to use the word "occupation", or even call it the West Bank.
He's ghoulish and sucks obviously, but other than that, he's just another standard neocon, isn't he? Wonder if any Trump fans who were hoping for something different than the standard Republicans and their playbook are getting disappointed with these picks.
But then, it's foreign policy and Israel specifically, so I guess only Nick Fuentes and his groypers care, while the used car dealership owners and MBA failsons who make up the rest of his base either don't care or are happy for more blood for their imperial machine.
He’s a Christian fundamentalist on top of being a neocon but he’s definitely a fundie first and a neocon second.
His calculations regarding Israel are going to be informed far more by his Christian fundamentalist views rather than a calculation to uphold US hegemony in the long term so he’s way more dangerous.
I would argue way less dangerous since he’s basing his decisions on irrational frameworks and biases, he can’t make cold calculated imperialist decisions.
Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake
Yeah the more Ideologically entrenched you are the less capable you are to respond to material reality. If you 100% trust in god to provide for you why would you get up off your ass to make a sandwich? If isisraelis are gods chosen people they will surely be granted victory "as it is written."
This is why Hitler was commanding armies that didn't exist by the end of the war. This is why Zellenski refuses to retreat and build defensible lines. They think that their ideoligy is more powerful than reality and even when reality forces itself on them they continue to make the same mistakes because they don't question their world view.
I'm with you on this. On the one hand an ambassador is just a foreign policy communicator and doesn't or shouldn't make policy but if this is meant to signal Trump's middle east plans this is very very bad. Since it's early in the game I'm really hoping this is just red meat to the baby burning evangelical base. I'm not a believer but if you told me mike huckster had the mark of the beast I wouldn't be suprised. Fuck.
Even for people here who were arguing that a Trump presidency could be less damaging than Biden's on a foreign policy standpoint were never under any illusions that the people Trump would appoint would be any less monstrous, because there aren't really any non-monstrous candidates left within ten miles of power. It's purely an argument based on the mixture of incompetency at the helm and mounting American military exhaustion after nearly three years of the Ukraine War and a year of Israel's genocide.
Any conservative who voted for Trump partially on the basis that the people he would appoint would be less bloodthirsty are gullible dipshits
Can’t wait to watch this guy’s eyeballs fall out of his head live on tv
The only silver lining to this mess is that none of the government officials of the Palestinian-sympathetic countries involved are going to be under any illusions about the true intentions of Trump&co.
Yea, in a way Trump&co being completely mask off about American policy and imperialism is an asset, it's way harder to buy the "nice liberal international order" with them at the helm
Got a historical cave for Huck to get familiar with
