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

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.


  • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    79
    ·
    2 months ago

    My Paraguayan brothers just demolished “Israel” 4-2 in Olympic Games football. “Israel” has the right to defend it’s goalposts (they just don’t do it very well)

    Death to “Israel”. Even in something quite meaningless like olympic games football they deserve to lose. As long as they exist, they shouldn’t be able to enjoy anything.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    75
    ·
    2 months ago

    It’s so weird how Putin used to be the “funny bald russian chuck norris” redditcore meme back in the day until around 2017 or so. Then he became satan lol

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    74
    ·
    2 months ago

    “There are 92 elections that we monitor, I would say that the electoral process in Venezuela is the best in the world” - Jimmy Carter, former president of the USA.

    Can’t wait for the US to refuse to believe in the Carter Center results again.

      • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        41
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Remember that time when Evo went to the US and instead of meeting with Bush, he went to meet with Carter? lol. Pretty sure Carter is well liked in Bolivia due to his comments about the Bolivia-Chile dispute and his support for good relations between the US and Bolivia.

        • Torenico [he/him]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          28
          ·
          2 months ago

          Those were the days. I have my disagreements with each and one of these presidents and their governments, but holy fuck we didn’t appreciate how based they were in the end. Like I remember that time Néstor blamed the US and the Washington Consensus for many of Argentina’s problems in front of Bush himself, today that is almost unthinkable. It’s worse even, you have milei trying desperately to hug a visibly horrorized Trump.

          We lost so much ground.

          • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            20
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            I remember the ALCA (FTAA) meetings, where basically Nestor, Lula and Chávez told Bush to fuck off, lol. I think Evo was also there as president-elect.

            • RNAi [he/him]@hexbear.net
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              14
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              I don’t remember that because news centered on the riots against Bush presence that destroyed shopwindows in Mar del Plata city center

              The city is famously filled with nazis so lol lmao

              No me toquen Helados Italia ni Churros Manolo porque ahí si se arma

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    70
    ·
    2 months ago

    Today (26) is the 71st anniversary of the invasion of the Moncada Barracks. The date is considered the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, which would happen 6 years later with the fall of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, on January 1, 1959.

    The story of the assault on the Moncada Barracks is considered one of the most important historical events in the social and revolutionary struggles of the 20th century: it was a rebellion against the dictatorship that Cuba was subjected to at the time, but, above all, it was a rebellion against the dogmas of the possible.

    “Moncada’s actions were, in practice, a military failure. However, this failure was transformed into a political success based on a whole series of significant elements in Cuba’s history", says history professor at the University of Havana Fernández Batista.

    From that moment on, Fidel Castro became one of the main opposition figures to the Cuban regime. The message began to spread across the country, with the landmark speech “History will absolve me”, when the revolutionary went on trial on October 16 in the same year, in 1953, due to the robbery.

  • theother2020 [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    2 months ago

    Hersh article: Kamala was prepared to invoke 25th

    https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/leaving-las-vegas

    spoiler

    At that point, according to Emily Goodin, a Daily Mail reporter who was in the traveling press pool, the president was “deathly pale” and Air Force One flew at maximum speed to Delaware, where the president has a weekend retreat at Rehoboth Beach. The press pool was told that Biden had COVID. Nothing more was said on Air Force One. After Biden’s return to Delaware, the White House told the public that Biden had contracted a COVID infection and would be in isolation. He was said to have upper respiratory symptoms, a runny nose, a cough, and was fatigued.

    That was the last straw for a core group of Congressional leaders, government officials and some senior Biden funders who were withholding huge amounts of committed contributions. “There was pressure on donors to come across on their pending commitments,” the official told me. “It was understood that Biden had a physical problem in Las Vegas and the family was saying no” to continued pressure from donors and senior Democrats in Congress to withdraw from the presidential campaign. Initially, the president could not be reached.

    By Saturday, July 20, former President Barack Obama was deeply involved, and there was talk that he would place a call to Biden. It was not clear whether Biden had been examined or just what happened to him in Las Vegas. “The Big Three,” the official said, referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, continued to be directly involved. “On Sunday morning,” the official told me, with the approval of Pelosi and Schumer, “Obama called Biden after breakfast and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment.” The amendment provides that when the president is determined by the vice president and others to be unfit to carry out the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall assume those duties.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    2 months ago

    Venezuelan military refuses to shake hands with President Maduro’s opponent María Corina, who called on the U.S. to invade Venezuela and ask Benjamin Netanyahu for help to overthrow the government a couple of years ago.

  • mushroom [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    ·
    2 months ago

    the Park Fire in norcal is really something. it started on wednesday and it’s already burned 350,000+ acres. i have never seen or heard of a fire covering that much ground that quickly, usually they take weeks or at least a week to really get going. 7th biggest fire in state history and third biggest non-complex fire; will almost certainly take the #2 spot before long