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.

  • mkultrawide [any]
    ·
    4 months ago

    In the follow up to my earlier post about Trump doing the DNC's job of selling Tim Walz:

    Show

    This is like if Face/Off was about a presidential election.

    • SovietyWoomy [any]
      ·
      4 months ago

      His handling of the protests was so brutal that even Trump praised him? yikes

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Democrats: "Donald Trump is literally Hitler. Also, he praised Tim Walz for making the trains run on time."

            • Chronicon [they/them]
              ·
              4 months ago

              how's northstar doin

              (jk I love trains and minnesota, but MNs service is sorta pitiful for the moment. isn't the light rail system running tiny 2 car trains and getting some kind of supervisory authority installed because they can't manage their own expansion projects? that one to duluth sounds cool though)

              • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
                ·
                4 months ago

                how's northstar doin

                Actually checking the schedules it's getting better. We're up from 2 trains a day to several, including a couple reverse-direction trains. Still not very good, but a decided improvement.

                • Chronicon [they/them]
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  well yeah compared to "verge of death" lol

                  I do genuinely hope it eventually gets extended to actually be a one-seat ride somewhere useful and with more commuter/regional routes on the system. Oh and getting back to or exceeding the opening day scheduled frequency would be a good start, I want to say that was 6 trains/day/direction? The pace of infrastructure improvement in the US is so demoralizing, by the time anything gets better the people who needed it have moved on with their lives and the existing infrastructure is starting to fall apart/need serious maintenance

    • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      4 months ago

      I want a text transcription of Trump's first statement. This is what I have, but I can't make out a couple of words in the middle:

      Governor Walz is on the phone, and we spoke, and I fully agree with the way he handled it the last couple of days. I asked him to do that, and the whole world was watching. Two days, three days later, I spoke to the governor and the governor picked up the call, and he's an excellent guy. You've got a big National Guard out there that's ready to come in and fight like hell. I tell you the [???deaths in the pre-vid???] in Minneapolis was incredible. They went in and dominated! And it happened immediately. Tim is on the phone now—Tim Walz—and again, I'm very happy with the last couple of days, Tim. You called up, for some reason, the big numbers. Knocked them down so fast, it was like bowling pins.

      That's what it sounds like to me: "deaths in the pre-vid". Can anyone make out what the fuck those words are and help me out here?