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.
Interesting observations:
This is also pretty obvious by their operations today too.
yeah, it's kinda weird that Hezbollah didn't get the memo from reddit that they've been destroyed and scattered to the winds. somebody should write Nasrallah a letter telling him that continuing to attack Israel is an insult to the Israeli propaganda narrative, which is more real than reality itself
Nasrallah please strike the reddit headquarters
Doomers:
if Iran doesn't send 1 gazillion rockets NOW I've lost all faith in them
No reason to continue, immediate subjugation of the global south and total submission of the DPRK to Washington are inevitable. China balkanize and US soldiers welcomed as liberators.
So I guess the primary purpose (but not the only one) for the explosions was just for the sake of inflicting terror after all?
As we've seen in Ukraine, territory isn't what matters in war, it's destroying your enemies resources to fight. Hezbollah will certainly follow that kind of strategy.
Yeah but if you want to use the Ukraine war analogy, Hezbollah is not in the position of Russia, who have air supremacy and are the invading force. Hezbollah would be in a more similar position to Ukraine, with little to no air cover and defending their own territory. Hezbollah will not be able to use a similar strategy to Russia because they do not have the same capabilities as Russia.
They can disappear and bleed Israel dry though, just like in 2006. Israel cannot tolerate large losses of personnel, Hezbollah can.
They airstrike cities, and then what? They still need to cross into Lebanon at which point they'll enter the Vietnam lite phase of the war.
Holding territory requires you physically maintain a presence with soldiers and outposts. Calling in airstrikes and drone strikes isn't enough, they just waste money and resources on nothing.
Not only that, but Israel would be in the position of Russia in the early days of the Ukraine war. When they captured loads of territory but had to significantly cut back because Ukraine would dog-walk them to their graves if they actually tried to occupy Ukrainian land.
This was a smart move by Russia and was necessary to achieve their goals, which are to denazify/demilitarize Ukraine, keep it from joining NATO, and install a Russia friendly leader. That's why occupation of Ukrainian land and wonton destruction of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure were avoided.
Unlike Russia however, Isntrael's strategic goals ARE occupation. They don't just want to bring the settlers back to the north, they want to occupy and set up a "safe zone" deep into Lebanese territory.
They must occupy and hold territory, because that's the only way to achieve that goal.
Of all the things a country could do, no matter how large or powerful they are, occupying foreign land is fucking difficult and often results in a protracted war that ends with occupier leaving in body bags.
Russia understood this, that's why they got out of most of Ukraine and switched to attrition warfare to wait out the inevitable Ukrainian front(s) collapsing.
It happened to America in Vietnam and Afghanistan, it happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan. It will happen with Lebanon and Isntrael as well.
Seeing as Israel occupied southern lebanon for decades, this is literally just a return to the old status quo. I define doom in this scenario as Israel allowing settlers into Sidon. Still, this is not as impressive as Nasrallah is saying, everyone knows Hezbollah can't maintain a hard border and never wanted to.