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.
Genocide Joe has lifted the ban on arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Biden has previously said that the Saudis are willing to recognize Israel in return for the resumation of arms sales and approval for a nuclear facility.
Decades inbound?
Recognizing Israel now would be very directly an endorsement of the Palestinian genocide. What’s the feeling among the Saudi people? Would that strip the House of Saud of legitimacy or are the Saudi people so tamed and treat-pilled that it wouldn’t matter?
Like, obviously the House of Saud are imperialist puppets and they have been since about the end of the Ottoman Empire but they’re still the keepers of Mecca. How would the Muslim world react to that?
When was the last time SA had a legitimately threatening domestic protest against its government in this century? SA will just make neutral statements that will prompt no response from the US while they support and profit from genocide. Hopefully Yemen can take care of them.
The Saudi people would either support this or be too terrified to say a single thing let alone pray for the Palestinians.
There is no in between.
Is he hoping to use them against Yemen?
Technically the ban was put in place to get them to stop fighting Ansar Allah. It’s possible that he wants them to attack. It’s possible that they are just ending it because the Saudis have upheld their end of the deal. It’s possible this is about Iran and the threat of a larger regional war. It’s possible this is in return for recognizing Israel.
TL;DR
MBS: “Oil lol”
Biden:
it would be pretty funny if this was the angle, because Saudi Arabia led a famously incompetent campaign against Yemen that seems to have resulted in the exact opposite of their war aims. a lot of similarities to Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza, now that I think about it. hundreds of thousands of dead civilians? check. the military of your enemy not only not defeated, but emboldened and strengthened by regional alliances? check.
Saudi Arabia would bomb a civilian march for Gaza and kill 200 people, and then half their refineries would explode. Yemen got a drone through the most well-defended Western airspace on the planet. Hezbollah is doing it repeatedly almost every day now. April 13th went badly enough for Israel that they were too frightened to form a response and had to lie to their settlers that it failed in order to justify why they weren’t responding, and stopped Israel assassinating politicians until months later, when they again grew desperate.