Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.

In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women's sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.

Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries "unfortunate". A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a "broad-based government". Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven't (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.

The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya's debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to "help" Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.

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 Kenya! 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.

  • smokeppb [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Binance complies with Israeli request, seizes Palestinian funds

    Crypto exchange Binance has seized all funds belonging to Palestinians, acting on a request from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

    “I have received this from several sources. All Palestinians are affected and judging by the way things are going all Lebanese and Syrians will get the same treatment. Not your keys, not your coins. We are all Palestinians now.”

    Centralized exchanges like Binance are starting to look more like government snitches than safe places to store your crypto. And it gets worse.

    Ray claims that Binance has been leaking info on MENA (Middle East and North Africa) users to the IDF without any legal process—no warrant, no subpoena, just handing it over.

    This seems to be coupled with a sudden outflow of ~$2 billion dollars worth of BTC from Binance today: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1f2nt6b/binance_just_had_an_outflow_of_44000_bitcoins/

    I find it hard to believe any real hamas would just leave their funds hanging out on a hostile western platform when they can take the funds out. I also find it hard to believe $2 billion would be kept in crypto alone.

    Well, let this serve as a warning to anyone looking to do business with Binance, they're basically a wing of the IOF now.

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
        ·
        4 months ago

        They all went into US treasuries and stock market to make more money for the third party lol! This is not de-dollarization, it’s actually dollarization with an extra step.

        Makes sense that something that was probably developed by the CIA would mostly benefit the US.

      • dualmindblade [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        Eh, but this sort of thing is an actual practical use case of crypto, the problem as you pointed out is off ramping to a fiat currency, this is actually a sovable problem, you can wash your crypto funds, there are methods for literally perfect money laundering if you know what you're doing, and as long as you know someone who can cash them out and get the money to you you're good to go. Unfortunately it's annoying AF, I'm sure Hamas and whatnot are doing something like this but not your average Palestinian.

    • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      This affects regular Palestinians more than Hamas. Hamas knows well enough not to use real names or their nationality anywhere.

    • What_Religion_R_They [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      I find it hard to believe any real hamas would just leave their funds hanging out on a hostile western platform

      They dropped crypto for this reason a while back I doubt they'd be stupid enough to come back.

      Also this isn't anything new for Binance, it will polish the boot of anyone who would allow it to operate legally unimpeded.

      • FuckyWucky [none/use name]
        ·
        4 months ago

        No, Russians continue using crypto exchanges. These places have next to no AML/KYC. I created my own account using a fake Briish Drivers License.

        You can get crypto exchange account for like $10.