Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.
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.
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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.
I am declaring unlimited vendetta on anyone who starts boosting Walz. I will fight you. I will bite. I have 20 years of rage built up from living with those racist passive aggressive backstabbing jackasses, I lived under a year of police terror under the Walz regime, I am not letting anyone lesser evil that fuck. Tim Walz sent the US FUCKING ARMY to crush an anti-cop PoC uprising. That's who he is, that's what he did. He's not a nice old man, he's not a "progressive", he's not going to save Palestine, he's not going to fix anything. He's the competent fascist we believed was going to follow Trump and that's why he's being picked. They didn't pick him for his progressive ideals, they picked him because he proved he'd be willing to send armed soldiers in to America's streets to ruthlessly crush dissent Because he actually did that.
Thank u for sayin this Frank, love this. Feels like psychosis seeing people say "wow the dems actually manouvered" "he's less bad than I expected" dude is bloodthirsty.
It's like when libs did this with Obama even though he sprung out of Chicago politics. Like lmao you think a guy who navigated that isn't an absolute ghoul? Walz is there BECAUSE he is a fucking ghoul.
Fool me once, right?
They have no idea what white Minnesotans are like.
As someone who is saying this, I should point out I am not voting for Harris. But it is objectively true that the DNC recently has been making decisions that will boost their chances of winning, which is abnormal for them to say the least. Putting Biden out to pasture was smart - and you saw it immediately in poll results. Picking Walz was smart, because as well all know a lot of these populist policies like free school lunches are popular. It’s just surprising to see is all.
The DNC has to constantly balance the interests of their donors with the interests of their voting base, which are totally at odds. I do not believe that democrats “want to lose”. Dem politicians of course prioritize donors over their voters but only to the extent they can still win. Or at least that’s what they do when they want to win. I think they saw how bad the odds were against Trump, and also they know the party is on track to do pretty well in state and local races, but Biden was so unpopular that he was fucking that up. So get rid of Biden and make a nominal, not really all that impactful nod to your base with a guy like Walz and now look at where polling is, I think Harris is now the favorite over Trump.
2020 was different. They dems had a pretty good sense that they’d win no matter who they put up there, so of course they went with the most reactionary and donor-friendly choice out of a field of 20+ candidates.
I guess so, they let Biden publically decay for so so long though. Since he just disappeared it feels like they only pulled him when he finally literally could not speak, Idk. Not that smart.
The reality is that the DNC is not omnipotent, and they had no ability to pull Biden out unless he agreed to it. Like, there isn’t a mechanism for them to do that. If they tried to run a separate candidate that would just split the party. That debate was the perfect gift, because it galvanized the party against Biden. And Biden only left the race when he saw he had no support at all in the party (outside of AOC, lol)
I think their inability to orchestrate a palace coup over a frail old man with dementia hints to their overall weakness and lack of coordination. All it'd take is one shove on a stairwell and they had four years to do it.
I have no idea why people would think the democratic party would let this guy in unless he absolutely was about their shit lol.
4 years ago they crushed Bernie, who was not even good by the loosest sense of leftism, and now all of a sudden they don't mind it at all?
Bro is absolutely about the DNC, and everything they do, and he wouldn't be in this position if he wasn't. They would mobilize a hit squad if he even remotely gave off a vibe of not nesting up with their corporate owners.
There is no such thing as a good U.S. politician. Remember that.
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I looked at their profile and see nothing but removed comments. Wtf happened in there.
US politician got them banned
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Hasn't been one since Thaddeus Stevens.
the kamala revisionism in general is just so disheartening to witness, this is the exact same kopmala from 2020 and everybody that's like not on this site is somehow unironically excited for her. not a burger so at the end of the day i can't do shit about it either.
At the end of the day most people are just consumers and are glad that someone else is On TV. The old show was getting boring and sad.
The new show will still suck though.
They also picked him because americans are dumb enough to run towards the football for the 900th time and pay the democrats for the privilege
to be clear from my previous walz posting, I don't like him and ofc a harris/walz presidency will be horrible for minorities, labor, and the global south
The democrat faction was widely unpopular with Genocide Joe as their figurehead. All the deprivation and violence and mismanagement and genocide was causing the vibes to go off.
Now, with new figureheads, the mainstream media blob has decided to wipe the vibes slate clean and even grant the democrat faction some positive and progressive vibes. The policy will not change significantly and material conditions are going to be roughly the same as with Genocide Joe so these vibes will go off as well at some time in the future but for now vibes are good for the democrat faction and with a little luck they will stay good until the election.
When the vibes go off, a new set of good vibes will be awarded to either a democrat or a republican and the process will repeat itself. If they are good at their job, the mainstream media blob will be able to defend imperial policy from popular discontent for decades to come.
I'm down to about -30 karma on my /r/BreadTube comment calling Walz Shiv Me a fascist for that shit. (That's currently a lot of down-votes for 2024 /r/BreadTube.)
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Nooo minnesota is like sweden or canada or something! social demumucrazy!
Wait, what happened in Minnesota? I'm out of the loop.
The George Floyd uprising four years ago. Walz took the unprecedented action of mobilizing the entire Minnesota National Guard to occupy Minneapolis and put down the uprising.
a cop kneeled on George Floyd's neck for eight minutes
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Cope with machine guns the next time we rise up and Walz sends in big army instead of the weekend warriors.
A few years ago I was trying to calm down my neighbors and friends telling them that the national guard pukes with machine guns almost certainly didn't have ammo and couldn't start shooting people if they wanted to. People were terrified that soldiers had taken over every intersection in the city and there were armored trucks patrolling around town amid convoys of every pig agency within five hundred miles.
I was wrong. Apparently the national guard did have ammo issued. They were ready to kill us.
I ain't gonna breathe a sigh of relief for any dogshit action the democratic party does lol
It turns out a political party that had its start as the "slavery is good for the slaves aktually" party continues to suck almost two centuries later. Imagine someone thinking the NSDAP could somehow be reformed to a progressive party. That's how people who think the Democratic Party can be reformed sound like. In a matter of 196 years, the Democratic Party went from being filled with slaving monsters to being filled with neoliberal ghouls. And anyone who joins that party is joining the slaving-monsters-turned-neoliberal-ghouls party.
Paris is worth a mass; free school lunches and a chance that not every Palestinian is exterminated is worth missing out on MAZ and SPAZ.
Lucy is definitely going to let you kick the football this time.
Appropriate Twin City reference, but where are the anarchists and where is the metaphorical football that they'll let me kick?
A scintilla of electoral support costs nothing and doesn't preclude more radical forms of politics. I understand the Biden detestation as he's an ideologically committed genocidal freak, but to threaten to bite me because of a mild support of a mild progressive instead of an authoritarian grotesque is misplaced anger imo.
Your mild progressive pointed machine guns at me and terrorized my community. Like boots on the ground, convys of armored vehicles, soldiers with machine guns terrorized. Like real, visceral, people were afraid to leave their homes terror. Idk why you don't think he's an authoritarian grotesque. I think he's an authoritarian grotesuq because he put my community under martial law.
Ah, there it is. They don't let anyone touch the reins of power in America unless they're another cute little crypto-fascist.