Image is of a colectivo: an armed group, usually operating in impoverished areas, which act to support and defend the socialist government of Venezuela. They are often derided as vigilante terrorist groups which prop up the government, because cops are only bad when they are socialist and not murdering minorities, I suppose.
Maduro's party, the PSUV, has won the election after a staggering amount of propaganda by the opposition, who said their polls suggested they were going to win and that Maduro's loss was inevitable. The reaction across Latin America is what one would expect. Left-leaning leaders are generally respecting the results and congratulating Maduro, while those on the right and/or are US puppets (such as in semirecently-couped Peru) are calling for recounts, or even that the election was illegitimate. The US itself is also unhappy about the results. We shall soon see if their unhappiness boils over into yet another coup attempt.
Personally, I think they should have ran Guaido again.
Thank you to @[email protected] for the election coverage here, and everything else they do in the news megathread.
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 Venezuela! 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.
Edit: I should have clarified that I was not referring to the normal usage, but rather the exceptions.
So the red flag has been raised six times, one was the murder of Soleimani and the most recent was current news.
All I’ve been able to find was that it was also raised for three COVID death milestones. Is that accurate or are those a different count?
It would appreciated if anyone could chime in if the missing sixth instance was a fourth Covid milestone or if it was something else. Or if the Covid ones aren’t included in the count and what the other 4 flag raising were.
Who told you it's only been raised six time????
Six times outside the religious context, should have clarified.
My understanding is that it is for religious purposes during Muharram, but in special circumstances has been raised for other purposes.
Please correct me if this is misinfo. I’ve had a hard time trying to google a list of of the exceptions to when it is traditionally raised.
I see. I'm not sure, it honestly feels more like an orientalist "oh look what the Muslims are doing now" kind of news byline after seeing all the headlines about it.
The martyrdom of Imam Hussein (ع) has a very important ontological position in Islam (especially but not exclusively Shi'i tradition) and Iranian society. For this theres the red and the black flags which symbolize resistance and mourning respectively.
I dont have a source but I suspect they've raised it a lot of times above the Jamkaran Masjid outside of Ashura commemorations but people in english-speaking media only cared about it for the first time after the martyrdom of Soleimani. Iran gets to play up its scary image so why not roll with the orientalism I guess.
It is a good excuse to learn about the revolution of Imam Hussein (ع) though. Here's his last Sermon at Mina followed by an exegesis from Seyyed Khomeini.
https://www.al-islam.org/articles/sermon-mina-al-imam-al-husayns-everlasting-message-religious-leaders
Labayk ya Hussein
It's funny actually.
I just spent the whole first 10 days of Muharram in mourning and reading and watching videos all about this because thats what we're supposed to do and then I forget that outside of Islamic circles people have no clue about any of it
😭😭😭
are there any you would recommend to somebody with only english? Learning more about the significance seems like a good thing to do.
I can consolidate some things for you absolutely. Im very glad you asked!
I really cannot emphasize how important this historical event and the memory of it is for the Islamic Resistance. Yesterday in his speech Seyyed Nasrallah read an excerpt from Seyyeda Zainab's (AS) sermon given about this event 1380 years ago. Abu Obeida and Abu Hamza both make allusions to the event of Karbala quite frequently in their speeches.
I think this article is crucially important for non-Muslims to understand the Islamic Resistance. It's explaining the politcal-ontological position of Ashura and the tragedy of Karbala in relation to the Iranian revolution.
In order to understand that, you need to understand the historical chronology of events regarding the tragedy of Karbala. A short (30 minute read) here.
A final article talking about the role of Seyyeda Zainab (AS) after the events of Ashura and the role of women.
Palestinian martyr Sheikh Khoder Adnan is quoted as saying "If you cannot be a Husseini, then you must at lease be Zainabi" in reference to this. I think you will understand after reading these.
A very important quote from Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini goes like this: "every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala." Again, you will understand the power of this after reading.
There is Ramin Mazaheri's book "Socialism's Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism" which has two very good chapters explaining the revolution of Imam Ali (AS) and Imam Hussein (AS) as historical parallels to later worker revolutions. Those two chapters are published here and should be read in order. Chapter 8 on the revolutions of Muhammad (SWT) and Ali (AS) Chapter 9 on Martyrdom. These chapters are written from a secular socialist perspective and may be the most approachable for people here, but I shared the other things as well if you want to keep digging.
Scary calligraphy is scary 👻
not even a paragraph in, and yearning for a world in which he won. Gets it.
question: what does (A) mean? Via context it seems meaningful. same for the (S).
no wonder he was killed, speaking truth right there.
this goes so hard
literally the chad Iran taking the pandemic seriously versus everyone else (except China and any state who did and I forget).
the more things change....yet they stay the same...
He spit fire in that last sermon. Is he a big part of that tradition Yemen has that views opposing oppression as a key tenet? I cannot recall at the moment, but that tradition and perspective always struck me as super cool.
Thank you for sharing the sermon and interpretation. To anyone who sees this and did not click the link, it is worth a read.
(S) or (SAW) or (PBUH) is a short acknowledgement of what we say after saying the name of the Prophet Muhammad. "sallallahu alayhi wa salaam", meaning "Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him". Sometimes its (SAWA) or (SAWS) which would be adding his family: ‘sallallaahu alayhi wa aalihi wa sallam’, that is “Peace and Blessings be on him and his Progeny”.
(A) or (AS) is similar but we say it after the other prophets like Isa and Musa etc as well as the Ahlul-Bayt (the family and close descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.) It is an abbreviation of ‘alayhis salaam’, that is “Peace be on him” or for women 'alayha salam' "Peace be upon her".
Something I forgot to share in the other post. The ShiaWiki site is a pretty good source for digging around to find more information as you continue your education on the topic. I would not trust CIA-Wikipedia. Of course it is coming from the Shi'i perspective but I have yet to find anything there that is offensive or antagonistic towards other Muslims (indeed the Grand Maraji have ruled that antagonizing Sunnis is forbidden.)
Thanks for sharing the information and the resource.
Wa iyyaki
It's very rare thing when people actually follow up on resources I share 😭
If you still have questions after going through the other resources I sent then I'll be glad to answer as best I can comrade
I’m working my way through. I’m having to look up a lot of stuff which is both a good thing in that a lot of previously unknown knowledge is being experienced while also being a factor in why it’s taking me a while to work through.
I really like the wiki format of the first link though, I made a tab group for the links, but ended up giving the wiki its own which is going to be useful.
You’ve already helped a ton, now l just need to do the reading.
The flag for Imam Hussein (as) is the one we're talking about? The one that gets flown every year on Ashura?
Yes, I should have clarified that I was referring to the atypical raising as opposed to the traditional. That’s a mistake on my part.
This post appears to have been the origin https://hexbear.net/comment/5199539
Thanks. The citation for the article is "agencies" meaning the AP nonsense probably.
I learned awhile ago not to stray from the news mega on this site hah