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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.


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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist 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 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.
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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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[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 36 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

Machine translation of the whole article (emphasis added by me):

The first Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital had barely been repelled when, in the spring of 2022, men from the US foreign intelligence agency CIA and Ukrainian sabotage specialists met in Kyiv's Podil district. It was apparently a familiar group; they had known each other for years.

The Ukrainians, according to insiders, had brought an idea: they wanted to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines. These pipes transported billions of cubic meters of gas from Russia to Germany, thus financing Moscow's war against their country. The Americans apparently liked the plan, Ukrainian participants later told confidants.

Further meetings between the CIA representatives and the masterminds of the attacks on the gas pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea are said to have followed. SPIEGEL was able to speak with several people in Ukraine who reported details of the meetings. According to their accounts, the Americans knew about the attack plans much earlier than previously known.

According to the report, US agents appeared to the planners of the Nord Stream attack in the spring of 2022 to be at least sympathetic listeners. Insiders report that they exchanged technical details of the sabotage operation.

Huh, so not only "they held encouraging meetings" as the headline implies, but also they literally gave Ukraine all the info they were missing on how to do it. Sounds a lot more active than what the headline implies.

Was this true? Confronted with the findings, a CIA spokeswoman called the account "completely and utterly false." The CIA declined to specify what exactly was wrong with it.

Despite the US intelligence agency's denial, SPIEGEL has decided to report on these events. The editorial team has known the Ukrainian sources for years, and their information has proven accurate. They were aware of details of the attack early on, details which were later confirmed by German investigators.

The accounts make an already sensitive issue for the government in Berlin even more uncomfortable.

Former Ukrainian commando Serhiy K. is currently in pretrial detention in Hamburg. He is alleged to have been involved in the detonation of the pipelines in September 2022. Several men and a woman sailed across the Baltic Sea on a rented yacht called "Andromeda." Near the island of Bornholm, divers placed military-grade explosives on the gas pipelines on the seabed.

According to a detention order issued by the Federal Court of Justice in the case of Serhiy K., which became public in mid-January, the operation was "highly likely" state-directed. The state in question is Ukraine—the very country that the German government has been supporting with billions of euros since the Russian attack.

We'll come back to Ukraine being "the directing state" after a few paragraphs

Now it has emerged that US intelligence officials apparently knew about the attack plan in its early stages and initially allegedly did not object. According to the investigation, they only later changed their minds and warned the Ukrainians against carrying out the plan—to no avail.

Serhiy K. is associated with Roman Chervinsky, a specialist in covert operations and sabotage who previously worked for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). He is considered the mastermind behind the attacks. Now 51, Chervinsky was part of an elite unit established by the CIA after the 2014 Maidan Revolution

Oh, so a CIA-trained operative blew up the Nordstream with, at the very least, knowledge of this by the CIA and technical assistance from the CIA. Makes it seem more like it was the US behind this all along curious-sickle

The so-called 5th Directorate of the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) made a name for itself with spectacular operations against pro-Russian separatists. Targeted killings were also part of the secret unit's repertoire. When Chervinsky transferred to the Ukrainian military intelligence service HUR in 2019, the covert work against Moscow continued – often with the help of the US.

Nooooo, this is Russian propaganda!!!! How could he have been acting against Russia with support from the USA if the war began in 2022??!!!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

After a failed operation, Chervinsky had to leave the intelligence service in 2020. But with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, his skills were needed again. Initially, the sabotage expert helped defend Kyiv. When the Russians were repelled at the gates of the capital, the old group of commando specialists reunited – this time with the special forces of the Ukrainian army.

In principle, it didn't matter over the years which service or unit you belonged to, says a former Ukrainian member of these commando units. "We worked together with the Americans."

I suspect this is slightly pointing towards collaboration between Nazis and the US agencies same-picture

In the spring of 2022, new ideas were apparently needed to inflict significant damage on Russia, the enemy in the war. An old idea resurfaced among the men: attacking the Nord Stream pipelines.

The pipelines in the Baltic Sea had long been a thorn in the side of Ukraine and most Western nations. Nord Stream allowed Russia to supply Europe directly, bypassing Ukraine's gas network. Kyiv lost crucial transit fees as a result. At the same time, the pipelines made Germany, the most powerful country in Europe, dependent on the Kremlin. Without them, the Russians would lose a significant political bargaining chip, the saboteurs reasoned.

The pipelines had been a thorn in the side of most Western nations by checks notes providing cheap energy to Europe? As for dependence from the Kremlin, diversifying the supply of energy among different geopoltical blocks can hardly be argued to be dependence, dependence is what Germany has now, when it relies exclusively on USA liquefied fossil gas for its energy supply, instead of being able to choose fossil gas from Russia and from the USA (most of it from the former due to, you know, it being cheaper). If Germany wanted energy independence it shouldn't have allowed the destruction of the European photovoltaic industry or destroyed its nuclear power plants.

