Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.
In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women’s sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.
Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries “unfortunate”. A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a “broad-based government”. Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven’t (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.
The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya’s debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to “help” Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.
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.
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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.
The fascist Danish People’s Party is no longer content with making it ever harder and more expensive to get a citizenship. Now they want to revoke citizenships “retroactively”.
“It should be close to impossible to live an Islamic life in Denmark”, as their spokesmen says.
Citizens who got their citizenship less than eight years ago should be required to take a test in language and “culture” that is even harder than the one they already passed to get their citizenships. In addition the fascists wants to “review” all citizenships granted for the past 20 years to see if they have committed crime, deporting anyone who might have done so.
Anyone about to be deported, under this policy or any other of the countless racist policies already in place, should be locked up and “made to feel they are in prison”. To facilitate this, the fascists wants to create a new ministry of deportation.
The far-right Danish People’s Party is not part of the current ruling junta but the entire political spectrum has a long history of legitimising them and adopting their racist ideas.
Also, the fascist loser who is spokesperson for “foreigners and integration” (read: official racism recommender) is a 28 year old Groyper guy, who somehow managed to get elected before all the really weird online shit began infecting the far right. He used to have an instagram account where he would just post screed after screed next to pictures of women in niqabs and burkas. Also lots of pictures of old danish people looking scared at groups of muslim teenagers with captions about people being too afraid to speak their mind, presumably because the old people are afraid of being called racist (the worst thing you can call someone in Denmark apparently).
Somehow this fucking freak got himself maneuvered into a high position in an admittedly fringe party because he was willing to bend the knee to Morten Messerschmidt, the fancy-lad who considers himself an oldschool gentleman and carries himself like a 19th century failchild of a noble family.
Bullshit, there’s no way a leading member of the fascist party is named Messerschmidt like the Nazi planes
…oh for fuck’s sake it is real
I’m starting to think that maybe Islam itself poses a problem for the west, and this goes behind general nationalist racism. It is the world’s fastest growing religion and it hasn’t become absorbed by individualism. If it was just about demonizing enemies, you’d think something similar would be happening with Orthodox Christianity or something, but it’s not.
I’m not a religious person and I wasn’t raised religious, so I don’t have an axe to grind with anybody, and most of what I think is gleaned relatively clinically by just reading the books. And as it is written, Islam is actually a pretty universalist religion that sort of contains a universal nationalism. I feel like something about this is inherently threatening.
There’s also the role of Islamic banking. Sharia prohibits usury, which results in different banking standards. I don’t know if or how Islamic banking is any better or worse than western banking, in theory or in practice, but the fact that there’s a different standard at all has to be a problem for western powers-that-be.
Finance is arguably the most important tool in the western imperial domination toolbox, particularly because the west makes all the rules. They can’t just allow alternative modes to compete on an even playing field. If there’s a financial system that exists that doesn’t abide by their rules, it has to be challenged and mitigated, or else they’d lose control of the system.
Banking is just one example of the overall thing you’re describing. The existence of a system of organization that could challenge western hegemony in any way is a threat, and Islam has the potential to challenge it in multiple overlapping and self-reinforcing ways. Different interest groups within the western power structure probably see Islam as a threat in their own ways, but they can agree with one another that it’s a problem and work together to oppress it, regardless of whether they’re against it for ethnic, cultural, religious, political, financial, etc. grounds.