Image is from this Black Agenda Report article by the Communist Party of Kenya.
In June, large anti-government protests shook Kenya. President Ruto and his parliament were attempting to pass the new Finance Bill 2024, which, among other things, would have hiked taxes on the population, with a 16% sales tax on bread and a 25% duty on cooking oil, as well as new taxes on financial transanctions and vehicle ownership. There would also have been levies on women’s sanitary products and digital goods such as phones, among other measures affecting hospitals.
Hundreds of protestors stormed the parliament building and began to tear the place apart. Shortly afterwards, on June 26th, Ruto announced that he was withdrawing the bill, calling the tens of deaths and hundreds of injuries “unfortunate”. A couple weeks later, Ruto then fired his entire cabinet (aside from his foreign minister) and communicated his wish to the nation to form a “broad-based government”. Funnily enough, in July, it was announced that the majority of positions were to be filled by members of the old cabinet, while other positions were taken by members of the opposition. This has prompted scepticism among the population, including calls to resign, but there haven’t (yet) been any major anti-government events to pressure this outcome. The Communist Party of Kenya has been working to get some of their comrades back after they were abducted by the police during the protest period, and have otherwise supported the protests against Ruto.
The measures in the bill were strongly encouraged by the IMF. Kenya’s debt is currently around $80 billion, of which about 10% is owed to China for infrastructure projects (such as a railway linking the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, as well as 11,000 kilometers of road throughout the country). The rest is owed to a combination of the US, IMF, World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. More than half of government revenue is going towards repaying the debt - but despite these massive payments, it has only grown. The most recent round of IMF plundering (and the impetus for current events) began in 2021, when they offered a 38-month programme to “help” Kenya, which would involve the usual warfare on the poor and the dismemberment of any useful societal institutions.
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.
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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.
Really strange how liberals seem to believe invading a neighboring country is somehow morally worse than invading a country on the other side of the planet.
There’s certainly a sense in which neighbouring invasions are reminiscent of old-timey wars in which the Archduke of Shitcumberg-Pisstein would invade a nearby duchy to take their territory, which is entirely self-interested, versus newfangled 20th and 21st century American wars, which were always framed in terms of containment of evil forces or for humanitarian reasons and not crude territory-grabbing. After all, we didn’t attempt to physically incorporate the territory of any countries whom we fought! We just happened to accidentally stumble into becoming the world’s largest military force and economy into which the riches and resources of developing countries flowed into as if those countries were in fact part of our territory! But the magical words of binding weren’t written on a special piece of paper making them part of the US, so it’s all fine and good, unlike what those barbaric Russians are doing in Ukraine!
The history of the US being seen as fairly non-imperialist compared to Europe also contributes to this as it allows them to sell the illusion of a progressive empire better than if it was France or Belgium or somebody like that doing it. Of course, the US was just as imperialist as everybody else, it just happened to have most of its territorial acquisitions of native land and all the wars and genocides be on the same contiguous landmass, so it “doesn’t count” as colonialism in the same way as a British ship claiming an island in the Pacific for some syphilitic monarch.
I was thinking about this. If anything, it’s the opposite because when invading your neighbor you will have to continue to live with them (especially if you plan to annex the territory) so you don’t completely destroy everything and disregard all consequences. Sometimes you have to invade a neighbor to stabilize a chaotic situation or end a genocide or something like that (see: Vietnam invading Cambodia).
When an imperialist is invading on the other side of the world, they are incentivized to cause as much chaos as possible and destroy as much fixed capital as possible. They do this on the doorstep of their rivals to cause them problems (see: Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, etc) so more destruction and death is encouraged.
When an imperialist is invading a neighbor with intent to annex them, they are incentivized to stabilize a situation and try not to destroy all of the productive forces.
Neither imperialist invasion is good, but one is clearly worse than the other and more nakedly about self interest instead of self defense.
The exception is the Zionazi entity
And,come to think about it,settler colonies in general
Already established imperial powers have the option to outsource the destruction overseas,whereas the settler colony requires that violence to be on its immediate periphery so it can expand
Isn’t the US a settler colony itself?
Yep,but the cleansing and expansion phase is over
Eventually you run out of other people’s land
From “Kayanerenko:wa, The Great Law of Peace”, by Kayanesenh Paul Williams:
I do know what you mean in terms of the settler colony’s focus turning outwards to do its colonialism, but saying that it’s “over” does rub me the wrong way a little, because it minimises the ongoing struggle of indigenous people in Turtle Island. The US and Canada have diplomatic agreements with many indigenous nations “within” it’s territories, in which they recognise them as independent (not like you’d know about it from looking at google maps), only to continue to erase their culture and displace their peoples in the continuous and ongoing process of settler colonialism.
disclaimer
This is not a personal attack; I realise I’m discussing semantics.
Yeah,maybe that phrase needed some refinement
What I meant to say is that the time of seizing large,country sized swathes of land is over and is now is transitioning into the final stages of cleansing,with the remaining population being herded into the least valuable land remaining and being slowly killed off by either disregard on the account of the government towards ensuring the population has access to decent living conditions or forceful cultural assimilation
It’s ok,I can see that my point could’ve used some extra nuance,so don’t sweat it
This is only because the empire has already invaded its neighbors enough already to make them docile so its targets are far-flung. If the empire had the farthest countries under its heel and the nearest were “troublemakers”, the narrative would be completely the opposite.
Basically, this is entirely a product of US-serving propaganda.
Its because they are colonialists