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.
A specter is haunting Elbit Systems - the specter of Palestine Action:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025/12/19/elbit-shutdown/
Say it with me now:
Hunger strikes only work when the government cares about you or is at risk of being held account and suffering grave geopolitical consequences by not pretending to care about you.
There is no one to hold them to grave geopolitical consequences by successfully painting the UK as a human rights infringing, oppressive shit-hole and hammering it home to an audience that is receptive and would matter to UK interests. And obviously they don't care about the suffering of these people. Hence the only merit this has is if it drums up more support domestically among people who get their news through non-sanctioned means and even then who knows. They can definitely get away with force-feeding these people and it'll be shrugged off by the same people shrugging off the genocide in Palestine. Of course the people in question are quite brave to have even gotten into this position but I want to point out how because these people aren't in China or Russia hunger striking against "bad thing government" it doesn't matter.
They're still useful to the extent that they demonstrate conviction of will. Nobody taking themselves to the edge of death in hunger strike action can be accused of lying or being untruthful because nobody will do it without that.
Additionally, demonstrating that the government does not care has usefulness. The gov can't pretend to be oblivious to an issue or demands when it has hospitalised people and MPs at the highest level have been questioned about the prisoners in person. They can't stay silent and not face the consequences that come from people judging them for that silence. Other methods have the side effect of people saying "oh perhaps they don't know about the issue" or "perhaps there are other priorities". There are no priorities more important than a person's imminent death.
These things serve to radicalise people. It removes the many ways people pretend the state is just stupid. It changes from "the politicians are idiots" to "the politicians are willfully evil".
Force feeding today is untested under law. It violates UK law is my guess, it hasn't been practiced since IRA prisoners did it in the 80s, and before that were the suffragettes.
The alternative is to sit in prison quietly. They choose to do this in the hope that it can have an effect, which it might still do.
By this standard, virtually nothing outside of breaking out of prison or killing prison guards would work. And being able to pull those two off is orders of magnitude harder than a hunger strike.
What about when the state relishes the excuse to...
torture/SA
...torture you by ramming feeding tubes up your ass (or down your throat, but that's less fun for the cops, so...) and violate your lack of consent regarding both feeding and bodily autonomy?