Image is from this Reuters article.
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.
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 daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
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.
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.
#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
reasoning
This is the largest economy I've seen while playing the game so, modern and healthy economy, makes a lot of wine and cars. Oh yeah, it's frog time ๐Damn Hexbear news mega heads are really becoming geopolitical experts these days, getting it right in just one go.
If the bar is this low for expert then call me the
expert๐Anyone who does better than me is an expert in my eyes.
#Tradle #750 1/6 ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
Yeah this one was kinda easy tbh
#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
reasoning
a large economy like this is usually European, industrial but not too industrial and high up the manufacturing chain, I know that France is a relatively big agricultural player, a few luxury items on there too, as well as radioactive chemicals in the chemical section which indicates nuclear energy, which France has a lot of. one could reasonably mistake it for another major economy if they only looked for 10-30 seconds but inspecting further leads you to France quite quickly#Tradle #750 3/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
Tried Italy first, then misread the direction arrow and went Germany.#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
Our reasoning was pretty similar, it feels a little obvious4/6 damn
spoiler
I saw a large and varied economy and immediately assumed US or China. Tried US, arrow pointed to Europe. I focused a little too much on the cars and went with Germany. Arrow indicated either France or Spain, and I picked Spain because I thought wine would be bigger in France.I feel a little dumb, but even if I had put more thought into the first guess I think I still would have gone with Spain or Italy (not enough fish for Portugal).
#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
Peugeot, Wine, and Gas Turbines. C'est la Vie#Tradle #750 2/6
Spoiler
I thought it was UK but I'm shocked how much less UK ($469B) exports compared to France and why the fuck is UK biggest export Gold? Fucking evil shit country.#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
statistically significant wine is, i believe, a dozen countries or less in europe, the americas, and oceania. the industrial and aircraft engineering + medical stuff made me guess frogs first#Tradle #750 1/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
#Tradle #750 1/6 ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
size of economy, wine, cheese collapses into france or italy, italians don't make turbines or pharma#Tradle #750 1/6 ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐ฉ https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
#Tradle #750 4/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle
spoiler
I mostly rely on the cardinal directions and distance, which is why I wound up with 4 guesses.