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.
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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.
I just fucking can’t with this shit, if the election takes place without her clarifying her position on Gaza and she doesn’t catch some major mainstream criticism for it, I will have lost all hope
Let go of the lingering liberalism telling you there is hope in bourgeois electoralism. Beyond providing opportunities for agitation it is wholly barren and offers no future for humanity
The one lingering hope I have is that the democratic party will suffer such a catastrophe that it can be remade or replaced. I have an unpopular opinion which is that I think we are running out of time for actual revolution in the US, as in overthrow our terrible government, I don’t expect the system to collapse on its own as many do, so I must maintain this hope
And to be clear I don’t expect reform from within to save the country, but perhaps it may buy the world enough time for revolution
She’ll keep things ambiguous enough where every single rational israeli will understand that she has their back. The problem is that zionists are inherently irrational, so they’ll hate her like they hated every dem president who gave them 10s of billions.
What hope? She’s just as Zionist as Biden, just smarter about optics. She had a closed door 1 on 1 after all.
Hope in humanity, Kamala do what Kamala do she is brat after all, I expect nothing good. What I do need is for some kind of attention on what her policies might look like from the media
Shes meeting with him in private.
Her stance is clear
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/22/politics/harris-declined-preside-netanyahu-address/index.html
yeah she was the VP while Biden was sending those bombs so that death toll in on her too, otherwise she should have resigned from being VP over it ( heh yeah right, like anyone over there has any morals) even those staffers that quit knew what they were signing up for going into a Biden admin, Biden’s been loud and clear about his Israel support
Oppression and exploitation are what most people who go into federal government and politics expect, even as they rationalize it away, but genocide is a step too far for most people that it should not surprising that people would resign over it.
Despite that assessment on my part, I was surprised any resigned at all, to be honest.
one of the people who quit was saying in an interview that US military support with no red lines was coming directly from Biden and he was the main actor stubbornly pressing ahead, painting a picture of there being some kind of internal opposition that kept getting overruled, lol it’s like ‘we knew Israel would be doing the usual bad stuff under our tenure but we didn’t think it would get this bad’, maybe some of them really did have a ‘change of heart’, I don’t know, by default I’m cynically assuming they were thinking about their careers
I think Hannah Arendt and others have touched on this before, but most fascists and monsters of political regimes are not all stone cold psychopaths but ordinary, mundane, trite, and ambitious careerists who pursue monstrous goals and policies out of professional aspirations and vanity, out of routine (just following orders), or fear of reprisal.
Of course they were thinking about their careers. It just so happens that despite that, those people in particular had a conscience that broke free.
Or they were playing the long game and thinking that opposing genocide looks good on their resume. Never underestimate a ghoul’s ability to do the right things for the wrong reasons.
you still have hope?
I have kids so yes, I must in a sense hope in order to maintain the tiny bit of sanity that holds my life together
:07: keep on keeping on
It’s like the first episode of a Kamala sitcom (like that’s my Bush or something) and She’s double booking Netanyahu meetings, and her phi zeta sorority reunion party and then xanax brained shenanigans occur.
“Of course I’m going to continue our genocide. But did you really think I was going to cancel my brunch cocktails over it?! I don’t cancel brunch cocktails for ANYTHING!” (Half-hearted canned laughter, as if even the laugh track knows she is, in fact, quite serious).