Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.
Despite the predictions and assertions of various NATO-aligned commentators that Russia's influence is waning, the opposite generally appears to be occurring. ASEAN has become more strongly aligned with Russia despite claims to the contrary. In Central Asia, there has been a propaganda push to declare that countries there are "emerging from Russia's shadow", while in reality, as Bhadrakumar analyzes, Russia's significant economic growth and ongoing march towards victory in Ukraine is creating opportunities for further integration, not separation, and there are no major political shifts there in terms of Russian ties. And in Niger, Russian soldiers have now entered an airbase which once hosted American soldiers, now kicked out, and generally Russia's diplomacy and economic deals (nuclear power plant construction, military equipment, grain shipments, etc) have accelerated in Africa.
Where Russia's influence has actually seemed to decrease (outside of the West, of course) is in Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh's remarkably rapid collapse in late 2023 demonstrated that Russia was not willing to escalate things in defense of Armenia to fend off Azerbaijan. One hundred thousand Armenians - most but not all of them in the region - fled in advance to avoid mass persecution, which received remarkably little attention by a West which calls itself overwhelmingly concerned with borders changing due to military action as in Ukraine. Since then, Armenia seems to be on some kind of self-annihilating bender, allured by the potential of Western military and economic deals. Armenia froze its membership in the CSTO due to its failure to protect them, and the head of NATO, Stoltenberg, visited the region in March. The West has offered up hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Armenia and is helping them "modernize their military"; given the poor track record of Western military equipment in Ukraine, one wonders why they're even bothering. RAND has advocated for a balancing act; America should, in their eyes, realize that they can't entirely remove Russia's influence but nonetheless should make inroads to protect Armenia from Azerbaijan (which is an interesting position given that Israel provided arms to Azerbaijan to help them take Nagorno-Karabakh).
A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.
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 Armenia! 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.
Journalists vagueposting on twitter but apparently the Israeli Eurovision delegation harrassed the Dutch participant and made fun of his dead parents (which his song is about), the Dutch guy punched someone and now Eurovision is (maybe?) disqualifying him. The show is being delayed, nobody is saying anything concrete. This is all rumours, could be wrong entirely, but something almost definitely happened between the Dutch and Israeli parties. The local reporters say it's total chaos and nobody really knows what's going on.
They're really gonna burn everything to the ground to protect Israel's impunity.
Edit: Apparently the Italian girl just sang Imagine by John Lennon for no discernable reason.
Edit 2: All press conferences scheduled for today have been cancelled, everyone is confused
Edit 3: Seems like the Dutch guy was a huge fan favorite and he called out the Israeli woman during press conferences before. Now the rumor is that he got in a fight with a photographer. It does seem like he's being disqualified. There's also a video of an Israeli journalist harassing him.
Edit 4: Spanish journalist also harrassed by Israelis at Eurovision
Edit 5: Joost Klein is not performing during the Jury show. They're saying this has nothing to do with Israel but there was an incident with a Swedish photographer but I don't buy it. This is, from what I know, the first time something like this has happened. You're telling me no Eurovision contestant has ever gotten in a fight before a big show? Nobody has ever thrown hands during this yearly freak show of rival countries? This is the first time someone needs to be disqualified? Shut the fuck up.
EU liberals finally having their first interaction with Israelis and finding out why they're so hated
This cannot be stressed enough to those who have never met Israelis IRL. They are absolute scum, extremely arrogant, extremely rude and just disgusting people. Anybody who interacts with them will begin to hate them.
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Actual heroes. I unironically mean this.
I've never met a people that are so consistently awful. What do you call it when people dislike you as a nation (Israel the apartheid nation. Not the Jewish nation) bc you're all a bunch of reprehensible genociding thieves?
Like it can't be racism if everyone has receipts of your sociopathy?
I was thinking this about Americans in the coming years. When there is a sizable influx of them here, including ones that might chase work outside of NYC and south Florida + the them getting blamed for accelerating the collapse of the empire.... Yikes
I don't feel sorry for them. When you follow an ideology that literally threw Jews in death camps in WW2, you forfeit any sympathy.
Israelis are the absolute worst humanity has ever offered.
Even the average German under the Nazi regime would have been less insufferable than these removed.
Edit: these Walnuts. I'm gonna use walnuts as an insult.
