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.
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.
Today, at most, the right of the Palestinian people to resist by all means, including armed resistance, is expressed in a more or less stammering manner.
This is not very transgressive or extremist, since it is in fact something recognized by international legality itself (UN Resolution 3070 and other provisions). It is sad that it seems very audacious to wield an outright UN statement, but in any case the audacity stops there and other more important things are omitted. What is forgotten is what it says in the following paragraph in which it urges the peoples of the world to give material and all kinds of support to the Palestinian resistance forces to help them in their inalienable right to national liberation.
What almost all Eurocentric leftists supported with Ukraine, sending military aid, is what they should be doing with the Palestinians and their regional allies, but it does not seem to cross their minds to do so.
In an act of the Spanish left a Palestinian woman defends the right to Palestinian armed resistance and the leaders of the Podemos party show hesitation in applauding, perhaps they are afraid to hear it. In other expressions of the left what we find is a passive, opportunistic, cloying or hypocritical radicalism. The parties of the Spanish government are installed there. They combine shouting "Free Palestine!" with supporting the colonial doctrine of the "two States". They combine full relations and arms trade with "Israel", with validating only Palestinian voices exclusively asking for human rights, notably, those who represent the Vichy Regime, called the Palestinian Authority.
In general, the Western Left has silenced the current political subjects of the resistance. Why was the blockade on Gaza breached on October 7? Because "they are terrorists", even the European communist parties have explained this to us. Only a few pro-Palestinian groups have made it possible for the protagonists to express themselves.
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For the time being, material support for the Palestinian Resistance is provided by an alliance heterogeneous in its ideologies and capabilities from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon or Syria. It is curious how this alliance resembles the one proposed a hundred years ago by Lenin in his Congress of the Peoples of the East. This meeting was attended by tribal leaders, religious sheikhs, intellectuals and revolutionaries from Turkey and Western Asia, because the Soviet leader understood that the heterogeneous anti-colonial struggle was the Achilles Heel of imperialism, and no revolution could be expected within the European colonizing metropolis.
That is where we remain: the centrality of the conflict remains between impoverished peoples across the planet and the oppressors who plunder their resources and lands. And that is where the Western left remains: it oozes a mixture of Zionist heritage and prejudices about native national liberation movements that do not fit into Eurocentric ideological corsets. Add in Arabophobia and Islamophobia and you have the explanation why these heterogeneous alliances with the Palestinian Resistance are not worthy of selective Western solidarity. Along with this, the deep imbrication of the left in the structures of the colonizing powers means that perhaps it only continues as an expectation to manage, in a progressive way, the profits provided to the West by having in Palestine a colony and some Arab minion regimes.
We are all repulsed by armed conflicts, but even more so by the oppressed peoples who are forced to engage in them and resist, precisely in order to live in dignity and peace. And the representation of these peoples is in those who resist, who must be given a voice, and not in those who submit.
If the European left is not capable of overthrowing colonialism, they should at least be bold enough to defend international legality and send arms and resources to the Palestinian Resistance and its allies.