Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.


Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia's influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are "emerging from Russia's shadow", while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia's significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia's diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.

Where Russia's influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh's remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them "modernize their military"; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they're even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can't entirely remove Russia's influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).

A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.


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 Armenia! 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

If you have evidence of Israeli 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 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.


  • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Joost Klein (Dutch representative) officially disqualified from the Eurovision grand final. Fans are in outrage. The delegations from Switzerland, Ireland and Italy have complained about harrassment from the Israeli delegation and have refused to show up to the flag parade ceremony. Bambie Thug (Irish representative, one of the most vocal Israel critics) demands that the harrassment is addressed. Individual jurors are withdrawing in protest. EBU is having a crisis meeting.

    Apparently, the Israeli delegation cheered when the disqualification of Joost Klein was announced. Do they want the world to hate them?

    Edit: Libs have discovered that the Israeli representative Eden Golan is from Moscow. I think the only way this could be worse is if Eden Golan shot a puppy on stage Kristi Noem-style.

    Edit 2: Norwegian spokesperson Alessandra Mele, who was supposed to give Norway's points at the grand final tonight, announced her withdrawal from said role in protest. The Portuguese representative Iolanda has expressed her support for a free Palestine ahead of the dress rehearsal today.

    Edit 3: This is from last night's show: Finnish spokesperson refuses to say "Israel" when giving out points, instead saying "Ireland" even after the moderator asks her to repeat. Last night, the Finnish representative from last year appeared in an Instagram story with Eden Golan and was forced to apologize later. Eurovision fans really, really, really hate Israel right now.

    • Kaputnik [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      This genuinely might be more of a PR blow to Israel than if they just got kicked out initially

        • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
          ·
          8 months ago

          Well this could've been avoided if they just banned them like they did Russia. At least now people can see why the whole mena region never liked them.

          Still it's pretty wild they're this dumb enough to take the mask off in front of white people. Like I'm not gonna lie that's actually dangerous considering what Europeans did to them in WW2. Don't give euros a reason to hate you bc they'll just become Nazis.

            • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
              ·
              8 months ago

              That's it. They are the population equivalent of a child that been given everything they ask for by their rich parents with no push back.

              Spoiled into adulthood

              • VILenin [he/him]
                ·
                8 months ago

                The lady writing “JEW” on her shirt and stomping around the encampment malding that nobody is attacking her is the perfect embodiment of every Israeli

                • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  malding

                  You reminded me: She looked like she parts her hair with a straight razor. Truly put on a hat atp 😭 🙏🏼

                • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  8 months ago

                  ...even through the "Israel" on the back of her shirt was a straight-up invitation to justifiably attack her without any anti-Semitism being involved.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              ·
              8 months ago

              You get lazy during the decades and then the weeks start coming and they don't stop coming.

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            8 months ago

            Fascists aren't very good at being hinged, especially when under stress.

          • Maturin [any]
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            What did Europeans do to Israelis during WW2 other than provide them material support to dispossess Arabs? You are confusing Zionism with Judaism.

            • SteamedHamberder [he/him]
              ·
              8 months ago

              There were no Israelis during WWII. The Zionists in Palestine were divided over support for Britain (The Haggadah- Ben Gurionites origin of the Israeli Labor Party), or continuing terrorist action against the British (The Revisionists- origin of Likud)

            • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
              ·
              8 months ago

              Israelis are Jews. They're Zionists too. Unfortunately for the rest of the Jews, they're still a part of the community.

              The people that committed the first Nakba escaped the Nazis, they're victims but also abusers. Israelis are for the most part, descendants of the victims of anti-Semititism.

              When I say "them" I mean that in the sense that Israelis are still Jews and still can be subject to actual anti-Semititism.

              Israelis don't understand that when Europeans dislike them it will be bc of their ethnicity, not their ideology and actions.

              • Maturin [any]
                ·
                8 months ago

                But see how the European powers treated Zionists Jews who formed the core of the colonial movement before, during, and after the war. While it is true that an about as many actual holocaust survivors went to Palestine as went to the US, Zionist Israeli society was outright hostile to them. The association of the holocaust with the Zionist movement and Israeli state is straight up hasbara.

                • GlueBear [they/them, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Ok I can see where you're coming from and I agree. I should have been more specific in my original comment.

                  However I feel like I still have a point: they can still be subject to anti-Semititism even if they're Zionists.

                  It's not a guarantee that being a Zionist jew will protect you from anti-Semititism. Both can be true (and often are).

    • Zrc
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      deleted by creator

      • VILenin [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        A “country” of entitled, genocidal manchildren who’ve never been told “no”

    • Greenleaf [he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      This whole Eurovision thing is a fascinating microcosm of how “israel” operates geopolitically. I kinda hate the term because JBP coined it but it’s the perfect term: “israel” is a chaos dragon. From the US perspective, that’s its raison d'être. “israel” is supported because it keeps the rest of the MENA region disunited and fractured, unable to act as a cohesive unit. The parallels to this year’s contest are uncanny.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      This seems like a good thing. The Euros love their Eurovision, so is it safe to assume that a revolt on Eurovision represents wide public sentiment?

    • JamesConeZone [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Loreen has refused to hand over the trophy of Israel win as well, but will do it for any other country.