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.
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Last week's thread is here.
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 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.
Google Loses Antitrust Suit Over Search Deals on Phones - Bloomberg (archive.ph)
...
By the time any of these remedies get litigated, there will be a new sheriff in town. Regardless of who wins the election, Lina Khan will be crucified and this momentary lapse of corporate rule will be corrected.
On a related note, this might cause Mozilla to go bankrupt lmao.
Why would this bankrupt mozilla?
Google pays a substantial sum of money to Mozilla to make the default search engine in Firefox google search
https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-google-search-deal-for-firefox
If the source is even remotely correct it appears to be in the 200-300M USD/yr range
As far as I know, these contracts with Google are the single largest source of income for Mozilla. Without them, the firm would face inevitable mass lay-offs. In fact, Google has pulled on this chain in the past. Last time this contract was re-negotiated, Mozilla was forced to lay off it's Servo team, which was developing a next-generation renderer based on Rust. Google is able to use this leverage both to ensure Chrome's position as the most 'advanced' web browser, while dragging Mozilla around on a leash to claim Chrome has competition and does not constitute a monopoly.
This ruling highlights these default search engine contracts as an illegal monopolistic practice, but AFAIK leaves the browser monopoly unaddressed, and it is unlikely Mozilla will be able to replace that funding. There are dark days ahead, though the status quo was not tenable to begin with. This only forces the issue.
Surely Mozilla can find a loophole around this? Like on first startup, have a full splash screen that lets you select or deselect search engines, and have google be center so draw people’s eyes. They’re technically allowing the user to choose, and the work for the user is so minimal that it should be no more effort than closing all the pop ups or selecting a theme for every browser when you open it.
Wait never mind. This loop hole would only work if Mozilla finds the funding elsewhere.
:( I really like firefox
I saw that article like last week about Google buying Reddit search results (don't really understand how this works) and lo and behold Yandex won't pull reddit results anymore and I had to go to Google to learn how to fix my toilet :(
What year is it