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.
Honestly whenever I hear “the US could stop this” it doesn’t really make sense anymore. It’s the same thing as saying “Israel could stop this anytime it wants.” Both technically true, but allowing Israel to destabilize its neighbors and keep the Middle East in crisis is exactly what the US ruling class wants. It’s not like the US is getting regrettably pulled into all of this because it doesn’t have the guts to say no. America does what America wants as a hegemon, full stop. If the ruling class want all of this to be happening, it simply wouldn’t happen. I’m not saying the US is some god that snaps its fingers and the world goes accordingly because that’s not a dialectical analysis. I’m just saying Israel is so much a foundational extension of US foreign policy for the Middle East that it becomes an extension its own will. So saying the US could stop it anytime it wants, I mean sure. A school shooter could stop shooting anytime they want too. It’s just meaningless
I think this is slightly too dismissive of Israel's own agency in the conflict. I do think that destabilizing the Middle East in this fashion (not just spreading chaos and death in Iraq and Syria but it actually meaningfully impacting both Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other monarchies) isn't in America's best interests. I think if you asked the top people in the deep state "If you had a choice between having a war between Israel and Hezbollah and not having that war, which would you pick?" then they'd answer 'not having a war'. America has actively benefitted from the status quo over the last century, has shaped the region as best it could to align with its geopolitical interests, and now this genocide and war threatens to upset that project. The endangerment of various private military corporations rampaging through the Middle East is fairly unimportant, they're just there to take the losses and do the dirtiest work. Losing Israel, or it even being massively weakened, is actually catastrophic, but also fairly possible to achieve because Israel is tiny and surrounded by very angry regional forces. The entire "deterrence" paradigm was established specifically so this exact situation would not be allowed to occur. Israel getting caught up in an existential war should not have been allowed to happen. That this situation has now occurred is a blow to the US.
The issue is that there's no interest, or at least concentrated will, inside the US government to tell Israel that they're endangering their imperialist project in the Middle East. It's at least partially sunk cost, and at least partially that if Israel is forced to back down, then the deterrence paradigm is still shattered, which means that another war in 2, 5, 10 years could happen. If Biden called Israel tomorrow and was like "That's enough. We are stopping all military and financial aid unless you end the siege of Gaza and sign a deal with the Resistance," then even if Israel did that, then Hezbollah and Hamas and everybody else isn't going to go "Well, all in a year's work! Time to disband and stop fighting Israel! They might be in a historically weak position, but we got the deal we wanted!" They're going to rebuild and prepare for the next round, and with Iran strengthening due to the help of Russia and a rapidly ascending China, and the US failing to maintain industrial production of key military equipment and instead burning trillions on F-35s, the next war will be even more lopsided against Israel.
So there's no way out. Iran and friends have manuevered the empire into a trap, just as Russia did in Ukraine. Just as the US has/will find it extraordinarily difficult to surrender in Ukraine because of all the implications of that move and so feel compelled to keep fighting even if their analysts know that they're doomed, the same situation is occurring in Israel. If they keep fighting, it means the further destruction of the imperial architecture that took decades to build. If they give up, they've gained nothing, they've lost a lot (of both physical military equipment and soft power around the world), they've been dealt a big psychological blow, and they know that the next round of fighting (a cold or hot war) will be even worse. Europe being substantially weakened as an imperial rival is the only significant achievement that they've managed. It's a pretty good one, but does that make up for everything else? Europe was already stagnating for years and years before the Ukraine War began.
Realizing that the Western ruling class would rather die than give up their privilege is both shocking, and horrifyingly not shocking.
A deal with the resistance would necessitate movement towards an acceptable long term resolution for both sides re Gaza. I don’t think the assumption that Hamas and Hezbollah lured Israel into war, or would desire a future war, is correct. I suspect Hamas did not expect the incursions on Oct 7th to be as successful as they were, nor the Israeli response - which began with them shelling their own citizens - to be so extreme. They offered to return all hostages immediately in return for Israeli agreeing not to launch a ground invasion, for example. Oct 7 also only occurred within the context of Israel having taken years of attempts at peaceful resistance and resolution on the part of Hamas as a sign of weakness to be exploited. Ultimately the US has calculated that keeping Israel happy is worth any cost, whether that’s because of their importance to US imperialism or for domestic political reasons is not totally clear I think.
I don't remember this, do you have a decent source?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/no-doubt-netanyahu-preventing-hostage-deal-charges-ex-spokesman-of-families-forum/amp/
It seems the offer was to return civilian rather than all hostages
Ah, now it's ringing bells, thank you. I think back then I was talking/thinking about how Israel probably wouldn't go for it even if they weren't bloodthirsty and looking for thousands of children to murder, because the military hostages are the ones that are actually somewhat important to them.
the reason it's brought up is to counter the center-left DNC lib narrative that the Democrats are doing everything they can to reach a ceasefire and hold Israel back. Pointing out that the US is responsible and could end it all with a phone call is to prove that the Democrats are lying genocidal warmongers who have no actual interest in ending the conflict. You are correct in saying that America is doing what it wants, and it won't make that phone call, but it is also true that they could. That is important for Liberals who are on the fence and don't like that Kamala and Biden are doing a genocide, but have justified it to themselves because they are doing the best they can to mitigate it in their minds.