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.
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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.
The United States will be sending even more tactical fighter aircraft to the Middle East next week, in the military buildup against Iran.
5x mid air refuelling tanker aircraft (1x KC-135R/T, 4x KC-46) with GOLD callsigns have been deployed to Bangor Air National Guard Base, Maine, United States. They are preparing to drag more tactical fighter aircraft across the Atlantic ocean, probably sometime next week. It's unknown what type of aircraft will be deployed.
I wonder if they're planning to do all of the attacks with mid air refueling and long range munitions. Certainly wouldn't want to be within range of Iranian short-medium range missiles right now.
Also seems to imply the war won't be starting in the next couple days, unless these are just planned as reinforcements.
may they all crash into the ocean for no reason like the others before them
What are the odds that this is amerikkka going all in on toppling Iran and the greater Axis of Resistance? In other words, that attacks won’t be limited to Iran, but will be launched against Lebanon, Yemen, etc.?
If Iran falls then Hezbollah loses their major supplier, intelligence partner, etc and are in a very bad place, Yemen too loses an important supplier and will find themselves isolated in a hostile region and more easily picked off so the US doesn't have to take them out at the same time.
IMO there's no reason for them to stretch their resources. Yemen can wait because they can't really strike American or zionist assets directly, merely disrupt shipping which the US and the entity can survive a bit of as we've seen before.
Lebanon is slightly more of a question. The zionists themselves might strike if they think they can kill leadership or hit anything important. However I suspect maximum resources will be reserved for the decapitating strike against Iran's government, everything they can muster will be put into that. Forces on the border of Lebanon will be put on alert and all that but they'll probably want to hit Iran with the US and be on their way back to bases to get ready to reload to fight any in-coming from Lebanon then. That's assuming the US wants them. I don't see US diverting resources from it's Iran attack plan and contingencies for significant simultaneous attacks on Lebanon. Could be wrong and we must understand they operate on opportunity, if they know where Hezbollah leadership is meeting in the event of an Iran attack they'd absolutely divert some planes to bomb it and kill them. If they don't know that then I don't think they'll open up a general air campaign trying to find and bomb dozens of locations in Lebanon while in theory Iran will be keeping them busy destroying their launchers and shooting down their drone attack waves.
But who knows. It's hard to say what their strategy looks like. It's likely they have drawn up battle plans for wider regional strikes (still would bet no Yemen, maybe a drone or two) and battle plans without that.
I believe Hesbollah and Ansarallah both said they'll back Iran, so I would expect that there will certainly be at least some back and forth in both Yemen and Lebanon.
Kinda silly to pretend and go round and round with negotiations. Nobody moves billions of dollars of equipment to look tough