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.
DM me to feature effort posts and good threads in the newsmega/newscomm here (including your own).Please review and provide feedback on revised comm policy and rules
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net and others discuss weakening Chinese domestic consumption and the importance of their trade surplus to the status quo
@LeninWeave@hexbear.net and @demerit@lemmygrad.ml on the fraught discussion of harm to Jewish versus Palestinian lives and the implicit racism of the Palestine exception
Previous posts of the week: Oct 27 | Nov 3 | Nov 10 | Nov 17 | Nov 24 | Dec 1 | Dec 8
A lot of interesting discussion and debate in this thread, though it’s somewhat controversial, so I’m not sure if you would want to include it.
it’s good discussion but also a lot of
with site rules lawyering for good measure.https://hexbear.net/comment/6761055
Nominating this specifically, comrade @demerit@lemmygrad.ml made an absolutely excellent comment regarding Holocaust exceptionalism, the western left, and the supremacy of “Jewish pain” (but only when it helps zionists).
Yeah, that’s what I mean by “controversial”.
@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net and others discuss weakening Chinese domestic consumption and the importance of their trade surplus to the status quo
Reports of more US piracy, another ship seized off the coast of Venezuela
NSW is planning to ban the phrase “globalise the intifada” cracking down on hate speech
intifada means uprising you fuckers
BREAKING: Putin is in love Sina News
From today’s Q&A where Putin answered more than 80 questions over 4 hours, on all sorts of topics. And yes, Putin admits that he is currently in love, and it was a love at first sight too.
https://xcancel.com/Ollie_Vargas_/status/2002166029389267437:
Bolivia’s workers unions announce an indefinite general strike against the neoliberal austerity measures announced this week.
No dialogue or negotiation, all the measures must be repealed first. No honeymoon period for the right-wing govt.
CW: Suicide, self harm.
spoiler
Suicide has reached record levels in Argentina, with an average of one death every two hours and a rate exceeding the global average. Economic and social factors, along with a lack of access to mental health care, explain this growing phenomenon, which particularly affects young people and exposes the shortcomings of the prevention system.
The National Criminal Information System (SNIC) of the Ministry of Security recorded one suicide every two hours in Argentina. This figure reached a record high for annual suicides and surpasses the global average. According to the latest SNIC report, 4,249 suicides were recorded in the country during 2024, yielding a rate of 9.8 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants over the age of 5. Due to the persistent increase in cases over the last four years, suicide has been the leading cause of violent death in the country since 2023, accounting for 41.7% of cases in 2024.
The phenomenon occurs for various reasons: economic and social factors, compounded by a lack of access to professional treatment in different regions of the country. In this regard, an official report stated that suicide has become one of the leading causes of violent death, second only to traffic accidents and homicides, especially among young people.
In this context, a survey by the Ministry of Health, through the National Health Surveillance System (SNVS), revealed that an average of 22 people are hospitalized daily for suicide attempts. According to the report, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 700,000 people die by suicide each year worldwide, and that suicide is among the leading causes of death globally, with more deaths from malaria, HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, war, or homicide.
According to the report, suicide disproportionately affects young people and adults of working age and places significant costs on healthcare services for the treatment of physical, psychological, and social harm. “No single factor is sufficient to explain why a person commits suicide; suicidal behavior is a complex phenomenon influenced by several interrelated factors: personal, social, and environmental,” the WHO stated in the report. Therefore, suicide is a serious public health problem, which requires public policies that address it in an intersectoral, comprehensive and community-based manner.
On the other hand, Sundays and Mondays were the days with the highest number of suicides, a pattern that has remained consistent across all years analyzed. These days accounted for 32.3% of suicides in the last five years. Specifically, in 2024, the days with the highest frequency were Sunday (16.5%) and Monday (16.1%). Regarding the location, the events occurred in private residences throughout the analyzed period, while the Public Road category ranked second.
In that regard, the report confirmed that during 2024, 3,425 males (80.6%), 807 females (19.0%), and 17 cases (0.4%) died by suicide. The most frequent age groups were 20-24, 25-29, and 30-34.
Death to “israel”
The Second Great Neoliberal Offensive in Argentina has been nothing but a complete and utter disaster on all fronts. Nothing is working, absolutely nothing. At the very least, during the 90s, neoliberalism gained a massive foothold in the country and was able to produce some results, like getting out of hyperinflation and bringing it down to single digits, pretty much zero (at the expense of everything else). Sure, it failed completely, as the 2001 Crisis showed, but this time around there are no results to show. At all. Maybe the F-16s lol?
