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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
My Paraguayan brothers just demolished “Israel” 4-2 in Olympic Games football. “Israel” has the right to defend it’s goalposts (they just don’t do it very well)
Death to “Israel”. Even in something quite meaningless like olympic games football they deserve to lose. As long as they exist, they shouldn’t be able to enjoy anything.
I’m more glad Israel lost than Paraguay won tbh. In 2024, Paraguay voted against an arms embargo against Israel at the United Nations Human Rights Council How has the relationship with Israel been historically?
How has the relationship with Israel been historically?
Pretty sure it is close, but it depends on who is the president (Even though the Colorado party ruled Paraguay for 60 years, and is currently rulling again, the party has a bunch of different groups inside it, from far-right to leftists. Iirc, during the dictatorship Alfredo Stroessner, who was a member of Colorado, other Colorados formed their own liberal and socdem guerrilas against the dictatorship).
Paraguay is the most conservative country in South America. And the only South American country to have relations with Taiwan instead of China, they don’t even recognize the PRC, even though the PRC buys a bunch of meat and soy from them. All of the opposition parties (besides the weird neonazis known as National Crusade Party) are pro-China.
Large Article
On May 21, 2018, Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes announced that the Paraguayan embassy moved to Jerusalem, becoming the third country in the world, after the United States and Guatemala, to recognize the city as the diplomatic capital of Israel.
This was reversed in September 2018 by Cartes’ successor, Mario Abdo Benítez. Foreign Minister Luis Castiglioni stated that “Paraguay wants to contribute to an intensification of regional diplomatic efforts to achieve a broad, fair and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
In May 2023, President-elect Santiago Peña announced that he intended to move the Paraguayan Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem again after being sworn in as president
After being sworn in, President Peña followed through on his promise, announcing the Paraguayan Embassy would open in Jerusalem before the end of 2023. In 2024, Paraguay supported Israel in the South African case against Israel
In 2024, Paraguay voted against an arms embargo against Israel at the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Paraguay was one of the countries that voted for the 1947 UN Partition Plan. A vote in favour is a vote in favour of the colonial enterprise, no matter how much diplomacy has attempted to disguise Israel’s expansion with the two-state paradigm.
Not only has Paraguay supported the Zionist settler-colonial project since 1947, but the South American country and the apartheid state also share a more sinister history, both in terms of the repression of the indigenous populations, as well as maintaining diplomatic ties during Alfredo Stroessner’s military dictatorship.
Between 1956 and 1989, Stroessner enabled the ethnic cleansing of indigenous lands. In the 1970s, the dictatorship sold land to foreign companies which became complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Paraguay’s indigenous communities.
In 1969, Israel and Paraguay reached an agreement to transfer 60,000 Palestinians over a four-year period, a plan which was abandoned after two Palestinians killed an Israeli embassy employee in May 1970. Had the plan been successful, Paraguay would have been complicit with Israel in the forced transfer of Palestinians from their own homeland. Paraguay also hosted Nazi war criminals such as Josef Mengele, as did other Latin American countries, notably Argentina.
The country’s links to Nazism date back to 1927, when Paraguay became the first country, apart from Germany, to create a Nazi party. When it is politically opportunistic, Israel turns a blind eye to such things; even to the narrative it strives so hard to promote.
In 1969 the Israeli government under Golda Meir approved of a plan to pay 60,000 Palestinians to leave Gaza for Paraguay. At the time, Paraguay was ruled by the Alfredo Stroessner regime, which had agreed in 1967 to go along with the proposal, seeing Palestinians as ideal immigrants out of a need for labor as well as a notion that as mostly Muslims they were not inclined towards communism.
At the time the agreement was made, Israel had just occupied Arab territories in the Six-Day War, occupying Gaza with a substantial Palestinian population Israel wanted to systematically remove, in addition to the Sinai peninsula, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights, and the West Bank. While estimates of the exact number of Palestinians sent to Paraguay due to the project vary, ranging from “a few dozen” to “thousands”, it is widely agreed that the project was a failure, with the number that made the trip being only a small percent of the 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza the Israeli and Paraguayan governments intended to reach.
Under the plan, Palestinians in Gaza were enticed to move to Paraguay by “travel agencies” set up in Gaza to promote emigration to Paraguay; those who moved to Paraguay would be given a one-time lump sum of $100, while the Paraguayan government would be paid $33 per Palestinian it accepted, and after five years of residency they were to become eligible for a path to citizenship.
However, upon arrival, having been left in the country with few resources and with no guarantee of employment, they became destitute. Many of those that went had been lured in with false promises of becoming landowners and receiving further financial support, leading to additional frustration.
Does Paraguay have a solid roster? I know they had a hard time in Copa America. Either way, hope Japan keeps their foot on the gas and can keep the Israeli’s loosing.
They have some talent here and there but overall they’ve fallen off. They haven’t qualified for a World Cup since 2010, and that time they lost 1-0 to eventual champions Spain in a very close and fun match. Since then, they reached the Copa America final in 2011 only to be swept aside by a ridiculously good Uruguay, then they either died in the group stages or made it to the quarter finals only to lose against a much powerful rival. They might make it to the 2026 World Cup just because the CONMEBOL qualifiers now allow for like 7 teams to qualify, out of 10. But with teams like Ecuador and Venezuela on the rise, they have fewer chances.
Was going to say I remembered Paraguay being better semi recently but honestly haven’t been tracking the different South American national teams very closely.
They might make it to the 2026 World Cup just because the CONMEBOL qualifiers now allow for like 7 teams to qualify, out of 10. But with teams like Ecuador and Venezuela on the rise, they have fewer chances.
Venezuela’s rise has been interesting to me, I know quite a few of their players have come through or still are in MLS. I’m guessing the sport has grown in popularity in Venezuela enough and the domestic league quality must be decent enough to give their players a shot in foreign leagues.
