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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 25th to March 31st, 2024 - Friendship Ended With Taiwan, Now China Is My New Best Friend - COTW: Honduras

Image is from this Reuters article.

This week marks the one year anniversary of Honduras ceasing to recognize Taiwan and instead only recognizing China. Over that time period, China and Honduras have gone through several rounds of negotiating a free trade agreement, with trade expanding. Additionally, they have just signed a $275 million cooperation agreement, providing education infrastructure for Honduras.

The other major news piece relevant to Honduras is the battle against Prospera, a US-based crypto libertarian firm that sought to buy a private island in order to create an ancap paradise, in which Bitcoin would be legal tender. In 2022, Honduras killed the island's special status that made the deal possible, and so Prospera is seeking $11 billion in compensation.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Honduras! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

890 comments

  • For the next four months I'll be studying a subject called "Economy of Historians" in my University. Turns out the professor is a Marxist gigachad and his classes are four hours long, the first two hours we see general economic theory, from Smith to Keynes, Marx and all economic systems. The last two hours it's just him reading through Das Kapital chapter by chapter, line by line.

    This is the evil political indoctrination milei was talking about. HELL YEAH.

    By the end of this period I'll be the biggest Marxist around here, so you better buckle up, liberals.

    • Oh damn they do be indoctrinating marxists in universities

    • Damn that's a long class, is it once a week or what? I only ever had stuff like that for field work

      • Once a week, but that is just one class. Classes are divided in three types: Theoretical, Practical and Theoretical-Practical, each one of them is 2 hours long. Each subject (I think that's the correct word) has these three types of classes which is 6 hours per week, 96 hours in total. The differences between these classes are in the method and topics to be covered, theoretical and theoretical-practicals are pretty much the same, it's a professor speaking for 2 hours about certain topics. Students can speak and ask questions and even debate but the class must proceed. Some professors are quite boring to listen to while others are better, it depends. Practical classes are there to "teach" the students how to participate in class, how to prepare certain texts for a class and how to make research and so on. These classes are more like a debate-ish kind of thing where students participate by asking questions and what not.

        Practicals are divided in "commissions" that you have to join and attend to, there are multiple commissions to choose from that have different professors, methodologies and times. You could have 6 hours long classes if you combine all your classes in a single day. It's way too much to sit in the same place for 6 hours to listen to pure theory, despite the 15 minute breaks, but sometimes we have to do it.

        In this case, the marxist economics professor uses the first two hours of class, the theoretical, to cover some topics and the theoretical-practical covers Das Kapital, which he said it's optional and not mandatory to attend to. So I believe most students will leave (especially because it's late) and few will remain, those interested in the topic and Peronist debatelords who want to own the Marxists. There are no libertarians in this University, for real.

  • Have you seen that when Genocide Joe is giving a speech and a group of protestors yell things like "Genocide Joe! How many dead kids is enough for you?" to interrupt the rally... the pro-Genocide Joe crowd begins to chant "Four more years!"?

    Are they asking for four more years of genocide?

    Regardless of this, I know History will be the final judge here. And History will not be kind to them.

  • guy who thinks that it's ridiculous that madman communist dictator Putin could possibly accuse Ukraine, the nation which has previously and continues to this very day to proudly state that they commit terrorist attacks against Russia, of doing a terrorist attack against Russia

    but also thinks that Medvedev himself or something personally drove the boat into the bridge

    you couldn't pay me to look at news subreddits or lib twitter so I'm assuming that most of the people there are exactly that guy right now

  • Colombian President Gustavo Petro said in a post that if the UN resolution ordering a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas is not followed, Colombia will break off diplomatic relations with Israel.

  • Putin - at a meeting with pilots in Torzhok:

    This is complete nonsense - the possibility of an attack on some other countries, on Poland, the Baltic states, scares the Czechs. Just nonsense! Another way to deceive your population and extract additional costs from people, force them to bear this burden on their shoulders, that’s all.

    Putin on military spending by Russia and the enemy:

    Let’s take 2022, military spending, because the results for 2023 are being summed up and calculated, 2024 is too early to say. According to our data, we spent 3.5% of the country's GDP on defense spending. Let’s take data that is not ours, let’s take data from the Stockholm Peace Institute, international data, they have the following calculation: The United States spent 3.5% of GDP on defense, Russia - 4%. Let's say Israel is 4.5%. Ukraine spent 33.5% in 2022. But in absolute terms, what a difference it makes. In 2022, the United States spent, God willing, 811 billion dollars, and the Russian Federation - 72 billion. 72 and 811 - the difference is noticeable, more than ten times.

    The United States spends, its defense spending is approximately 40% of global defense spending, 39% of global spending is the United States. And Russia – 3.5%. And, keeping this ratio in mind, are we going to fight with NATO or something? This is just nonsense!

    Putin - about attacks on NATO airfields:

    If they deliver F-16s, they talk about it, like they are training pilots, I think you understand this like no one else, better than others, this will not change the situation on the battlefield. And we will destroy their planes just as we destroy their tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment today, including multiple launch rocket systems. Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, no matter where they are located. And the F-16s are also carriers of nuclear weapons, and we will also have to take this into account when organizing combat work.