Argentina records negative foreign investment for the first time in over two decades
A top Canadian fertilizer company is the latest to leave Argentina, amid a wave of foreign companies selling their operations to local businesses
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Argentina has fallen to negative levels for the first time in 22 years, amid a wave of international companies selling their operations to local businesses. According to a report by consulting firm PxQ, based on information from the Central Bank, FDI reached negative US$1.52 billion between January and November 2025, the first year with a deficit since 2003.
A Central Bank source confirmed to the Herald that the deficit has been caused by the sale of foreign companies to local capitals this year. The number remained negative even with Javier Milei’s government attracting some foreign investments with a scheme of tax breaks and other facilities known by the acronym RIGI.
The latest firm to confirm its exit from the country was Canadian fertilizing company Nutrien, which completed the sale of its Argentina-based nitrogen producer Profertil — the country’s largest fertilizer producer — to two local companies. Nutrien announced that it would leave Argentina in September but completed the sale last week. The company, the second-largest fertilizer producer in the world, held 50% of Profertil. The other 50% was in the hands of state energy company YPF until Thursday, when its board confirmed it too would also sell its share of the business.
Argentine companies Adecoagro and Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas are buying the operation via a joint acquisition. “Closing the sale of our equity stake in Profertil demonstrates continued progress towards simplifying our portfolio, enhancing earnings quality, and improving cash conversion,” Ken Seitz, Nutrien’s President and CEO, said in a communiqué. The company reported earnings of US$600 million for the transaction.
Nutrien has generated approximately US$900 million in gross proceeds worldwide from asset divestitures since the fourth quarter of 2024, they announced. That means Profertil’s sale represents three-quarters of such operations. The Herald contacted representatives of both companies but received no immediate response.
Wave of companies selling
Nutrien is the most recent of dozens of foreign companies that have decided to leave Argentina and sell their operations to local businesses since Milei took office in December 2023. While some exits could be attributed to multinational companies shifting their global strategies, others seem to have been caused by the country’s macroeconomy.
Florencia Fiorentin, chief economist of the Epyca consulting firm, told the Herald that import liberalization, exchange rate appreciation, and a sharp drop in local demand mean that “people are buying less” and, at the same time, “are buying more imported goods.” The trend has become evident in numerous sectors — from French-based supermarket company Carrefour looking for buyers for its local operation (they have 700 branches in Argentina) to U.S. entertainment giant Paramount selling the local television network Telefé to a local media holding.
According to Fernando Morra, economist and former vice economy minister, the reasons for leaving are different for each sector.
For companies in the mass consumption segment, “the problem is that the economy has been stagnant for many years and there are no favorable prospects,” said Morra. For businesses in the tradable sector, like Profertil, the appreciated exchange rate scheme does not reflect increased productivity and has instead made the country expensive and uncompetitive, which discourages investment. He added that the liberalization of the exchange market for foreign companies “is seen more as an opportunity to exit than to enter.”
The trend shows no sign of stopping — in August, YPF acquired two production blocks in the Vaca Muerta geological formation, previously owned by the French multinational TotalEnergies. In February, Spain’s Telefónica sold its operations in Argentina to local connectivity giant Telecom. Last year, U.S. oil and gas company ExxonMobil transferred all of its interests in the region to Pluspetrol, a national company, in a deal estimated at US$1.7 billion.
There are no good economic indicators in milei’s Argentina. Despite the neoliberal offensive, the “great opportunities” given by the “Chainsaw Plan” there is no movement. The country is starved of foreign currency, there’s a non stop hemorrhage of reserves and the cheap exchange rate is sustained through ridiculous loans. Inflation is consistently rising despite being milei’s “area of expertise”. Salaries are crushed too.
Social indicators are not doing so well either. A few days ago a soldier being assigned to guard duty in the Presidential Residence has shot himself in sheer desperation because the man was in debt with banking institutions (2 million pesos, roughly around 1400USD while his salary was around 468USD). By the way, salaries for low ranking service members, as well as health services, have been gutted. It’s not uncommon to see active-duty members picking up second jobs like Uber to compensate. This soldier’s particular situation is well extended in our society, a lot of people are in debt with banks and other financial institutions and there’s no way to solve it (other than debt forgiveness I guess). I have a friend who works in a call center for certain financial institution, her job is to basically call people who are in debt and remind them, in diplomatic terms, to enter paying schemes and solve it. She says she can’t believe the amount of people in really bad situations, with their credit cards completely “exploded” and being millions and millions into debt. A lot of people she calls are very rich themselves, but a big number are also working class people, whose situation is terrible because they were forced to take loans to solve whatever issues they had, sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
This debt crisis comes paired with a mental health crisis. Not uncommon in our hellhole that is the “western world” though. In Argentina those responsible for taking up cases of suicide and classify them have stopped doing so. We don’t know how deep this goes, last time suicides were recorded they were and an all time high. We know they’re still very high because we can access them through indirect means, like police reports and internal hospital reports, and we can make some guesses here and there. But the crisis is very thorough, nobody is speaking about it and milei doesn’t care either way. And with a terrible labor reform in the horizon it’ll only get worse.
