Thank you to @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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.
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 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.
I don't really read enough German internal politics, I heard something about their coalition government collapsing? Is there any political change in the country coming? Would it be unfriendly to NATO or even more friendly to NATO?
Yes, their coalition is blowing up and elections in Germany are likely next year. The right wing afd is likely to be a major part of any future government (i.e. Not scholz). The afd is a bunch of chuds that talk a big game about making changes, but similar to trump it's hard to say how much they will really change course from the neoliberal German state.
However, contrary to the American right, there is actual incentive for them to change course - the German economy was shattered by the destruction of Nordstream and ukrainian migrants and refugees directly undermine German labour in a way that does not apply to the US. The afd is similarly nato-skeptical as heterodox republicans, but unlike the Americans, the Germans actually have actually been negatively affected by this war.
All that said, I suspect that the afd will do more bitching and moaning about the war than actually take unilateral action to draw it down, instead focusing their chud ire on their true enemy, brown immigrants and refugees. If the American empire does pull the pin on ukraine though, expect the afd to enthusiastically follow the trump admin's lead.
On the subject of this being a more motivated change than the rhetorical shifting from Trump's people, I think that gets lost in translation frequently across the Atlantic. There's this lingering paranoia that Trump is going to create some kind of unified Hitlerite bloc across the entire first world part of Europe, some of the more peripheral bits, and subvert Russian statehood by getting Putin to warm up to the US and slow the pivot to the east. People are afraid Trump's sway with rightists is going to reverse all of the damage we have done but I don't even think there is a serious plan to do that, it's more like a vibe they are on, and it wouldn't work anyways.
I see him as doing more cooption (cooptation? Whatever not looking that up) of the more rebellious libertarian shitheads, neonazis, and tea party types, giving them bones to chew on and chugging ahead with the neolib agenda like any other neocon. With the Russians, they have learned their lesson too many times with the west now, but I suspect that any rebellious right wingers in Europe would be willing to do stupid shit for Trump. Not sure if the far right taking over in Europe will effect lots of geopolitical change, but it is actually something. Unlike appointing RFK or dumb stuff like that.
Are there any German or Netherlands etc posters here? Euros?
100%. The euro right will get to put a based chud coat of paint on the same project, then continue wondering why things keep getting shittier. The idea that another Trump admin is going to willingly de-vassalize europe is just idiotic