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.
It’s clearly an argument where you’re using disengage to get the last word. Are European Jews not white, since Jewish is an ethnicity? Was a German Jew not German, but Jewish?
Another example, I'm a Catholic in latam who definitely shares a little bit of genetic heritage with lots of Catholics in the Philippines, but otherwise we have nothing in common; not language (well maybe a bit but let's say for Tagalog speakers), culture, political reality, etc. If having a religion and a little bit of genes in common with a group of people that lives several oceans away makes you the same ethnicity, ethnicity becomes a pretty useless concept.
Depends who you ask, I suppose. Both zionists and antisemites would say "no". Although, to be fair (not to zionists and antisemites, of course, but to insurgentrat), people can belong to several ethnic groups.
For what it's worth, I agree with the comment by insurgentrat elsewhere in the thread that says "Jewish" is a collection of several distinct ethnicities. They have some cultural relation, of course, but outside the frameworks of zionism or antisemitism, I don't think it makes much sense for "Jewish" to be a single ethnic group. Or rather, they have more cultural relation than they did in the past, largely because of antisemitism and zionism as historical forces. You could make the argument for a strict single homogeneous ethnic group (which I want to emphasize insurgentrat did not do in this thread), but I think it would largely be based on zionist conceptions of Jewishness.
Whether that distinction makes a difference in this case (as insurgentrat said it didn't) is up for debate. I think it doesn't really. However, I agree that it's not sufficient to say this was simply an act of ethnic hatred when it clearly may have been partially targeted based on the affiliations with Chabad and almost definitely would never have happened if not for the "Israeli" genocide. I think that's the more important debate to be having in this thread, rather than whether "Jewish" is an ethnicity.
Of course, mixed people exist, but the idea that a religion is an ethnicity encompassing all practitioners worldwide is not the case, even with the qualifiers of subcategories within that ethnicities.
I agree that there's no coherent conception of a unified worldwide Jewish ethnicity (rather than religion) that isn't indebted both historically and ideologically to both zionism and antisemitism.
Yeah I realize there’s nuance within the religion, but if one of ethnic categories cited is Mizrahi, I’m (proverbially) jumping off a building
I mean, it is an ethnic category (just one purely based on zionism), those can be defined by various historical processes which can be artificial.
Like (OK not "like" at all because they're completely different, but they're similar only in the sense that they're both the result of displacement and homogenization of diverse groups with superficial common characteristics) "African American" is an ethnic category principally defined by being descendants of African slaves brought to Amerikkka, "Mizrahi" is an ethnic category defined by being the socially lower-ranked group of settlers who stole "Israel" from Palestinians - mainly in practice footsoldiers for European zionists, sometimes made so by coercion and deception. It's purely a zionist invention, but it's still a real group.
Edit: of course, I agree that it's probably not a productive categorization for people looking to organize a non-religious conception of Jewishness that isn't based on zionism.
FWIW Mizrahi is the term for Arab Jew in Israel because they are too racist and evil to associate themselves with the word Arab.
I'm aware, but as a result of this they have formed a common culture distinct from just being Arab Jews. AFAIK a significant amount (but not all) of that culture historically has been to performatively act in incredibly toxic and violently racist ways against Palestinian Arabs to prove that you're not an Arab, but it's still there. Hence why some anti-zionist Arab Jews refer to themselves as Arab Jews - to separate themselves from all that. It also includes the history of being displaced from their homes by the creation of "Israel", not always voluntarily - though I doubt very many Mizrahim today accurately attribute blame for that event.