On December 4th, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and the DRC’s Felix Tshisekedi signed the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity (pictured above). Trump boasted that he was settling a war that had gone on for decades, and remarked, idiosyncratically, “[…] and now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands […]”
A few days later, the M23 militia (backed by Rwanda) advanced into Uvira, a city near the DRC’s eastern border with Burundi and a major commercial and strategic location in the region. Burundi, although a small country, is a significant ally to the DRC and has sent thousands of soldiers to aid them during conflicts; this offensive by M23 aims to cut off a direct route between the two, though they do still share quite a long border over Lake Tanganyika. Tens of thousands of civilians (possibly up to 200,000) fled as M23 approached.
Signed almost simultaneously with the Accords was a Strategic Partnership Agreement between the DRC and the United States, which effectively threw open its critical minerals in the east to American exploitation. These minerals include tin, tungsten, and tantalum, which is vital for many industries. The irony is that M23 has been taking territory in the eastern DRC in order to transport these very minerals to Rwanda and onwards to global supply chains. Signing the Accord was, therefore, a remarkably pointless endeavour for everybody involved. Burundi and the DRC have complained, calling for sanctions on Rwanda, and appeasing to Trump’s pride, calling this a “slap in the face to the United States”, though I doubt the US is ultimately all that bothered about it one way or another.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. 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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
An update on the oil tanker seized by the US Coast Guard and Navy today.
Due to the above facts, this is different from the previous US seizure of the vessel SKIPPER, which was sanctioned and operating under a false flag and registration, and became “stateless”. This is a significant escalation, the US making the point that any vessel, even those not sanctioned, is subject to seizure if transporting sanctioned cargo (Venezuelan crude oil). This also opens up questions about legality under international law (lol), did the US contact Panama, China and/or Hong Kong before boarding and seizing CENTURIES? Will CENTURIES be returned to one of the aforementioned parties after the seizure and offloading of it’s cargo (crude oil), given that only the cargo is under US sanctions, and not the vessel itself, or will the US keep CENTURIES? I’m pretty sure the latter is called “theft”.
Source, Tanker Trackers
Xi, this sure would be an easy chance to flex a little muscle in defense of Venezuela
China still doesn’t have the logistics or power projection capabilities to help. Especially not in Great Satan’s backyard, or when the Panama Canal is at risk of closure by the US at any time.
Even if they sent all three of their aircraft carriers, they would still be outmatched by the US Navy, and quickly run out of fuel and supplies.
The response could also just be freedom of navigation type shit the us does in the Taiwan straight. Would you want to be on a marine helo approaching a tanker when there is a type55 destroyer 5 miles away from it?
What I’d really like to see is arms delivery. I think that’s realistic and useful.
I think the US would say any significant new deliveries are a “threat to national security” and immediately start bombing.
Maybe, but I’m not so sure that would be the trigger. Hard to say.
1.8 million barrels of crude oil is over 100 million US dollars at the market rate of $56 a barrel. Even if China is getting a significant discount, someone in China paid a lot of money for this crude oil. They’re going to want some form of compensation or assurance in their investment. Otherwise it becomes impossible to do business. Can’t have losses of tens of millions of US dollars because the ships get seized.
And that’s not even talking about the vessel, it’s Chinese owners are also going to want that asset back. Especially because it wasn’t even under any sanctions itself.
And the calculus of the US is: when they don’t get it back and when they do it again Chinese buyers will stop buying Venezuelan oil as too risky at which point the money to Venezuela dries up, that leads to cuts to services, leading to unrest, leading to opportunity for coups, fomenting images of unrest to use as a pretext to invasion in western media, or at the very least securing control of global oil resources even further in the hands of the US via its gulf proxies.
China doesn’t have a deep water navy to stop them and probably is disinclined against picking a fight with the US at this point and that far away from home anyways. Russia isn’t going to stop them and probably couldn’t afford to divert its resources right now with a push for Ukraine around the corner even if they were so inclined.
Chinese buyers will just have to purchase through Chevron. I don’t want to keep banging the drum here, but Chevron is still unsanctioned. The goal of the operation atm isn’t necessarily to actually fight with Venezuela, it is to funnel any and all oil revenue that Venezuela does make through a U.S. company. You just have to wonder ATM if the operational costs are anywhere close to the money they are making from it. I have to assume they are not.
They are trying to shear the sheep.
A lot of that’s true, and the US is certainly betting on China doing nothing, and China’s ability to directly assist Venezuela is quite limited. But China may choose to escalate within it’s own “sphere of influence”, around Japan or Taiwan. Last time around there was a joint Russian - Chinese bomber patrol with stimulated missile launches around Japan, and a Chinese aircraft carrier was involved, in response to US bomber runs around Venezuela. The US responded with their own US-Japan joint bomber patrol where they practiced sinking ships at long ranges (in other words, the Chinese Navy) off of the coast of Alaska and then flying around Japan (it was called Operation Tundra Merlin).
I don’t think China will react much, but this is still significant. A big financial loss for China, Venezuela, or an intermediary. And whoever was the guarantor/insurance behind this is going to be in big trouble.
at least some economic and diplomatic muscle
The US controls Panama since 1903, the only time Panama had truly indepedent goverment was between 1968 - 1981, under the Panamanian Revolutionary Military goverment. The US invaded in 1989 because their CIA asset, Noriega, went “rogue”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Panama even helped the US with this.
I think they most have contacted China about this. Now if this is just a show of force towards Venezuela, or an US operation that got the wrong ship, idk. It seems like the waited for the Venezuelan Navy to stop escorting the ship to attack.
Just saying that one ship is “sanctioned” and one isn’t is silly. Those sanctions should only matter (in the legal sense) if the vessel entered US territorial waters.
It matters because in the case of the SKIPPER, the US could argue that it was a “stateless” vessel operating under a false flag. Stateless vessels open themselves up to seizure by any nation. In this case, no such argument can be made. CENTURIES had a valid registration and flag.