It's worth poining out that after the Dutch guy didn't perform in rehearsals, an Israeli press member selectively filmed himself following and haranguing the Dutch delegation, trying to start shit, and acting up for the camera when a member of the Dutch delegation turned around, stopped, and told him to get lost seemingly to create some distance between him and the Dutch guy. Recent pictures of the dressing rooms seem to show that all Dutch flag for what was their dressing room as been removed. And the Dutch performer has deleted all of his Instagram stories about Eurovision and stopped following them.
As for the Italian televote... it's incredibly sus.
40% of a televote with the next largest only getting 7% would be totally unheard of. Even when Ukraine won, which was so obvious at the peak of European Ukraine Flag hysteria and with many many people who don't usually watch voting just for them, they got between 24-29% of the televotes in the semi-final and final, with their competition being much closer in their percentages too.
The counter-agruement would be that there's only ways to vote for, not against, countries in Eurovision and a large number of people who usually watch and vote who dislike Israel are boycotting it this year (myself included) which would skew the voting people to being more pro-Israel, especially if lots of Zionists are paying attention this year to vote even if they're not watching etc.
The sheer difference in percentage between Israel and the next highest though suggests a crazy number of Israel votes. Again, amounts that would be totally, totally unheard of for literally any entry historically.
It's also somewhat suspicious how wrong it means the bookies would have gotten it. Bookmakers are generally pretty good at this, and rarely wildly outside the reality, but they mostly had Israel at 50-1 or worse until this televote leaked. Now they're solidly second mostly likely to win. And there's no way bookies weren't taking into account things like the political situation, the pro-Palestine boycott, pro-Israeli social media activity focused on Eurovision etc. For them to be uniformly soooo far off proves that it's not just some bubble of younger, less pro-Israel Eurovision viewers not reading the room.
Then you've got the fact that Israel (the government, not the Eurovision entry) has definitely manipulated Eurovision in the past as a propaganda tool. Their win in 2018 drew allegations of televote manipulation. Israeli politicians stated openly that a Eurovision win and then hosting in 2019 was an active priority in their PR strategy and had specific working groups dedicated to it. And when their 2019 hosting was controversial, with European and Irish press discussing potential boycotts they were caught massively manipulating online media polls via a number of apps with state backing.
Really sad how everything you know and love will be burned to the ground just so capitalists can get more oil and real estate properties
Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that Eurovision's biggest sponsor for the last 3 years has been Morrocanoil, which is, despite the name, and Israeli firm that's been targeted by BDS for disguising where it's made an possibly being based in illegal settlements.
From what i remember, during a press conference yesterday a reporter asked the Israeli singer if she felt unsafe being in Malmo. She replied that she chooses not to answer, Klein looked at her and asked "why not?". She didn't look too happy with that reply.
Yeah. There's been multiple reports of press from other countries being surrounded and intimidated by people with Israeli press passes for showing any support of Israel or refusing to clap or cheer for Israel during rehearsals. I wonder if that was partly the origin of the question.
He's also only 26, which is prime time for being tapped into the cultural moment. I wonder how this is going to proceed.
So are euros actually talking about this? It seems like there is actually cheating going on rn and it's out in the open.
This is so strange
Not really because this instance didn't really matter, it was just semi-finals which nobody gives a shit about except the real ESC stans.
honestly im hoping israel wins so next years eurovision can get a fireworks show
Israel won't exist by next year
My first thought when I saw that is some bookie is making bank 🤌🤌🤌
Update: All Dutch flags have been removed from the arena and the Netherlands are no longer in the running order for the Jury show about to start. Netherlands are out.
Update update: A WhatsApp alert to Eurovision media says they're going to show his Semi-Final performance for the jury show, but haven't clarified whether the judges will award it points, and also suggest it's because they're in negotiations with the Dutch TV channel that airs and donates to Eurovision. Even Eurovision media has no idea what's happening.
I will say it is funny to me how typically Dutch it is to take offence to something like not having to answer a question because it might be a sensitive topic.
Can someone please stop the idealistic and utopian Europeans before they start another world war...
It's been announced on stage that Joost (the Dutch artist) will no longer perform. The reaction in the arena was pretty strong.
Joost Klein come to Gyrovision
Relax. It’s his birthday!