Thank you to @carpoftruth@hexbear.net for covering my position as Supreme Dictator of the Goddamn News while I was moving and getting set up in my new home in a top secret Kremlin-funded bunker five hundred feet below the ground. Our regularly scheduled programming returns this week.
On October 9th, Daniel Chapo won the Mozambique general election with about 70% of the vote. Chapo is the head of FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party of Mozambique's liberation, which fought an internal anti-communist resistance called RENAMO which was backed by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa; Frelimo won in 1975. However, as the USSR fell, Frelimo began to allow elections inside Mozambique, and has ruled the country with significant majorities in each election ever since.
The main opposition party inside Mozambique is Podemos, which is led by Venancio Mondlane, a former member of Renamo and trained inside the USA. He alleges that his polling figures predicted a majority win for him, not Frelimo, and has accused Chapo of electoral fraud. There have been the usual slogans about how they yearn for freedom. The EU, of course, "witnessed irregularities." As @WilsonWilson@hexbear.net has pointed out, Mozambique has massive undeveloped gas fields and is outsourcing the development process to France, Norway, the UK, and the USA, while mysterious Islamist groups have popped up to cause chaos in the exact regions which have the gas, slowing the process of actually developing those gas fields. Overall, it appears to be a cookie-cutter colour revolution attempt by the imperial core designed to install a comprador for cheaper resources. Its proximity to BRICS+ member South Africa may also be significant, noting the colour revolution in Bangladesh earlier this year exerting influence near India and China.
Protestors have been battling against the police and government since late October, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries as well as massive disruption, as the government has intermittently blocked access to the internet and social media. As of today, calm appears to be returning, with border crossings beginning to reopen.
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Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. 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.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
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.
Danish municipalities caught using Google Translate in child protection cases
In Denmark, municipalities handling child protection cases have faced criticism for using Google Translate to communicate with non-Danish-speaking families in situations as serious as child removal cases. In one instance, officials warned an Ukrainian refugee mother that her children could be taken away if she didn’t comply with an action plan by pushing a smartphone through the mail slot in her front door and letting the Google Translate app play the message machine translated to Russian. Later that night all her children were forcibly removed.
She had become unable to take care of her children after suffering a mental breakdown when learning about her husband being severely wounded in the war. For six months leading up to the removal of the children, a for-profit company hired by the municipality had sent social workers to assist her and assess her parenting skills. The social workers did not speak Russian or Ukrainian, instead they communicated with the family in English, a language the mother doesn't speak, or through Google Translate. The mother did not understand what the purpose of the visit was or what was required of her.
According to Statistics Denmark, 44 Ukrainian children has been removed from their homes by authorites, either with or without the parents' consent. There are no statistics on the use of Google Translate in these cases but state media DR knows of at least three instances where authorities used machine translation.
Legal experts say this practice violates Danish law, which requires that authorities communicate in an understandable and accurate way with parties in child welfare cases, typically requiring qualified interpreters. Human rights advocates warn that relying on Google Translate risks misinterpretations that could isolate vulnerable families and lead to family separations without due understanding.
Municipalities claim that machine translations are mostly used in low-stakes interactions with citizens but defend the approach, citing a shortage of interpreters, but critics argue that automated translation is insufficient for such high-stakes interactions.
When we say Death to America...we really mean Death to The West, just can't type that many words...
May the families soon be reunited
Some of the Ukrainian woman's children has been returned already and the process for bringing back the last child is in the works. But that family is going to be traumatised forever, on top of all the war horrors. I hope they all get the support and care they need but I severely doubt they will.
The West more or less is America with how willingly they let American culture take over theirs
When you live in a western Europe, seeing American brainworms develop and run wild is a mixed experience. On one hand you get to laugh at the dumb uncultured yanks (yes, euros feel superior to white burgerlanders, there are no limits on who we can be racist to, we invented racism) but on the other hand you also get anxious knowing that in a few years our own homegrown chuds are going to bang the same drum.
Scandinavian child protection services really serve as an instrument for terrorising immigrants and poor families.
Norwegian version of CPS has repeatedly been sued by the UN for breaking human rights.
I didn't know about the UN thing. The only thing I've heard has been about right-wing evangelical American immigrants being shocked to find out that hitting children is very illegal in Norway and that authorities take the ban seriously. That is a good thing in my view but I wouldn't have trouble imagining that such a system would also be capable of abusing its powers for more or less conscious racist reasons.
A lot of the times, when children get taken away, it's for good reasons, like drug abuse, crime, violence or sexual abuse.
But Norway is in the middle of a giant moral panic about teen crime. The justice system recently implemented a new system to hasten the punishment of teenagers and lowered the age required to be sent to prison.
All of these measures are heavily biased towards teens of immigrant families. Middle Eastern looking kids hanging out in a shopping mall will frequently get the cops called on them for loitering around, and that results in CPS involvement, meaning families that are visibly foreign are much more subject to scrutiny for simply having a normally rowdy teenager.
Our CPS equivalent are also infamous for using sloppy "interrogation" tactics and often twist the words of children and lead them on to get a conviction against their families. Especially so against immigrants.
There has been similar tendencies in Denmark where the regime has made it easier to remove children or forcibly put them up for adoption at birth. I don't know much about how it works in practice but I would be surprised if non-white families were treated the same as white families.
Meanwhile, despite stories of CPS overreach and all the toughness posturing of the regime, any teacher or childcare worker can tell you stories of children who live in horrible conditions and the authorities being alerted multiple times while doing fuckall for years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against CPS-like services. I just realise that it is a double edged sword. Open for exploitation for those with horrible intentions, and a crucial service for people who really need it.
I thought taking people's children was genocide? Or has the West changed their mind about that?
Moving unaccompanied children under your care away from a war zone — Genocide. A more clearcut case of war crimes than bombing and starving hundreds of thousands of children to death for explicitly racist reasons.
Abducting children from their parents because you can't be arsed to meaningfully communicate with them — Protecting the children. Maybe a bureaucratic irregularity at worst but you have to consider that talking to people can be really hard.
Ah yes of course that all makes perfect sense! How did I not realize that? I forgot to apply
(Russians don't count as ok)