Image is of the breach in the tailings dam near Kitwe.
On February 18th, 50 million liters of acidic waste from a copper mine was accidentally released into the Kafue River after a tailings dam collapsed. The Kafue River stretches for a thousand miles across Zambia and a majority of the country - millions of people - rely on it, for both the economy and drinking water.
The results have already been catastrophic. The water supply for the city of Kitwe, home to 700,000 people, was completely shut off. As the wave of contamination moved downstream, a wave of death accompanied it as dead fish dotted the river surface. The government is dropping lime into the river to try and counteract the acid with an alkali and neutralize the water, but the tailings also contain toxic heavy metals that will undoubtably seep into the nearby environment and affect the area for years to come.
A considerable portion of the media attention to the accident has been devoted to the fact that the mine was Chinese-owned, as well as China's broader influence and investment in the region. Western anti-China propaganda aside, it has been clear to those in the know that these mines have been badly managed and needlessly dangerous for years now, and it is disappointing - to say the least - to see disasters of this magnitude occur from Chinese businesses. Hopefully this prompts a wave of investigations into China-owned mine managers all around the continent, who will then hopefully face real consequences for their actions.
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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.
Hungary Banned Pride
While education and healthcare is in shambles, taking no action that would actually remedy the situation in the last 15 years, the Hungarian parliament proves, it can take swift action when their goal is restricting human rights.
Viktor Orbán, the PM of Hungary foreshadowed earlier this year, that the organizers of Budapest Pride should not waste time and money on this years event, as it is not going to happen.
Swiftly after this, the parliament voted on amending the constitution, to make it possible to restrict people's right to assemble under the pretense of protecting children's rights to "proper moral development". They also added that Hungary only recognizes 2 genders, male and female, delivering another blow to LGBTQIA+ rights in addition to the amendment years ago, which made it unconstitutional for same sex couples to have a family, by declaring that the father is always male and the mother is always female.
In another step to make sure the country is on the right path to become a theocracy, they referred to the bible to ensure that the "order of Biblical creation" is respected when considering legislation.
The amendments of the contstitution did not take effect yet, despite this the parliament proposed a bill on 17/03/2025 to restrict people's right to assembly, if an event would display or popularize same sex relations and trans identities. At almost record speed, the bill was voted on the next day. In addition to the ruling party, Fidesz, the far right wing Mi Hazánk, and right wing Jobbik, also voted in favor, amidst liberal politicians demonstrating against the bill, by playing the Russian anthem on speakers, distributing pictures of Orbán and Putin sharing a kiss, and causing chaos with smoke bombs.
That same evening on 18/03/2025, the bill was signed into law and went into effect the next day. There are only a few examples of Hungarian lawmakers doing their jobs in such a hurry, but it seems like causing suffering to marginalized people is such an important task that immediate action was necessary.
In previous elections, one of the opposition parties, Jobbik, who also supported the bill made alliances with other opposing parties that are liberal or moderately left wing. The sad reality of current Hungarian politics is that, while there are oppositin parties, that tend to the left, there is no real political challenger to the ruling parties conservative right wing ideologies.
The biggest opposition that Fidesz curently has is from Tisza, which is a party headed by Péter Magyar, who is a the ex-husband of the former Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, who resigned after a scandal involving the president granting pardon to a person aiding a convicted pedophile. He worked in positions tied to the government and in turn to Fidesz, before taking up the mantle of political activism after the aforementioned scandal.
While his party promises reforms, the end of corruption, closer ties with the EU and denouncing Russia, and restoration of human rights, he comes from the same ideological background az Fidesz politicians. More concerning is the fact that he does not take strong stances on more divisive matters, that would alienate his voters that he aims to Syphon from Fidesz, after absorbing nearly all voters of other opposing parties. For example, he only stated about the current legislation, that everybody's right to assembly would be restored, while failing to recognize that this affects certain marginalized groups disproportionately, or to highlight that protection of LGBTQIA+ communities and other marginalized groups will be an important responsibility of our next government.
Hungary is a small country, with very limited influence on international politics, however analyzing the shift to the right and its consequences, might give important insights into what's to come in other EU countries that have managed delay the complete takeover of their politics by the far right.
Please see below a proper article about the current legislation by one of the remaining independent media outlets of my country:
https://telex.hu/english/2025/03/19/hungarian-parliament-adopts-law-banning-pride
ADJ
They amended their fucking constitution to do it, even?! JFC
To be honest, ameding the constitution with shit like this is an annual occurence at this point. They came into power in 2010, scrapped the old constitution almost immediately and came up with a new one that went into effect in 2011. I graduated high school in 2014, and as a "present" everybody received a hardcopy of it. It was a hardcover, printed on expensive paper, full of pictures. My school had to print out 2 pages on cheap printer paper, staple them together and put it inside, as the publisher didn't even have the time to print out the latest edition with the new amendment. It is truly a joke
Do you think the gays will still assemble? A big rainbow flag with like 'gods promise to be cool from now on' written on it or something?
Have the likes of ratheon and the big banks released a statement about how much their gay imperialist employees were looking forward to the pinkwashing parade?
I'm being unhelpful, be safe comrade x
No statements so far, every one of them is trying to suck up to the government as expected.
I think there is merit to this type of criticism, and it would be great to have a conversation about pinkwashing, and how movements like this fail to analyse deeper societal problems caused by capitalism and imperialism.
Sadly, we are back to square one, where I have to argue my right to exist. To hell with this system