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.
The argument for Israels existence has included the affirmation that Jews are an ethnicity. Therefore they get to claim that their settler colony has legitimate beginnings as tied to the ancient Israelites who they claim are the ancestors of all Jewish people everywhere (the 2000 years myth). This is contentious considering the history of coerced conversion and separation of Jews into their own enclaves by many European nations and the mass migration and extermination of Jews in the 20th century by Germany and its European collaboraters. You can't simply just say "scientific studies have been done" off hand and expect that to work here, this is not reddit and this is the news mega. You could find "Jewish genes" in a non-jew from Germany because their family converted out of Judaism.
Even Chabad, the ultra Zionist cult, doesnt claim this (https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/498027/jewish/Is-Jewish-a-Race.htm), instead they opt for the explicitly religious ethnicity (that is also explicitly tied to a "pact" with Israel) which is not the same. We can classify Israel as a religious ethno-state, not an ethnic one as there are clear ethnic divisions between Ashkenazi, sephardim and mizrahi jews among other groups of Jews not originating from Europe at all. Israel also gains more ground as an ethno religious state and pushing Judaism as a covenant with the settler colonial state rather than any persons personal religious position. Every Jew in the world has been tied to Israel forcefully whether you think its legitimate or not by the Zionist entity. This is an ongoing process for 70 years that no western Jewish diaspora has really tried to reject besides some traditionalist enclaves.
If you're getting outflanked by Chabad maybe it's an indication that this ideological road you're going down is a dead end.
Isn't that precisely the problem early European zionist settlers ran into? They had very little in common with African and Asian Jews, who they needed as footsoldiers and demographic padding (feels gross to say, but it is what it was, along with needing "Israel" to be the sole "homeland" of Jews, especially in the region) for their colonial project. They came up with various reasonings to make a national group out of all these ethnicities, one of which is the Chabad line you're mentioning. They also felt comfortable crushing and erasing the cultural traditions of those non-European Jewish groups, and even at times those of European Jews, in service of their homogenization project.
Hence the destruction of the Yiddish language, and its replacement by the artificially constructed fake Hebrew language