Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.

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 Iraq! 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.

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.

  • HotAtForty [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Copy and pasting from CNN since linking to breaking news doesn’t let me link to the story itself

    Stocks are tumbling. But, no, America's market is not "crashing”

    The US stock market looks like it’s going to have another very rough day on Monday. But this is not what a market crash looks like.

    US futures, which give investors a sense of how the market will open at 9:30 am ET, are sharply lower. Dow futures are down 800 points, or 2%. Futures for the broader S&P 500 are 2.9% lower. And futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which entered correction territory (a 10% decline from the peak) fell 4.2%.

    That’s bad, but it’s not close to historically bad. By comparison, Japan’s Nikkei 225 plummeted 12% Monday — that’s a crash.

    The Dow’s worst drop, measured by points, in history, came in the early days of the pandemic: It fell 2,997 points on March 16, 2020, a decline of 12.9%. The broader S&P 500 fell 12% that day — the second-worst decline in history.

    But that wasn’t even close to “Black Monday,” the worst US stock market crash ever. The Dow on October 19, 1987, fell 22.6% in a single session. That day, the S&P 500 nosedived 20.3%.

    The US trading day hasn’t even begun, and strange things can happen when fear takes hold on Wall Street. But — at least so far — this is not what a market crash looks like.

    My “the markets aren’t in melt down” shirt has people asking a lot of questions that are answered by my shirt.

    Whatever you think is happening right now, the bank manager wants you to know that your money is safe and you should definitely exit the queue of people seeking to withdraw their money.

    It’s SO fucking Joever.

    • TheModerateTankie [any]
      ·
      5 months ago

      Watch how quickly liberals go from "bidenomics! Best economy ever!" to "actually, the president doesn't have much control over the whims of the market"

      • HotAtForty [he/him]
        ·
        5 months ago

        Ask for nickels so at least you have the exchange value of the metal

    • HotAtForty [he/him]
      ·
      5 months ago

      The dominant emotion on Wall Street: Fear

      Trading on the market is inherently risky, so two emotions tend to dictate the direction of stocks, bond, currencies and commodities: fear and greed.

      So CNN Business created a Fear & Greed Index, a measure of market sentiment, analyzing seven different metrics.

      Today, the Fear & Greed Index is pointing solidly to “Fear” and remains just a couple points away from “Extreme Fear.” That’s a big change: Just a week ago, the market was in “Neutral.”

      Investors are worried that the economy is taking a turn for the worse, confirmed by Friday’s weak US jobs report and rising unemployment rate. Investors are also fearful that tech stocks may have been driven too high this year on hopes that AI could create a new wave of profitable technologies — risky applications that customers may hold off on buying if the economy heads south.

      AI is making the economy much more efficient in the pace of boom & bust cycles

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      5 months ago

      I mean a month ago spy was up 20% YTD which was pretty stupid. Now it is up 12% instead. This is blowing off steam, not some wild collapse. The expression is stairs up elevator down for a reason.