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
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.
Western European "Volunteer" troops ie actual NATO soldiers have been spotted in Kursk. This might actually be the biggest fuck up in the war yet.
kursk oblast, not kursk city. they aren't even 10% of the way to kursk city. stop spreading vague dooming misinfo
Its completely indistinguishable from
trying to win this war with vibes. Its like they think moments like these are the only time they can logically justify not liking russia or something. Having a shameful "fuck putin session" and then going back to cheering on Russia like nothing happened doesn't sound like the most mentally healthy thing when you are genuinely counting on this operation succeeding but what do I know.
I just find it frustrating when people who you thought would have a materialist and realist view of geopolitics and war start whipping around in the wind from western media exaggerations and narratives. Ground yourself people. Research things before posting and stop wildly speculating worst case scenarios that aren’t even likely. People have a bit of goldfishbrain and they extrapolate the last bit of news they heard into the whole outcome of the war
Did you not see the immediate pivot to electoralism the moment Biden dropped out and kamala took over? This is quite literally a repeat of 2016.
The coconut pill is real, and that's what you get when you have a bunch of white westoids.
Part of the reason why GenZedong >>>> chapotraphouse is because there were more POCs and fewer anarchists in GenZedong.
Edit: stuff like this is why sites, messaging boards, and subreddits need to ask about views on foreign policy more than domestic policy. I hate to say it, but the reason why so many on the white left tend to be disappointing is because just believing in trans rights and POC liberation is not enough and doesn't actually tell anyone whether you hold a materialist view of geopolitics.
When Oct 7 happened there were so many people that genuinely believed that Palestinians were in the wrong, or both sided the I-P issue.
When Palestine wins and when the settlers are dealt with (either forced to leave or
) you will see many users calling this reverse genocide and armchair analyzing Palestinians and their liberation.
Mark my words
"Uh aktually, Israel let 10/7 happen because Palestinians are smelly brown Ay-rabs who have never read The Art of War by Sun Tzu."
The enemy is both a mouth-breathing-knuckle -dragger and Lex-Luthor-Braniac brained
I would be absolutely shocked if Sun Tzu was not commonly read by Palestinian officers and leaders. You don't keep effective resistance going in the worst circumstances for generations without learning the basics.
deleted by creator
Yeaup, this whole kamala thing is exposing a lot of users right now.
You know what will happen in November tho?
I miss genzedong more than I miss cth :(
Same sister, same. It was one of the few refuges against westoids.
These people can't even let go of hacks like Zizek. They're idealists. They're just buttering you up. Be proud of that, that these nerds now have to try to cosplay as Z and red triangle posters.
Žižek has made two absolutely invaluable contributions to leftist theory and praxis, I'll have you know.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
They do this shit for China and Iran as well. They lurk in the background quietly seething that China/Iran isn't filled with communists who have the same exact ideology as them and doing what they want them to do and as soon as China/Iran have a minor fuckup, they crawl out of the woodworks to remind the rest of us ad nauseam about how China/Iran is revisionist/Islamist or how China/Iran aren't doing enough to help the Palestinians because they haven't razed Tel Aviv to the ground or to solve world hunger or to abolish the money form or they hate women or blah blah blah.
On a certain level, they want Russia to fail. They want Russia to fail, they want China to fail, and they want Iran to fail. This leads to resentment because despite their innermost wishes, Russia, China, and Iran have been racking up Ws and aren't prone to failure. This is why whenever any one of those three countries have a minor setback, they act as if manna rained down from heaven and begin spreading doomerism.
It's just Western chauvinism in the end.
I have to deal with this shit from people who should know better in real life too. Fucking sucks.
I don't like Russia, I just hate Ukraine more and I've maintained that since the start of the war. Russia is a neoliberal capitalist hellhole which has been the rotting decaying corpse of the RFSR since it's inception and will never achieve the greatness the Soviet Union achieved.
The problem though is you bring that dislike and also a moral judgment into your analysis that is spoiling it. You are letting your dislike of Russia lower your critical defenses and you accept things like panic spreading photos from Ukraine as fact, and then repeat it here. Commenting stuff like “Ukraine is deadass gonna reach Moscow” or “Ukraine is 15 km from the nuclear power plant” when they aren’t. They have barely moved a dozen kilometers into the biggest country on Earth. They have barely even scratched the surface of the first few tiny villages of the first oblast.
This is common in the western left, to insert moralist and idealist preferences into their analysis, to get the outcome they want instead of the outcome that the arrangement of forces implies.
Russia is a neoliberal state? So what? They have more industrial capacity than the west and most of their defense industry is state owned. The west has the same problems as Russia but even greater, and Russia has all it needs to win a war of attrition. You hating Putler for betraying Lenin or whatever is not relevant.
deleted by creator
I am not always so patient unfortunately
And we’ve got a state that is mostly defense industry owned :(
deleted by creator
People, and people in the news mega no less, really think the Ukrainians are going to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do lmao. And last time I checked, the Ukrainians aren't led by a Napoleon nor have the industrial capacity of Nazi Germany.
The truth of the matter is this: Russia is letting this happen. If there is one thing to know about Russian leadership: it's that it's shrewd.
Bring Ukrainians into Russian land, let them get far enough that leadership really thinks they're going somewhere, force their allies to give even more aid and continue with this new dose of hopium. They continue to demilitarize Ukraine, they waste even more resources and destroy even more Ukrainians, and then they make their big arrow movements a few months later.
Fucking Russia is letting this happen because they want to waste even more enemy resources, money, and Ukrainian lives.