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.
Are any of you sickos still following the Ukraine frontline stuff enough to know if anything significant has happened since Avdiivka fell? I keep hearing that Russia is advancing basically across the entire line of contact but haven't heard of any big wins in a little while. Rumors of a Kharkov offensive?
Most of the recent talk is still on the recent terror attack, particularly because the head of the FSB specifically named the USA, UK, and Ukraine as responsible. There is definitely a shift in Russian attitudes that it's time to hurry up and beat Ukraine. i.e. a recent quote from a Russian diplomat:
People make fun of Putin for letting every red line be crossed, and this is part of the reason for the minimal war news lately, but his current approach does somewhat minimize the chance of WWIII kicking off tomorrow. A more aggressive approach could get interesting.
Also, the current understanding of the attack according to Russia (mainly from the FSB), is that the US/UK/Ukraine had planned for the attack to occur on International Women's Day, before the election, but called it off due to high security on the holiday. This is around the time they issued that terror warning in early March. Ukraine decided not to let a good terrorist go to waste and carried out the attack later, against the wishes of the US.
I would like to not die in a nuclear hellfire thank you. Knowing my luck it would happen while I’m at work.
All quiet on the western front. I think they took 5-6 villages in the vicinity of Avdiivka and reached the second defence line and probably took part of it. Russia seems to have near full air superiority and thus the glide bombs dropped by russian jets do hurt the UA defence force a lot. That's probably why russia can keep the momentum without recovering from months of attacking. Than u had the skirmishes in belgorod oblast, that really did nothing for UA. A weapons depot was bombed by UA in Transnistria. Zaporizhia front seems to not get anywhere, russia is trying to reach the pre "greatest counter offensive"-line.
Can’t have big wins if Ukraine can’t put up big defenses. Next big fight is Odessa so it’ll be minimal news until the Russians make it that far.
Odessa and Kharkiv are the two they have been hitting hard with aviation and strikes. The area in the North around Belgorod will get a big buffer zone and see a lot of pressure in the upcoming year as now Ukraine is launching direct artillery strikes into Belgorod for the first time all war.
A patch of dirt was taken yesterday, its so joever.
Every day for over two years now, comrade. They changed the name of the mega, but that's mainly why I'm still here as well.
The Avdeevka offensive kinda kept going since then, and went further than many of us were expecting. The RUAF pretty quickly took an additional ring of villiages past Avdeevka, then even more surprisingly took positions in the next ring of villages out from there. The AFU is managing to defend at that second line, but has been steadily conceding small amounts of territory there for a few weeks now. A similar situation is happening in the other villages surrounding Donetsk City generally. It seems like the overall objective of the RUAF in that area is to finally create a buffer zone around Donetsk City to protect it from artillery fire.
Other that that, the RUAF has been making small gains to the west of Artyomvisk, and even smaller gains in the area the AFU carved out in Zaporozhia during their summer offensive. The AFU's defense in the northern parts of the front lines has been more effective, with some back and forth there.
Everyone seems to be expecting something big from the RUAF this year, but I am not going to try and make predictions. There have been some other developments in the Russo-Ukrainian not directly involving the front line. You didn't ask about that though.
I want you to try to make predictions for me please lol. What might be the objective of a large Russian offensive this year? Kharkov? Odessa? If you had to guess.
I find it hard to believe Odessa is next. There's a long way to go from Kherson to Odessa.
Sure, but I'm usually wrong. I think it's likely that the RUAF will try and make a buffer zone out from the Belgorod and Kursk borders. This will have to include Kharkov City.
This is my thinking, too. I think Odessa + Transnistria is an eventual target but not short-term. I think 2024 goals are Chasiv-Yar and Kharkov.