Bulletins and News Discussion from August 26th to September 1st, 2024 - Ruto Must Go - COTW: Kenya
Bulletins and News Discussion from August 26th to September 1st, 2024 - Ruto Must Go - COTW: Kenya
Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.
In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women's sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.
Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries "unfortunate". A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a "broad-based government". Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven't (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.
The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya's debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to "help" Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.
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 Kenya! 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.
You're viewing a single thread.
Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) has worsened relations with Brazil and Colombia, some drama:
Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua, said that the Brazilian government, led by President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, repeating what the Yankees (US Goverment) say. The movement makes the rupture between Brazil and Nicaragua more evident. He also accused Lula's goverment of being corrupt, talking about the Lava Jato Operation (Car Wash Operation).
Ortega accuses Lula of being Pro-US and corrupt by using the same argument the US and Far-Right people use to attack Lula? The Car Wash Operation Judge had literally connections with the CIA. lol.
Ortega also described the Bolivarians' "struggle" as "the fight between David and Goliath.". Saying that Brazil is attacking Venezuela.
Quoting Ortega, Lula said that not attending an event is not a reason for retaliation. At the beginning of August, Nicaragua announced the expulsion of the then Brazilian ambassador to the country, Breno Dias da Costa, after he failed to attend the 45th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.
Still on the subject of Nicaragua, the Brazilian president made a comparison and said that it would be the same as Brazil expelling ambassadors who didn't attend the September 7th celebrations.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has responded to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who called him "Arrastado" a way of saying obedient to the United States. Petro said: "I do not drag (In spanish: Arrastro) the human rights of my people through the mud, And I do not betray my former comrades of war and revolution." Gustavo Petro is a former guerrilla fighter.
No idea why Ortega got so pissed at Brazil for mediating the Nicaragua-Vatican diplomatic crisis. I know there are a bunch of far-right pro-somoza Catholic priests there, but removing most religious protections and attacking the Catholic Church seems like a bad idea when you consider there are a bunch of pro-sandinista catholics, besides probably being unpopular to attack the religion most people follow there.
In Venezuela, lots of commotion surrounding the arrest of journalist Carmela Longo, who worked for 2 decades at the (firmly pro-govt) newspaper Últimas Noticias, covering night life and social activities. She's reportedly been charged with terrorism and inciting hatred. Plenty of voices in her defense, alleging that this is a (very serious) misunderstanding
Seems like they got the wrong person with a similar name?
Sorry what does the Vatican have to do with this? I assumed Ortega was attacking their positions on the vz election
I remember that during the 2021 Nicaraguan elections, some Catholic priests and some Catholic radio stations promoted a right-wing candidate and criticized the government. Ortega was furious about this, because they were using the immunity that religious institutions have to attack the government. He arrested these priests.
The Vatican didn't like seeing its priests imprisoned, so Pope Francis called Lula da Silva, a head of state with whom he is close, and asked him to help mediate the release of these priests. It seems that some things happened, the Brazilian diplomat didn't go or didn't want to visit the Revolution Day March, and this angered Daniel Ortega. He expelled the Brazilian diplomat, and Lula expelled the Nicaraguan diplomat.
Now, Daniel Ortega is attacking Lula, Petro and AMLO because they didn't immediately recognize Maduro's re-election, which is dishonest, considering that AMLO is already dealing with the US and Canada interfering in his government. And Lula and Petro have to calculate the political costs of recognizing Maduro, since their government depends on the support of liberal parties and liberal voters, most of whom don't like Maduro. So Petro and Lula are just waiting for the Venezuelan Right-Wing to fuck up, for the media in those countries to forget about it, to recognize Maduro's reelection.
What's more, Nicaragua is literally irrelevant to Colombia or Brazil. This is a really stupid move by Ortega to further isolate himself from Latin America's three largest economies under left-wing control. And it's really hypocritical of him to say shit like that when he spent most of his government recognizing Taiwan and having US advisors inside the Nicaraguan army. Only recently have relations between the US and Nicaragua worsened. And he used literally false accusations that were mostly fabricated by the CIA to attack Lula and accuse him of corruption. It's as if Lula said that Ortega was a rapist because he had been accused by the US of having done SA with his daughter-in-law.
I hope that relations between these countries normalize soon. But it was a really stupid and unnecessary move by Daniel Ortega. I honestly have no idea what he thought it would get him. Even Maduro didn't say anything bad about Lula or Petro, nor did he accuse them of being US puppets.
I'm surprised Ortega has lasted as long as he has. Maybe I need to educate myself on the Nicaraguan revolution, but the history in my lifetime has been less than stellar
He was President from 1985 - 1990, then after an agreement between Nicaragua and the US, the sandinistas agreed to step down and let an anti-Somoza liberal be elected, but Ortega remained active inside the army and quite influential. Then after that he was finally elected again in 2007 - Present Day.
After the 2021, and thanks to Biden out of nowhere attacking and sanctioning Nicaragua, they decided to ban all right-wing and anti-sandinista center-left parties since the US broke their own agreement that they made during the 1990's. I believe Ortega was also a member of the 1979 - 1985 revolutionary junta that basically had everyone that hated Somoza, a lot of liberals, communists, catholics and some anti-Somoza conservatives.