Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh
Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh
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!
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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Time to dig back up all the
oppo research. Most of it hasn't been memory holed.A reminder that Kamala Harris's brother-in-law, Uber's chief legal officer, wrote the legal strategy for Prop 22, and Barack Obama's transportation secretary, now chief policy officer for Lyft, is rolling it out to the rest of the country.
Court upholds California Prop. 22 in big win for gig firms like Lyft and Uber
Justices in a California court of appeals ruled today that Proposition 22 — a 2020 ballot measure that allowed Uber, Lyft, and other platforms to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees – is largely constitutional, but that part of the measure is invalid.
The distinction between employees and contractors is important: Employees have the right to a host of benefits and protections like minimum wage, sick leave and family leave, unemployment and disability benefits, and more. But independent contractors don’t have the same rights.
California basically approved the destruction of labor protections and
is deeply connected to the manufactures and benifacfors of it.I wonder if unionism can turn back to a more trade/guild type approach vs single shop organizing?
IWW's industrial organizing FTW! Across shops in an industry and also/then up and down supply chains.
Sorry if this isn't what you're talking about but here's a masterpost of her bullshit
https://www.tumblr.com/politijohn/186036319237/get-to-know-kamala-harris
Golden! So much material. Thank you, comrade.
Welcome
Important to note that this was made in 2019 when she was originally running for president, she's done a lot more shit since becoming VP
Yeah. The spotlight's usually on Biden. I wonder how much of what she's done while VP has really been noticed and documented. I'll try to keep my eye out.
The more the better!
Who is steve mnuchin and what did he do?
He became Trump's Secretary of Treasury. Before that he was illegally foreclosing on people's homes. I believe Graham Elwood was a victim of such a forclosure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Mnuchin
During the financial crisis of 2007–2008 he bought failed residential bank Indymac, which he reorganized as OneWest Bank and resold, becoming embroiled in lawsuits over questionable foreclosures.
.....
.OneWest was criticized for aggressively foreclosing on homeowners. In the five years following Mnuchin's acquisition of OneWest, the bank foreclosed on 36,000 homes in California, leading local activists to begin calling Mnuchin "the foreclosure king."[42] The high foreclosure rate might have been a result of the loss sharing agreement with the FDIC, whereby the FDIC had to reimburse OneWest for losses.[8] According to The New York Times, OneWest "was involved in a string of lawsuits over questionable foreclosures, and settled several cases for millions of dollars".[43] Because of these foreclosures, around 100 protesters of Occupy Los Angeles gathered outside Mnuchin's home in October 2011 and held signs that read "Make Banks Pay".[32] Two California fair-housing groups filed complaints to the federal government alleging that OneWest had violated the Fair Housing Act by not lending money to African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.[28][33][44]
In November 2016, after OneWest was sold to CIT, the California Reinvestment Coalition submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to learn more about CIT's reverse mortgage subsidiary, Financial Freedom.[44] According to the HUD's response, CIT/Financial Freedom foreclosed on 16,220 federally insured reverse mortgages from April 2009 to April 2016. This represented about 39% of all federally insured reverse mortgage foreclosures during that time. CRC estimated that Financial Freedom serviced only about 17% of the market and thus was foreclosing more than twice as often as its competitors.[45] CIT Group disclosed to investors that it had received subpoenas from HUD's Office of the Inspector General in the third and fourth quarters of 2015.[46] In November 2016, two non-profits filed a complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, alleging redlining by OneWest Bank.[47][48][49]
In 2017 a leaked internal memo from the California attorney general's office was published, stating that the prosecutor's office had found more than a thousand violations of foreclosure law by OneWest during Mnuchin's tenure. The prosecutor,
Kamala Harris, had declined to file a civil enforcement suit.
