Image is of vehicles set aflame by protestors near a government building.
Since July 1st, students have protested the unpopular proposal in which 30% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans of the 1971 War of Independence and their relatives. In a country with a youth unemployment rate of around 20% and a population of 170 million, a large number of otherwise eligible and competent people would have been forced out due to favouritism for veterans. As with basically every country on the planet over the last couple years, Bangladesh is suffering from inflation and an increasing cost-of-living, further exacerbating tensions.
The student protests have been met with significant violence by the government - local newspapers report that over a hundred protestors have been killed, and thousands have been injured. Guns and tear gas have been used. Additionally, the government has completely cut internet access throughout Bangladesh to prevent organizing, which has had some success in dividing protestors, but has also only further angered various parts of the country due to the massive impact to Bangladesh's online industries and various startups. And a national curfew has been in place to limit movement, with the population told to remain home if they want to be safe.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh relented, stating that now, only 5% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans and their families. 2% would be allocated to members of minorities, with the remaining 93% distributed on merit. A period of tentative calm has arrived, but Hasnat Abdullah, a coordinator of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, has stated that unless the government restores the internet, removes the curfew, releases detainees, and forces certain ministers to resign within a few days, then the protests will resume.
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 Bangladesh! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
Blumenthal and Doug Lain are good figures to watch to kind of map the development of the new faction of the compatible left that treats the working class as an identity and frames itself as macho and right, and/or delves even deeper into this Western Marxist/post-Marxist academia labyrinth all the way back to Heidegger, much of it's like a return to the Iraq War libertarian strain of the antiwar movement in the US.
I don’t know shit about Max or Doug besides being generally anti-America, how do 1) the white working class identity and 2) the post-Marxist academia labyrinth appear in their works/organizations?
I will try to flesh this out later but Blumenthal's bread and butter has been this alt media sphere that runs off of generic anti-authoritarianism, Chomsky shit you know? He's clearly gone of the deep end with regards to class issues over the Canadian truckers shit and obsesses over gender issues, it's like he's going out of his way to tank the reputation The Grayzone has built off of their Syria reporting. Makes me question his editorial style of making himself a byline on lots of shit as maybe more of a controlling measure.
This whole non-Marxist anti-authoritarian libertarian left alt media journalism shit exploded during COVID. Was very easy to get recommended Grayzone and Mint Press News surprisingly.
Lain was the Zero Books guy back when it was putting out Mark Fisher books and shit. He's doing some shit called sublation media rn churning out jargon about Hegel and shit. Loves the service workers = labor aristocracy discourse. This started back even in like 2016 with the "anti woke leftism" discourse and shit but you're going to be seeing way more of the Western Marxist crowd turning to this kind of nonsense, like that very recent Jacobin article, the Zizek article in Compact that woke a lot of people up to how he's always been a super reactionary idealistic thinker, etcetera.
I don't think I did a very good job of explaining that lemme come back to this after I go back to my car and drink water.
Nah don’t worry about it, this rocks. I appreciate the explanation and look forward to the post-water edits
I agree. Would slightly characterize them differently though.
First off never knew why or can't remember why Ben Norton left. But, understood it was on bad terms.
Both Doug and Max flirt with social conservatism to different degrees. Max trys to court the traditional working class to a flaw likecwithbthe truckers but does still do good anti imperialist politics whereas Doug is in a post modernist trap that idealizes the perfect revolutionary subject to the point of inaction and pacifistity (revolutionary defeatism as a form of anticommunism). Sublation has been repeatedly bad, radlib outrage on foreign affairs from Ukraine to Palestine, albeit with critique but, ultimately falling on the wrong side of the debate, imo. At best sublation can provide an interesting critique of the left from "the left" but they somehow critique both, the academy and PMC (most of which I agree with) but when it comes to actual third rail issues - condoming hummus or condoming putler as a war criminal, not participating in the new cold war - are somehow always defaulting to the empire's interest, shows that they aren't that good
Ben left shortly after Grayzone kept pushing anti vax and weird post-left/conservative narratives. He didn’t state that as the reason or any at all, but at the time the Grayzone was getting attention for their crankery in the articles. According go Grayzone diehards, Ben got “bought out by big pharma” lol
Their work is still okay, but some of the writers have hopped on the “anti woke” train lol