INTERNAL ARMED CONFLICT IN ECUADOR

The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, declares a State of Internal Conflict and orders the armed forces to immediately take measures to neutralize the terrorist groups described:

Águilas, ÁguilasKiller, Ak47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller, Choneros, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Gánster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trébol, Patrones, R7, Tiguerones.

CRIMINALS INVADE TV CHANNEL

Criminal groups have just invaded TCtelevision TV in Ecuador. At the moment, a group of journalists are being held hostage.

The TV is forced to maintain its signal. Shots are reportedly being fired inside the studio, where the criminals are holding the journalists hostage.

There is still no information on whether there are any dead or not A massive exchange of fire is reported outside tctelevision. Criminals are holding the group's journalists hostage.

Are there updates on the Ukraine situation beyond the 'continuing stalemate' narrative I see on MSNBC and other major sources? I see Zelensky is getting more creative with who he's asking for help, and rumblings about Russian gains but nothing substantial.

Residents of Taiwan's Kinmen, after waiting 8 hours for their flight back to Kinmen from Songshan Airport, discovered it was cancelled. Kinmen is a historically deep-Blue county and voters in Taiwan must vote in their county.

A mastodon user ~~is~~ was blogging the ICJ trial: https://toots.matapacos.dog/@aroacemagicalnerd@blackqueer.life/111736512060380743

Similar thread on Twitter https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1745375499147202831 / https://nitter.net/jeremyscahill/status/1745375499147202831

The Finnish police attack anti-fascists on independence day (observed Dec 6 but posted today)

Where is the Over/Under guy for post count? This money is burnin a hole in my pocket

Ancap Update:

Argentina's Vice-President Victoria Villarruel failed to show up for a very important cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss the DNU and the General Law.

Rumors abound that her relationship with President Javier Milei is not good. Villaruel met with the former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, at the beginning of the week in a secret meeting, which was later revealed.

The government denies any crisis between the president and his vice-president.

Coup incoming lol. Can't wait for them to switch from the ancap to the neonazi

Link (spanish only)

In the midst of her personal tension with Milei, Victoria Villarruel did not attend the Cabinet meeting.

She did not attend the inauguration of the new Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces and the new number one of the Air Force, where she was expected due to her closeness to the military.

She's a big fan of the dictatorship that killed and tortured people and sent conscripts to die in the Falklands.

President Javier Milei headed this Tuesday a new Cabinet meeting at the Casa Rosada, focused on the debate that started in the Chamber of Deputies on the mega package of laws sent to Congress for the extraordinary sessions and, also, the evolution of the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), which deregulates the national economy.

The meeting of the Head of State with his ministers and collaborators started at 8:40 a.m. and ended at 10:18 a.m., in the Eva Perón room, on the second floor of the Government House. The most striking feature of the meeting was the absence of the vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, who, as reported by Tiempo in its printed edition on Sunday, has a deep rift with Javier Milei.

Within the government, there are those who maintain that the relationship between the President and the Vice-President is already broken, exactly one month after they assumed the highest national political positions. To different episodes that took place even in the last part of the electoral campaign, there was added one that would have provoked Milei's fury and the definitive cut of a personal relationship, which seemed at least cordial: an alleged meeting between Villarruel and Mauricio Macri, which at first was a journalistic version but that neither of the two parties came out to deny in public.

What is already a certainty is that Villarruel and Macri share the view that Milei and Patricia Bullrich "cut themselves off", after the electoral agreement between La Libertad Avanza and the PRO, which allowed them to win comfortably in the ballot. The current president repeated a thousand times during the campaign that Security and Defense were two areas of which he did not speak "because the specialist in the matter is Victoria and she will be in charge of those ministries". But Bullrich stayed with Security and imposed Luis Petri, his running mate in Patricia's failed presidential adventure, no less than in Defense.

After missing the cabinet meeting in the morning, on Tuesday there was another striking attitude of Villarruel. His familiarity with the military world suggested that he would be present at the inauguration of the new Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, Xavier Julián Isaac, or of the new Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Fernando Mengo. But none of that happened. Both brigadiers took office before Luis Petri and were only accompanied by active and retired military authorities, the Indian Ambassador to Argentina, Dinesh Bhatia and military attachés from foreign countries. Victoria Villarruel did not even greet them through her social networks.

