Image (of a Jamaat e-Islami campaign rally) and much of the information below is sourced from here and here.
In 2024, the government of Sheikh Hasina, leader of the Awami League, was overthrown in a student-led protest movement which was boosted by US interests. In the interim, Nobel laureate and dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal Muhammad Yunus was made president, and introduced a series of economic and political reforms (e.g. IMF packages and banking sector restructuring) which have sidelined the working class and aligned the country with US financial interests. Regardless of anybody's personal feelings towards Hasina (who did indeed make many mistakes and caused many deaths), it is now very clear that the reason why Hasina was overthrown was not due to a humanitarian, anti-authoritarian impulse, but because Bangladesh had at least some measure of sovereignty while she was in power, as she accepted Chinese infrastructure investments. Certainly, the US is perfectly comfortable with genocidal dictators if they are allied with US interests.
Last week, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party won over two thirds of parliamentary seats - the Awami League was banned from participating at all, and worker-aligned parties were either disallowed or decided to withdraw from participating due to repression. I haven't personally been able to nail down what exact economic/foreign policies they want to introduce, but because of what Yunus has set up in the interim, it might not matter that much - the economic stage has been set such that no matter what party took power, they would have to accept a fait accompli. As Vijay Prashad put it, the competition between the parties is reduced to "which faction will administer austerity"?
One of the many upsetting aspects of this election was that the student movement that helped overthrown Hasina have been forced into irrelevance, despite their legitimate grievances. The "Gen Z" protestors, displeased by the prospect of being ruled by the BNP about as much as the Awami League, found themselves with odd bedfellows, and allied with the now-opposition party (the hardline Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami). They are now in a tough bind, lacking much of the necessary left-wing organization to assert a genuine political project.
This is an instructive moment for many people who are desperate for better conditions in countries that are economically struggling, including Iran with its recent protests. If your country has sovereignty from the US, you walk a very dangerous tightrope - how do you organize for better conditions in such a way that it cannot be co-opted by the US to overthrow your government and put something even more terrible in its wake? Shortly after a jubilant revolutionary moment, you are left without influence, power, or even media representation, and now yet further under the repression of Western imperialism. This is one of the many problems that the population of the non-NATO world will need to find ways to overcome.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA 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.
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.
Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
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Unsure of the legitimacy of the news, and I don't think we'll get any evidence either way anytime soon. Anyone that actually knows the truth, if they told you, they'd end up in jail. But it could definitely be true. However unless China has given Iran access to a whole integrated air defence network and space assets, in other words China's whole system of area/access denial (which would likely involve sending over Chinese troops and aircraft, like the Soviets did various times during the cold war, in North Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, etc), I don't think Iran getting a few UHF band ground based early warning/"anti stealth" radars or even a few advanced air defence systems like the HQ-9 is going to move the needle much. Maybe it will help Iran detect an incoming attack better, detect incoming air launched ballistic missiles from Israeli aircraft and give them time to mobilise. Venezuela had that (Some Chinese anti stealth radars and a few advanced Russian air defence systems), and it didn't work out. The days of sending over a limited force like this to deter limited US action are over. I know many won't like hearing that, but it's my honest opinion. I feel that I owe everyone honesty.
The modern battlefield is not 1v1 duels between a plane and a radar/emitter, or a single air defence system. This misconception is a fundamental misunderstanding this article, and line of thought makes. Any US airstike package is that, a package of distributed sensors, aircraft and effects from space based satellites designed to detect any radar emissions, to the strike aircraft themselves, to stealthy reconnaissance drones, decoys, etc (you can probably add high power microwave weapons to the mix after Venezuela, Trump calls it the "discombobulator"). A mosaic of a whole bunch of different stuff coming together. As a counter to this, some soft of "handshake" or "handoff" or "passing over" a radar track from a VHF/UHF anti stealth radar, to an X band fire control radar, to firing a missile, an guiding it to a target is not a credible anti stealth "kill chain"/capability, in fact it's quite a fragile one with weaknesses that the US will target. We saw this (targeting kill chain weaknesses) in Venezuela when the US destroyed the Buk/SA-17 air defence systems' command post, likely to prevent any communication between the SA-17 systems and potentially between the SA-17 and S-300VM/SA-23. Breaking the kill chain. Essentially making sure that this couldn't happen:
While this thread is very much pro USA, it outlines the flaws that the "anti stealth" crowd has in it's thinking, and points out that what China is building is very different from that
I think that if any hot engagement happens between the U.S, China or Russia I think it will happen in space and it will be satellite warfare or counter-measures. All three nations have unmarked, "spy" satellites both used for intelligence and likely has one or more of the publicly disclosed anti-satellite ICBMs all three of those nations have. I think all satellites, both civilian and military, going down would make it really hard to continue any form of war without a period of adjustment; even if it is only weeks. Are people going to push the big red button over space junk?
Once satellites go down I think drones are what is on the table for recon, coordination and radar. Makes me wonder if that is one of the many reasons all three nations push for heavy spending of such. Would be a very different life afterwards for everyone.
Is "stealth is dead" the new "the tank is dead?"
Much worse because at least we've seen 1000s of tanks being destroyed in Ukraine.
We've had a total of one stealth aircraft being shot down since their inception.
Do tou thin the earlier warning for such an attack might enable an earlier retaliatory strike?
Say the US launches a stealth craft, Iran detects one in its airspace, could it ready batteries to fire on a carrier in such a case?