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.
countries on the persian gulf exported around 18 million barrels of oil per day in 2022 (according to wikipedia). now, ~1.8 million of those were from Oman, who’s kinda on the outside, and Iran themselves. i think there’s an argument for this collapsing the global economy specially because of knock-on effects with China’s oil imports almost entirely coming through the Gulf, but i think there’s an earlier problem.
crude oil has ‘flavors’, namely light or heavy (referring to the length of hydrocarbon chains) and sour or sweet (referring to the relative amount of sulfur). the upshot of that is that oil refineries are built to take in specific flavors of oil. part of the reason Chevron is so mad about Venezuela is that, for fairly obvious geographical reasons, Venezuelan oil fits the refineries for the USA pretty well. shorter carbon chains have higher boiling points (more butane and less boat oil) and sweet oil does not need to have the sulfur removed from it. for instance, Saudi Arabia’s most common crude oil export is called ‘Arab Light’, which is a medium and sour crude oil. if Iran strikes at oil rigs, refineries, and distribution centers, there is no guarantee that other, unaffected infrastructure can actually do the same job. refineries built for sweet crude can not refine Arab Light. there could be barrels and barrels of oil sitting on boats and in pipelines, unable to be refined.
all of that is to say, depending on how and where Iran strikes oil infrastructure, the issue could very quickly become whether or not certain petroleum products are available at all, not just if the price is spiking. the price would also spike. there would be rationing and restrictions on international trade, most likely. in the areas most affected (hard to predict without knowing details), there would be pressure to declare ‘move it or lose it’ wars, with ‘it’ being all the fuel you currently have in stockpile. desperation and material interest can erase all alliances. the flip side of what could be several regional wars is that people are aware that those wars could happen. Saudi Arabia recently denounced genocide in Palestine (too little too late), and had meetings with the Iranian military. it’s certainly not a coincidence that Saudi Arabia didn’t start changing its tune until after True Promise II. Iran discussing strikes on oil infrastructure is as much a diplomatic tool as actually striking the infrastructure
Gives me the same vibes as Paul Atreides threatening the spice in Dune to force the Space Guild to negotiate.
I wonder where Frank Herbert got his inspiration
Just made it all up I presume
/s
It came to him in a spice dream.
To briefly expand on this, the US is the world's single largest oil producer, making 13 million barrels every day. That being said, the US only recently became a net exporter of oil and has been massively stepping up that oil production since the pandemic; it's why the presidential fights over the oil industry and climate change is pretty laughable, if you didn't know the figures you'd get the impression that Biden is sending agents to close down oil rigs when the exact opposite has been true.
So while a war in the Middle East would have massive repercussions, the US still stands to get fairly rich from oil price increases and may be - depending on Trump's policies - somewhat insulated from such a war, until the impact of having Arab Light be scarce truly sunk in. And it's not as if the world would "run out" of oil entirely. Five of the top ten countries by oil production are not in West Asia. Additionally, the global recessions and hardship has brought down/stagnated oil prices and demand over the years.
So my verdict is that it would be Very Bad (potentially 2008 recession levels or greater, depending on how far it spreads) but not Catastrophically Bad (developed countries start collapsing into anarchy; developing ones might be fucked though)