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.

The Country of the Week is Iraq! 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.

  • PaulSmackage [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Just a question for all you Newsheads out there: is there any people you folks would like to have an AMA with? Doesn't have to be just what we have here, just in general.

    • mkultrawide [any]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I think it would be very funny if Michael Hudson and shipwreck got into a flame war.

        • mkultrawide [any]
          ·
          3 months ago

          He's just very easy to set off based on the few interviews I have seen and I think it would be funny if you two started fighting over something that like at most 5 other people in this site understood. I saw an interview where someone asked him a question about crypto, and he only half listened and basically cut off the guy to yell at him about something that wasn't even really what the guy asked. I think I might have even argued with you (or maybe on an old account you had?) about how he was kinda being a dick to the guy and didn't even answer the right question lol.

            • mkultrawide [any]
              ·
              3 months ago

              I think we may be talking about the same thing. I think the guy was essentially asking about the uses of money (store of value, medium of exchange, unit of accounting, etc.) in relation to crypto and Hudson like barely listened and started yelling about debt or something. I felt bad for the guy asking the question because he said at the beginning he was a leftist lol.

    • Alaskaball [comrade/them]MA
      ·
      3 months ago

      Live chat with unfiltered and unmoderated Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Completely open floor for topics of discussion no holds barred.

      I want to hear the catty drama queens go full throttle just to see where we go.

    • Greenleaf [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      The person I would most like to have in an AMA isn’t one specific person with a name. I would like it to be with someone reasonably high up in the CPC who could help understand and explain the details of how socialism is implemented in the Chinese economy, and what they see as the plan in the coming decades.

      Evo Morales would also be good.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
      ·
      3 months ago

      President Xi why have you not yet pressed the button (the nuclear one, not the communism one)?

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      3 months ago

      If there's not a good response here we should try an extra thread.

      Some usual suspects I'd suggest: Political figures like Varoufakis, Corbyn(might be v hard), leftist authors(all of them), left-aligned union leaders, reps from the better parties, etc. There's some youtubers and stuff I've tried to approach in the past, not sure if I've been ignored or I've just approached them wrongly too, I won't air who I have and haven't tried publicly though on the offchance it affects whether they might in the future.