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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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.
The Drone Wars: How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea
This is a terrible article. The author breathlessly describes how our heckin’ scrappy underdog Ukraine has been able to decimate Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The article actually states that because of these naval victories and the current Ukrainian offensive into Russia that’s its Zelensky who will be dictating the term to Putin and not the other way around (I should point out that this article was written three days ago, and uh… a lot has happened in that time).
But I’m posting it here and not the dunk tank because I think the author stumbled into a couple interesting takes:
I actually don’t doubt that Ukraine has used drones, missles, and small craft to completely decimate the Black Sea Fleet. But what is completely lost on the author is that this is the dawn of a new age in naval warfare. Putin gets it and that’s why the Black Sea Fleet hasn’t ventured out. Yemen - one of the poorest countries on earth - is currently embarrassing the US navy, who has no response to the attacks. Surface navies are done. They’re sitting ducks now. I think in future history books they will talk about the Ukrainian destruction of the Russian fleet in the same way we talk about how the trenches in the Russo-Japanese War were a prelude to the trench warfare of WW1; only in this example WW1 will be more like China sinking the entire US Pacific Fleet in a day with hypersonics and drones (inshallah).
Also, the author postulates that the recent Ukrainian offensive was a ploy to show their allies that you can cross a major Russian red line and not push them to use nukes, thus encouraging them to allow them to have weapons that can strike deep inside Russia. While that’s a pretty bad idea for reasons obvious to everyone here… I think that probably was what Zelensky was thinking.
Also, the author postulates that the recent Ukrainian offensive was a ploy to show their allies that you can cross a major Russian red line and not push them to use nukes
This makes sense. Russia has also previously said they will consider F16s to be carrying nukes and they’ll respond accordingly (nuke back I presume?). They obviously haven’t done that yet.
the ukrainians haven’t meaningfully damaged the russian fleet, and their success in attacking naval targets is not because of the end of the age of the big boat (though i do agree with you that the age is over). the article you shared said a third of the naval assets in the black sea were destroyed. i can’t say i know every boat that’s been hit, but at one point the ukrainians “nearly destroyed a submarine” and “blew a massive hole in the hull of a destroyer”. both were fully repaired within two or three months. the ukrainians lie about the damage they have done, and the western press repeats it. but you know this, i just feel the need to correct the time article.
i think that ukrainian success in attacking the russian navy is because of three reasons. (1) the ukrainians are indeed the best or second best drone forces in the world, by natural selection if nothing else. they have material and operators that most navies would struggle to deal with. the other best or second best drone force is russia though, which leads into the second reason. (2) naval assets have not been relevant to the war since the rumors of marine landings in odessa way back in ‘22. as such, the russians are not going to put the best electronic warfare or antiair up to protect five tugboats and the black sea anti-smuggling task force. so the russians have no reason to put up much more than the bare minimum, which connects with the third point. (3) the black sea is an active theatre for nato operations. i don’t mean nato “operations” or special forces or trainers. there are regular flights of american (and lapdog) recon drones and awac planes carefully following international boundaries starting in nato bases in romania and turkey. any and all possible toys that the USA sees as too valuable or too fragile for the stupid ukrainians but still worth using against russia are being sent over and under the black sea. they’d be sailing on top it if they could too, because the US has been begging turkiye to let warships in since ‘22. there’s probably no part of russia that ukraine is getting better information on than crimea and the black sea coast.
all this combines with ukraine’s habit of PR-based warfare, and big ticket naval strikes seem to be easy (and yet further evidence of the inevitability of the brutal putler’s defeat). i’m also not sure that the rise of hypersonic missiles means the end of all naval operations. the PLA navy don’t seem to think so. they’re building up a big green water/ coastal defense fleet. in a somewhat similar vein, iran just launched its first aircraft carrier, a design based on a container ship mostly designed for drone launching. modern day fire ships, drones, and missiles are a factor that all discourage concentration of force, but they don’t discourage having force. if there is ever a modern naval war that somehow doesn’t go nuclear, i imagine we will see the naval equivalent of russia and ukraine no longer fielding multiple tanks together because concentrated armor columns are just cruise missile bait.
i think you’re spot on about zelensky and the kursk adventure. i wonder who’s got more of thirst for russian blood/ nuclear war, the banderites screaming in his one ear, or the natoists whispering in the other?
i’m also not sure that the rise of hypersonic missiles means the end of all naval operations. the PLA navy don’t seem to think so. they’re building up a big green water/ coastal defense fleet. in a somewhat similar vein, iran just launched its first aircraft carrier, a design based on a container ship mostly designed for drone launching.
Not disagreeing with your overall analysis, but warships take years to build. The construction of these carriers probably started long before the war.
That “decimated” Black Sea Fleet just launched a ton of missiles this week
If one is being a big nerd, decimated means to reduce by 10%, so 90% remains. Is the total number of vessels sunk vs. total vessels a thing that can be calculated? I would expect a decimated navy to be basically fully operational.
yeah i think taking the west/ukronazis at their word is stupid but he’s right in that I think that large surface navies are obsolete unless and until better anti-drone measures are complete because it’s too hard for everyone on the planet except maybe china to manufacture the number of anti-air missiles needed to defend against sustained drone swarm attacks.
Future navies slapping big circus tents over their ships to boink incoming drones
