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.
President Nicolas Maduro to the president of Panama: "Govern Panama. Don't try to govern Venezuela." The United States government has offered immunity to Nicolás Maduro, as long as he leaves power, in a government transition.
The US government's efforts have increased significantly to get Maduro to concede the election, which the US says was won by Edmundo Gonzalez by a large margin.
Statement from Cuba’s Foreign Ministry after the US claimed that Cuba changed the electoral results: “It is absolutely false [the claim] that specialists in computer science or other area have traveled to Venezuela from Cuba, with the purpose of modifying the results of the presidential elections in that country.”
I believe Venezuela uses the same Linux/GNU system for the Electoral System as Brazil and some other countries. I remember seeing in twitter back in 2022 some weirdo bolsonarist posting something like: "Look! This is the code they are doing to steal the election! It's like this: "If: Vote = 13 = 13." "If: Vote = 22 = 13." This is how they stole the election!"
These people were angry that there were places that Lula won with 90% of the votes, saying that was impossible, but if you looked at what were those places, they were mostly small villages and places where only 100 people votes.
The disrespect, imagine if Russia said that to Biden hahaha. Given that they even offer immunity, that should basically confirm to anyone that Maduro won fare and square and has a stable support base.
Don't you know that the US has jurisdiction on every square centimeter of this planet? That's just how the international rules based order works. The US makes the law and everyone except the US has to obey it. Anyone who disagrees is an authoritarian terrorist dictator and a threat to democracy and the free world.