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.
Anybody have a good report on the Khakhovka Dam collapse from last June? Had a discussion/disagreement with a pro-Ukraine guy irl about stuff after the golf course Trump would-be assassin turned out to be a deranged NAFO guy and the irl guy was trying to deflect about "Russian imperialism" at the same time he was claiming "Putin is doing scorched earth tactics purely out of vindictive national hatred of the Ukrainian people" and claimed Russia destroyed the dam just to flood out the region downstream of it to ruin infrastructure.
I don't know enough about it to push back on it confidently and didn't want to reveal my power level too much, but the whole thing read to me like the "Russia is gonna blow up the ZNPP as a dirty bomb" thing awhile back where I was just like "...the power plant they control? That they captured and secured? That they'd want to maintain as valuable infrastructure if they intend on conquering everything in Ukraine like you claim?" I know there's a lot of fog of war shit in reporting from an active warzone, but I'm almost certain this guy believed in the "Ghost of Kiev" and probably soyfaced over the "Russian warship, go fuck yourself" Snake Island thing, and the dam collapse thing being a vindictive Russian scorched earth thing just sounds fishy to me. Weren't there reports of it being hit with US supplied HIMARS by Ukrainian forces or am I thinking of something else?
Pushing back on this kind of shit makes me feel like
sometimes I stfg
https://archive.is/9Py2F
Here's a Washington Post article from 2022 about Ukraine considering blowing up the dam and hitting it with HIMARS to test their ability to destroy it.
Is this a "Biden saying they'd blow up Nordstream" in the meeting with Olaf Scholz type deal?
"I didn't do it jack, and even if I did, who's gonna believe ya!?"
ask him which country hosts the most refugees from Ukraine
Also the one country where Ukrainians aren’t being pressured back into Ukraine for recruitment, for obvious reasons
I have been informed that Russia regularly attacks their own positions, shells their own soldiers, and destroys any territory that they intend to keep.
Can't remember any source that wasn't just speculating about this. I don't think there's any evidence you could cite at him.
My own theory: If you were to blow up the dam for defensive purposes, you'd want to blow it up after the enemy had already crossed in significant numbers, but the only thing going on there in the weeks before was the occasional Ukrainian recon unit maybe doing prep work.
If, on the other hand, you were planning an offensive across the river, it might be smart to preempt this by blowing up the dam before you attempt to cross. Now, it would of course be total stupidity to do an offensive across the mouth of the Dnieper, even after the dam is blown. Nevertheless, the Ukrainians sent elite units to conquer and hold a bridgehead there after the flooding had subsided, and only gave up a couple of weeks ago.
The thing was also blown up two days before the start of the greatest Ukrainian
Coincidence?
springsummer counteroffensive.Ask him which army benefitted from the flooding of the river? Which army was advancing and which was defending.
The dam was breached to aid the defenses as an additional obstacle, it was Russia who wanted to advance past the river. Why would Russia make their own job harder?