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.
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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.
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
Is pepperspray legal in Canada? Some pepperspray would've been reeeeal clutch against that nailgun guy.
"gas based chemical weapons used by Hamas sympathizers in antisemitic attack in Toronto"
-the cbc
Even worse: "Man charged after bringing nail gun to demonstration in Thornhill: police"
"A 27-year-old man has been arrested and charged after allegedly bringing a nail gun to a demonstration in Thornhill on Sunday, police say.
It happened in the area of Clark Avenue West and South Promenade.
York Regional Police (YRP) said they were called to that area at about 9:45 a.m. after a victim reported being assaulted with a weapon by a male suspect.
According to police, an altercation broke out regarding the conflict in the Middle East.
"Through investigation, officers identified several witnesses who stated that a male had stopped his vehicle near pro-Palestinian demonstrators and began shouting obscenities at them, while becoming confrontational with three of the protestors," YRP said."
... They did so much to obscure the fact that the pro-Palestine protestors were the ones being attacked by someone wielding a nailgun
if you're asking is ______ legal in canada the answer will always be no
Except if you're doing settler shit like selling colonized land. That's ok apparently.
Nope https://www.mdlawgroup.ca/articles/is-it-legal-to-own-pepper-spray-in-canada
Dumb fake ass country.
Any and all self-defense tools are illegal here
You're allowed to own pepperspray but it is illegal to carry and deploy it. Same with anything else like batons. You can only use your fists and whatever is at hand - but you are not allowed to carry any weapons to fulfill that second bit
Literally any weapon or tool that is considered self defense is basically illegal in Canada. I have heard stories of people getting attacked and use a tazer or bear spray as defense but get arrested instead of the attacker.
There's a similar auction happening near me this upcoming Sunday, making plans to go protest
what a nerd. josh from drake and josh lookin mf. Squaring up to fight a middle aged woman.