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.
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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.
I'm not a lawyer, but someone really needs to start suing some of these colleges for racial discrimination for their attacks on pro-Palestine protestors. One thing I have been thinking about is finding a group of sympathetic students like maybe Chinese or Russian students, and having them sue the schools for discrimination when the schools let anti-China or anti-Russia protests/speech take place. If anti-Israel speech is discriminatory against Jews, then anti-China speech should be discriminatory against Chinese students. It's at least worth a shot. Enough of these Zionist shitstains have said racist shit about Palestinians that have gone entirely unpunished that there has to be a case.
Let’s not pretend like the institutions actually abide by their own rules. You’re never going to “catch” them off-guard in a loophole, at least not for things that really matter.
And while many people might get upset about it, they won’t really care. How many people came out to protest against the Iraq War? Did it stop the invasion of Iraq at all? Most people don’t even care about the infringements of their privacy and civil rights following the Snowden leak, and you think they’re going to care about what happens in Palestine, China and Russia?
honestly i think the only loophole that is exploitable is the republican's determination to obstruct the dems, the dems got PSL kicked off the ballot in Georgia with some wacky legalese about needing to collect signatures for the electors and not the candiates (for some reason...?) and then a repbublican immediately reinstated them lol
it will radicalize exactly 0 people because americans think discrimination against people from [bad country] is totally different and good and moral (and infact your duty as a lover of democracy) so it's not a double standard
Organize the students. University administrations only understand leverage. Occupy the buildigs, prevent grades from going out, slash administrators' tires, etc.
Legal challenges will not mean anything. They are too slow to be relevant and the judiciary does not mind being inconsistent, they can always find a su jective loophole. Legality can only be exercised as a way of partially enshrining rights won by real on the ground leverage, thus shifting the base from which university admins expect to operate.