The US, too, had never been a fan of the more than 1,200-kilometer-long gas pipelines running from Russia to Germany. In early 2022, then-US President Joe Biden, in light of the planned commissioning of Nord Stream 2, threatened to end the project: if Russia invaded Ukraine, there would be "no more Nord Stream 2."

For weeks and months, the Ukrainians developed a plan to have divers plant bombs on the pipelines. They considered various routes and vessels, deliberated about the explosives, and searched for suitable men and women capable of diving to depths of up to 80 meters. The saboteurs even gave the operation a codename: Operation "Diameter."

According to insiders, the operation was ultimately approved in Ukraine by the then-army chief, Valery Zalushny. However, it was not approved by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The secret commando unit did not inform the presidential administration, sources in Kyiv claim.

At the same time, according to Ukrainian insiders, there were repeated meetings with the Americans to discuss the planned operation. "They told our guys: That's good, that works," says one man familiar with the discussions. The Ukrainians claim not to have received any warnings at that point; quite the opposite.

"If you place the bombs in this manner, it will work" is more than encouragement, it's explicit participation in the operation.

According to her account, a signal of support came from the CIA as early as the second meeting: Go ahead with it. And even more: On the Ukrainian side, the impression even arose that the US agents could help with financing the plan

Waiting for the evidence to come out in 50 years that the money circled back to the CIA :D

The CIA declined to comment on this when contacted by SPIEGEL. The intelligence agency merely stated that SPIEGEL's research was "extremely inaccurate" and should "not be read as factual information."

In the spring of 2022, according to US security sources, Washington's interests were completely different. At that time, the focus was on organizing the greatest possible support for Ukraine. Why would the US condone an attack on the infrastructure of an ally?

[–] Kieselguhr@hexbear.net 20 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It still beggars belief that the "couple of Ukranians with a civilian boat" narrative is right, and not the "they planted the bombs with underwater drones during the naval exercise a month before"

Second one still sounds more plausible to me

Nevertheless, the main perpetrator is obvious

[–] RedDawn@hexbear.net 16 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah whatever happened to the version of events that Seymour Hersh published? Was he just totally wrong?

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

He was slightly incorrect on the timeline but generally correct on the overall picture. MoA went over the correct timeline here https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/02/some-small-corrections-to-seymour-hershs-new-nord-stream-revelations.html

[–] Kieselguhr@hexbear.net 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

MSM just pretends that explanation doesn't even exist because it's too plausible and implies direct US involvement

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

It's the only plausible explanation. The 3 Ukrainians on a civilian yacht theory is actually impossible. Diving and explosive experts have clearly laid out how this type of operation would take days of continuous, around the clock dives or specialized diving drones supported by an entire logistics team and careful handling of hundreds of pounds of explosives. Nobody has the capability of doing this except the navies of major powers, and clearly Russia, Europe and China didn't do it. There's only one possible remaining explanation, by deduction.

[–] mkultrawide@hexbear.net 26 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Pictured - The CIA objecting to the sabotage plan:

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 13 points 20 hours ago

The CIA not participating in the plan because they didn't directly fund it:

Sorry for AI slop, was too specific

[–] FortifiedAttack@hexbear.net 15 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

At the same time, the pipelines made Germany, the most powerful country in Europe, dependent on the Kremlin

Certifiably false given how quickly they were able to switch to US supplied gas.

It's like insisting on using your car while sitting in the train on the way to work because your car has broken down.

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 12 points 18 hours ago

Not that false, though. I lived in Germany at the time and my gas bill tripled in the span of months, to an eye-watering 450€/month, I literally had to move apartments because of it. Also, German industry hasn't recovered from the hit of losing access to cheap energy. It's just that having more options to buy gas makes a country less dependent.

[–] Kieselguhr@hexbear.net 9 points 17 hours ago

Certifiably false given how quickly they were able to switch to US supplied gas.

yes but also, it completely contradicts the narrative that "the EU would play with Russia, but Putin is evil"
Let's say Navalny doesn't die and him or another Western puppet magically becomes Yeltsin 2.0, what then? Nord Stream is still blown up

[–] hotcouchguy@hexbear.net 30 points 22 hours ago

If Germany wanted energy independence it shouldn't have allowed the destruction of the European photovoltaic industry or destroyed its nuclear power plants.

Now wondering about US involvement in those decisions as well

[–] PosadistInevitablity@hexbear.net 27 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Who would have thought that kindergarten level analysis of motive would lead to the right answer- it was America, not Russia.

I lost all respect for the libs in my life when they called me crazy for correctly calling out America as the culprit.

Peoples adherence to US ideals is, apparently, a commitment to total childlike naivety.

[–] vovchik_ilich@hexbear.net 23 points 21 hours ago

"Ruzzia would totally nuke its own infrastructure because pooting is a maniac" is the usual answer