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.
Tribal forces allied with Assad have started a Offensive against the SDF and the US occupied Oilfields …
2017 Me is so fuckin vindicated right now, I guess the policy of arresting every other Northern Syrian Arab, accusing them of being ISIS collaborators and sticking them in prison camps didn’t pay off in the long term, huh who woulda thunk
SDF did this to themselves. I’ve lost a lot, if not most, of sympathy I had for the Kurds in Syria.
They are opportunist out of desperation, which will always blow back on the people.
They could (and should) have allied with Assad, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Instead they chose the great Satan, the funder of ISIS, and that will be their undoing. It wasn’t desperation, it was poor decision making
Well opportunism is always poor decision making, yes!
Don’t give the SDF that excuse, they know what they’re doing.
The SDF was never interested in protecting their own community, all they ever do is make money off of stolen resources and leave Kurdish families to bear the burden of US betrayal.
Oh for sure plenty to criticize SDF, specifically for there. But basically every Kurdish organized group allied itself with the US, even those experimenting with lefty ways of living and organizing.
Weren’t they mostly anarchists tho?
I wouldn’t call them any particular tendency. They seemed pretty incoherent to me, grabbing bits and pieces of theory they liked from anarchists, whatever you want to label Bookchin’s stuff as, and commies. They developed decently along feminist lines as well.
Edit: by them I actually mean YPG in this case.
Right before the Turks invaded Afrin, Russia and Syria offered an alliance to the SDF and the SDF chose not to. They would rather be dogs for America than protect their own people.
I never had any, that’s what happens when you try to make your own little Isntrael in a country you don’t even belong on.
Occupying wheat fields was bad enough, ethnically cleansing the Arabs from their land and claiming it was necessary to stop daesh forced me to stop caring.
There was an article posted here by al_sham about how Kurds in the syria region were enrolling child soldiers from their own community. They were always bad.
While I’m not sad to see American compradors get their asses handed to them, this sentiment is a real slippery slope. I’m not sure we ought to indulge in it.
“depends on what you consider a child soilder”
yhea, they were always compradores, that being said Kurds have been there since the bronze age.
IT’S BEEN HYPOTHESISED FOR A WHILE THIS WOULD HAPPEN. IT DEPENDS ON WHETHER AMERICA (AND TO A LESSER EXTENT ISRAEL) WILL STEP IN TO DEFEND THEM I GUESS? MAYBE SOME SORT OF BACKROOM DEALS HAVE BEEN MADE?
AMERICA IS EMPLOYING IS FORCES THERE ALLREADY TO DEFEND THEM , EVEN WITH AIRSTRIKES , AS THEY APPEAR TO HAVE SURROUNDED AL_OMAR RAFFINIERY ALLREADY . SO I DONT BELIVE IN A BACKROOM DEAL
Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, maybe Iraq… You know what this needs another war front
they took it ???
About time
Apperantly they took it … amazing …