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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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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.
Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles
Big development. Russia previously drew a very clear red line about this.
Starting a war with Russia on his way out out of spite makes Biden straight up worse than Trump. I'm now forced to root for the fucking Trump foreign policy team to find a way to extricate the US from war with Russia.
Trump having won the election might be the only thing that prevents this from spiraling into an open Nato-Russia conflict (which would almost guarantee a nuclear war). Depending on how blood thirsty Biden and the
around him are the next few months could be very dicey. I can only hope Putin/Russia is willing to hold out for Trump to be inaugurated but only time will tell
I'm not sure how loyal the us military is to the departing administration. Maybe they'll just fuck around with excuses until trump can countermand the orders to do deep strikes. It's been pretty clear that the pentagon has been the one trying to pull back support for ukraine.
When the Joint Chiefs of Staff are the voices of reason...
Trump will manage to do it and then start a war with CHYNA.
Gabbard at the helm of the CIA will be interesting
Wonder if this has anything to do with it lol
Ukraine's Zelenskyy says he wants to end war with Russia through diplomacy next year
This is probably the last wunder weapon Ukraine is getting. It's so over.
come on putin. Houthis want to sink a carrier. your kinzhals want to taste carriers. (stop telling me to quit copium I will never do that)
Yeah the Russian attack on Ukraine's electrical infrastructure was an escalation, the biggest aerial bombardment of the war so far, it's why I didn't believe the initial reports that they'd actually go through with it when they had 20+ strategic bombers in the air. So an escalatory response by Ukraine and it's NATO backers is expected.
I don't believe that, if it was true, the authorisation would've happened sooner.
I mean, isn't it more likely russian response? Considering editor's work and verification, this decision was made some time ago
It's an issue that's been debated in US circles for some time with the US initially deciding against it, and Russia has prepared for a potential authorisation of ATACMS on Russian soil, but to me the fact that the decision was made today, and not earlier, is a big deal in my view.
I saw reports they are gonna do it after election, they did it after election
with reporting lag doubt they could have decided that in less than 16 hours after attack. More likely decided some days ago, russians learned and decided fuck it with their training launches 5 days ago
So what options do Russia have to retaliate if the yanks stars shooting missiles into Russia? I doubt that they will move directly to total war with NATO but they will have to do something to make it clear that this decision hurts the west as well.
Would it be feasible for them to shoot sone yank military satellite down? That would achieve striking a blow to the west and striking yank infrastructure related to the attack while simultaneously avoiding to actually strike western soil and killing westerners. In the other hand that could make the yanks begin shooting down Russian satellites and then we are back on the escalation.
The last time the US came close to giving Ukraine permission to use long range weapons on Russian soil, Russia floated the idea of supplying Ansar Allah/the Houthis with P-800 Oniks/Yakhont ramjet powered supersonic anti ship cruise missiles.
something like this seems reasonable, it'd be defensible and lawful to strike all the NATO surveillance that helps the AFU with targeting and planning but it'd put the 'escalation ball' back in NATO's court at a time when Russia's offensive is doing really well. if ATACMS were capable of stalling that i'm sure they'd have used them already, no way there's a magic spot behind the line on the map thats the lynchpin of the offensive.
It would be reasonable in a way, but giving such weapons to Ansar Allah increases the chance of a US/NATO military ship being hit quite substantially. Cruise missiles are much more suited to hitting moving targets like ships than ballistic missiles, and the P-800 is a vast improvement on the cruise missiles in their arsenal. The escalation ladder from such an event could be very ugly.
it's a much nicer ladder with an ally than direct action, though.
Give S-400s to Iran and Ansarallah.
Pretty sure Russia needs all the missile defence it can muster doubly so if usa is firing missiles from ukraine.
They'd probably make a formal protest in the UN and get the general assembly to condemn the actions of the usa. Putin is too civility pilled some times.
🥰
news heads, how bad would it be if a US missile reached moscow
sternly worded letter? i keep thinking they would continue until putin catches jassm/taurus to the face
At best, total Russian mobilization. At worst, we all die tomorrow morning. Most likely this leads to an aircraft carrier sinking and Africom gets a bad case of warlords suddenly getting their hands on depleted uranium weapons
I don't think ATACMS has the range to reach Moscow. Longest range variants have a range of 300km/190 miles.
Can't they put them on jets? That was the point of giving Ukrainians jet fighters.
No, there are no air launched versions of the ATACMS ballistic missiles. There was a planned version under the JTACMS name, but it was scrapped. The F-16s can carry plenty of other weapons though, and were mainly sent over to bolster Ukraine's air defence, in intercepting Russian fighter jets and missiles.
If Ukraine want air launched ballistic missiles for the F-16, they'd need to get those from Israel.
Today I learned.
Yeah, the long range stand-off weapon that the Ukrainian Air Force has used is the Storm Shadow/SCALP air launched subsonic stealth cruise missile, which has a range of 560km/350mi. Ukraine launch them from modified Su-24 bombers, modified with parts and likely avionics packages from the British Tornado GR4 aircraft.
The F-16s could theoretically carry JASSM stealth subsonic cruise missiles, though there has been no final agreement on that as of yet.
It's interesting that Putin still hasn't declared war even with Ukranian troops on Russian soil. I know it's because there are mobilization laws that would come into effect or something legalese, but a missile strike on an oil refinery would have to do it.
who could have predicted this