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.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
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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.
There has been a lot of incompetence here. Few hours after the shooting they detained a "person of interest" who looks nothing like the suspected shooter, completely wrong build.
Also, in both cases Jewish professors were killed, so if the two shootings are linked, it's possible that it's another anti-semitic attack like Australia.
I am trying to avoid
posting without having evidence to back it up, but yes, Brown is probably the most Jewish Ivy and Brookline is probably the biggest Jewish community in New England. This wouldn't be the first time some mentally ill physics student/researcher killed a bunch of people over science bullshit, but this article from the JPost kinda set off some alarm bells at a time when the Israeli state is starting to bang the drum that they need to do more Iran strikes.
It's also possible some nutcase decided to kill Jews afer being "inspired" by the recent ISIS aligned/inspired attacks in Syria (ISIS ideologue within the Syrian security forces killed US troops in a green on blue incident) and Australia (the Australian shooters had an ISIS flag in their vehicle and visited the Philippines).
It's like school shootings, once the media buzz happens copycats get inspired.
I don't think the majority of the western world is prepared to deal with the reality that Al Qaeda, ISIS and aligned extremist ideologies have not been defeated even after 20+ years of war. Sure they have been weakened in the Middle East or are under US stewardship in the case of Al Jolani, but these groups have made massive gains in Africa. Multiple states could fall to them in the coming years and decades. It would be a humanitarian disaster.
Will Israel try use this to their advantage? Yes of course, they'll advocate for more bombings, a tougher line on Syria, etc. Try to link it back to Iran. This is to be expected.
It's possible that it's just some guy who is trying to target Jews, but the choice of who he picked is weird. If he's in Brookline and wants to shoot up a college, he could have just gone to Brandeis, the "Jewish Harvard" that is like 20 minutes away instead of Brown. And why target that professor specifically? That's part of why it just feels weird to me. I wouldn't be surprised if this is some sort of academic or student who is behind these shooting if they are just "normal" shootings. There are a lot softer targets that would result in more death than shooting this professor in front of his daughter (and not killing his daughter) at his home.
Looks it was some guy from Portugal with a personal grudge against the university and lecturer, a 20+ year long grudge after being a failed physicist. While still very tragic, I'm glad it's not another ISIS linked attack.
The tip that broke the case also came from reddit lol.