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.
https://www.koreadailyus.com/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-labels-china-a-longstanding-enemy-amid-rising-tensions/
Big if true assuming Kim actually cares about how Korea gained independence from imperial Japan and the fact that I am pretty sure they were on the Soviet side of the sinko Soviet split. Seems little fishy though.
Rodong Shinmun report every thing that he says. I did not see on any language. Not in Chinese news either.
Kim Il-sung’s DPRK had benefited greatly from the Sino-Soviet split since neither side wanted the DPRK to fall into the influence of the other.
Also, keep in mind that the DPRK in the 60s and 70s, after being bombed to hell during the Korean War, had higher GDP per capita (both industrialization and living standards) than the People’s Republic of China. A small country that was touted as an economic miracle comparable to post-war Japan.
Kim Jong-il had hated China since China normalized relations with South Korea in 1983 as part of its “reform and opening up” strategy. He came to power in 1994 at the worst possible time ever, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union (import of cheap fuel that powers their highly mechanized agricultural equipments fell to a complete halt), together with the century’s worst climate disaster between 1994-96, plunged the country into widespread famine.
His eldest son (from his first wife) and heir apparent, Kim Jong-nam, was a fervent supporter of Dengist China and was ultimately purged in 2001. His first wife died in Moscow in 2002 following the purge. Kim Jong-nam would eventually be assassinated in Malaysia in 2017.
Kim Jong Un (son from his second wife) was subsequently summoned back from a Swiss international school and was groomed to be his next heir.
Kim Jong Un crafted his image and physical appearance meticulously to resemble those of his grandfather’s (Kim Il-sung) - a fat bespectacled man - who is permanently revered by the North Korean populace and to deliberately distance himself from the rule of his father that happened during the Arduous March.
It is clear that at this point, the DPRK no longer has the influence it used to have to extract concessions and favors from China, especially with the exponential growth of the Chinese economy that left everyone in the dust.
Kim’s strategy has been to engage in a cautious diplomacy with China but will defend its sovereignty at all cost, especially when it comes to the question of nuclear weapons. Kim Jong Un really ramped up ballistic missile and nuclear tests since he assumed office in 2012, which invited Russia and China into joining UN sanctions against North Korea in 2013 (Resolution 2087).
It really took until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that the DPRK began to receive more attention from the Russian side, who now also joined the “pariah states” under unprecedented international sanctions, and military and technological cooperation intensified between both countries. Kim was invited to visit Russia and various space and military facilities, and stayed there for weeks in 2023. Putin and Kim also had a nice personal meeting not too long ago, and Kim was visibly elated from seeing Putin lol.
It remains to be seen where DPRK stands with China, and how China will choose to prioritize between its relationship between the Western consumer markets versus Russia and North Korea on the other side of its borders.
China's failure to support North Korea at this time is one of the major foreign policy Ls.
Ignore the humanitarian cost, China's millions of tons of vegetable exports and that the DPRK's population is a rounding error, if the DPRK collapsed you'd have another US client state on your border.
To be fair, the feelings were mutual. Kim Jong-il really disliked China and would have preferred not to have anything to do with China.
China was also undergoing its first economic crisis since Deng’s reform with unprecedented unemployment that never existed during Mao’s period. By the end of the century, China would move toward embracing the neoliberal WTO to save its own economy, and would have sided with the Western imperialists during those times.
I always try to remind people that China’s “return to its Marxist roots” is a very recent phenomenon. Xi Jinping only became president in 2013 and his policies were not in place until the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-2020), amidst power struggles against pro-Western liberal factions. Trump’s victory in the 2016 election did help accelerate this process, but there have always existed liberals that occupy key positions across all layers of Chinese bureaucracies even to this day. Corruption was incredibly rampant in the 1990s and 2000s and they are only starting to seriously fight it in the last few years.
I think of the DPRK goverment had collapsed China would have invaded/intervened to install a pro-PRC one. No way they will allow the ROC or the US control the entire Korean peninsula.
Why would you read something from a website like KoreadailyUS that and assume it isn't just spewing shit?
Yeah when I read something like this I assume the opposite is true and they are starting to get the misinformation engine going.
Cap