Bulletins and News Discussion from August 5th to August 11th, 2024 - LGBT - COTW: Iraq
Well, Iran and their allies' response may happen sometime this week and apparently they aren't talking to the US in order to negotiate how and where they will hit Israel (and Shoigu arrived in Tehran rather auspiciously), the Bangladeshi government just fell, F16s have been given to Ukraine, there are fascist riots in the UK, and Japan just had its worst stock fall since 1987 and seems to be taking several other countries/corporations with it. I don't really know where to look right now.
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 Iraq! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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.
Seen a lot of videos of Israeli tourists in Japan screaming at locals protesting the genocide.
The obviously takeaway is that they act like they own the place everywhere in the world, but a secondary thought I had: are there an unusually high number of Japanese pro-Palestine protests? Like versus other countries? Or do Israelis just love visiting there?
Some Japanese companies have stopped doing business with Israel after the ICC ruling, so at the very least it’s indicative that Japanese society sees it as a legitimate org. I imagine the same people who are against US bases are also against Israel, and the Japanese trot communist party is the largest one not in power. There are also japanese anti semites who dislike Jews because they want to establish the Protocols of the Elders of Nippon
Israelis seem terminally annoying. It could be because of the extreme inequality of Israel they feel entitled to everything. Maybe it's especially pronounced in nonwhite places. I don't really know, I'm just going by what I see online.
a friend of mine told me that she never paid much attention to israel/palestine until she traveled abroad in 2018 or '19 and every israeli tourist she met was a huge asshole, after that she started to look into israeli society and has been an antizionist ever since.
it makes sense - i mean, what kind of people does a segregationist, apartheid, genocidal society create?
China, South Africa, Brazil, and several other countries in Latin America all went from viewing Israel positively to negatively. And many rich countries that already had net negative views of Israel—including Japan, South Korea, and the U.K.—saw steep declines. Net favorability in Japan went from -39.9 to -62.0; in South Korea from-5.5 to -47.8; and in the U.K. from -17.1 to -29.8.
Emphasis mine.
I think Time is a sufficiently bad source most of the time that I’m just going to not link, but copying that paragraph should turn it up in a search engine with functioning exact match.
The original polling seems to be behind a paywall, it’s the morning consult. I’ve never heard of them before.
There are regular protests in Tokyo, they regularly interview protestors on TV, I also see regular announcements of protests in cities surrounding Tokyo. I haven't seen any Israel fans from here lmao.
You also have to consider that Japanese people are considered lesser in the white supremacist lens that Zionists use, so that means that they get extra triggered. Also that they may feel it is less likely that they will get their ass whooped since all the videos I’ve seen it is one person handing out pamphlets or whatever that seems fairly non confrontational.
I think maybe one or two of those is organic, but some of them are paid to do that. Why? I dunno. That's how some of the body language looks to me last couple times