    Putin - on jingoism:

    When I listen to our - there are such people everywhere, in any society - jingoistic patriots, including those who say that Russia is only for Russians, then a feeling of anxiety arises in me. Because we have 190 ethnic groups living on the territory of the country and some nationalities are represented by millions of peoples, as soon as we begin to implement these destructive thoughts about the fact that everyone else is strangers here, we will ruin the country. And the main victims will be the Russian people. Therefore, you need to treat this component very adultly, seriously, not wave your arms and wag your tongue, but think when you pronounce every word, every phrase. To think that we have one big united Motherland.

    Anyone gets the feeling that the US is going to press for a hot war and prevent truce in Ukraine no matter what?

  • Russia pushes for an end to the sanctions control system against North Korea at the UN.

    On Thursday (28) at the UN, Russia blocked the renewal of the mandate of the experts who oversee the application of sanctions against North Korea, a veto denounced by the majority of Security Council members concerned about the development of Pyongyang's nuclear program.

    Since 2006, North Korea has been the target of Security Council sanctions, mainly related to its nuclear program, which were reinforced several times in 2016 and 2017. Since 2019, Russia and China have been trying in vain to convince the Council to ease these measures, which have no expiration date.

    In this context, Moscow today vetoed a resolution aimed at extending by one year the operation of the committee of experts in charge of monitoring sanctions, whose reports are a benchmark in the field.

    "The commission continues to focus its work on irrelevant issues that are not commensurate with the problems facing the [Korean] peninsula," commented Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia.

    "This veto is not a sign of concern for the North Korean people or for the effectiveness of the sanctions. It is about Russia getting the freedom to violate sanctions in search of weapons to use against Ukraine," denounced British ambassador Barbara Woodward.

    In addition to the United Kingdom, the United States also denounced the veto as an attempt by Moscow to hide its growing military cooperation with Pyongyang.

    "Russia's actions today have cynically undermined international peace and security, all to promote the corrupt agreement Moscow has signed with the DPRK [North Korea's official name]," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller

  • My theory on the Crocus attack:

    • Extremist elements in the Ukrainian military or intelligence, possibly at a high level, were plotting with ISIS for the attack.
    • Someone with knowledge of that rightfully thought "this is fucked" and reported to Zelensky's government.
    • Zelensky, having very little power over his subordinates, forwarded the information to the US government.
    • US publicly and vaguely warns about the attack just before it is scheduled, hiding their source and drawing scrutiny away from Ukraine should the attack happen.

    • I think it was Nuland that organized it and when word got out what she had done she got fired.

    • why with when it can be "as". Someone who hired them asked them to send a video to isis beforehand, isis double agents report it to usa, usa makes a warning, someone gets cold feet before elections, attack is delayed till now.

  • UN Security Council adopts resolution calling for immediate Gaza ceasefire

    Amerikkka abstained, and the resolution also calls for the immediate release of all hostages. It's unclear to me if they mean the release of only those being held in Gaza or if Palestinians being held captive would also be released. For some reason I think they only mean the captive Israelis should be released

    • Also taken from the UN security council website, why the fuck do they call it the "Palestinian question"? I would have thought that phrasing would give them pause to think

    • I doubt Israel will willingly release all the Palestinians they have locked up on bullshit charges and I think Hamas will try to get as many of them released as they can since Oct 7 was mainly a hostage taking operation from what I remember. A hostage swap is definitely going to happen at some point but I doubt it will fully end the hostilities.

      I think that fundamentally too many of the contradictions in Israel have been broken, laid bare, or challenged by Oct 7 and the work of the axis of resistance. Israel can't go back to the previous status quo since that's been delegitimized. However this progresses there will be a new dynamic in the region and that new dynamic is still coming into being even if they somehow get a ceasefire enacted temporarily.

    • Finally. its not going to do much but still goes to show there is pressure on the U.S.

      • Speaking after the vote, US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the delay in passing a ceasefire resolution.
        “We did not agree with everything with the resolution,” which she says is the reason why the US abstained.
        “Certain key edits were ignored, including our request to add a condemnation of Hamas,” Thomas-Greenfield said. She stressed that the release of captives will lead to the increase in humanitarian aid in the besieged coastal enclave.
        In a statement following the vote, the White House said the final resolution did not have language the US deems essential, and the vote does not represent a shift in policy.

        Maybe there is a limit to how much open genocide america will publicly support. But seeing as america is still supplying them with the weapons israel needs to commit mass murder I think it's more a propaganda move than anything. I think Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden will hold true to that and support israel for the foreseeable future

  • From the Resistance News Network:

    🚨 The sounds of explosions are still heard in Aleppo, Syria, as the IOF launches what local sources are calling the most violent IOF attack on Syria in recent history.

    US-aligned terrorist organizations in Idlib exploited the zionist attack and coordinated the launch of several batches of drones with the zionist aggression in order to confuse the Syrian air defense systems.

  • Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister of Israel, says “the United Nations is a wasteland” in reaction to the UN Security Council vote.

    lol

890 comments