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.
its over. hexbear is gonna have a civil war over this guy.
@[email protected] any word on why Nicaragua and Brazil are expelling each other's ambassadors?
TIL there is an Italian version of the ADL
That's so fucking funny though, holy shit
Daniel Ortega has some trouble with some catholic priests, most that used to support Somoza, I think the police arrested some and took over some catholic radio stations. The Vatican got angry, they asked Lula da Silva to mediate the release of the priests. Seems like it didn't go too well, Ortega got pissed that Brazil didn't sent a representative to the Revolution Day thing. And kicked out the Brazilian diplomat. Lula didn't like that, so Brazil kicked out the Nicaraguan diplomat from Brazil.
Seems like not a lot of leftists are talking about this, mostly Liberal saying how Lula fought his "friend" and "ally" Daniel Ortega, when in reality, Brazil doesn't even care about Nicaragua. I think they will restore relations when Lula meets with Ortega during some Celac meeting.
Oh, ok I didn't know Brazil was mediating issues between the Vatican and Nicaragua. But yeah given what brazilian foreign policy is like the government just did another reciprocity and relations will be restored in tandem.
I think that during the elections, Bolsonaro tried to say that Lula supported Ortega's actions. But nobody knew what he was saying, because most people probably don't even know that Nicaragua is a left-wing country. Brazil has good relations with the Vatican, because the Pope has been positive towards Lula, Miguel Diaz-Canel and some other left-wing leaders. I believe that the majority of Catholics in Brazil support Lula and his government.
lula did have 10 million more votes from catholics, whereas bolsonaro was up by 14 million with evangelicals
but it's a tricky stat: the most catholic regions in the country are the south and northeast, and while the first one voted firmly for the right, the second basically pushed lula to his win, with crazy percentages like over 76% of the votes in piauí
so, two catholic regions voting in completely different ways. my take is that it's not really that catholics support lula, as much as northeasterners do (for very material, concrete reasons - historically the poorest region in the country, but whose conditions improved massively under lula I and II), and they just happen to be very catholic
I'm sure Lula is also from the Northeast. In general, in Latin America, Catholics are the majority, but most catholics here aren't weird and traditional like in the US and Europe. They're just normal people, who can be liberal and even left-wing. It's very strange how conservative Catholicism is in Europe and the US compared to Africa and Latin America.
Remember to point out that back in the day, liberals also arrested Nicaraguan priests. I mean way back during the lib vs conservative 1800s.
That's a shame on Lula's part. Mediating issues between SA nations is cool. Using Brazil's political machinery to fight for the issues of European colonizers... not so much.
Isn't this when he called in the national guard? What the fuck are they talking about lol
Mamma mia he wasn't fascist enough for them
The most prominent symbol? followed by
and 
I assume