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.
Your Monday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Thursday briefing is here in the comments and here on the website. Your Sundary briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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 Pakistan! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
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.
This is why I think this is an actually serious effort. The reason I think they want to deploy troops at all is because Russia is going to take Odessa, which is Ukraines last route to the sea. Western Ukraine without Odessa is pretty much worthless.
The conversation about how America is going to try and import Europeans after destroying the economy has me thinking a coastless Ukraine might be a good source….
It’s still a breadbasket though
They’ve lost millions of people who have already said they have no intention of going back. Who’s gonna work the fields? It really looks like nato would rather turn it into a weapons production hub than anything else.
Yeah the Hitler particles in western Ukraine are basically inexorable at this point
Some of it but I'd wager there is more untouched fields than there is polluted ones. The majority of the fighting has been focused on towns.
The value of Ukraine as a breadbasket is more so denying the Russians an even greater control of the wheat markets and so on. The EU itself is a mercantilist union built around minimizing food imports and subsidizing local landlords. Adding Ukraine's agricultural potential is enough to get the Poles to hate them.
The real value of Ukraine is in the mineral rich zones which the Russians are poised to seize.
Tbh, I think all this talk of Poland and Hungary taking over parts of Ukraine is at this point absolutely silly. The only people talking about it are Russian propagandists.
Besides, unless the frontline starts collapsing a lot more and a lot quicker the Russians are years away from taking Odessa.
No this is about the French and Germans possibly deploying troops/making plans to destroy the Crimean bridge (which would be an act of war against Russia)
Well you’d better believe it because the Russians are talking about wrapping this whole thing up by fall this year and I don’t see any reason to not believe them (unless nato troops go in obviously) Why else would France and Germany be talking about this big of an escalation? And keep in mind the info about the Germans was found out from a tapped communications line.
I don't know how much you've been following the war but the front is collapsing.
Yes, the Russians are making gains currently. But did the fall of Kherson and Kharkiv result in the Ukrainians kicking out the Russians?
It is still a war of attrition that Russia is currently 'winning'. Just because they broke through defensive strongholds and are pushing through more open fields now, doesn't mean a tipping point has been reached in terms of attrition.
I think people need to keep in mind that there are elections happening all over Europe this year. Which means a lot of posturing. The Russians will be saying the war will be wrapped up any day now. We are to believe that France, which has contributed relatively little in Ukraine, now is considering sending troops? I'm not buying it (until I do).
The reason the Ukrainians were successful was because the Russians did not have the necessary personnel to maintain a proper defense along the front, that’s why they did the mobilization. Until those units were trained up and sent to the front Russia had to pullback to a better defensive position.
But those were not just strongholds, they were THE defensive positions of the Ukrainian army. They were areas that had been built up since 2014. That’s the reason this war has taken so long really. Going forward most defenses between the front and Odessa will be hastily built defenses, not the fortresses made of concrete.
Say whatever you want, but the Russians are the only ones who’ve been telling the truth from the start of the conflict. The pace of conflict has picked up in every way since Bakhmut because the Ukrainians really just don’t have it in them anymore. Will France send troops? Maybe maybe not, but the Germans talking about destroying the Crimea bridge themselves shows that the Europeans are making moves outside the knowledge of the US. Europe really can’t provide much in terms of weapons, and Ukraines real problem is manpower shortages. Don’t think it’s impossible that the stupid Europeans wouldn’t try to put boots on the ground even if it’s outside of article 5 protection.