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.
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.
Am I misunderstanding the arrangement or is it kind of fucked up of The Onion to try to get Sandy Hook families to use the recovery fund for acquiring InfoWars? Do they really not have the money?
Wouldn't the Sandy Hook families get (most) of the money from the Infowars auction? So they're effectively paying themselves I think. Would be interesting who's paying what amount of money and what the ownership structure is now.
A court-supervised auction concluded on Wednesday. The Connecticut families said they agreed to forgo some payment from the defamation judgments to boost the Onion's bid and prevent other right-wing content creators from continuing to broadcast conspiracy theories on Infowars.
"The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability," said Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. "The dissolution of Alex Jones' assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for."
The second-highest bid was submitted by First United American Companies, which is associated with Jones, according to court documents.
"They're shutting us down," Jones said on social media site X. "I'm going to be here until they come in here and turn the lights off."
First United American Companies, which bid $3.5 million in cash for Infowars, objected to the way the auction was handled, saying it wasn't given an opportunity to beat the Onion's winning bid.
The Sandy Hook families wanted The Onion to have the website so that right wing news companies could not buy it. Maybe it's more important to the Sandy Hook families that there are less victims of right wing extremists than the money that they spent. It's not likely that The Onion is going to retain Infowars customers as The Onion customers.
Alex Jones is still required to pay the Sandy Hook families over $1 billion dollars. Alex Jones tried to buy Infowars for $3.5 million, he was the second highest bidder. So the price payed for Infowars is some amount over $3.5 million. Alex Jones still owes the rest of the money.
You are misunderstanding. You are inserting yourself into the scenario and trying to make decisions as if you are the victim. The Sandy Hook families probably already liked The Onion. If they wanted to buy Infowars themselves and gift it to a joke company, then good for them. The Sandy Hook families believe that it is justice for the website to be made into a joke.
Alex Jones has been posting on twitter all day that the Infowars auction was fraudulent and that he's a victim for not being able to buy the website.
What would be a worse scenario: "Sandy Hook families buy Infowars and gift it to The Onion as a joke" or "Alex Jones buys Infowars from the Sandy Hook families and continues to harass the families of school shooting victims"?