Bulletins and News Discussion from August 5th to August 11th, 2024 - LGBT - COTW: Iraq
Bulletins and News Discussion from August 5th to August 11th, 2024 - LGBT - COTW: Iraq
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.
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Exciting to see the Ukraine will-they-won't-they intelligence from the states againInitial assessments had predicted an early-week attack, but the latest intelligence suggests that any response may be delayed until late Thursday or Friday.
Wait, hang on a minute. Isn't this literally just saying that on Sunday, they predicted it would happen on Monday, but now it's Wednesday and now they think it will happen on Thursday? Isn't this just the wordiest way of saying "we've been predicting it'll be within 24 hours for the better part of a week"?
This failure of US intelligence aside, I do wonder how and why they keep being incorrect. Do they genuinely have no idea? That seems unlikely, given that I imagine Western intelligence is trying their hardest to get information out of Iran, has satellite images, etc. Has Iran merely been sitting in a ready position for a few days now and could fire at any time, but aren't going to until they feel the time is right, and so the US can only see that preparations are complete and are predicting based on that information? Are there elements inside Iran that are feeding them misinformation about when they're going to strike? Do they actually know when Iran is going to strike, but aren't sharing that information in order to keep the tension high in order to justify a potential retaliatory strike on Iran if it's harmful enough?
Not much different from how Iran was been months away from obtaining nuclear weapons for four decades now.
every article stops the Nuklear Program for the day becasue they need to hidde it under a big Cloth , that is why they are still are months away..
Iran is probably pushing misinformation out from multiple angles to find out where Intelligence leaks are. Somehow Israel knew where Haniyeh was and exactly when.
Intelligence is mostly propaganda, I swear. They just keep predicting a relatively sure thing until it happens, and then claim victory for such great prediction. This statement says they have no idea what form it will come in, but I bet after the fact we'll be hearing all about how they knew exactly what form it would take. Their biggest achievement is appearing omniscient when the reality appears to be that they can't predict their way out of a paper bag.
And Israel does this all the time, too. A massive calamity hits them and they're just like "Oh, yeah, we actually knew that was gonna happen 10 years in advance but we, uh, just didn't stop it. Because, uh, we didn't feel like it." The image of omniscience merely failed by a lack of rapid action is more palatable to the average Zionist who wants to be safe on their stolen land than the truth that they are truly vulnerable and Israel does not always (or even generally) know what's about to hit them and only deterrence and US help has kept the state project alive this long; and now the deterrence has vanished and the aid is insufficient for anything but murdering civilians in tents
I think Iran told 10 different people they were attacking 10 different days to figure out who's been leaking and all that intel is getting muddied up in the analysts room.