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!
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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.
Just wanna put it out there that if the death toll of Gaza is currently 40,000 or thereabouts (according to gaza authorities) this represents roughly ~~7% of the population~~ 2% killed.
We should really be comparing this to the 20% of the population that the US killed in the dprk to truly make people realise the horror of what the americans did there.
The number of murdered Palestinians is likely to be higher. The Zionists has deliberately targeted all forms of record-keeping and healthcare infrastructure so it is impossible to know the full extent of their crimes. The 40.000 number is likely to be too low, I don't think it is that long ago I saw a six-digit number of estimated victims.
A hospital has to see the body for the PA to make it part of the “official” count. Kinda hard when all the hospitals have been hit. It’s almost as if the Zionists planned it that way…
The PA does not handle Gaza. Which is why all ~~western~~ Goebbels media call it "Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry".
Plus all the bodies never recovered/buried under the rubble.
also kind of hard when they bomb crowded schools and the bodies are so disfigured they cannot tell where one stops and another starts, so they bury them in 75kg plastic bags of human remains
We will never know how many palestinians will have died in the end, because in many cases there is no one left behind to mourn their absence. The future historians will probably have to extrapolate figures which of course will be disputed by surviving sympathizers.
We'll never know the exact number but once the entity has been destroyed and Palestine is free there will be a census and we will know how many people there are then and how many there were before october 7th. but really that number is meaningless because of the decades of slow death that came before it.
The 40,000 number hasn't changed in months and months. It's like the "official" number in Yemen being fixed at 200k for years. I think it was the Lancet that estimates a low ball of 190k as of last month, and likely more. You just cannot deprive that many people of food, water, medicine, and shelter for that long without killing vast numbers of people.
40000/2000000 is 2%, but still a crime against humanity.
Oh shit I got completely the wrong number from quickly looking up the population of gaza. Thank you.
Which puts the war crimes in Korea in even starker contrast. 10x the amount of the population.