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.
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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.
Probably they're loading the dead into these intact trucks. I'm not sure who has control of the scene (can't tell), but my guess would be it's the Russians, because (a) it's reported as some sort of HIMARS strike, so further from the front (makes sense anyway, they wouldn't be doing a non-armored convoy near the actual frontline I would hope), and (b) why would the Ukrainians do cleanup there anyway? So I don't think it's a Ukrainian fake. It's also too elaborate to be a fake, like are they setting a dozen trucks on fire just to film this?
Oh and the answer is probably shrapnel
from cluster munitions.Edit: This is probably drone footage of the strike. It's like 20 trucks just standing there. Looks like regular explosive rockets, not cluster munitions. And Ukrainian troops are not there; that's like 20 km from the frontline.
This video of himars hitting a convoy is fine. The other video is weird. It's labelled as UA video, as in it's Ukrainian footage. It does not make any sense.
If it's Ukrainian footage it can't be the column from the above video, because the level of danger would be higher as Russian troops would be in the area.
Ukraine wouldn't be loading dead russians onto russian trucks to extract them.
I suspect this is a real scene of vehicles that have been abandoned after an attack near the border, and Ukraine has used it for propaganda by loading some mannequins onto the truck beds.
Shrapnel would not leave entire truckloads of people instantly dead such that they would not even attempt to evacuate or fall out of the vehicle. Shrapnel would hit some but not all occupants, some occupants would take fire for the other occupants as the shrapnel would not pass through their body, etc etc. It's just not a scene that looks realistic.
This is down to the subreddit being weird. Things labeled as UA POV in that subreddit mean that it supports the Ukrainian narrative not that it's being filmed by Ukrainians.
The "UA pov" rules there are wierd. Basically if it's from a pro-Ukrainian channel it is supposed to be labeled UA pov, even if it's from inside Russia. This was probably filmed by a Russian civilian and then found on a pro-UA channel. Apparently it's geolocated to be in Rylsk, which is not under Ukrainian control.
looks like a roadway not far from civilian housing and traffic (civilian traffic and homes in the video taken from what seems to be a civilian vehicle) so it wouldn’t be out of the question to get the bodies picked up ASAP in whatever is convienient.
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