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
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.
Western "socialists" be like: "Maduro cheated, he rigged the elections to keep the CIA-funded reactionaries from winning!"
Me:
one can either tie themselves into a bunch of ideological knots about whether violence is justified and whether if a population votes for an awful outcome like a genocide in a fully democratic election, if that vote should nonetheless be respected, and a hundred other things
or you can just cut through that knot with Stalin's gigantic razor-sharp spoon and go "if it will benefit the working class, it is very probably good. if it doesn't, it is very probably bad."
it is fucking awesome to cheat and rig electoral results to make socialist and communist parties win. even better if you can win without that, but your enemy sure as hell is trying to rig it, so you might as well fight back. legalism has its place, of course. and there is no point getting arrested if you can help it. but on the liberal to leftist pipeline, it's always very important to critique the moral code that society has implanted into you, because you'll realize that, huh, that's weird, a lot of these principles a) tend to benefit the ruling class and encourage breaking working class solidarity, and b) are rarely followed by the bourgeoisie anyway. stealing is bad, unless you're a CEO doing wage theft.
You oppose Maduro rigging the elections because you think the opposition should have a chance to be elected. I oppose Maduro rigging the elections because I think the opposition should be liquidated. We are not the same.
All this talk from western "leftists" about how corrupt Maduro is just reminds me of Lava Jato and the squishes all fucking cheering for Lula to be locked up, clearing the way for Bolsonaro.
The opposition is as best no less corrupt than Maduro, so clearly corruption isn't the issue they actually care about The opposition fucking murders poor worker and pro-government politicians, so clearly violence and authoritarianism isn't the actual reason either.
Oh, how we hate the squishies.
If he did steal the election that would probably be a good thing.
It's bad enough that Antony Blinken runs one country.
Eh, I think not. If it wasn't necessary to rig the election then it just goes to show reactionaries are paper tigers and don't threaten the left in Venezuela. I don't have anything negative to say about the possibility of him having cheated, that would be totally reasonable, but all in all it's best if it was legitimate so it doesn't vindicate the fascists so they go and burn another hospital.
Not to be a Red Fascist or anything but the left (or at least the forces of multipolarity) winning is good actually
All they can even point to is uneven coverage and use of state resources to help his campaign. Like... just saying they think it's unfair, not because they can say anything meaningful about the actual voting process.
It tells you all you need to know that their implicit default on fairness is how the bourgeois press decides to cover elections. God forbid our track suit prez put a finger on the dial. To be a good, fair socialist you must always fight with one hand tied behind your back. This ensures your moral victory and actual real-world loss, as is tradition in the West.
That attitude kinda reminds me of this article https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/
Bourgeois "democracy" is a farce anyway that by design benefits imperialists, so you might as well fuck with it to screw them over.
The problem is “representative” democracy. If the people are not involved in the decision making process then they aren’t really involved.
Direct democracy is too unwieldy and subject to whims.
Council democracy is a neat balance.