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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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
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.
See, Democrats? It wasn't that hard. All you have to do is not make the stupidest move possible every single turn.
It's too bad, TBH. It's allowing them to whitewash everything, and they need to lose. This is just going to normalize genocide, and put a "progressive" Kama/a/Walz face on it. Everyong knows it's still happening, still going to happen, and now they'll all have voted for it too.
So Obama 2.0. I wonder which fascist she’ll be paving the way for if she wins.
Worse. The U.S. working class hadn't been made brutally aware of an outright genocide via media, the empire's own international courts, a pretty well-known anti-genocide protest movement right under their noses, and the televising of fascists' own explicitly genocidal statements during Obama's first term. They voted for war, just as they had voted for war when re-electing Dubya. But they didn't knowingly pull the lever for what they already knew was another Holocaust. That's what they'll be doing this time.
As constructed as the narrative was that the U.S. was anti-fascist for WW2, at least it's what most people believed. It was an internalized story that fascism and genocide were always off the table. And there was hope that if e.g. people were awakened to the fact that they were participating in the whitewashed genocide of people indigenous to Turtle Island, that internalized mythology might awake in a good number of people a spark of anti-colonialist revolution.
Now they're all-in, and even the mythology of being against fascism and genocide is blown away. Genocide will be at worst a completely democratically accepted thing, and at best an acceptable "lesser evil". Re-electing Democrats (or at least the same administration via KKKopmala) is literally the worst possible election outcome. With or without another Trumpian big-bad-wolf fascist coming down the pipeline next (but yes: it'll also be "with").
If kamala is elected I will truly have zero faith in the pro-palestine movement of America.
It was all a bunch of crackers looking for the next new thing to virtue signal.
They'll be putting up the flag of the entity in their bios alongside the Palestinian one, when it becomes clear that the entity will be wiped off the map.
If Democrats win again, then it would have all been a lie.
We’re all going to muse about how much worse Trump would have been when Kamala makes having negative thoughts about “Israel” a federal crime.