The weekly update ain't here. I'm going to be honest, though: not a shitload has really been happening. The reason why I stopped doing daily briefings after Tuesday last week wasn't exhaustion, but because I had like, at best, 3-4 articles of any interest to share on any given day.

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The Country of the Week is Ethiopia!

As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Ethiopia, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I'll be very proud of you):

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

The previous country was Haiti.

This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!

General Theory:

• Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
• Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
• Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini's 'Dialectics of Dependency' Goes beyond Marx's 'Capital', by Andy Higginbottom.
• Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
• World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
• Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
• Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.

Canada:

• Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.

Chile:

• 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
• Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende's government and Cybersyn.

Lebanon:

• A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.

United States:

• Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.

Venezuela:

• Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.

Danish fascist party New Right is dissolving itself, claiming that the are "too many right-wing parties". In the 2022 election they won six seats in parliament running on a platform of rabid anti-Muslim racism and libertarian economics. Exactly a year ago the party leader stepped down but she had to come back soon again as the new party leader was kicked out of the party for shameless grifting with party funds. Two other MP's left the party and a third one became sick, leaving them with only two MP's.

The rest of the Danish right-wing is welcoming the demise of their competitor and are now vying to get party leader Pernille Vermund to join their parties. They have no qualms welcoming a woman who headed a party that accepted membership applications from self-declared Nazis.

Local politicians of the party as well as their EU candidate was not informed about the decision beforehand and learned about their party disbanding through the media.

SPILLING OVER THE BORDER

The President of Peru, Dina Boluarte, has called the Council of Ministers together for an emergency meeting. The subject is the crisis in neighboring Ecuador, and the aim is to prevent fugitive criminals from entering Peru.

According to reports on several Peruvian channels, the weapons and grenades used by the criminals in Ecuador today belong to the Peruvian Armed Forces and have been smuggled into Ecuador.

link (In Spanish)

It is also important to note that one of Ecuador's most bloodthirsty criminals, alias 'Fito', escaped from one of its prisons. In response, the PNP responded that they are reinforcing the border with this sector to prevent him or other criminals from entering national territory.President Dina Boluarte convenes an emergency Council of Ministers due to the crisis in Ecuador.

The President of the Republic will seek to take measures to reinforce the security of the national territory. Weapons used by criminals in Ecuador would belong to the Peruvian Armed Forces.

After a group of criminals unleashed chaos in Ecuador by taking over a television station, in the middle of looting in the streets of Guayaquil, Dina Boluarte called her emergency Council of Ministers in order to take urgent measures to avoid that the criminals who escaped from some prisons in that country enter Peru.

According to the latest information available to RPP, the weapons used by the group of criminals belonged to the Peruvian Armed Forces and were smuggled into Ecuadorian territory.

Foreign Ministry issued a statement

In this regard, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement and expressed its solidarity with the country of Ecuador in view of the wave of violence that this nation is experiencing. However, they did not refer to the situation of Peruvians living there.

"The Government of Peru strongly condemns the acts of violence that occurred today in Ecuador, which violate the fundamental rights of Ecuadorians and threaten the security of that brother country. It also expresses its support to the Government of President Daniel Noboa and to the democratic institutionality and stability in Ecuador, wishing a prompt reestablishment of peace and security in that country. Peru expresses its solidarity with the victims of such acts of violence," reads the letter.

Ecuadorian Hostage Update:

The TC Television workers were released after hours of armed kidnapping.

Apparently the Swedish right-wing government and chief of defence is trying to whip up a war panic despite admitting that they have no concrete intelligence about a military threat. They claim they just want people to "make some thoughts" and are asking bizarre questions in public speeches such as "who will you be if the war comes?".

Allegedly, the Swedes should be afraid of a Russian invasion of Scania and Gotland and the military has been conducting increased exercises there recently.

The newscast I got this from interviewed a bunch of random people on the street in Malmö and most of them seemed to not take it seriously or to be angry at the government for scaring people.

To me this seems like reactionary brainworms either driving their hosts mad or being released deliberately in order to make people rally around the government and forget whatever fuckery they're up to.