Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan
Bulletins and News Discussion from March 4th to March 10th, 2024 - The Coalition of Losers - COTW: Pakistan
Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.
What a clusterfuck of an election.
Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.
It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.
This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.
Your Monday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Thursday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Sundary briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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 Pakistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
While the genocide continues in Gaza, the U.S., France, and Germany sell weapons to Israel.
On Friday, Gaza Civil Defense Spokesperson Mahmud Basal confirmed that five people died as a result of errors in the airdrop of humanitarian aid packages.
The drop operation proceeded incorrectly in the northwest of Gaza City, where many packages fell on people's heads and on top of homes.
The sending of humanitarian aid by air was initially applied by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France. Last week, the United States joined the initiative and carried out three launches, each with 38,000 food rations.
During his "State of the Union" speech on Thursday, US President Joe Biden pledged to construct a floating platform off the coast of Gaza for the unloading of aid through a Cyprus-based maritime corridor that will be operational from Sunday.
As expected, the Zionist State has expressed its disagreement with this proposal, alleging concerns about the potential entry of military equipment into Palestinian territory.
Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom will also participate in the provision of humanitarian aid through this maritime corridor, according to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
So far Israeli occupation forces have killed over 30,878 Palestinians, 72 percent of whom are women and children. While the massacres continue daily, countries such as the United States, France, and Germany are selling weapons to Israel.
"Since the beginning of Israel's genocide on Gaza on Oct. 7, U.S. President Joe Biden has covertly approved more than 100 weapons sales to Israel," MintPress recalled.
"Only two U.S. military sales to Israel have been publicly disclosed during this period: US$106 million worth of tank ammunition and US$147.5 million of components essential for manufacturing 155 mm shells," it added.
US President Joe Biden pledged to construct a floating platform off the coast of Gaza for the unloading of aid through a Cyprus-based maritime corridor that will be operational from Sunday.
As expected, the Zionist State has expressed its disagreement with this proposal, alleging concerns about the potential entry of military equipment into Palestinian territory.
BTW, he's also promised to give Isn'trael the ability to supervise aid delivered this way. I think it's pretty clear Isn'trael is "officially" protesting this idea, but that they know it's a stupid, ineffective, cosmetic gesture that ultimately doesn't matter, so ultimately they're fine with it. And "worst case" they know they can always play the same games with it that they do the humanitarian aid coming through Rafah.
I also think it's funny that liberals seem to think the U.S. and other Western countries are taking these actions in defiance of Isn'trael's policies, without a single critical thought about how the latter controls every millimeter of the coastline and airspace surrounding Gaza. What, they think these places are running the blockade like Western container ships are running Ansar Allah's Red Sea blockade, with 100% better results and no violent reaction by the Zionist state?
This is so fucking stupid. They're going to build a fucking island to deliver food to the people their rabid fascist ally is wiping out through starvation. They're air dropping supplies in to a city that's never more than 5-6 miles wide. "Supplies". Enough food for 10k people for one day. Jesus fuck.