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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.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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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  • So there is lot of talk from the McDonalds "Left" about the Venezuelan elections being fraudulent or whatever. I don't have first hand experience but a journalist that I respect has and she went as an election observer in Venezuela. (Breakthrough news has also done some great coverage from what I have seen)

    She reported that:

    • The election system that they have is probably one of the best (if not the best) in the world and is very hard to cheat. They have a triple verification system where you vote in an electronic machine using your fingerprint (instead of just an ID), you then get a receipt of what you voted (without any identification on the paper), and also the machine leaves a physical vote in a separate box so afterwards they can verify the differences between the receipts and what's in the ballot box.

    • Things were very calm in every election center she went. There was violence in certain places elsewhere. The world on the street was that certain people(...) where giving 150 dollars to anyone willing to participate to anti government riots. She said there is tremendous misinformation. At some point they were saying that an airport was taken over by anti-government forces. The problem was she was at that airport at that time and nothing was happening!

    • Internet is completely censor free. (Maybe you should rethink of it Nicolas...)

    • Maduro made a request to the Venezuelan supreme court so that the opposition parties submit any evidence that they have in regard to the elections so they can be cross examined. (BTW, the supreme court is elected by the parliament that included the opposition parties of course...)

    • Maduro had 5 assassination attempts against him in March alone. He wears bulletproof vest in his public appearances.

    • In the last 15 years the government has built 5 million houses and has made the country food independent.

    • Maduro when he gathered people around to express his thanks after the election he had 3 ambassadors beside him, those of China, Turkey and Iran

    • Many of the cars in Venezuela streets are Chinese (a phenomenon that I see not only about cars but in everything across Latin America)

    • Burgerland companies like Edison Research (that takes contracts from CIA, Voice of America etc.) where trying to create a climate, months before the elections, that basically the opposition was far ahead (they were polling the opposition as high as 70%!) so that when the real election results came they could say "Aha you see, our polling (that was 100% real of course) didn't match the election results so that means the government cheated!". So the western muppets ("left" and right) take what burgerland polling companies claim as better evidence than the election results themselves!

    • NYT about a month ago reported that the base of the opposition was inside the embassy of Argentina! They did that because the government can't check what's getting in and what is getting out of an embassy. That's why we show supporters of the government trying to get inside the embassy after the elections.

    Loser "Left" is very concerned about elections in Venezuela, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet in China, arming Naz...excuse me freedom fighters in Ukraine, women rights in Iran at convenient times, LGBT rights in Palestine at convenient times and voting for the lesser of two evils in the imperial core in order to protect their proper...democracy. All of this just happens to be a stance that is very convenient for the US state department...nothing to see here.

    • Contrary to popular (social media) belief you do not have to have an opinion on everything. You can just shut up. If you got to have a opinion, have one that contributes , first and foremost, towards building socialism in your own country and if possible towards international solidarity. What you absolutely shouldn't do is cosplaying as the morally superior philosopher king up in the mountain that judges everything and everyone and especially people that have done things to better this world and the lives of ordinary people, despite all the limitations and all the contradictions.

    • the McDonalds "left"

      I'm lovin' it

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