Image is of a protest in Pakistan after the attempted assassination of Imran Khan in November 2022.
What a clusterfuck of an election.
Imran Khan, the previous official Prime Minister of Pakistan, was removed by the command of the United States in April 2022 in a no confidence motion. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Imran Khan and his supporters have protested since then against the Pakistani state, which is more-or-less governed by the military despite the furnishings of civilian rule. This has ranged from largely peaceful protests to trying to burn down and occupy houses and headquarters.
It was assumed by the Pakistani elite that they could make the problem go away by arresting Imran Khan and effectively forcing many PTI candidates to run as independents while hounding them with police raids and stopping them from campaigning - and adding salt on the wound by disabling social media access and mobile services on the day of the election to make it more difficult to co-ordinate. Fortunately, these people don't seem to quite understand how the internet works in the current day, and so Khan's supporters started up WhatsApp groups and improvised websites and apps to spread the word about which candidates to vote for, leading to Khan's party getting the plurality, though not the majority, of votes in the election.
This has created a rather depressed mood in the Pakistani elite. A coalition of eight parties joined together, obviously excluding the PTI, but this coalition is shaky and lacks much legitimacy, with two major parties inside it, the PML-N and PPP, being ideologically opposed on several issues. It has been regarded as "the coalition of losers" by Khan's supporters. The new Prime Minister is Shehbaz Sharif, who also ruled from April 2022 until August 2023 and is the younger brother of Nawaz Sharif, who served as Prime Minister three times before in the last few decades. With inflation at 30% and the economy greatly struggling, there are fears that things may only stay together for months, not years, before the coalition fragments and something else has to be done.
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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.
Danish Regime Refuses To Help Refugees Stuck In Bureaucratic Limbo
Unmoved by human suffering Denmark's social democratic-led right-wing regime is rejecting all talks of processing the asylum cases of asylum seekers who are stuck in the refugee detention camps of the American satellite state, unable to have their cases heard due to rigid and bureaucratic EU asylum rules.
THE WEST'S DESCENT INTO FASCISM — Under the Dublin convention that governs EU asylum law refugees can only have their cases processed in the first country they were registered in. The system was set up to deter what mouthpieces of the regime denounce as "asylum shopping". These rules means that Mediterranean countries bears most of the responsibility for processing asylum claims. As a result the mismanaged and underfunded Italian asylum system has refused to accept refugees from other EU countries since December 2022, leaving asylum seekers unable to have their cases processed anywhere. Human rights organisations estimates that between 70 and 100 refugees are trapped in Danish detention camps because of this.
Regime Rejects Humanitarian Pleas
The human rights NGO Danish Refugee Aid, supported by the pro-democracy Red-Green opposition party, has urged for processing their cases following a report on Ketily, a 34-year-old refugee from Eritrea who has been stranded in Denmark for almost 1.5 years. However their pleas for mercy falls on deaf ears.
With the callous disregard for human suffering that is so typical of the capitalist world, Christel Schaldemose, a member of the EU's rubberstamp legislature for Denmark's ruling social democratic party rejects the idea of allowing the refugees to have their cases processed in Denmark, instead she calls for strict adherence to existing rules. Evading responsibility she states that it would be best if the Italian system could handle the refugees and and goes on to say: "We need migrants and asylum seekers to have their cases resolved more quickly in the countries already handling them. We cannot allow migrants to come to the EU and live without a legal basis for residence. If there is no need for protection or residence, the European states must improve their efforts to send people back to their home countries".
Far Right: The Refugees Are Rule-breakers
Her refusal to help the refugees is shared by her fellow EU legislator Anders Vistisen who represents the far right Danish People's Party. "I certainly don't believe they should be given special treatment just because they've prolonged their case by staying in Denmark." the islamophobic hardliner says. He accuses the stranded refugees of "breaking the rules" by "travelling through several safe countries to seek asylum" and claims that allowing the refugees to have their cases processed would be "preferential treatment" as it would mean the stranded refugees would be treated better than "all those who follow the rules and have their cases processed where they first entered the EU".
Unlike his social democratic comrade, Vistisen is not content with making impotent wishes for the problem to simply not exist in the first place. Vistisen claims that the fact that Denmark received 541 refugees through the Dublin system in 2022 while only deporting 472 to other EU countries is evidence that the system has no effect. Instead he proposes a more radical solution, calling for Denmark to leave the Dublin and Schengen conventions to enable a ramping up of border controls.