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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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.

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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.

  • dead [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    There's a new Biden interview with some actually interesting moments.

    The interviewer asks Biden about calling a person "an illegal" during his SOTU speech. Biden says that he now regrets using the word "illegal" and should have said undocumented person. Then Biden go on to say "we have to control the border", but also that he's different from Trump because Trump uses words like Vermin. Biden basically says that he's doing Trump's border policy but with Civility (TM).

    The interviewer asks Biden about the hot mic footage after the speech, where Biden says "I told Bibi, and don't repeat this, 'You and I are about to have a come to Jesus meeting'." Biden says that Bibi has the right to protect Israel but that it's now Biden's view that Israel's actions are hurting Israel by making them look bad. Then Biden says that he's trying to get a ceasefire, 6-week ceasefire. The notable thing here is that the Democratic establishment is redefining what a ceasefire is. Ceasefire is meant to be an end of the war, not a 6-week pause.

    The interviewer asks Biden about the "no red lines" policy on Israel. Biden says that he won't stop supplying weapons to Israel under any circumstance. Then he says "We can't have another 30,000 Palestinians dead". Biden says that he told Israel "Don't make the mistakes that America made with Bin Laden" Then he has a Freudian slip and says "But we shouldn't have gone into Ukraine". Biden winces. Then he says "I mean we shouldn't have gone into Iraq or Afghanistan."

    The interviewers asks Biden about the port that Biden promised during the SOTU to build in Gaza for aid, saying that a port would take 60 days to build. The interviewer asks Biden what he will do to give aid to Gaza for the next 60 days. Biden talks about the air drops and acknowledges that several people were killed by the air drops falling on them.

    The interviewer asks Biden about the Uncommitted primary voting campaign and says that many people have pledged to never vote for Biden because Biden actively armed a genocide. Biden says that the interviewer is lying and that people don't believe that. Biden says that people are upset and asking him to do something, but Biden says that he believes most people don't think that Israel is doing a genocide. Biden denies that Israel is doing genocide and he also denies that other people believe Israel is doing genocide.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03VAGMvmoNQ

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Then he has a Freudian slip and says "But we shouldn't have gone into Ukraine". Biden winces. Then he says "I mean we shouldn't have gone into Iraq or Afghanistan."

      jesus fucking christ

      • edge [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        lmao it’s like the reverse of Bush’s “brutal invasion of Iraq” slip when he meant Ukraine. But at least Bush recognized his slip was accurate, saying “Iraq too” after correcting himself.

        • Dessa [she/her]
          ·
          4 months ago

          If you travelled back to 2006 and told young me that 2 of the next 3 presidents would be dumber than bush, I would have saved myself the trouble of living

    • edge [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Biden says that he now regrets using the word "illegal" and should have said undocumented person.

      Bruh your writers spent months on that and you approved it. You and your team had so many opportunities to realize that before the speech.

    • volcel_olive_oil [he/him]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Biden denies that Israel is doing genocide and he also denies that other people believe Israel is doing genocide.

      "nah they don't believe it. they're lying." this is a conspiracy theory. the president would like you to believe that there is a conspiracy against him where people pretend to think Israel is doing a genocide, for reasons not stated. millions of people just simultaneously decided to do this somehow

    • Parzivus [any]
      ·
      4 months ago

      Biden says that he believes most people don't think that Israel is doing a genocide. Biden denies that Israel is doing genocide and he also denies that other people believe Israel is doing genocide.

      I would say he's gonna lose but he might be right about the average Amerikkkan

      • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
        ·
        4 months ago

        exit polls will ask people whether they believe israel is doing genocide, and they'll naturally miss the fact that people who believe this will probably just stay home and not vote, feeding directly into the democrat electoral survey data grift machine because some nerd will be able to point to the result and say "see! voting americans don't believe israel is doing genocide!"