I know the Rambo title card is a hoax.
The COTW was chosen in the wake of the aborted sequel to the attempted assassination of Trump being performed by a guy who is VERY enthusiastic about Ukraine, to the point of trying to sneak Afghan soldiers into Ukraine by setting up a house in Pakistan to house them and then further transport them. He also apparently offered to send thousands of Afghan soldiers to Haiti to help them combat gang violence. Whomst among us doesn't have the numbers of thousands of Afghan soldiers on speed-dial. Do you reckon there's a group chat?
Anyway, while there is still no official recognition of the Taliban's government by any country, China has taken a different course than the late USSR and the US - forming economic in-roads, rather than trying their own invasion. This has been a big boon for the struggling country, with various mines and oil and agriculture deals helping keep things barely afloat. A total disintegration of the social fabric of Afghanistan is not in the interest of any of the powers that border it - China, Pakistan, and Iran, with Russia not too far away - so an interesting dynamic of helping-without-official-recognition has been established. I wonder who will be the first country to fully recognize them?
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 Afghanistan! 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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
If Iran and Hezbollah don't attack Israel in the next few hours, they will have essentially surrendered. What just happened in Lebanon is the greatest terrorist attack of all time. Now we know why no one has cell phones in sci fi.
Why do people continue to say this shit and why do we tolerate people who continue to say this shit?
Agreed. These posts are nothing more than idealist wargame fantasies
Because Iran is like 4 massive escalations behind at this point. Deterrence has obviously failed at this point, Israel is going to have a war whether Iran wants to he proportional or not. Not recognizing weakness is weakness, Israel literally just wounded an ambassador after not being punished for bombing an embassy.
let's be honest, "coming collapse of israhell economy (ignore trillions of aids from usa)" is as absurd as coming collapse of china, especially since dems and their voters are very ok with funding genocide unlike south africa apartheid. only thing that will stop israhells genocide is direct military action from resistance
economies are not just "money flow in, money flow out", there's actual goods that can be blockaded and businesses that can be shuttered. the US can and would print a quintillion dollars tomorrow to save Israel from collapse. it cannot send enough food to feed the entire Israeli population every day for months and months if the ports are blocked and the airports cannot receive regular flights of cargo planes
America can easily direct food from places like Africa to Israel. They can easily build ports if they really wanted to. The date Israel loses its independence is the day it becomes the 51st state. Everybody knows this and needs to stop pretending that delaying until the next election is a sensible move.
they cannot construct a single pier
"If they really wanted to"
That pier was just a way to briefly get some stuff to Israel, they don't actually give a shit about feeding Palestinians.
what are you talking about? they ship tons and tons of weaponry to Israel every day. the pier was designed to allow US special forces to try and infiltrate Gaza from a less conspicious spot under the guise of aid delivery. sure, they largely failed in their aims, but I don't think the US intentionally designed the pier to suck, what would even be the point? they could have used it repeatedly for more missions,
There is only red sea blockade? Gibraltar is open for israhell
not at all true, they should take their time to formulate a meaningful response, and I know that they will because it's what they've done every time Israel has attacked them.
the attrition strategy actively benefits from drawing things out and making things as painful as possible for Israel. they have time on their side; Israel does not.
By the time they formulate their response, Israel will have carpet bombed Beirut at this rate. They basically just did and decapitated Hezbollah's communication network.
decapitated? this is some advanced doomerism
Noooo terrorism can only be done by non-state actors this is fine.
To be clear, I disagree with your assesment, I think a response will take longer than a few hours, will be less than declaring war, and will not essentially be surrendering.
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Wrong poster