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.

The Country of the Week is Kenya! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          The movement should be NEVER VOTE DEM AGAIN

          Been saying this since Oct 7 (and before, but emphasizing different reasons). And it only becomes more true each day. IDK if KKKopmala stopped the genocide tomorrow. She’s already done 10 months of fucking genocide. WAAAAAAAAAAAY too fucking late.

    • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
      26·
      3 months ago

      I’m not sure I agree, it doesn’t look like this will shake out that way. No one should be under the illusion that the ‘uncommitted’ represented anything outside of the democratic party but the categorical refusal to even let them speak some weak-ass Harris-supporting horseshit at the convention doesn’t look like a coherent or successful plan to retain the ‘pro-palestine’ votes. Harris could’ve just lied, played nice, and gotten an endorsement from them. but she didn’t, and doubled down yesterday/today in an interview. I don’t expect ‘uncommitted’ to come out anti-Harris officially or anything, but I very much expect an effort to turn whatevers left of it to Harris won’t bear much fruit.

      • Al_Sham [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        I think we read different articles

        This latest PR move is trying to move and re-engineer Arab youth and their allies. The last 10 months have shown a progression of courage and conscientiousness for the leftist pro-Palestine movement in the US as a whole, as demonstrated by open solidarity and support shown to the Palestinian Resistance and the Axis, the student encampments, and direct material action blocking boats, weapons factories, and airports producing and transporting instruments of genocide.

        …

        Perhaps it is God’s blessing that the DNC shut the door on allowing the Palestinian-American speaker to take the podium. This was the last message to Arabs still mentally bound to playing into a socially prescribed partisan role that they are every bit as disposable to the American elite as the hundreds of thousands of innocents slaughtered in Gaza.

        This moment exposed the contradictions between the Democratic Party and the base it panders to and the utter humiliation and servitude of this base’s blind loyalty. The liberal establishment does not want to see Arabs and their allies, neither in the occupied Middle East nor on American streets, take charge to disrupt, conscientize, and interrupt the flow of genocidal capital, but rather wants to continue to see them perpetually begging, eagerly jumping for the intermittent scraps thrown their way.

        In her most recent interview for RT, the wife of the late President Raisi, Dr. Jamileh Alamolhoda, admitted that there was no shortage of empathy for the people of Gaza, but rather a lack of courage to make sacrifices. The Uncommitted Campaign was designed by and for Arab millennial petit-bourgeois that cling to the illusion of comforts brought by careerism and social capital, where nothing in the way of material, worldly gains (the heavy price being only principles and dignity) is lost or sacrificed, but a career, a platform, and possibly an opportunity to be the next Democratic party token candidate to sign off on an intersectional-imperialist agenda is won.

    • wheresmysurplusvalue [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      3 months ago

      Good post 🫡

      The left part of this astroturf diagram is like the electoralism equivalent of horseshoe theory. How deluded do they need to be to place Trump voters as being one logical step from voting for the Greens? They’re blinded by their own propaganda which can only see third party votes as spoilers, because they can only think in terms of a binary voting system. I hope their ignorance continues because ignorance means shit theories unable to predict behavior

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      I don’t disagree with the overall thesis that Uncommitted is uncommitted to Palestinian resistance and will likely funnel voters back into the Democrats, a number of key quotes are unsourced and the attack on JVP for being “Soros funded” is extremely whack:

      Working alongside Soros-funded JVP Action, and within the Democratic party’s proverbially pro-Palestinian-branded members, it created a virtual space meant to contain the grievances of Arab Americans while continuing to benefit from their demographic as a key and easy voting base, while adopting, alongside other big-donor funded Jewish “pro-Palestinian” organizations such as JVP and IfNotNow, the language of “both sides" and that Israelis are also “victims of violence.” Toeing the line with their liberal Zionist supporters and funders, a leading Uncommitted co-chair on an IfNotNow livestream lamented the “cycle of violence that led to the abhorrent killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas.” Such a false narrative about Al-Aqsa Flood, a military operation that only targeted soldiers, as Zionist entity tanks and helicopters rashly killed their own settlers, serves to manufacture consent for the genocide against Palestinians and justify the occupation.

      In terms of both rhetoric and aims, the Uncommitted Campaign is a perfect marriage of liberal Zionism and an astroturfed pro-Palestinian movement, just like Walid Shaheed’s own marriage to IfNotNow co-founder Emily Mayer.

      JVP has been a genuine, serious member of the movement in the US. IfNotNow is a pretty lib org that JVP should not be lumped in with.

      • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        It’s a little off on DSA too, IMO. It characterizes it as a whole organization, but DSA’s politics varies widely. The local chapter I participated in for a while decided not to engage in electoralism at all, for example, except to re-engage a bit after Bernie’s absolute capitulation and be one of the strong voices in support of DSA not endorsing another Democrat (ever, in our case, though a lot of other chapters at least decided it should be true for that particular election). National sucks, and chapters can be either liberal bullshit or radical leftist spaces depending on the location and structure of the chapter.

        EDIT: To clarify, we didn’t even agree to endorse Bernie, but we especially agreed afterward to (also) not endorse other Democrats.