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.
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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.
Trump barely looses to Kamalah.
Trump supporters galvanize around Trump as the permanent Republican candidate for President.
All future USA Presidential elections are just "TBD" vs "Donald Trump" from now until the USA collapses.
The guy can't have more than 5-10 years left in his old bones.
This is why we are all happy to announce President TrumpGPT's candidacy!
It will never end!
You underestimate the extent to which God is willing to commit to his greatest bit. The man will live and continue to run for president for 40 more years.
I don’t know whether it would be good overall, but I’ve honestly been thinking that it would be better for the Democrats if Trump won this round.
The Democrats will likely have control of the senate, and the house is probably split down the middle, so Trump would be a lame duck out the gate. Trump would be great for Dem fundraising leading into a midterm election, which would probably favor the Democrats if Trump is president. Trump does the rest of his term with even less legislative support, and since he can’t run again, the following presidential election will be more or less normal, with a competitive primary process for both parties. The Democrats have more and better potential 2028 candidates than the Republicans, and coming off another Trump presidency the general will likely go to the next Democrat nominee, who probably goes into their next term with house and senate majorities. That’s assuming nothing crazy happens, but I’m confident that nothing ever happens gang would probably approve of the above.
Meanwhile, what happens if Kamala does win? She probably has a senate majority, she might have a slim house majority, but the house will be pretty split either way and likely require a lot of negotiation and whipping to get anything done. Brunch Democrats go back into hibernation while Republicans are mad that yet another election was stolen. Republicans get to the midterms as the opposition and manage to get control of the house and maybe senate. Kamala is a lame duck for the rest of her term. By the time the general rolls around people will be tired of her schtick, but unless she really bombs, she’s probably still going to be the nominee because you basically always stick with the incumbent. Trump runs against her, with his base fired up and hers flagging. Trump gets a rematch against another very unpopular candidate who, unlike Biden, won’t have any reason to quit the race. She might eke out another win, but 2032 would probably see a massive swing towards the GOP just because of inertia.
If Trump loses, he’ll be back next time, and against unpopular governing Democrats. If he wins, he’ll do a bunch of dumb stuff, but without a lot of legislative power and without the possibility of coming back again, plus he sets up the Democrats for a rebuilding period.
A second Trump term isn’t going to fundamentally change anything, but it might be the fastest way to get rid of him. If he’d won the 2020 election we’d be looking at a Democrat blowout from top to bottom right now instead of everyone holding their breath and hoping real hard that Joe Biden didn’t fuck everything up by not having the grace to just retire when he should have.
I think we're at the point where all presidents become lame ducks except for enacting the latent fascist will of Capital. Ever since Mitch McConnel said in 2010 that his goal was to make Obama a one term president, we haven't really had presidents able to enact their larger policies through congress. For Gods sack Trump kept having controversies in infrastructure week because he could never actually get policies enacted. They'll always find some shit like Joe Manchin or the parliamentarian to stop anything good from happening.
I feel like we might be in the era of one term presidents. All a president can do is oversee the collective decline of the country and do nothing about it. After four years of that they become deeply hated and then the next person comes in to rerun the trend. Hard to say but it's just a suspicion I have.
Democrats are born losers who will fuck up and seize defeat from the jaws of victory.
My theory is that Joe dies, Kamala becomes president, loses to Trump, and then gets zooted out of her mind on some pills and fumbles her way into successfully doing a January 6th coup to remain in power.