Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.


What a clusterfuck of an election.

Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.

It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.

This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.


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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 Pakistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA daily-ish 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 (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
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.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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.
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.


  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    9 months ago

    Naked Capitalism has a new piece on Israel. Simplicius also wrote a piece a few days ago.

    TLDR:

    Socially:

    • It's difficult to have a great idea of what's really going on in Israel because of the sheer magnitude of propaganda and narratives and hasbara. The best you can really do is stumble around in the fog and decide whether or not this article or that statistic is meaningful or meaningless.
    • From what we can tell, Israeli opinions against Palestinians are not improving, which is expected. If anything, the young appear to be more conservative and bloodthirsty than the older generations (though I'm not somebody who believes in generational politics or that the zoomers will save us or whatever, so idc).
    • Israeli society nonethless appears to irrevocably shattered. The sense of safety has gone, and the dramatic victory and display of military might that could have repaired it has not happened and seems less likely to happen every month that this goes on. On the contrary, Israelis seem to believe that the death count is higher than the Israeli government is letting on.

    Economically:

    • Israel experienced a 20% decline in Q4 GDP. I don't put much stock in GDP figures but a hit like that is extremely difficult to just shrug at.
    • Imports are down 42%, which indicates that the blockade is being more successful than previously thought.
    • Spending is up by 90%, while investment is down by 70% and private consumption dropped 27% and public consumption dropped 90%. Israel also suffered its first sovereign credit rating downgrade.
    • NATOpedia says that the number of settlers evacuated from the Lebanese border is at 96,000. If scaled up to the US population, that would be 3.5 million people. These settlers are receiving social support which is perhaps not sustainable in the long term, and regardless, every month that goes by without businesses operating near the border makes it more unlikely that they'll be revived. They'll just set up shop elsewhere.
    • According to rumours, 500,000 Israelis have emigrated and immigration into Israel fell by 70% in November. People who can emigrate on short notice are more likely to be affluent, so them not being around anymore to spend money is probably not great.
    • About half a million compensation claims for businesses have been filed so far, and the damage is so far 6 times greater than the war in 2006.

    Militarily:

    • Once again, the West's inability to fight wars of attrition for a drawn out length of time is on full display.
    • The war in Gaza is going badly and most are aware of it. Resistance groups inside the strip do not seem to be meaningfully weakened despite us being in month 6 of the conflict. It's entirely possible that Hamas has recruited more people than they've lost.
    • Israel says that they're going to invade Rafah soon, so Israeli casualties will increase even further soon.
    • Border settlers want Hezbollah pushed back to the Litani River to provide a buffer zone. Unfortunately for them, this doesn't seem possible. Israel made two (albeit limited) attempts recently to strike at Hezbollah in cross-border attacks and were routed both times. Israel is striking further into Lebanon to kill civilians and such, but this doesn't have much effect militarily. The US is trying to defuse the situation on the border by proposing deals that Hezbollah will obviously never accept.
    • The US produces 30,000 artillery shells per month, of which 10,000 go to Israel. This is not enough for a war against Hezbollah, so if Israel starts shit against Hezbollah officially, then Ukraine will collapse even faster than it already is.
    • On that note, Israel is now officially no longer doing a weird balancing act between Russia and Ukraine, siding fully with Ukraine and offering early-warning systems. This seems both delusional and difficult to actually achieve given the enormous hole Israel is putting itself in, and making an enemy of Russia when they're becoming more friendly with Iran does not seem like a good idea either.
    • There have been rumors of waves of resignations; I'm unsure how much stock to put in them in terms of both veracity and the actual impact they're having overall.
    • The Haredim in Israel are also under pressure by the government to undergo conscription; they were previously exempt. Polling suggests only ~30% of them are fine with joining the army. It's hard to tell whether this is due to desperately needing more troops, or if it's more to do with spreading the pain throughout society so as to bring it together and ensure no particular group is unaffected while another bears most of the weight.
    • Yemen's blockade obviously continues, with the US continuing its definitely-sustainable strategy of firing $5 million missiles at $2000 drones. Ansarallah have also shot down three Predator drones, which is $100 million down the drain there too.
    • The US seems to still be in talks about the withdrawal of forces from Iraq and possibly Syria. They may be trying to draw it out to see whether conditions might improve, but Iran will very probably keep the pressure on.
    • someone [comrade/them, they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      This is not enough for a war against Hezbollah, so if Israel starts shit against Hezbollah officially, then Ukraine will collapse even faster than it already is.

      If I was influential in some revolutionary organization somewhere in the world, and my organization was facing off against a NATO-backed puppet government, I'd be making the case to my comrades that there has never been a better time to start an attrition war against said puppet government.

      And I suspect the people actually running US foreign policy know this, and are quietly panicking, because I keep thinking about how Biden's state-of-the-union speech was basically "America has never been stronger" every 2nd sentence. If you have to tell someone you're a king, etc.

      • AbbysMuscles [she/her]
        ·
        9 months ago

        there has never been a better time to start an attrition war against said puppet government

        I legit thought that's what Venezuela was gearing up to do in Guyana at first.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        9 months ago

        We just need China to open up that third front in Taiwan and honestly I reckon the collapse of the US is accelerated by like 30 years at least

    • newmou [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Is the date still the 10th for Israel invading Rafah?

    • Greenleaf [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      The US produces 30,000 artillery shells per month, of which 10,000 go to Israel

      This is truly staggering. Fully one-third of production of an entire major segment of the military (artillery) is going to Israel. You cannot pretend the US is passively involved in this genocide. Those bombs that are killing innocent Palestinians are American bombs, that Joe Biden has gone out of his way to ensure that Israel has plenty of, with the full knowledge that those bombs will be genociding a population.

      Joe Biden is an evil man, and just losing an election is far better than he deserves.