All this agony for nothing.
And as always: Death to “israel”.
A specter is haunting Elbit Systems - the specter of Palestine Action:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025/12/19/elbit-shutdown/A group of protesters have shut down the entrance to a factory belonging to Elbit Systems. The halt of Israel’s weapons supplier is one of the key demands of the anti-genocide activists. Eight prisoners, all being held on remand for allegedly taking action in solidarity with Palestine, have been on open ended hunger strike since the 2 November in British prisons. This is the biggest coordinated prison hunger strike in UK prisons since the 1981 H-block strike in the North of Ireland. Six of the hunger strikers have been hospitalised so far. Despite the enormity of the strike, the media coverage has been minimal, and the government fails to respond.
Haven’t heard from Assange in a while but he made a legal complaint about the Nobel Foundation giving Machado the award. They have just dismissed his complaint.
Pretty minor but I think it’s notable to see Assange back in the news.
In light of the recent trade surplus topic, I am reminded of this Neil Wilson’s short parable: A Tale of Two Nations from a few years back that hopefully should illuminate from an MMT perspective that the IMF’s so-called “export led growth” is really just an imperialist exploitation of the developing nations.
Once you start shifting the perspective and think in real terms, the interpretation becomes very different!
Prologue
spoiler
The nation of Importia, so named because it believes itself to be important, had a long and illustrious history. Blessed with natural resources it had developed advanced techniques in production, PR and marketing and, largely due to the latter two rather than the former, had become the centre of turnip production worldwide.
The owners in Importia grew wealthy and, with bribes of extra turnips, were able to transform some of their more mathematical PR specialists into a priesthood they named “Economists”. These Economists praised the efforts of the owners, in particular their daily practice of trickling down on those that did the actual work.
Eventually the natural resources of Importia started to weaken, and the workers became restless — demanding more Alpha (the currency of Importia) so they could buy an extra half-turnip between them. The owners were very displeased and turned to the Economists, demanding they come up with another wheeze to pull the wool over the eyes of the proles.
So the Economists quietly withdrew and drew strange symbols on blackboards in the belief that was slightly more effective than looking for clouds that look like ducks. The operating principle was the same though.
Eventually, after remembering they were marketeers not scientists, they came up with the answer — export-led growth. They would sell more turnips to elsewhere in the world. Just one problem. Nobody else had any Alpha to buy the turnips.
—-
How would they solve this problem?
spoiler
At this time another nation of the world had arisen in a stunningly convenient manner. The leaders of this nation were keen to join modernity and had heard of the new fashion for export-led growth. They invited the Economists of Importia to speak to them and, like a fox entering a hen coop, they accepted with gusto.
So impressed were the leaders of the new nation with the proposals, that they named their country Exportia in honour, and thereby neatly avoided an even more contrived plot device.
The production of turnips would move to Exportia, exploiting the fresh natural resources and willing Prana fueled workforce. Exportia would then sell the turnips to Importia for Alpha. To avoid the dreaded “Dutch Disease” that the Economists warned about in the most serious of tones, Exportia would maintain a sovereign wealth fund by investing in the assets of Importia with their Alpha.
It was very fortunate that the workers of Exportia could exist on praise, pats on the head and Prana, otherwise this mildly amusing parable would rapidly become a rather dull treatise on Calculus.
Which, funnily enough, is precisely the tool the Economists used to give their wheezes an unwarranted air of gravitas.
—-
Epilogue
spoiler
And so the workers of Importia were dismissed, the turnip fields ploughed up and replaced with shanty towns. The once proud workforce existed on a handout of far less than one turnip, supplied as charity from the owners, when once they had aspired to one and a half.
The owners of Importia continued to have as many turnips as before, and kept the turnip ration of the Economists high so they would continue to espouse the virtues of export led growth.
