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.
- Never go to a second location.
- Always get the interior ministry post.
- Never get in a helicopter or any small aircraft.
- If someone with a gun enters your car, they’re gonna kill you.
- If someone tells you they’re not going to kill you, they’re calming you down to kill you later.
- Never give up your nukes.
- Never release the opposition's political prisoners.
- Never let the opposition delay elections.
- If someone starts to get into German runes, drop them.
- Never trust a South American with a German name.
- Never move anywhere for a religion.
- Never go into the sewers unless you’re a sewer guy.
- If someone’s trying to get you to commit a crime, they're FBI (sometimes CIA or military intelligence).
- Never become an FBI informant.
- If you do become an FBI informant, record everything.
- Never relinquish your arms.
- Always get it in writing.
- If you keep gambling, you’ll eventually win.
- Never talk to cops without a lawyer.
- Always pay your mercenaries.
- 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
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.
I don’t know what the right word is. My first thought was to call it “gaslighting” but I don’t think this is the right word here. Maybe there’s a better non-English word.
What I’m referring to is the fact that no one on planet Earth believes Israel isn’t intentionally murdering civilians by the thousands. There is no explanation for not letting food and water in if not for reasons of collective punishment. Like, I’ve even tried to come up with a BS line I would take if I was Israel, and I can’t think of one. To my knowledge Israel hasn’t even really addressed not letting food and water in, they just simply do it.
We all know what Israel is doing. But the imperialists and Zionists simply trot out lines about “Israel isn’t targeting civilians” and “Hamas is the enemy, not the Palestinian people”. No one believes it but we are sort of “expected” to believe it. What would you actually call this?
No that's gaslighting 100%. They think if they lie consistently enough and often enough that it will make people question what they know is true. They do it with a patronizing tone most of the time and then when someone calls them out directly they switch to "what you think is crazy" tone.
Hypernormalization? Everyone has an ambient understanding, perhaps even an explicit understanding, that something is wrong. But no one is able to really comprehend the system they live in or how to escape it, so you just pretend everything is normal.
Alternatively, there’s kayfabe. It requires everyone to buy in to keep the illusion alive. The opposition within the system is largely fake and controlled or slight variations of the same agenda.
the big lie
not dodging those comparisons
Lying as a vulgar display of power
"Any aid given to Gaza will be taken by Hamas/giving aid to Gaza while Hamas is still operating legitimizes them and reduces the incentive of Gazan people to overthrow them"
Don't underestimate liberals
They just claim they ARE letting food in, and that they are even "risking the lives of their brave soldiers to deliver it", but that Hamas still steals it all. It doesn't matter how many facts they are presented with—about the pier and its (alleged) reason for being built, about direct statements from Israeli politicians saying they were literally going to lay siege to and starve all of Gaza, etc.—they just stick to the story.
Here's a debate that just happened between Mehdi Hasan and some Zionist about the ICC warrant proposal in which this is literally done. (Note that I am NOT endorsing Mehdi Hasan here. He actually does a pretty shit job IMO, especially in his condemning of Hamas in the very beginning, his acceptance of "both sides" bullshit, and his failure to call out that literally all "evidence" of systematic rape by Hamas has been debunked as Zionist slander.)
In 2016 liberals and other fart-huffers masturbated non stop with the word "post-truth" cuz "bullshit" doesn't sound intelectual enough
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
deleted by creator