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.

  • Torenico [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    Mr. President we need to do something, we are losing popular support, we are not signing new trade deals and the IMF is refusing the send us funds. We need to distract the people, shall we order the armed forces to invade the Islands?

    No, I have a better idea. ancaptain

    Milei gives musical show, rails against abortion during book launch

    The president sang and gave a speech where he called abortion a ‘murderous agenda’

    President Javier Milei gave his followers a full show on Wednesday night for the presentation of his latest book Capitalism, Socialism And The Neoclassic Trap. The president gave a fiery speech railing against socialism and abortion — he called the latter a “murderous agenda” — but the headline was the brief musical show where Milei appeared as the frontman of a rock band.

    “I am doing this because I wanted to sing,” Milei told around 8,000 of his supporters as he went on stage at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires. “I’ve always done this acapella. Now I wanted to have musicians.”

    Dressed in his customary black leather jacket, he sang Panic Show, a song by rock band La Renga that has become an anthem for libertarians in Argentina, despite the band’s opposition. The president frequently sings a part of this song before giving speeches to his supporters.

    The band that appeared alongside the president was made up of libertarian deputy Alberto “Bertie” Benegas Lynch, his brother Joaquín, and journalist Marcelo Duclos, co-author of Milei’s biography. After the musical performance, Milei gave an hour-long speech and later joined a panel with presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni and libertarian deputy José Luis Espert.

    The event was live streamed on the presidential YouTube channel, but the musical section was left out. The only footage of the moment was taken by people recording on their phones. No professional video equipment was allowed inside, aside from the devices used by the presidential team.

    Milei devoted part of his speech to speak about his book, claiming that it provides tools to fight what he calls “21st century socialism.” But he also went against abortion, despite recently saying that overturning legal pregnancy interruption in Argentina is not on his government agenda.

    Citing a passage from the Exodus book of the Bible, Milei claimed that abortion was a mechanism the Egyptians used in biblical times to “annihilate Jews.”

    “Abortion is an agenda that is over 3,000 years old, and it is completely murderous,” he said.

    Milei was initially scheduled to present his book at the Buenos Aires Book Fair on May 12. However, he decided to call it off and do it at the Luna Park stadium on the grounds that he thought the organization would “sabotage” the event. “We need to thank [Book Fair organizers] El Libro Foundation, which gifted us this party with their boycott attempt,” he said on Wednesday night.

    Tickets for the event at Luna Park were handed out free of charge. According to the government, the event was funded using earnings from the president’s book. Publisher Planeta announced on Wednesday that Milei had given up the book’s economic rights. The president later explained they were transferred to Distribuidora Belgrano Norte SRL (DBN), a music distribution company that paid for the rental of the stadium.

    In recent days, Milei has been accused of plagiarism in his new book. According to an investigation published by Noticias magazine, he allegedly copied exact paragraphs from published works by two Chilean economists and a group of researchers from Argentina’s top publicly-funded research institute, CONICET, as well as a United States website.

    “There is no plagiarism of any kind; everything is within intellectual property law,” the presidential spokesman said on Tuesday. Milei has already been accused of plagiarism on previous occasions.

    I want our next president to be the most boring ass bureaucrat possible, I've had enough of this wild ride (it has just been 6 months).

    • GinAndJucheM
      ·
      6 months ago

      Blinken and Milei should form a band. What ghoul plays drums?

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Beto O'Rourke on bass. Travis Barker on drums for a Kardashian tie-in show.

    • Redcuban1959 [any]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Argentina needs to elect as president that Peronist candidate who parodied the intro of Evangelion. That's the only way to stabilize the levels of cringe in Argentine politics.