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.

  • Al_Sham [she/her]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Palestinian Resistance: From the Lone Sniper to an Army of Snipers by Yousef Fares

    Show

    Excerpt:

    The important thing about all of this is that sniper weapons are no longer rare, nor is their ammunition scarce. Rather, they have become available to all resistance factions, and it has become possible to develop a large cadre of specialized fighters who excels in using the best sniper weapons in the world. The Al-Ghoul rifle is especially suitable for the Strip’s environment and these rifles, which the Palestinians have made with their own hands, are used with high proficiency. This human abundance in snipers and material abundance of weapons appeared during Al-Aqsa Flood like never before. The resistance has carried out at least one sniping operation every week, for the past 44 weeks of war. In fact, the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation was carried out with snipers who used precise shots to disable all the surveillance cameras and electronic machine guns along the separation fence within minutes.

    Perhaps what most worries the Zionist enemy army about the sniper threat is that the occupation cannot hope to deplete the resistance in a war of attrition. The ammunition is locally manufactured and the snipers who graduated from military academies and trained extensively over the past ten years are always ready. A sniping operation needs nothing more than a skilled shooter, a rifle, and a bullet. As for the range, Al-Ghoul can inflict wounds at a distance of 4km which is the depth of the Netzarim axis, from the Zeitoun neighborhood to the newly established barrier. This means that the occupation soldiers, whom the Zionist political leadership has decided to keep in Gaza, will be sitting ducks on a shooting range with inexhaustible ammunition and tireless snipers.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
      ·
      2 months ago

      there's a great parallel with how Israeli soldiers spent their time sniping harmless Palestinian children and boasting about taking out kneecaps and such, and now Palestine has developed an army of soldiers dedicated to sniping those Israeli soldiers

      "the master's tools cannot destroy the master's hou--" BANG

      • Al_Sham [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        "the master's tools cannot destroy the master's hou--" BANG

        Hahaha 😆

        Related:

        An excellent video explaining "How Iran Became a Drone Superpower" reveals that Iranian drone technology today is the consequence of capturing and reverse engineering an 'israeli' drone and then a US stealth drone.

        Jumpstarted their research of materials science and all sorts of aspects of the technology. Now these drones are terrorizing US occupation forces in Iraq and Syria and 'israelis' from Eilat all the way to the border of Lebanon.

        🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

    • plinky [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      ngl, had hamas figured out fpv drones, things would have been differen

      • Al_Sham [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        things would have been differen

        What do you mean by this?

        • plinky [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          much heavier israeili attrition, safer for fighters

          • Al_Sham [she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            If Gaza had the manufacturing capability to mass produce tiny electrical components and cameras and wireless transmitters and all the other technical components required to make an effective FPV drone then that would be nothing short of a miracle. Doesnt Russia buy most of their components for FPV drones from China?

            The fact they can still produce their own rifles and other munitions, 11 months into the war and after 18 years of siege, is incredible enough!!

            • plinky [he/him]
              ·
              2 months ago

              oh both ukraine and russia buy the components, of course they couldn't produce them, i meant prepared beforehand small motors and pcbs, and then assembled them if needed.

              It is incredible, no doubt palestine-heart

            • sinstrium [none/use name]
              ·
              2 months ago

              Do they have underground industries? I know some countries in ww2 tried to do something like that.

              • Al_Sham [she/her]
                ·
                2 months ago

                Yes. There are videos posted showing their underground manufacturing. All of the Yassin-105 shells and the Ghoul rifles & ammunition as well as the rockets and a whole host of other things are indigenously produced in the metro.

                Someone else can surely post the videos