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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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.
From Rania Khalek’s twitter:
The only country that can do that is Russia and they’re being stretched to the limit by endless waves of Ukrainian drones and the occasional yet unpredictable long range missile strikes supplied by Western countries. All of their air defense systems are already fully occupied and new production (which is being churned out slowly) obviously goes to the Ukrainian front.
The West kept Ukraine fighting for a reason.
I understand that it probably isn't anywhere near this simple but I do wish that Russia would just hand over the blueprints for their S400s or even S500s to China and then China just sets up a dozen factories overnight and in six months, half the countries under threat by the US suddenly possesses top-tier air defence systems. you'd also have to train specialists ideally locally and that would probably take years but the general idea of like, if China is the world-factory now, it should be mass-producing stuff to at least help countries defend themselves against the US
the modern equivalent of the USSR sending military equipment and advisors to colonies trying to overthrow their oppressors should be China sending defense equipment to shoot down American jets and missiles and drones
I don't know if bravery is really the resource lacking here considering China and Russia are still developing countries. The US is powerful but dying, the semi-periphery is rapidly growing. They're not just being overly conservative.
The same reason TSMC cannot just hand over the blueprint of its semiconductor fabrication to the US and expects them to be replicated. This kind of technology requires many decades of expertise and very skilled personnel for production.
There is a reason why Russia continued to export its military equipments even after the fall of the USSR - if they had stopped at any point over the course of the past 30 years, those expertise would have been lost forever. The dilapidated military industry was kept afloat by the occasional buyers of Russian military hardware.
In other words, Russia needs buyers to stimulate their defense industry. China is welcome to invest in the Russian military industrial complex by placing large orders on their equipments. In fact, Su-57 is currently flying in Zhuhai hoping to entice the Chinese into purchasing them.
The SU-57 flying in Zhuhai is an advertisement for other buyers, not China. And the credible rumor is that a deal was signed. Most likely with Algeria.
Beyond nuclear submarine tech (Russia ahead) and Jet engines (Russia slightly ahead), China really doesnt need anything Russia has in any notable quantities (quantities Russia cant even put out for sale atm). Su-57 is great but its not a great fit for the pacific theater compared to the j20 and j35 . China will be churning out ~200 5th gen airframes of those two combined per year from 2025 onwards either way
Regarding countries like Iran or even Syria i agree. And we have seen a new Chinese anti-drone laser based AD in the recent Khamenei sermon. But Lebanon is at the doorstep of the US and Israel and in a very unstable situation, with the Lebanese army and civil structure quite infiltrated with west sympathisers and even Mossad. Giving modern AD systems to Hezbollah carries a ton of risk of them falling into the wrong hands eventualy. Especially since these are the same AD systems China will relly upon in any pacific or Taiwanese straight conflict in the coming years if it happens. Not that if those dangers werent present China would be giving modern military tech and systems away in "US designated terrorist groups" but its a big hurdle that makes that convo impossible
Yeah thank you, I was gonna say "Lebanon needs air defense" is insanely reductive. I do not trust any of these non-Marxist antiwar leftist journalists. Madly suspicious people even if they did actually get their rhetoric right.
The US would attempt to coup all of them and probably steal hardware to reverse engineer
Very cool how this non-Marxist antiwar left figure can just click her fingers and get legions of you to turn into reply guys complaining about Iran and Russia and China sitting on their hands. I need to look for more of these examples. It's a persistent strategy of co-option.
Like, "Lebanon" needs air defense? Huh? What has the Lebanese army been doing? Is she implying they can just ship stuff to Hezbollah really easily? Ridiculous.
You should probably look into her work, I'm not quite sure she is what you seem to think she is.
I can't remember if I've ever heard her explicitly refer to herself as a Marxist, but the main focus of her work is on imperialism, and her views on the subject are basically indistinguishable from what you get from most Marxist Leninists. Could that be a complete coincidence? Sure, but again, go see for yourself.