Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.


What a clusterfuck of an election.

Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.

It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.

This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.


Your Monday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Thursday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Sundary briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.


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 Pakistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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.


  • @420stalin69
    hexbear
    98
    3 months ago

    Rishi Sunak felt the need to explicitly “reject” the idea that “Britain is or has been on the wrong side of history.”

    Keep bullying.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    hexbear
    91
    3 months ago

    BREAKING: U.S. Air Force employee charged with giving classified information to woman he met on dating site

    Show

    https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1764781238550680002

  • Awoo [she/her]
    hexbear
    91
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    The food the US dropped for Gaza was MREs that were 8 years out of date.

    Show

    Show
    Show

  • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
    hexbear
    80
    2 months ago

    Yemeni forces attacked the cargo ship True Confidence in the Gulf of Aden, after which it caught fire.

    Al Jazeera reports this with reference to the Houthi press service.

    Two sailors were killed, the British embassy in Sana'a said.

    According to the AP, the ship is owned by Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management.

    Reuters claims that it is owned by a Greek company with no connection to the United States, and that the ship was flying the flag of Barbados.

    Ambrey, which specializes in maritime security, claims that the attacked bulk carrier is still American.

    Pretty interesting how every time Ansarallah strikes another ship, media falls over itself to say it’s “Greek owned, Lebanese flagged, heading towards Cyprus” or some shit to try and make Ansarallah look like reckless terrorists, but it always comes out eventually it was indeed US/UK/Israeli connected in some major way. They deliberately omit the connections and only report on everything else. In one article they will mention the flag but omit the owner, in another they will omit the flag but mention the owner. It’s such obvious bad faith propaganda on their parts

  • mkultrawide [any]
    hexbear
    80
    2 months ago

    He's gonna win lmao

    Show

    https://twitter.com/addammy1/status/1765948090501001622

  • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
    hexbear
    79
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Democrats say they aren’t worried about the “Uncommitted” campaign because it isn’t garnering that much support, when in reality people will just sit out the election if they don’t like your candidate.

    Funny enough, this always makes me think of an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon Ramsay once said something that really stuck with me. A restaurant was failing due to the low quality of its food, and people were sending their food back to the kitchen saying that it was no good. The owner/chef were shocked because they said this never happens, and it must just be because Gordon Ramsay was there influencing their decision. Ramsay said that in the restaurant business, almost all restaurants stay afloat due to repeat customers. He went on to say that it may be true that people are sending food back now because they know he’s here, but on a normal day it’s different. If you go out to eat and the food is low quality, the vast majority of people don’t send food back, they just never come back to your restaurant.

    This so perfectly encapsulates how the “Uncommitted” vote in the Democrat primaries is actually an underrepresentation of people who will not vote for Biden on Election Day. It is much more difficult to go out to a predetermined primary election and vote for nobody than it is to simply stay home and not vote at all.

    Democrats will lose a sizable chunk of voters as a result of this election cycle, many of them forever. This alienation event is almost certainly going to be larger than the Bernie 2016 and 2020 events, and is probably going to be the largest since NAFTA. If you are a young person, it is just so blatantly obvious that democrats have almost no policy overlap with you.

  • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]
    hexbear
    79
    2 months ago

    Exactly 1 month ago Sweden ended their investigation into the NordStream pipeline, saying it lacked jurisdiction on the issue. Today they join NATO officially.

    How much circumstantial evidence do we need to conclusively say NATO INTENTIONALLY caused one of the worst environmental disasters of all time?

  • edge [he/him]
    hexbear
    78
    3 months ago

    Libs love to say "Biden doesn't have the power to send weapons to Israel, it's up to Congress.".

    Except Congress hasn't sent any weapons, Biden has bypassed them multiple times to send weapons. It's not even a spin or bad faith or anything, they're just dumbasses.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    hexbear
    77
    3 months ago

    In Toronto, there was a protest against a Zionist real estate show selling Palestinian land, which culminated in a Zionist freak attempting to attack protestors with a nailgun and a few cars trying to run over the protestors.

    Background of the protest: https://twitter.com/sasa_ghada/status/1764424937375166754

    Aniti-Zionist rabbi explaining the protest: https://twitter.com/Mivasair/status/1764322548215410811

    Car attempting to run over protestors: https://twitter.com/sasa_ghada/status/1764308711265202490

    Zionist loser attempting to attack protestors with a nailgun, getting scared, attempting to throw hands with some middle-aged lady, getting scared again, and storming off in his car: https://twitter.com/sasa_ghada/status/1764426956483817739

    Different POV of the same Zionist loser: https://twitter.com/sasa_ghada/status/1764345290109145174

    Lurking more, there was apparently multiple Zionist venues in Canada selling illegally occupied land, which led to multiple protests, which lead to multiple Zionist attempts at injuring and murdering protestors.

    I don't know if this is part of the same Toronto protest. Apparently, Thornhill is right next to Toronto proper: https://twitter.com/sasa_ghada/status/1764704064942576039

  • edge [he/him]
    hexbear
    76
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Biden invoking Reagan in the first 10 minutes, amazing. Insane that Reagan has had 11 terms.

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    74
    2 months ago

    bushnell Residents in Areeha named one of the streets in the city after the American pilot Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the occupation embassy in Washington, in solidarity with Palestine and in rejection of his country's position supporting the genocide war waged against #Gaza. This sign of appreciation from Palestine comes just a week after a government order in Sana'a, Yemen put Aaron's face on billboards across

    Show