Image is of vehicles set aflame by protestors near a government building.
Since July 1st, students have protested the unpopular proposal in which 30% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans of the 1971 War of Independence and their relatives. In a country with a youth unemployment rate of around 20% and a population of 170 million, a large number of otherwise eligible and competent people would have been forced out due to favouritism for veterans. As with basically every country on the planet over the last couple years, Bangladesh is suffering from inflation and an increasing cost-of-living, further exacerbating tensions.
The student protests have been met with significant violence by the government - local newspapers report that over a hundred protestors have been killed, and thousands have been injured. Guns and tear gas have been used. Additionally, the government has completely cut internet access throughout Bangladesh to prevent organizing, which has had some success in dividing protestors, but has also only further angered various parts of the country due to the massive impact to Bangladesh's online industries and various startups. And a national curfew has been in place to limit movement, with the population told to remain home if they want to be safe.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh relented, stating that now, only 5% of government jobs would be reserved for veterans and their families. 2% would be allocated to members of minorities, with the remaining 93% distributed on merit. A period of tentative calm has arrived, but Hasnat Abdullah, a coordinator of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, has stated that unless the government restores the internet, removes the curfew, releases detainees, and forces certain ministers to resign within a few days, then the protests will resume.
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 Bangladesh! 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
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.
https://archive.ph/N9BAz
Syrski, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces quotes some numbers that contradict the UA's official stats. Anybody paying attention is gonna be scratching their heads at all their lies.
"They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000 with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men."
“When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armoured personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” Syrskyi said. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”
Just as a refresher, Ukrainian Armed Forces officially claim they have killed 571,350 Russian soldiers. They claim they have destroyed 8,313 tanks. They claim they have destroyed 15,804 artillery systems. They claim they have destroyed 16,039 APCs.
Do these number make sense to anybody at all? Russia's production would have to be absolutely INSANE to double their tanks despite losing 8,313. How could they hope to compete against such industrial output?
Ukraine is so obviously full of shit
I saw a war blogger carefully explain with an authoritative tone how Russia’s classic small unit infiltration tactics were akshually equivalent to human waves just very small waves.
This isn’t directly related to your comment I just had to share because this has been bugging me.
if you think about it, via wave-particle duality, a single Russian soldier dying is in fact a human wave
Who is to say which side really is advancing or at what speed
And a single russian losing a limb is atom-splitting, and therefore nuclear war
It's funny the west is so obsessed with projecting the "human waves" tactic on their enemies, but historically it's actually been America's primary method of warfare. In the Civil War, in the conquest of the Philippines, in WW1 and WW2 all the famous major American battles involved reckless infantry charges with heavy losses that they later portray as heroic. In Vietnam it seems they didn't even know what they were doing and just occupied areas with infantry waiting to die. Americans have never been shown to use maneuver or positional war very effectively, they have never done major armor offensives involving encirclements.
When the US figured out aerial bombardment that became their go-to tactic because their ground movements were so fucking bad with heavy losses. The new strategy is to blow shit up from the sky forever until nothing moves and then go send your infantry to occupy it.
Chinese/North Korean "human wave" tactics are where you heavily arm a small number of infiltrators (we're talking each person is strapped with like 12 grenades, fastened onto a wooden board on your chest, or just sitting in a bag) and you sneak up close to a line/bubble of enemy defenses. You overwhelm them with a massive amount of firepower concentrated on a small area of their defenses, then rush in. If that team fails, another follows up and attempts to do the same. This minimizes casualties because you're exposing the fewest number of people to do the dangerous work. Once you've caused a breach, the other 50 soldiers you had hiding rush into action, pouring through the gap in the lines and attacking the enemy from inside their own fortifications in the confusion.
It's less of a "human wave" and more of a "human dam breach".
During the Korean war, this terrified US soldiers so much that they complained their M1 Garand rifles couldn't penetrate Chinese winter coats. In reality, they were either missing in terror, or just didn't have the time to react before they were forced to give up.
In Vietnam, the Vietnamese used sappers to do ambushes and destroy encampments. They would tunnel beneath the Yankees and then pop up inside barracks, storage areas and armories, torch the place and throw tons of explosives everywhere in the confusion. A relatively few sappers could cause massive damage.
Looking forward to seeing the inevitable "le inferior ruzzian asiatic hordes merely overran our brave fighters with unfair overwhelming numbers!!!!" used by coping nazis the same way it was in 1945.
Anybody actually believing Ukrainian Numbers is too stupid to engage with.
Western Winter War propaganda repeats itself
So, mediazona is probably more or less correct, probably some minor lowball but not 5-10x undercount like NAFO idiots want to believe.
Either that or Russia secretly controls the star forge.