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.
By looking at this poll i can instantly imagine something about reform voters:
okay a couple of things here. first, why is this poll promoting someone's patreon? second, why the fuck would you ban smoking in pub gardens? thats what theyre there for. people will still smoke if you dont let them smoke in the gardens, they will just do it in the street outside the pub entrance
Seriously this is the same logic as removing all the public bathrooms and then getting upset that homeless people didn't just magically stop needing to use the bathroom.
I understand that smoking while drinking isn't as necessary as basic bodily functions but try explaining that to some British hog after 4 pints.
cause i took the picture from them, and haven't bothered to remove patreon link, as they are not reactionary (if you have money to spend on patreon, save for a trip to cuba/buy from palestine/donate to homeless).
Idk, cause its nice to eat outside with fresh wind and sky? Pub entrance is not where people eat, and as a thingy, standing up and walking is good for checking where is your head at while drinking (thats my personal opinion)
Sorry I'm not mad at you for taking this image from someone with a patreon link, hope it didn't come across that way.
Where are you from? I've never eaten in a beer garden, if I was eating in a bar I would always eat inside.
In europe, well it’s not like dining eating with several courses and stuff, just pizza/fries/burgers etc, still nicer with fresh air.
The poll isn't. The account is a fairly popular leftist account in the UK. It's just taking the raw stat out of a much larger poll performed by yougov which is a very right wing pollster.
they are digging up raw stats and making nice graphs of them. I guess that takes money (idk it doesn't seem that hard to me but maybe they have a lot of output).
I don't know that they're doing an amazing job though, pretty sure I've dug up the raw yougov data to find that they edited the question, and they leave out details like sample size and who was surveyed, but they do make graphs for data that yougov doesn't always graph or publicize widely.
In this case they've edited the question down to be more pithy. the original was "Would you support or oppose banning smoking in pub gardens and outdoor restaurants?" And they've flattened the results, by combining "strong support" and "tend to support" into just "support", etc.
I'm definitely not a fan of banning smoking everywhere, like bougie cities in california are doing (you probably should not be making smoking require private property to do it in, because ultimately you're just criminalizing the working class smokers, its not going to stop anyone) and I'm not br*tish, so idk a lot about pubs, but if its primarily a place where people are eating, I'm not exactly opposed to banning it. But its not that urgent tbh
I don't know about the UK, but the American middle class is obsessed with not smoking as a sort of Bourdieu-ian status marker, particularly in the suburbs. If you live in an east Coast city it's more bimodal... Your leisure/creative class/hipsters of olde will smoke in art galleries and fake speakeasies, along with the poor. But everyone in between thinks it's some sort of virtue that they don't. This is before vaping anyway.
I used to smoke, then vape, then quit, but I never acquired the performative sensitivity many former smokers, particularly middle aged women seem to possess... Crossing the street in coughing fits because somebody lit up 20 ft away.
When they figure out a way to inject stem cells into lungs these bitches are gonna be chain smoking with opera cigarette holders like cruella devile talking about notes or tonka bean and peet moss
Ok poindexter
Sorry I'll just being over here virtue signalling with my perfect takes and healthy lungs.
It could also be that america has absolute dogshit healthcare and even minor issues caused by smoking can easily cost you more than 10k
It could also be that smoking is disgusting. The smoke smells like rancid goat testicles and if you have any respiratory issues it's an area denial weapon that means you can't comfortably stand within twenty feet of smokers. It's just so gross, doubly so because people somehow think it's neutral to expose others to the rancid stink.
I'm old enough to remember what it was like in the us when every public space stank of rancid tobacco and going in to a restaurant set off my nose, throat, and lungs. Banning smoking in public places completely changed how i experienced public life, overwhelmingly for the better.
Crazy how there were only 20 years or so where it was safe to eat inside at a restaurant in this country
Can we please NOT stigmatize people who smoke, many of whom want to quit but are unable and who tend to be among the least economically advantaged people in society? Frankly I think it's wrong to continually bully these people with greater and greater restrictions to their activities and to burden them with higher taxes. Second hand smoke indoors causes disease, but that it basically negligible outdoors. Socialists should not be judging people by their nicotine use. Or do we also judge Stalin and other pipe users, or Casto and his cigars?
Oh ffs
i smoke, i don't think its particularly stigmatizing to notice that 1/3 of people are fine with it, with only reform lads being outlier of 2/3 being fine with it.
In my ideal world, it would be like two beer gardens separated spatially tbh, or sans that small separation wall according to local winds. As i've mentioned, i don't like other people's smoke when i'm eating, it follows that i won't be against it (even if its nice to get drunk and smoke without standing up for 3 hours), and im not such a baby that standing up and walking 20 meters is some sacrifice of dignity.
Some people have mentioned, that sturmer ban might be pointed at hookah places, so i can't comment on that angle.
On smoke note, cafes are actually more annoying, cause black coffee with cigarette hits
, but you can’t stand outside with nice cup, so you get plastic single use one, or smoke afterwards 
In Philly I noticed some bars still allow smoking, not most though. I kind of liked it, it's extremely obvious if the bar still had it around, and since most don't allow it to could easily avoid them.
People just lighting up a smoke on the subway was wild though
Authorities don't even pester people who don't follow existing rules, why are you punishing people who actively get away from everyone and go out of their way to find a trashcan? I also hate the vice morality police, I'm already paying more than enough tabacco taxes for the cost of my slow suicide, bugger off.
This is about health. Eliminating all smoking from public visibility to reduce reasons people might try it.
Also public smoking is unspeakably disgusting and, personally, fucks up my entire respiratory system. When most US states banned indoor smoking 20 years ago it completely changed how I experienced public life. I could actually go to restaurants and enjoy the experience instead of being a miserable snotty mess because cigarette fumes were messing up my body.
I believe you, I have no issue with getting away from people without them asking or maybe even noticing. I don't even smoke near the ashtray on the outside. I know I'm not most smokers, but come on, just let me be alone for a bit and piss on the ones actually being anti-social, is all.
We should eliminate every vice and dangerous behavior from public visibility, for health reasons. No more alcohol in public places, sorry. Jaywalking must a serious crime, think of the children. Kissing? Dear god, think of virus and bacteria. In fact, ban talking, Covid showed what a terrible danger it is! And let's not forget to give the death penalty for anyone selling sugar.
Look, it's already not cool, and you managed to make vaping disposable highly polluting garbage cool. All I'm saying, maybe make focus on the people actually damaging others and throwing the butts on the ground, I'm all for it.
Vaping? Cool? In the UK? I don't really think so.
If it stops more kids from starting then I'm for it, sorry. I know it's inconvenient for current smokers, I was a smoker myself, but eliminating smoking entirely is a good goal to have. 75,000 people die per year from smoking. We should absolutely be taking actions to chip into that, I assume you don't disagree that this number is bad and that it should be worked on, what would you suggest instead?