Image is of vehicles set aflame by protestors near a government building.
Since July 1st, students have protested the unpopular proposal in which 30% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans of the 1971 War of Independence and their relatives. In a country with a youth unemployment rate of around 20% and a population of 170 million, a large number of otherwise eligible and competent people would have been forced out due to favouritism for veterans. As with basically every country on the planet over the last couple years, Bangladesh is suffering from inflation and an increasing cost-of-living, further exacerbating tensions.
The student protests have been met with significant violence by the government - local newspapers report that over a hundred protestors have been killed, and thousands have been injured. Guns and tear gas have been used. Additionally, the government has completely cut internet access throughout Bangladesh to prevent organizing, which has had some success in dividing protestors, but has also only further angered various parts of the country due to the massive impact to Bangladesh’s online industries and various startups. And a national curfew has been in place to limit movement, with the population told to remain home if they want to be safe.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh relented, stating that now, only 5% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans and their families. 2% would be allocated to members of minorities, with the remaining 93% distributed on merit. A period of tentative calm has arrived, but Hasnat Abdullah, a coordinator of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, has stated that unless the government restores the internet, removes the curfew, releases detainees, and forces certain ministers to resign within a few days, then the protests will resume.
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 Bangladesh! 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.
Despite the “good intentions” and “positive messages”, the relations between milei’s Argentina and the Imperialist Monetary Fund are not good. Even they, an institution that pillaged the country over and over again, take a step back while looking at milei’s policies.
Caputo meets with Georgieva, calls her ‘best IMF director ever’
(This is exactly what they’re not doing lmao)
Yes, her arm is missing in the picture, but it is not digitally altered. Damn, I hate when my arm simply disappears.
This government is trapped in a huge problem. First, they’re facing infighting between milei and his VP (congressmen close to her made official visits to imprisoned military officers that took part in disappearances, tortures and killings during the 70s), milei is kinda mad because maybe he thinks this isn’t the time to reinstate former criminals or something I dunno. They’re not seen together too much and it is said she hates milei’s sister, Karina, who’s more or less like Hitler’s Martin Bormann at this point – his personal secretary and main advisor. Those who like to throw theories around say that his VP will stage a soft coup by securing support from former president Mauricio Macri and some military officers.
Second, everything is falling apart on the economic front. This is the number 1 issue for them and for pretty much everyone else. Milei was voted into power because “he knows about economy” (he doesn’t, his view is fully distorted and toxic) and therefore he should be able to fix it, but after 6 months of government it ain’t looking good. Not only it’s looking bad, but problems have worsened: Inflation slowed down to a single digit but at the expense of everything else, the Reserves are starved of US Dollars and so far they have secured no reliable source of foreign currency, the IMF being reluctant to give new loans is worrying to them. The economy is shrinking, productive activity is being reduced, consumption is slowing down, the buying power of the average argentinian has been demolished and poverty is well above 50%, just the other day I saw an statistic which indicates that about 300 people are pushed into homelesness each month in Buenos Aires alone. The honeymoon is over, and it’s time to start showing positive results… but they’re unable to.
Ding ding! Well look at that! It turns out the economy isn’t a pure mathematical thing after all. Actually, the economy is deeply embedded with society and it’s material reality. Sure, you can talk about complicated issues like “fiscal deficit” all day long, but when bread skyrockets, fuel skyrockets and taxes become unpayable due to your policies, these discussions go through the window.
People will get impatient. You can’t resist like this for too long. People really can’t really take it anymore, with pulverized salaries, unrelenting inflation, the rent going insanely high due to deregulation and the government publicly announcing that people will have to sell their personal reserves of US Dollars just to pay taxes, for how long this madness can be sustained? It’ll implode, sooner or later. Now they even announced that 12h hours work days are being discussed, they wont be able to introduce such thing but holy shit they’re fucking terrible and give no hope to anyone at all lmao.
Unless they pull an absolute miracle, or the IMF gives in and begins to rescue Argentina’s economy by sheer force of gigantic loans, there’s no way out. They have showed positive attitudes towards the deregulation policies, but they have also warned about the boiling social panorama. They want to pillage the country for sure, but they don’t want their people to get beheaded one after the other because they went a little too overdrive.
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lmao
She forgot to morph into her human form.
Where we go with the Foro Sao Paulo conspiracies. Good to see Milei is stuck with conspiracy theories from the 2000’s. He is hanging too much with weirdos like Bolsonaro, who still promote this shit.
Took me a while hahah