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.
Do the russians in charge really believe their own nonsense about traditional values compared to the west. Because it seems that they just picked a side in the culture war bs and got entangled into it instead of using those idiots to destabilize the west. Maybe it's a bit of both.
From what I understand the russian political regime is not ideologically wed to anything whatsoever. Worldviews are exploited, discarded and distilled for whatever is (perceived as) useful for social cohesion. Russia, like any other post soviet country, saw a religious revival amidst societal collapse. It is also going through the final stages of the demographic transition. Religious traditionalism and religious nationalism are both powerless but all too common choices for states in this position.
usually when you ask the question of whether such and such group actually believes whatever nonsense they're spouting, the answer is yes
Maybe a bit of both? I wouldn’t underestimate the reactionary ideology part though. After 1991, "traditional values" have firmly replaced socialism to explain why Russia is better than the west. Since the country was brutally transitioning to capitalism, there had to be an ideological reasoning for the suffering (blaming marginalized people of course). The Orthodox Church had a lot of influence on it, as well as patriarchal criminal gangs that were very prominent in the 90s and very connected to the ruling class. So it’s not like the people on top are disconnected from the reactionary elements, they came to power through them and continue to benefit from it.
Is there a part that doesn’t care? Maybe. There are quite a few oligarchs who have permanent residencies in europe, or send their kids to study there. But to me it is kinda like Republicans sending kids to Ivy League but then saying that they teach Marxism or something. Benefiting from privilege doesn’t necessarily mean than you’re not culturally conservative.
It's a bit of both, mainly though they turned to the orthodox church to give moral authority to obvious kleptocratic tendencies. There is also the unfortunate fact that historically most left wing movements labeled anything "decadent"as a bourgeois excess and leaned super into austere progressivism. That included homosexuality. Had the USSR not collapsed, I'm not sure if places like Cuba would have got with the times and ended oppression of lgbtq groups. Then again I know little about gay issues during perestroika.
Interestingly, GDR was getting quite progressive on lgbt issues around 1989. In the USSR, some gay rights groups were formed around the same time. The problem with perestroika and glasnost was that reactionary currents/topics/speech far outweighed any progressive movements.
Yes, Russia’s demographic is falling off a cliff and this is just a delusional, last ditch attempt to save the collapsing population by encouraging large family and birth rate. The young people don’t give a shit about raising family and so it is all falling on deaf ears. Some cities are trying to introduce automation to get around this problem but the country is too poor to implement these at any meaningful level, not to mention that the current technology is nowhere near as cost effective as what would be required to offset Russia’s collapsing demographic.
I hate to say this but Russia is pretty much a gone case by now. The demographic crisis since the collapse of the USSR and the shock therapy never recovered, and it spells impending doom for the nation a few decades down the road.
Lol
Russia will collapse any day now, trust me
For context: https://www.intellinews.com/russia-s-fertility-rate-is-catastrophically-low-335864/
https://www.intellinews.com/demographics-and-equality-main-national-goals-in-putinand-039-s-latest-mayand-039-s-decree-324872
Russia's birthrate is on the low end for Europe and well below replacement rate, though nowhere near as bad as Republic of Korea. This isn't a new concern for the Russian state.
This would not be a problem if Russia is one of those high income European countries. South Korea’s median income is more than 2 times higher than Russia’s, in USD terms.
When you’re a low income country and have a low birth rate, you’re pretty much fucked.
It will come to a point where young people will have to work much much harder to sustain the much larger aging population, which will almost certainly strain the healthcare system and various public utilities to their limits. How many young people do you think will still want to stay in Russia when it comes to that?
It is easy to underestimate just how far reaching the consequences of the Shock Therapy can be. When you let foreign capitalists come in and plunder your economy (quite literally stripped down to the bare bones, if you actually read up Russia’s tragic history in the 1990s), it’s not something that you can just easily recover from. The devastating aftermath can linger for many decades.
What Putin has been doing since the 2000s was to stitch together the strewn limbs of a half-dying corpse that is Russia and limping it forward, just barely.
Average life expectancy is 70, retirement age is 60 (and they unsuccessfully tried to raise that a few years ago)
It's a symptom of the serious consequences of the fall of the USSR but this aspect of the problem is mitigated by the healthcare and broader social services systems falling to shit
Russia's cost of living is low. They're doing fine
So is Brazil's or any poor/middle income country's. That doesn't mean we'll weather demographic collapse well. It just means we already consume fewer goods and of a poorer quality than westerners. And that it will only get worse in the coming decades. If Russia does fine, it will be because of their political economy going forward. Not because the cost of living is currently low relative to that of the imperial core - the cost of living has to be low relative to the median purchasing power of the people.
To maintain low cost of living, you need labor to produce goods and services. What happens when you have a much larger retired population to feed and there are not enough young people to supply these goods and services?
This is also why China has already anticipated a raise in retirement age in preparation for mitigating the problems that will be caused by their aging population, and China has by far a much stronger economy than Russia’s and its demographic crisis not as bad.
Pure doomerism.