And growth there was indeed. The owners of Importia, on the advice of the Economists, had securitised their holdings and split them into a 100 million shares. During the first period the price was 100 Alpha per share and the Exportia wealth fund, mindful of the warnings of the Economists to invest, spent their 10,000 Alpha earnings from turnip sales on 100 shares in Importia. Their net worth zoomed from nothing to 10,000 Alpha overnight.
The leaders of Exportia were ecstatic and they nearly gave themselves an injury patting themselves on their back.
The next year Exportia earned another 10,000 Alpha selling their turnips to the owners in Importia — from whom they had bought the shares. This year though there were fewer shares to buy and the owners in Importia were slightly more reluctant to sell. The price crept up to 100.01 per share and the Wealth fund of Exportia dutifully bought 99 more shares in Importia.
The leaders of Exportia were ecstatic again. They now had 199 shares in Importia and due to share price growth they were 4 Alpha better off already than they were when they started the new regime. Export led growth clearly led to very great riches.
And so it went on. After 20 years Exportia had managed to amass 1783 shares in Importia and the wealth fund was up to 178,618 Alpha . The leaders were very pleased with themselves. How much wealth they had created from nothing just by following the Wise Economists sage advice.
A little boy had pointed out that the owners in Importia appeared to be just as wealthy in Alpha as they ever had been, even though they now owned fewer shares, and received all the turnips, even though they did nothing for them other than bestow the odd turnip on the ex-workers of Importia.
But nobody listened to the boy. After all, the previous week he’d said that the leaders had been walking around naked when it was patently obvious they were dressed in the finest clothes.
That story, though, is for another day.
First published 12 Mar 2017
Edit:
wrong mega. SorryUS military OPSEC fail: The US accidentally revealed that RQ-170 Sentinel/Wraith Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, Reconnaissance, and Electronic Warfare (ISTAREW) drones/remotely piloted aircraft are operating in the Southern Command area of responsibility, most likely overflying Venezuela. The Southern Command Twitter/X account posted a photo of a solider wearing an RQ-170 patch from the 432nd Wing of the US Air Force. Once this was pointed out, the tweets were deleted.
A reminder that we only we what the US military wants us to see on the public flight tracking applications. They most likely have stealthy ISTAREW assets like the RQ-170 and RQ-180 overflying Venezuela, performing reconnaissance, intercepting communications, and jamming Venezuelan radars.
The RQ-170 is not a top of the line drone like the RQ-180, it’s designed to be “affordable” and give the US military the ability to conduct reconnaissance in airspace that is hostile to them in a more readily available platform. Iran has managed to capture one before. It doesn’t feature comprehensive edge treatment and/or the most costly stealth/very low observable technology, but it’s still stealthy enough for what the US needs to carry out these missions. It features an electro optical sensor (an array of various cameras) similar to the F-35s EOTS, and a conformal AESA radar/array, that can be used for SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar, kind of like a CT scan of the ground) imagery and to jam other radars and execute electronic attacks (it has done this in exercises with F-35, F-22s and B-2s), as well at satellite communications for remote piloting. Not much is known outside of that. The fact that it’s likely overflying Venezuela over the past few months shows that it’s still relevant, even if it’s not as advanced as the RQ-180.
In related news, China had its first public flight of an RQ-170/180 class ISTAREW drone a few days ago, it’s called the CH-7.
“Harsh scenes following the “israel” occupation’s targeting of a school housing displaced people in the vicinity of Al-Durrah Hospital, east of the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza.
Eyewitnesses report several martyrs at the site, including the remains of those torn to pieces by the zionist bombardment.
The number of martyrs has risen to 7 following the zionist bombardment targeting the training building of the Directorate of Education, located opposite Al-Durra Hospital.
The strike targeted the building while a wedding ceremony was taking place. The facility was housing displaced families from the Al-Barsh and Al-Andar families from Jabalia.“
Cw: dismemberment
https://t.me/Palresistmirror/83026
The slaughter of Palestinians has been so normalized that this won’t be reported or noted by a single mainstream western media outlet. White victims matter, brown victims clearly do not
A little bit of holiday spirit:
Thieves dressed as Santa and his elves steal $3K worth of goods from Montreal grocery store
On social media, an activist group calling themselves Robins des ruelles or Robins of the Alleys — a nod to Robin Hood — claimed responsibility for the heist.
The group says the stolen food, worth around $3,000, was redistributed under a Christmas tree at place Valois in Montreal’s Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, with leftovers going to various community fridges.
The group described Monday’s raid as a “great food drive” and a political call to action.
China seems to have made its first EUV machine for chip production. I dunno about chip technology much but this seems like a major step
