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.
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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.
So, is Walz actually good? I get that he’s better than Shapiro, but this is a pretty low bar.
He’s kinda Bernie-lite but has his own baggage. He had a pretty pro-Israel voting record in Congress. He was Governor of Minnesota when the George Floyd protests went down, and there are some users here more familiar with him than me who could explain how he is responsible for at least some of the police violence unleashed on Minneapolis.
Still seems way better than Shapiro, though. We weren’t going to get anyone anti-Zionist but Shapiro was an IDF volunteer lol.
Well for our non-American audience, Walz would be a pretty average European Social Democrat. So yeah pretty great for American standards, but for the rest of the world? Ehhhhh…
He’s a troop who called in the national guard during protests. He has a record of being pro-labor to some extent and has done some objectively good things in MN like implementing free, universal food in schools. He’s a typical lib, but is a good speaker and isn’t under investigation for covering up murder so was the obvious choice here. In terms of electoralism, it likely won’t hurt them any. If he debates Vance, that might swing a few nerds because of how offputting Vance is and also because he’s only half way through his first fucking term as a politican. But doubtful that this helps any progressive cause or anything.
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He’s around Liz Warren-level, he’d be in the right half of a 50s-70s socdem party with a fixation on brutalism but in the left half of a 90s-20s socdem party undergoing pasokification
“actually good” by whose standards? MN legislature with him as governor has passed a lot of decent liberal half measures and taken a huge victory lap for it, but he’s just a dem at the end of the day. He will bend the knee for big corporations, though maybe you could argue he’ll be slightly more emboldened at the federal level (but VP has no power so…)
He vetoed legislation that would have given some worker protections and a big pay raise to uber and lyft drivers (after they threatened to leave the state), only to sign a compromised deal the next year that was worked out with the companies in advance, and which even pre-empted a bill setting a higher rate at the city level that had already passed in Minneapolis (the largest city in the state)
He also leaned on reps to exempt the
clinic from a bill that would have forced hospitals to all have (iirc, binding) staffing committees with a large mandatory minimum % representation of direct care nurses, among other protections. After Walz got his exemption the bill and its support fell apart.
In terms of the horse race I think he may be a good pick because of his record, his whiteness, etc. but he’s not an exhilarating speaker or anything really iirc
He’s lead one of the most progressive state governments, so by the metric of Dems, yeah, he’s good. But like… How good is that, really?