Image is of Azerbaijan's President, Aliyev (left) and Armenia's President, Pashinyan (right) in a meeting a month or two after Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh.

  1. Never go to a second location.
  2. Always get the interior ministry post.
  3. Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
  4. If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
  5. If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
  6. Never give up your nukes.
  7. Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
  8. Never let the opposition delay elections.
  9. If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
  10. Never trust a South American with a German name.
  11. Never move anywhere for a religion.
  12. Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
  13. If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
  14. Never become an FBI informant.
  15. If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
  16. Never relinquish your arms.
  17. Always get it in writing.
  18. If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
  19. Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
  20. Always pay your mercenaries.
  21. Don’t let anyone take your passport.

To add an addendum to rule 3, never put your President and Foreign Minister in the same helicopter or small aircraft. Especially if doing so in bad weather conditions. Especially if you're already under threat from a hostile nuclear power in the region with a proclivity for terrorism (though this probably isn't Israel's doing, in this particular case).

Anyway, Azerbaijan. Not a great country, I think. Did some genocides. They're a petrostate that is hosting Cop29, which I suppose is a way for the bourgeoisie to implicitly convey their contempt for the green movement. They got weapons from Israel, too.

Just for the record, there's an Iranian province called East Azerbaijan, which is not the same as Azerbaijan.

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 Azerbaijan! 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.

  • Teekeeus
    ·
    19 days ago

    deleted by creator

    • PosadistInevitablity [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Imagine how Americans would react if China gave our next target of invasion missiles to strike the continental US.

      Can Westerners even consider the amount of pressure Russian leaders will be under to strike back? Do they not see the Russians as humans or something?

      • hello_hello [comrade/them]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Do they not see the Russians as humans or something?

        No they lost their white people status in the 2010s. Possibly earlier.

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

        If we stick with the theory that most of congress are second generation jet-ski salemen then yeah, there's a pretty good chance they don't think russians are human or have not put any real thought in to it.

        Super weird for them to be gooning on apocalupse when the us public largely stopped giving a shit.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      6 months ago

      What would a likely Russian response to this American escalation be?

      • Nothing. Putin doesn't exactly have a track record of setting his red lines in stone. Besides, terror attacks on Russian population centres would be a PR defeat but it wouldn't do much to change the situation at the front. Ukraine is fucked no matter whether they manage to blow up some Russian apartment buildings or not.
      • Intensification of the war? It would make sense for them to make a wider buffer zone to prevent terrorist strikes against Russian population centres.
      • Striking NATO targets abroad? This would risk even more escalation but not as much as striking NATO territory. It would probably also not do much to degrade the evil empire's lust for war.
      • Striking Ukraine-related targets on NATO soil? One could argue that they would be justified in striking arms caches, radar systems and arms manufacturing used to intervene in the war but there's little chance that the evil empire would let the lawyers work it out rather than escalating rapidly towards a nuclear holocaust.
      • Arming the evil empire's enemies? This is the funniest option, it is the most symmetric and also the most chaotic. What would happen if Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance suddenly got advanced Russian weapons? Or if some obscure ethnic seperatists in Europe suddenly had tons of Semtex?
      • Teekeeus
        ·
        19 days ago

        deleted by creator

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Reichsburgers get access to a drum full of vegetable oil and peeled potatoes from the Russian stockpiles

        But there is some precedent. China’s NORINCO was allegedly trying to sell machine guns (and maybe rocket launchers?) to gang members in the US, which is why Chinese guns are banned with the exception of Chinese shotguns (there are so many sub $200 Chinese shotguns getting imported lol). There were some gun forum posts that alleged that the Chinese people who got arrested were just ordinary local workers who got framed. Now China is selling Glock switches wholesale on the first page of google to American gangs lol

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

          Still pissed at Clinton for that. 30 years and ammo prices never recovered.